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The diagnosis of autism is based on a person's reported and directly observed behavior. There are no known biomarkers for autism that allow for a conclusive diagnosis.
In most cases, diagnostic criteria codified in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases (ICD) or the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) are used. These reference manuals are regularly updated based on advances in research, systematic evaluation of clinical experience, and healthcare considerations. Currently, the DSM-5 published in 2013 and the ICD-10 that came into effect in 1994 are used, with the latter in the process of being replaced by the ICD-11 that came into effect in 2022 and is now implemented by healthcare systems across the world. Which autism spectrum diagnoses can be made and which criteria are used depends on the local healthcare system's regulations.
According to the DSM-5-TR (2022), in order to receive a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, one must present with "persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction" and "restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities." These behaviors must begin in early childhood and affect one's ability to perform everyday tasks. Furthermore, the symptoms must not be fully explainable by intellectual disability or global developmental delay.
== Challenges ==
There are several factors that make autism spectrum disorder difficult to diagnose. First off, there are no standardized imaging, molecular or genetic tests that can be used to diagnose ASD. Additionally, there is a lot of variety in how ASD affects individuals. The behavioral manifestations of ASD depend on one's developmental stage, age of presentation, current support, and individual variability. Lastly, there are multiple conditions that may present similarly to autism spectrum disorder, including intellectual disability, hearing impairment, a specific language impairment such as Landau–Kleffner syndrome, ADHD, anxiety disorder, and psychotic disorders. Furthermore, the presence of autism can make it harder to diagnose coexisting psychiatric disorders such as depression. Diagnosing will be much harder in adults, since most people with ASD who reach adulthood undiagnosed, learn diverse (and often intense) masking techniques which make external diagnosis almost impossible.
== DSM-5-TR criteria ==
The DSM-5-TR lists five criteria (with examples) which include two groups of criteria (the first two):
Persistent impairments in social communication and interaction, characterized by difficulties in social-emotional exchange, nonverbal communication, and forming or understanding relationships.
Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, as manifested by at least two of the following: repetitive actions or speech, strict adherence to routines, intense fixations, and unusual sensory responses.
Symptoms must be evident early in development, though they may only become noticeable when social demands exceed abilities or may be masked by learned coping strategies later in life.
Symptoms cause significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning.
The symptoms are not better explained by intellectual developmental disorder or global developmental delay.
== Diagnostic process ==
Ideally the diagnosis of ASD should be given by a team of clinicians (e.g. pediatricians, child psychiatrists, child neurologists) based on information provided from the affected individual, caregivers, other medical professionals and from direct observation. Evaluation of a child or adult for autism spectrum disorder typically starts with a pediatrician or primary care physician taking a developmental history and performing a physical exam. If warranted, the physician may refer the individual to an ASD specialist who will observe and assess cognitive, communication, family, and other factors using standardized tools, and taking into account any associated medical conditions. A pediatric neuropsychologist is often asked to assess behavior and cognitive skills, both to aid diagnosis and to help recommend educational interventions. Further workup may be performed after someone is diagnosed with ASD. This may include a clinical genetics evaluation particularly when other symptoms already suggest a genetic cause. Although up to 40% of ASD cases may be linked to genetic causes, it is not currently recommended to perform complete genetic testing on every individual who is diagnosed with ASD. Consensus guidelines for genetic testing in patients with ASD in the US and UK are limited to high-resolution chromosome and fragile X testing. Metabolic and neuroimaging tests are also not routinely performed for diagnosis of ASD.
The age at which ASD is diagnosed varies. Sometimes ASD can be diagnosed as early as 18 months, however, diagnosis of ASD before the age of two years may not be reliable. Diagnosis becomes increasingly stable over the first three years of life. For example, a one-year-old who meets diagnostic criteria for ASD is less likely than a three-year-old to continue to do so a few years later. Additionally, age of diagnosis may depend on the severity of ASD, with more severe forms of ASD more likely to be diagnosed at an earlier age. Issues with access to healthcare such as cost of appointments or delays in making appointments often lead to delays in the diagnosis of ASD. In the UK the National Autism Plan for Children recommends at most 30 weeks from first concern to completed diagnosis and assessment, though few cases are handled that quickly in practice. Lack of access to appropriate medical care, broadening diagnostic criteria and increased awareness surrounding ASD in recent years has resulted in an increased number of individuals receiving a diagnosis of ASD as adults. Diagnosis of ASD in adults poses unique challenges because it still relies on an accurate developmental history and because autistic adults sometimes learn coping strategies, known as "masking" or "camouflaging", which may make it more difficult to obtain a diagnosis.
The presentation and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder may vary based on sex and gender identity. Most studies that have investigated the impact of gender on presentation and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder have not differentiated between the impact of sex versus gender. There is some evidence that autistic women and girls tend to show less repetitive behavior and may engage in more camouflaging than autistic males. Camouflaging may include making oneself perform normative facial expressions and eye contact. Differences in behavioral presentation and gender-stereotypes may make it more challenging to diagnose autism spectrum disorder in a timely manner in females. A notable percentage of autistic females may be misdiagnosed, diagnosed after a considerable delay, or not diagnosed at all.
Considering the unique challenges in diagnosing ASD using behavioral and observational assessment, specific US practice parameters for its assessment were published by the American Academy of Neurology in the year 2000, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 1999, and a consensus panel with representation from various professional societies in 1999. The practice parameters outlined by these societies include an initial screening of children by general practitioners (i.e., "Level 1 screening") and for children who fail the initial screening, a comprehensive diagnostic assessment by experienced clinicians (i.e. "Level 2 evaluation"). Furthermore, it has been suggested that assessments of children with suspected ASD be evaluated within a developmental framework, include multiple informants (e.g., parents and teachers) from diverse contexts (e.g., home and school), and employ a multidisciplinary team of professionals (e.g., clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists, and psychiatrists).
As of 2019, psychologists wait until a child showed initial evidence of ASD tendencies, then administer various psychological assessment tools to assess for ASD. Among these measurements, the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) are considered the "gold standards" for assessing autistic children. The ADI-R is a semi-structured parent interview that probes for symptoms of autism by evaluating a child's current behavior and developmental history. The ADOS is a semi-structured interactive evaluation of ASD symptoms that is used to measure social and communication abilities by eliciting several opportunities for spontaneous behaviors (e.g., eye contact) in standardized context. Various other questionnaires (e.g., The Childhood Autism Rating Scale, Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist) and tests of cognitive functioning (e.g., The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test) are typically included in an ASD assessment battery. The diagnostic interview for social and communication disorders (DISCO) may also be used.
== Screening ==
About half of parents of children with ASD notice their child's atypical behaviors by age 18 months, and about four-fifths notice by age 24 months. If a child does not meet any of the following milestones, it "is an absolute indication to proceed with further evaluations. Delay in referral for such testing may delay early diagnosis and treatment and affect the [child's] long-term outcome."
No response to name (or gazing with direct eye contact) by 6 months.
No babbling by 12 months.
No gesturing (pointing, waving, etc.) by 12 months.
No single words by 16 months.
No two-word (spontaneous, not just echolalic) phrases by 24 months.
Loss of any language or social skills, at any age.
The Japanese practice is to screen all children for ASD at 18 and 24 months, using autism-specific formal screening tests. In contrast, in the UK, children whose families or doctors recognize possible signs of autism are screened. It is not known which approach is more effective. The UK National Screening Committee does not recommend universal ASD screening in young children. Their main concerns includes higher chances of misdiagnosis at younger ages and lack of evidence of effectiveness of early interventions. There is no consensus between professional and expert bodies in the US on screening for autism in children younger than 3 years.
Screening tools include the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT), the Early Screening of Autistic Traits Questionnaire, and the First Year Inventory; initial data on M-CHAT and its predecessor, the Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (CHAT), on children aged 18–30 months suggests that it is best used in a clinical setting and that it has low sensitivity (many false-negatives) but good specificity (few false-positives). It may be more accurate to precede these tests with a broadband screener that does not distinguish ASD from other developmental disorders. Screening tools designed for one culture's norms for behaviors like eye contact may be inappropriate for a different culture. Although genetic screening for autism is generally still impractical, it can be considered in some cases, such as children with neurological symptoms and dysmorphic features.
== Prevalence of autism diagnosis rates ==
From 2011 to 2022, there was a 175% increase in autism diagnosis rates. According to the CDC, in 2023, 1 in 36 8-year olds were found to be diagnosed with ASD while in 2018, only 1 in 44 8-year olds were found to be diagnosed with ASD. Studies also show that boys are more likely to be diagnosed with ASD than girls despite there being no difference between the two in symptoms and overall expression.
== Misdiagnosis ==
There is a significant level of misdiagnosis of autism in neurodevelopmentally typical children; 18–37% of children diagnosed with ASD eventually lose their diagnosis. This high rate of lost diagnosis cannot be accounted for by successful ASD treatment alone. The most common reason parents reported as the cause of lost ASD diagnosis was new information about the child (73.5%), such as a replacement diagnosis. Other reasons included a diagnosis given so the child could receive ASD treatment (24.2%), ASD treatment success or maturation (21%), and parents disagreeing with the initial diagnosis (1.9%).
Many of the children who were later found not to meet ASD diagnosis criteria then received diagnosis for another developmental disorder. Most common was ADHD, but other diagnoses included sensory disorders, anxiety, personality disorder, or learning disability. Neurodevelopment and psychiatric disorders that are commonly misdiagnosed as ASD include specific language impairment, social communication disorder, anxiety disorder, reactive attachment disorder, cognitive impairment, visual impairment, hearing loss and normal behavioral variation. Some behavioral variations that resemble autistic traits are repetitive behaviors, sensitivity to change in daily routines, focused interests, and toe-walking. These are considered normal behavioral variations when they do not cause impaired function. Boys are more likely to exhibit repetitive behaviors especially when excited, tired, bored, or stressed. Some ways of distinguishing typical behavioral variations from autistic behaviors are the ability of the child to suppress these behaviors and the absence of these behaviors during sleep.
== See also ==
Autism-spectrum quotient
== References == | Wikipedia/Diagnosis_of_autism |
A vaccination schedule is a series of vaccinations, including the timing of all doses, which may be either recommended or compulsory, depending on the country of residence.
A vaccine is an antigenic preparation used to produce active immunity to a disease, in order to prevent or reduce the effects of infection by any natural or "wild" pathogen. Vaccines go through multiple phases of trials to ensure safety and effectiveness.
Many vaccines require multiple doses for maximum effectiveness, either to produce sufficient initial immune response or to boost response that fades over time. For example, tetanus vaccine boosters are often recommended every 10 years. Vaccine schedules are developed by governmental agencies or physicians groups to achieve maximum effectiveness using required and recommended vaccines for a locality while minimizing the number of health care system interactions. Over the past two decades, the recommended vaccination schedule has grown rapidly and become more complicated as many new vaccines have been developed.
Some vaccines are recommended only in certain areas (countries, sub national areas, or at-risk populations) where a disease is common. For instance, yellow fever vaccination is on the routine vaccine schedule of French Guiana, is recommended in certain regions of Brazil but in the United States is only given to travelers heading to countries with a history of the disease. In developing countries, vaccine recommendations also take into account the level of health care access, the cost of vaccines and issues with vaccine availability and storage. Sample vaccination schedules discussed by the World Health Organization show a developed country using a schedule which extends over the first five years of a child's life and uses vaccines which cost over $700 including administration costs while a developing country uses a schedule providing vaccines in the first 9 months of life and costing only $25. This difference is due to the lower cost of health care, the lower cost of many vaccines provided to developing nations, and that more expensive vaccines, often for less common diseases, are not utilized.
== Worldwide ==
The World Health Organization monitors vaccination schedules across the world, noting what vaccines are included in each country's program, the coverage rates achieved and various auditing measures. The table below shows the types of vaccines given in example countries. The WHO publishes on its website current vaccination schedules for all WHO member states. Additional vaccines are given to individuals more likely to come into contact with specific diseases through work or travel (e.g. military), or after potentially infectious exposure. Examples include rabies, anthrax, cholera and smallpox.
== By country ==
=== Australia ===
The Immunise Australia Program implements the National Immunization Program (NIP) Schedule. All vaccines available under the Australian immunization schedule are free of charge under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
=== Austria ===
Austrian vaccine recommendations are developed by the National Vaccination Board (German: Nationales Impfgremium), which is part of the Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection.
Children aged 14 and older can be vaccinated without parental consent.
=== Brazil ===
All recommended vaccines are provide free of charge by the public health services.
=== Canada ===
In Canada, publicly funded immunization schedules may vary from province or territory.
==== Alberta ====
==== British Columbia ====
==== New Brunswick ====
==== Ontario ====
==== Quebec ====
=== Finland ===
History
1960: Mumps vaccinations for military recruits.
1975: Measles vaccination for 1 year old children.
1975: Rubella vaccination for 11–13 years old girls and seronegative mothers.
1982: Two doses of MMR vaccination at 14–18 months and 6 years of age were introduced in the national childhood vaccination programme.
2009: Rotavirus vaccine introduced at 2, 3 and 5 months to all children (September 2009)
2010: PCV introduced at 3, 5 and 12 months of age to all children (September 2010).
2013: HPV vaccination of girls introduced
2017: Varicella vaccination introduced (1 September 2017) at 18 months, 6 years + catch-up of all born from 1 January 2006 or after with no history of varicella.
2020: HPV vaccination of boys introduced
=== France ===
=== Germany ===
In Germany, a vaccination schedule is developed by the Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO), which operates as part of the Robert Koch Institute. The recommendations are generally adopted by the Federal Joint Committee.
=== Hong Kong ===
In Hong Kong, Department of Health is responsible for providing free vaccinations from newborns up to primary school students.
=== India ===
In India, the standard vaccination schedule is recommended by the Indian Academy of Paediatrics(IAP). The latest schedule was the one given in 2016.
=== Italy ===
=== Japan ===
The vaccination schedule in Japan is defined and partially recommended by Immunization Act (Japanese: 予防接種法) and its related cabinet order (Japanese: 予防接種法施行令). By the combined laws, infections are categorized into two groups: Category A is recommended for vaccination to prevent pandemic whereas Category B is only for a personal care purpose. As of January 2020, fourteen infections are Category A diseases and two are Category B on the legal lists. The Act and the Order were enacted for mandatory vaccination in 1948 with punitive clauses, only the clauses were repealed in 1976 and eventually vaccination has become non-mandatory since 1994.
Only in the legal term in Japan, citizens get old one day before their birthdays. If a person was born on January 1, 2020, and Immunization Act specifies vaccine against measles could be received from age 12 months to 24 months, vaccination shall be practiced between December 31, 2020, and December 31, 2021 (not between January 2021 and January 2022.) Some vaccinations are scheduled in line with the school year system, which starts from April 1 in Japan. As explained, those who born on April 1 and on April 2 get old legally on March 31 and April 1, respectively. Thus, these two people are in different school years and thereby they may take vaccines in different calendar years.
=== New Zealand ===
History
Major additions, replacements and removals from the New Zealand Immunization Schedule include:
1958: First Schedule: DTwP and DT
1961: Polio (OPV) added
1971: Measles, rubella and tetanus toxoid added
1979: Rubella changed to girls only
1988: HepB added
1990: MMR replaced measles and rubella
1994: HIB added; Td replaced tetanus toxoid
1996: DT dropped
1997: Influenza added
2000: DTaP replaced DTwP
2002: IPV replaced OPV
2006: MeNZB and Tdap added
2008: MeNZB dropped, PCV7 added, HPV4 added for females only
2011: PCV10 replaced PCV7
2014: RV5 added, PCV13 replaced PCV10
2017: HPV9 replaced HPV4 and extended to males, RV1 replaced RV5, PCV10 replaced PCV13, VV added.
2018: HZ added.
2020: Td dropped.
=== Nigeria ===
All recommended vaccines are provide free of charge by the Federal Ministry of Health.
=== Spain ===
=== United Kingdom ===
The United Kingdom childhood vaccination schedule is recommended by the Department of Health and National Health Service, and uses combination immunisations where available.
==== Non-routine vaccinations ====
Some children may receive vaccines in addition to those listed in the table:
BCG vaccine is given at birth to "children born in areas of the country where there are high numbers of TB cases" and "children whose parents or grandparents were born in a country with many cases of TB."
Hepatitis B vaccine is given at birth to "babies born to mothers who have hepatitis B".
The injected flu vaccine is offered annually to "children 6 months to 17 years old with long-term health conditions".
==== Adult vaccinations ====
The five scheduled childhood tetanus vaccinations are thought to generally confer lifelong immunity; thus, no routine booster doses are given in adulthood. Those adults at risk of contaminated cuts (e.g., gardeners) may have booster tetanus vaccination every ten years. Pneumococcus vaccinations (pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine/PPV) are recommended for those over 65 and for people without a functional spleen (asplenia), either because the spleen has been removed or does not work properly. Flu vaccine is recommended for anyone who is aged 65 years and over, people with certain long-term medical conditions, health and social care professionals, pregnant women, and poultry workers. The shingles vaccine is recommended for those over 70. Additionally, pregnant women are advised to have the pertussis vaccine.
=== United States ===
The most up-to-date schedules are available from CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. In the US, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act requires all health-care providers to provide parents or patients with copies of Vaccine Information Statements before administering vaccines.
==== During pregnancy ====
The CDC recommends pregnant women receive some vaccines, such as the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine a month or more before pregnancy. The Tdap vaccine (to help protect against whooping cough) is recommended during pregnancy. Other vaccines, like the flu shot, can be given before or during pregnancy, depending on whether or not it is flu season. Vaccination is safe right after giving birth, even while breastfeeding.
== History ==
In 1900, the smallpox vaccine was the only one administered to children. By the early 1950s, children routinely received three vaccines, for protection against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and smallpox, and as many as five shots by two years of age. Since the mid-1980s, many vaccines have been added to the schedule. In 2009, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended vaccination against at least fourteen diseases. By two years of age, U.S. children receive as many as 24 vaccine injections, and might receive up to five shots during one visit to the doctor. The use of combination vaccine products means that, as of 2013, the United Kingdom's immunization program consists of nine injections by the age of two, rather than 22 if vaccination for each disease was given as a separate injection.
== See also ==
Vaccination policy
Influenza vaccine
H5N1 clinical trials
2009 flu pandemic vaccine
COVID-19 vaccine
== References ==
== External links ==
International
UN World Health Organization. "Reported immunization schedule by regions/countries/antigens". World Health Organization. Archived from the original (CFM) on August 2, 2003. Retrieved 2010-05-07.
UN World Health Organization: "Immunization schedules by antigens". apps.who.int.
Europe
Vaccine schedules in all countries of the European Union, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
United Kingdom
UK National Health Service. "The UK immunisation schedule". National Health Service. Retrieved 2006-11-03.
USA
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. "CDC National Immunization Program". (U.S.) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
CDC 2013 Recommended Immunizations for Children from Birth Through 6 Years Old | Wikipedia/Vaccine_schedule |
High-functioning autism (HFA) was historically an autism classification to describe a person who exhibited no intellectual disability but otherwise showed autistic traits, such as difficulty in social interaction and communication. The term was often applied to verbal autistic people of at least average intelligence. However, many in medical and autistic communities have called to stop using the term, finding it simplistic and unindicative of the difficulties some autistic people face.
HFA has never been included in either the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases (ICD), the two major classification and diagnostic guidelines for psychiatric conditions.
The DSM-5-TR subtypes autism into three levels based on support needs. Autism Level 1 has the least support needs and corresponds most closely with the "high-functioning" identifier.
== Characterization ==
The term "high-functioning autism" was used in a manner similar to Asperger syndrome, another outdated classification. The defining characteristic recognized by psychologists was a significant delay in the development of early speech and language skills, before the age of three years. The term Asperger syndrome typically excluded a general language delay.
Other differences noted in features of high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome included the following:
Lower verbal reasoning ability
Better visual/spatial skills (Being uniquely artistically talented)
Less deviating locomotion (e.g. clumsiness)
Problems functioning independently
Curiosity and interest for many different things
Not as good at empathizing with other people
Male to female ratio (4:1) much smaller
HFA is not a recognised diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association or the World Health Organization. HFA was, however, previously used in clinical settings to describe cases of autism spectrum disorder where indicators suggested an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 70 or greater.
=== Comorbidities ===
With the notable exception of intellectual disabilities, which were not part of HFA, cormobidities found in HFA populations reflected those found in autism. (Between 40 and 55% of individuals with autism also have an intellectual disability.) Studies that looked specifically at HFA have examined anxiety, bipolar disorder, Tourette syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). Both HFA and OCD have abnormalities associated with serotonin.
=== Behavior ===
A 2012 study noted that HFA "disorders are over-represented in the criminal population as compared to the general population," though more research needs to be done in this area. Some case studies have linked the lack of empathy and social naïveté associated with HFA to criminal actions.
== See also ==
Autism therapies
Causes of Autism
Conditions comorbid to autism
Diagnosis of autism
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Robison JE (2007). Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 978-0-307-39598-6.
McCreary M (2019). Ayer P (ed.). Funny, You Don't Look Autistic: A Comedian's Guide to Life on the Spectrum. Toronto: Annick Press Ltd. p. 169. ISBN 978-1-77321-257-9. LCCN 2018303582. | Wikipedia/High-functioning_autism |
Michelle Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, also known as Cedillo, was a court case involving the family of Michelle Cedillo, an autistic girl whose parents sued the United States government because they believed that her autism was caused by her receipt of both the measles-mumps-and-rubella vaccine (also known as the MMR vaccine) and thimerosal-containing vaccines. The case was a part of the Omnibus Autism Proceeding, where petitioners were required to present three test cases for each proposed mechanism by which vaccines had, according to them, caused their children's autism; Cedillo was the first such case for the MMR-and-thimerosal hypothesis.
The family sought compensation from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), but in order to qualify they were required to prove that it was more likely than not that their children's autism was caused by their vaccines. The scientific community had concluded that vaccines did not cause autism years before the first cases were heard, and concern was therefore expressed that the relatively lax evidentiary standards of the NVICP could lead to compensation being awarded in spite of the compelling scientific evidence to the contrary. This, some vaccine supporters argued, might have serious adverse public health effects by discouraging vaccine manufacturers from producing more childhood vaccines. Though the NVICP had existed since 1988, it was not designed to handle the thousands of cases it received from 1999 to 2007, which led to the establishment of the Omnibus Autism Proceeding in 2002.
The trial opened on June 11, 2007, in Washington, D.C. The Cedillos' six expert witnesses argued that thimerosal-containing vaccines degraded Michelle's immune system, which in turn made it possible for the weakened measles virus in the MMR vaccine to cause a persistent infection leading to autism. In support of this hypothesis, the Cedillos' witnesses relied on the reported detection of measles virus in Michelle's gastrointestinal tract by John O'Leary's Unigenetics laboratory in Dublin. However, the government's expert witnesses conclusively demonstrated that O'Leary's positive results were caused by contamination in the Unigenetics lab rather than an actual infection.
On February 12, 2009, the special masters ruled that the Cedillos were not entitled to compensation as they had failed to demonstrate that thimerosal-containing vaccines in combination with the MMR vaccine could cause autism. The special masters concluded, among other things, that the government's experts were considerably more qualified than those testifying on behalf of the families, with special master George Hastings stating that "the Cedillos have been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment."
== Background ==
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was established in 1988 in the United States by the passing of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, and is funded by a 75-cent tax on each vaccine dose. The program's aims were to maintain a steady supply of vaccines while, at the same time, allowing victims of vaccine injury to be compensated more efficiently than was previously possible. The program operates according to a no-fault principle. The family of Michelle Cedillo sought compensation from this program. Cedillo, a then 12-year-old female wheelchair user from Yuma, Arizona, was involved in the first of three test cases chosen by the government to represent the approximately 4,900 other vaccine-autism cases that had been brought before the court. Michelle Cedillo was born on August 30, 1994, and received thimerosal-containing vaccines during the first fifteen months of her life. On December 20, 1995, she received an MMR vaccine. Theresa and Michael Cedillo filed a vaccine injury claim on behalf of their daughter on December 9, 1998, for encephalopathy, but on January 14, 2002, changed their petition to a causation-in-fact claim, meaning they were arguing that Michelle developed autism as a result of the combined effects of thimerosal and the MMR vaccine. They did this as a result of a meeting that had taken place the previous year, between Theresa Cedillo and Andrew Wakefield, at a Defeat Autism Now! conference.
In 2001, many other families also filed suit in the NVICP, also because they believed their children's autism had been caused by vaccines and they were therefore entitled to compensation. The following year, the Office of Special Masters of the United States Court of Federal Claims held a series of meetings to decide how to deal with these claims, and that July, issued an order establishing the Omnibus Autism Proceeding. According to the Cedillos, Michelle was developmentally normal until she received her MMR vaccine at the age of 15 months, at which point she developed a 105-degree fever, began vomiting and developed diarrhea. Michelle was diagnosed with autism 18 months after receiving her MMR vaccine. According to The Washington Post, the legal standard to which the cases were subjected in this trial meant that "the outcome will hinge not on scientific standards of evidence but on a legal standard of plausibility—what one lawyer for the families called '50 percent and a feather'." It was in 2002 that, given the large number of litigants seeking compensation from the NVICP, the Omnibus Autism Proceeding was established. Its aim was to resolve pending vaccine-autism claims "aggressively but fairly."
== Overview ==
Prior to the Cedillo case beginning, the scientific community had conducted considerable research into the hypothesized link between either the MMR vaccine and autism or thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. This research had consistently come to the conclusion that no such link existed. However, some vaccine supporters, such as Paul Offit, argued that the standards for proving a vaccine had "caused" an adverse effect in the NVICP were far too low, and that the court might therefore find in favor of the Cedillos anyway. They also argued that if this happened, the vaccine manufacturers might be discouraged from manufacturing childhood vaccines, which might lead to more frequent vaccine shortages.
In the Cedillo case, her family claimed that Michelle was normal until receiving her vaccines, as evidenced by a number of videos of her between the age of 6 and 8 months. They also argued that thimerosal-containing vaccines degraded her immune system, which made it possible for the measles virus to infect her and cause autism and the other health problems she has, which include inflammatory bowel disease, glaucoma and epilepsy. The evidence presented for this consisted primarily of the detection of measles virus in Michelle Cedillo's GI tract. According to the testimony of Marcel Kinsbourne, a pediatric neurologist and professor of psychology at the New School, the vaccine strain of measles virus caused autism by "... infect[ing] the gut and enter[ing] the brain, causing dysfunction of astrocytes and other brain cells, which in turn provokes high levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate, causing a state of overstimulation which manifests itself in the symptoms of autism."
=== Plaintiff's case ===
The witnesses testifying on behalf of the state whose testimony attracted the most attention were Éric Fombonne, a psychiatrist at McGill University, Jeffrey Brent, a medical toxicologist at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and Stephen Bustin of Queen Mary University of London. Other experts who testified on behalf of the state included Edwin Cook, a psychiatrist, Diane Griffin, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University, Stephen Hanauer, a gastroenterologist, Christine McCusker, a pediatric immunologist, Brian Ward, a virologist who, along with Fombonne, published some research which failed to replicate the Unigenetics lab's results, and Max Wiznitzer, a pediatric neurologist.
Those who testified on behalf of the plaintiffs were H. Vasken Aposhian, a toxicologist at the University of Arizona, Arthur Krigsman, a gastroenterologist at the Johnson Center for Child Health and Development, Karin Hepner, a molecular biologist at Wake Forest University, Vera Byers, a retired immunologist, Ronald C. Kennedy, a virus immunologist at Texas Tech University and Marcel Kinsbourne, a retired pediatric neurologist.
On June 11, 2007, the plaintiffs presented their first argument, in which they contended that Michelle Cedillo, as well as other children with autism, had a "mercury efflux disorder" which was described by Aposhian, their first expert witness, as "a problem with getting a metal, in this case mercury, out of a cell." As evidence that such disorders have been documented before, he pointed to Wilson's disease.: 95 Aposhian based this claim, in part, on three peer-reviewed papers. The first such study was co-authored by Boyd Haley, and concluded that hair of children with autism contained less mercury than that of children without autism. Aposhian stated that "we know that the hair is an excretory organ and that the hair is reflective of the mercury or the metal in the blood, and the blood is a reflection of the mercury in the tissues, and so the fact that the children with autism had less mercury in their hair was a hint or indication that perhaps there was mercury efflux disorder.": 99 The second of these studies was conducted by James B. Adams, and found that baby teeth of children with autism had more than twice as much mercury as those of children without autism. Aposhian cited this study as evidence that "autistic children have a greater body burden of mercury.": 102 Another study which Aposhian used to back up this statement was one conducted by Jeff Bradstreet and Mark Geier, which gave dimercaptosuccinic acid, a chelating agent, to children and concluded that children with autism excreted much more mercury thereafter than children without autism. Aposhian also cited a number of in vitro studies as evidence that thimerosal could cause immune system dysregulation.
The following day, the plaintiffs presented their second argument, namely that the measles vaccine had caused intestinal damage. Their witness that day was gastroenterologist Arthur Krigsman, who testified that his opinion in the case depended on whether measles virus had really been detected in the intestinal tissue of Michelle Cedillo and other children with autism by the Unigenetics lab, using a study conducted by him, Dr. Hepner, Steve Walker, and Jeff Segal as evidence that the Unigenetics lab's results were reliable. This study, however, was still in its preliminary stages at the time of the trial, and had only been presented as a poster at the International Meeting for Autism Research the year before,: 64 and Walker himself warned that "We haven't done anything to demonstrate that the measles virus is causing autism or even causing bowel disease."
On the trial's third day, the plaintiffs presented their next argument, which was that the Uhlmann paper, which had reported the presence of vaccine-strain measles virus in the GI tract of children with autism, used reliable PCR techniques to detect said virus. Their witness for that day was molecular biologist Karin Hepner, who testified that "... the positive and negative controls used by the Uhlmann authors [led by Dr. John J. O'Leary, who runs the Unigenetics lab in Dublin] were appropriate, that the operating procedure employed in the testing was appropriate to minimize the possibility of "contamination", and that the "assays" utilized were appropriately selected and implemented.": 46 She also contended that the two studies that had failed to replicate the Uhlmann paper's results were flawed for two reasons: because they looked at cells of children with autism rather than in their GI tract, and because they did not test children with autism with gastrointestinal dysfunction.: 629A
Immunologist Vera Byers testified that Michelle Cedillo had a dysregulated immune system, which allowed the measles virus to persist in her system, and that her malfunctioning immune system was in part a result of the virus itself.: 32 She also stated that this dysregulation was caused by "a combination of genetics and the measles virus vaccination and the thimerosal-containing vaccines that she had received.": 872
Viral immunologist Ronald C. Kennedy testified that Michelle Cedillo had a "selective immune dysfunction". He also, like Dr. Hepner, testified that the Unigenetics lab was reliable and followed appropriate measures to prevent contamination, stating "that the laboratory of Dr. John O'Leary, Dr. Orla Sheils, and their colleagues has a good reputation.": 47 Kennedy also testified that he attended a meeting during which Dr. Cotter orally reported that his testing reached results similar to those reported by Uhlmann.: 56 However, he also acknowledged that this lab never published sequencing data, which is in line with the fact that the Uhlmann paper does not mention the sequencing process.: 57
Retired pediatric neurologist Marcel Kinsbourne testified that Michelle was developing normally until December 20, 1995, when she was vaccinated with the MMR vaccine, and that the fever and rash she experienced shortly thereafter was caused by this vaccine. He also testified that Michelle had regressive autism, and that "since Michelle has experienced both chronic gastrointestinal problems and the chronic neurologic disorder known as autism, the most reasonable conclusion is that a single causative agent—i.e., the vaccine-strain measles virus—is the cause of both chronic conditions.": 86
=== Opposing arguments ===
One of the key lines of evidence presented by the Cedillo family was that Michelle was developmentally normal before she received the MMR vaccine. This, they claimed, was evident from videos taken of her when she was 6 to 8 months old. However, Eric Fombonne testified that Michelle "... displayed early signs of autism clearly visibly on family video taken prior to her receiving the MMR vaccine."
Jeffrey Brent, the past president of the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology, was invited to testify about the potential role of thimerosal-containing vaccines in triggering Michelle's autism. He stated that "there was not a single study indicating that any form of mercury could cause serious neurological symptoms in the dosages that were used in vaccines" and criticized Aposhian's use of in vitro studies and his equating them to what happens in the actual animal, arguing that "the exposure to a cell in a petri dish was far more likely to cause damage than an equivalent dosage in a living system." With regard to specific in vitro studies, Brent argued that the Goth study was flawed because it tested thimerosal on mouse cells, not human cells; because these cells were exposed not to ethylmercury, as the human body would be after receiving a thimerosal-containing vaccine since thimerosal is quickly metabolized to ethylmercury, but to thimerosal itself, and because the cells were exposed to far higher concentrations of thimerosal than could ever occur as a result of the administration of thimerosal-containing vaccines. Brent highlighted similar problems with the Agrawal study, noting that the cells in that study, like those in the Goth study, were exposed to thimerosal, not ethylmercury, and to much higher doses than found in vaccines.: 26 He also examined the Bradstreet and Geier study and the Holmes study, noting that "much better studies from other investigators could not replicate the results of either the Holmes study or the Bradstreet/Geier study", citing two other peer-reviewed papers which had concluded that hair mercury levels were not significantly different between study participants with autism and controls,: 2354 as well as a study which had concluded that children with autism had no chelatable heavy-metal body burden whatsoever.: 2360 Brent also pointed out that, like another of Bradstreet's studies, the Bradstreet-Geier study had been published in a non-indexed journal, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, which he described as "very much of a fringe journal with lots of alternative agendas, and it's not even indexed by the National Library of Medicine.": 2360 Brent concluded by testifying that thimerosal could not have degraded Michelle's immune system to the extent that when she was vaccinated with MMR nine months later, it caused brain damage, saying "That couldn't possibly be the case." In the second set of the proceedings, which pertained to thimerosal alone (as opposed to thimerosal working in conjunction with MMR), Brent testified, with regard to Jordan King and one other child with autism who also served as a test case in this trial, that there was "absolutely no reason to chelate them for any mercury-related reason."
Many of the plaintiff's experts also relied on the reported detection of measles virus RNA in Michelle's intestinal tissue. This claim was based on results from O'Leary's Unigenetics lab, and was examined by Stephen Bustin, a world-renowned expert on polymerase chain reaction who has authored a number of scientific papers on the subject, as well as a book entitled A-Z of Quantitative PCR. He pointed out that this is based on results from the O'Leary lab, and concluded, based on a 2002 paper by Uhlmann that described their PCR methodology, that this lab contained a lot of contaminating DNA, and that the assays were actually detecting this DNA rather than the RNA which makes up the measles virus. Bustin pointed out that, among other things, O'Leary's Unigenetics lab which published this study neglected to use controls, and also did not discuss contamination. For this reason, Bustin concluded that it was a "scientific certainty" that none of the children's samples analyzed by the Unigenetics lab actually contained the measles virus. In addition, Bustin and Bertus Rima both testified that Cotter was unable to replicate the Unigenetics lab's results, in contrast to Kennedy's claim that they were able to replicate these results.: 56
Byers' testimony was countered by that of Christine McCusker, who testified that "Dr. Byers had compared the results from several of the tests on Michelle to a set of "normal" values for such tests. The normal values utilized by Dr. Byers, however, were for adults, not children" and that "when she herself instead compared Michelle's results to an age-adjusted set of normal values, Michelle's results fell within the normal ranges",: 36 with McCusker noting in her expert report that the only marker of Th2 cell activity that was assessed in Michelle's case, namely serum Immunoglobulin E level, was entirely normal.: 5 Additionally, Ward's expert report stated that Byers' expert report contained "many statements that appear to be entirely unsubstantiated.": 8
Kinsbourne's testimony was countered by that of Ward, who noted that if Kinsbourne were correct and persisting measles virus were causing autism, then it ought to be detectable in the blood, since Kinsbourne himself had stated that MV would travel throughout the body via the bloodstream;: 62 he also criticized Kinsbourne's expert report for citing Bradstreet et al.'s case series which had been published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. With regard to this study, Ward said that "the cerebrospinal antibody data from the three ASD children included in this manuscript actually argue powerfully AGAINST a persistent measles infection in the brains of these children.": 6 Ward also noted that Krigsman had cited research conducted by Vijendra K. Singh of Utah State University which had concluded that more than 80% of children with autism had elevated measles antibodies. However, Ward stated in his expert report that "Unless virtually all cases of autism are caused by measles virus (a position expressly excluded by the MRC, IOM and Cochrane reports), then Singh's work must be in error or there must be an alternate explanation for this finding. We have recently tested anti-measles antibodies in children with ASD and found no differences with control children.": 4 Another point of contention was a paper by Paul Ashwood, which had been cited by Kinsbourne in his expert report; however, as Ward noted, Kinsbourne had neglected to mention that Ashwood's paper concluded that "the overwhelming majority of epidemiological, population studies indicate there is no established correlation between vaccinations and autism." Additionally, Ward noted that this paper made no mention of the potential link between MMR and autism.: 6
=== Decision ===
On February 12, 2009, the three special masters each ruled against the petitioners' causation claims. In his decision, George Hastings noted that, unlike Aposhian, Jeffrey Brent, who testified that there was no evidence that children with autism were uniquely susceptible to mercury exposure, was a medical doctor. Hastings also described Dr. Brent's testimony as "persuasive.": 24 In addition, with regard to the theory that some children are genetically hypersusceptible to mercury toxicity, Hastings concluded that the "petitioners have failed to demonstrate that this theory has any validity.": 26 According to Hastings' decision, Byers' testimony "was far outweighed by the testimony of Dr. Brent and respondent's other witnesses ...";: 33 he also concluded that "her insistence that it was acceptable to use adult norms to measure the immune function of infants and young children was, frankly, incredible." Hastings also wrote that Kennedy made the same mistake that Byers made—namely, comparing the measurements of Michelle's immune system to the parameters for adults,: 39–40 and that while Kennedy testified that Cotter's results were evidence of the Unigenetics lab's testing, that "no conclusions can reasonably be drawn" regarding these results, noting that they had not yet been published.: 56 After examining Kinsbourne's testimony, Hastings concluded that it contained "... contradictions and inconsistencies ... concerning the appropriate time period between MMR vaccination and onset of autism symptoms",: 88 and also noted that Kinsbourne had not included measles virus as a cause of autism in a chart he wrote for a textbook, but had done so in the proceedings.
Hastings, in his decision, noted that "all of the petitioners' causation theories depend upon the validity of certain testing that purported to find evidence of persisting measles virus in the biological materials of Michelle and a number of other children with autism.": 41 However, Hastings concluded that this testing was "not reliable.": 41 In his decision, he noted that the authors of the D'Souza paper first performed PCR on PBMCs from children with autism, which resulted in a large proportion of apparently positive results. However, "the D'Souza group ... subjected those apparently positive samples to additional testing techniques in order to determine whether the PCR testing using the Uhlmann primers was truly identifying measles virus and only measles virus. ... The application of those two techniques revealed that all but nine of the samples that had initially tested positive by the PCR test using the Uhlmann primers were, in fact, not measles virus." With regard to the 9 remaining samples, the D'Souza paper performed sequencing on 7 of those samples. This step "demonstrated that the material, which in the PCR testing had appeared to be measles virus material, was in fact not measles virus material, but human genetic material.": 45
With regard to the Michelle Cedillo case in general, Hastings concluded that "The evidence was overwhelmingly contrary to the petitioners' contentions." He also said that the Cedillo family had been "misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment." The Cedillos appealed this case in March 2009, but the court upheld its dismissal thereof in August 2010.
== Impact ==
In response to the second rulings in 2010, SafeMinds stated, "The denial of reasonable compensation to families was based on inadequate vaccine safety science and poorly designed and highly controversial epidemiology." Similarly, Rebecca Estepp of the Coalition for Vaccine Safety said in a statement, "The deck is stacked against families in vaccine court. Government attorneys defend a government program, using government-funded science, before government judges", and Generation Rescue's J.B. Handley argued that "the courts won't concede something that will bring down the vaccination program."
On the other hand, vaccine scientists praised the ruling, with Paul Offit stating "the autism theory had 'already had its day in science court and failed to hold up.'" Additionally, Autism Speaks said that "the proven benefits of vaccinating a child to protect them against serious diseases far outweigh the hypothesized risk that vaccinations might cause autism. Thus, we strongly encourage parents to vaccinate their children to protect them from serious childhood diseases." The Department of Health and Human Services released a statement saying that "Hopefully, the determination by the special masters will help reassure parents that vaccines do not cause autism." Similarly, the chairman of the American Medical Association stated that the "recent rulings by the Special Masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims provide even more overwhelming evidence that there is no association between vaccines and autism or related disorders."
After the ruling, Keelan and Wilson wrote that, in contrast to those who argued that the proceedings gave unnecessary publicity to the scientifically unsupported vaccine-autism hypothesis, "the NVICP was successful in its management of these proceedings and met the intent of the original legislation to protect the integrity of the vaccine supply, maintain public confidence in immunization, and provide those injured with a fair hearing."
== See also ==
MMR vaccine and autism
Thiomersal and vaccines
Vaccine court
== References ==
== External links ==
Immunizing Against Bad Science by Lauren Haertlein | Wikipedia/Autism_omnibus_trial |
Treatments for influenza include a range of medications and therapies that are used in response to disease influenza. Treatments may either directly target the influenza virus itself; or instead they may just offer relief to symptoms of the disease, while the body's own immune system works to recover from infection.
The main classes of antiviral drugs used against influenza are neuraminidase inhibitors, such as zanamivir and oseltamivir, polymerase acidic endonuclease inhibitors such as baloxavir marboxil, or inhibitors of the viral M2 protein, such as amantadine and rimantadine. These drugs can reduce the severity of symptoms if taken soon after infection and can also be taken to decrease the risk of infection. However, virus strains have emerged that show drug resistance to some classes of drug.
== Symptomatic treatment ==
The United States authority on disease prevention, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), recommends that people with influenza infections:
Stay at home
Get plenty of rest
Drink a lot of liquids
Do not smoke or drink alcohol
Consider over-the-counter medications to relieve flu symptoms
Consult a physician early on for best possible treatment
Warning signs are symptoms that indicate that the disease is becoming serious and needs immediate medical attention. These include:
Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen
Dizziness
Confusion
Severe or persistent vomiting
In children other warning signs include irritability, failing to wake up and interact, rapid breathing, and a blueish skin color. Another warning sign in children is if the flu symptoms appear to resolve, but then reappear with fever and a bad cough.
== Antiviral drugs ==
Antiviral drugs directly target the viruses responsible for influenza infections. Generally, anti-viral drugs work optimally when taken within a few days of the onset of symptoms. Certain drugs are used prophylactically, that is they are used in uninfected individuals to guard against infection.
Four licensed influenza antiviral agents are available in the United States: zanamivir, oseltamivir phosphate, peramivir, and baloxavir marboxil. They are available through prescription only.
In Russia and China a drug called arbidol is also used as a treatment. Testing of the drug has predominantly occurred in these countries and, although no clinical trials have been published demonstrating this is an effective drug, some data suggest that this could be a useful treatment for influenza.
=== Interferons ===
Interferons are cellular signalling factors produced in response to viral infection. Research into the use of interferons to combat influenza began in the 1960s in the Soviet Union, culminating in a trial of 14,000 subjects at the height of the Hong Kong Flu of 1969, in which those treated prophylactically with interferon were more than 50% less likely to suffer symptoms, though evidence of latent infection was present. In these early studies leukocytes were collected from donated blood and exposed to a high dose of Newcastle disease, causing them to release interferons. Although interferon therapies became widespread in the Soviet Union, the method was doubted in the United States after high doses of interferon proved ineffective in trials. Though the 1969 study used 256 units of interferon, subsequent studies used up to 8.4 million units. It has since been proposed that activity of interferon is highest at low concentrations. Phase III trials in Australia are planned for 2010, and initial trials are planned in the U.S. for late 2009.
Interferons have also been investigated as adjuvants to enhance to effectiveness of influenza vaccines. This work was based on experiments in mice that suggested that type I interferons could enhance the effectiveness of influenza vaccines in mice. However, a clinical trial in 2008 found that oral dosing of elderly patients with interferon-alpha actually reduced their immune response to an influenza vaccine.
Viferon is a suppository of (non-pegylated) interferon alpha-2b, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), and tocopherol (vitamin E) which was reported in two small studies to be as effective as arbidol. Another interferon alfa-2b medicine, "Grippferon", nasal drops, is used for treatment and emergency prevention of Influenza and cold. Its manufacturers have appealed to the WHO to consider its use against avian influenza and H1N1 Influenza 09 (Human Swine Flu), stating that it was used successfully in Russia for eight years, but that "the medical profession in Europe and the USA is not informed about this medicine".
=== Corticosteroids ===
Corticosteroids can be prescribed for severe influenza; however, the currently available evidence is insufficient to determine their effectiveness, and more high-quality research, including randomized controlled trials, is needed to clarify their role in influenza treatment.
A systematic review assessed the effectiveness and risks of corticosteroids as an adjunctive treatment for influenza, given their common use for severe cases due to their anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory properties. The review included 30 studies with a total of 99,224 participants, primarily observational studies, and one randomized controlled trial. A meta-analysis of 21 studies (9,536 participants) suggested an association between corticosteroid use and increased mortality. A stratified analysis of adjusted studies also indicated higher mortality risk, and corticosteroid therapy was linked to an increased likelihood of hospital-acquired infections. The certainty of the evidence was very low due to potential confounding by indication and inconsistencies in study designs and reporting.
== Drug resistance ==
Influenza viruses can show resistance to anti-viral drugs. Like the development of bacterial antibiotic resistance, this can result from over-use of these drugs. For example, a study published in the June 2009 Issue of Nature Biotechnology emphasized the urgent need for augmentation of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) stockpiles with additional antiviral drugs including zanamivir (Relenza) based on an evaluation of the performance of these drugs in the scenario that the 2009 H1N1 'Swine Flu' neuraminidase (NA) were to acquire the tamiflu-resistance (His274Tyr) mutation which is currently widespread in seasonal H1N1 strains.
Yet another example is in the case of the amantadines treatment may lead to the rapid production of resistant viruses, and over-use of these drugs has probably contributed to the spread of resistance. In particular, this high-level of resistance may be due to the easy availability of amantadines as part of over-the-counter cold remedies in countries such as China and Russia, and their use to prevent outbreaks of influenza in farmed poultry.
On the other hand, a few strains resistant to neuraminidase inhibitors have emerged and circulated in the absence of much use of the drugs involved, and the frequency with which drug resistant strains appears shows little correlation with the level of use of these drugs. However, laboratory studies have shown that it is possible for the use of sub-optimal doses of these drugs as a prophylactic measure might contribute to the development of drug resistance.
During the United States 2005–2006 influenza season, increasing incidence of drug resistance by strain H3N2 to amantadine and rimantadine led the CDC to recommend oseltamivir as a prophylactic drug, and the use of either oseltamivir or zanamivir as treatment.
== Over-the-counter medication ==
Antiviral drugs are prescription-only medication in the United States. Readily available over-the-counter medications do not directly affect the disease, but they do provide relief from influenza symptoms, as illustrated in the table below.
Children and teenagers with flu symptoms (particularly fever) should avoid taking aspirin as taking aspirin in the presence of influenza infection (especially Influenzavirus B) can lead to Reye syndrome, a rare but potentially fatal disease of the brain.
== Off-label uses of other drugs ==
Several generic prescription medications might prove useful to treat a potential H5N1 avian flu outbreak, including statins, fibrates, and chloroquine.
== Nutritional supplements and herbal medicines ==
Malnutrition can reduce the ability of the body to resist infections and is a common cause of immunodeficiency in the developing world. For instance, in a study in Ecuador, micronutrient deficiencies were found to be common in the elderly, especially for vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12, folic acid, and zinc, and these are thought to weaken the immune system or cause anemia and thus place people at greater risk of respiratory infections such as influenza. Seasonal variation in sunlight exposure, which is required for vitamin D synthesis within the body, has been proposed as one of the factors accounting for the seasonality of influenza. A meta-analysis of 13 studies indicated some support for adjunctive vitamin D therapy for influenza, but called for more rigorous clinical trials to settle the issue conclusively.
A recent review discussing herbal and alternative medicines in influenza treatment details evidence suggesting that N-acetylcysteine, elderberry, or a combination of Eleutherococcus senticosus and Andrographis paniculata may help to shorten the course of influenza infection. The article cites more limited evidence including animal or in vitro studies to suggest possible benefit from vitamin C, DHEA, high lactoferrin whey protein, Echinacea spp., Panax quinquefolium, Larix occidentalis arabinogalactans, elenolic acid (a constituent of olive leaf extract), Astragalus membranaceus, and Isatis tinctoria or Isatis indigotica. Another review assessed the quality of evidence for alternative influenza treatments, it concluded that there was "no compelling evidence" that any of these treatments were effective and that the available data on these products is particularly weak, with trials in this area suffering from many shortcomings, such as being small and poorly-designed and not testing for adverse effects.
=== N-Acetylcysteine ===
The activity of N-acetylcysteine (NAC) against influenza was first suggested in 1966. In 1997 a randomized clinical trial found that volunteers taking 1.2 grams of N-acetylcysteine daily for six months were as likely as those taking placebo to be infected by influenza, but only 25% of them experienced clinical symptoms, as contrasted with 67% of the control group. The authors concluded that resistance to flu symptoms was associated with a shift in cell mediated immunity from anergy toward normoergy, as measured by the degree of skin reactivity to seven common antigens such as tetanus and Candida albicans.
Several animal studies found that in a mouse model of lethal infection with a high dose of influenza, oral supplementation with one gram of N-acetylcysteine per kilogram of body weight daily increased the rate of survival, either when administered alone or in combination with the antiviral drugs ribavirin or oseltamivir. NAC was shown to block or reduce cytopathic effects in influenza-infected macrophages, to reduce DNA fragmentation (apoptosis) in equine influenza-infected canine kidney cells, and to reduce RANTES production in cultured airway cells in response to influenza virus by 18%. The compound has been proposed for treatment of influenza.
=== Elderberry ===
A few news reports have suggested the use of an elderberry (Sambucus nigra) extract as a potential preventative against the 2009 flu pandemic. The preparation has been reported to reduce the duration of influenza symptoms by raising levels of cytokines. However, the use of the preparation has been described as "imprudent" when an influenza strain causes death in healthy adults by cytokine storm leading to primary viral pneumonia. The manufacturer cites a lack of evidence for cytokine-related risks, but labels the product only as an antioxidant and food supplement.
=== "Kan Jang" ===
The mixture of Eleutherococcus senticosus ("Siberian ginseng") and Andrographis paniculata, sold under the trade name Kan Jang, was reported in the Journal of Herbal Pharmacotherapy to outperform amantadine in reducing influenza-related sick time and complications in a Volgograd pilot study of 71 patients in 2003. Prior to this, an extract of Eleutherococcus senticosus was shown to inhibit replication of RNA but not DNA viruses in vitro. Among nine Chinese medicinal herbs tested, Andrographis paniculata was shown to be most effective in inhibiting RANTES secretion by H1N1 influenza infected cells in cell culture, with an IC50 for the ethanol extract of 1.2 milligrams per liter.
=== Green Tea ===
High dietary intake of green tea (specifically, catechins and theanine that is found in tea products) has been correlated with reduced risk of contracting influenza, as well as having an antiviral effect upon types A and B. Specifically, the high levels of epigallocatechin gallate, epicatechin gallate, and epigallocatechin present in green tea were found to inhibit influenza virus replication. Additionally, topical application has been suggested to possibly act as a mild disinfectant. Regular dietary intake of green tea has been associated with stronger immune response to infection, through the enhancement of T-Cell function. In a meta-analysis using a random-effects model that included five randomized controlled trials involving 884 participants, treatment with Green Tea Catechins demonstrated a 33% lower risk of influenza infection.
== Passive immunity ==
=== Transfused antibodies ===
An alternative to vaccination used in the 1918 flu pandemic was the direct transfusion of blood, plasma, or serum from recovered patients. Though medical experiments of the era lacked some procedural refinements, eight publications from 1918 to 1925 reported that the treatment could approximately halve the mortality in hospitalized severe cases with an average case-fatality rate of 37% when untreated.
Bovine colostrum might also serve as a source of antibodies for some applications.
=== Ex vivo culture of T lymphocytes ===
Human T lymphocytes can be expanded in vitro using beads holding specific antigens to activate the cells and stimulate growth. Clonal populations of CD8+ cytotoxic T cells have been grown which carry T cell receptors specific to influenza. These work much like antibodies but are permanently bound to these cells. (See cellular immunity). High concentrations of N-acetylcysteine have been used to enhance growth of these cells. This method is still in early research.
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Health-EU Portal EU response to influenza.
European Commission – Public Health EU coordination on Pandemic (H1N1) 2009
Flu treatment WebMD recommendations
Influenza Merck Manual, February 2007 | Wikipedia/Influenza_treatment |
Seasonal influenza vaccine brands include Fluzone/Fluzone Quadrivalent and Vaxigrip/VaxigripTetra, Influvac and Optaflu.
== AstraZeneca ==
Fluenz, Flumist and their quadrivalent formulations are nasal attenuated vaccines by AstraZeneca.
Fluenz
Fluenz Tetra
Flumist
Flumist Quadrivalent
== GlaxoSmithKline ==
Fluarix, Flulaval and their quadrivalent formulations are split virus inactivated vaccines by GlaxoSmithKline.
Fluarix
Flulaval
Fluarix Tetra
== Mylan/Viatris ==
Influvac and its quadrivalent formulation are surface antigen subunit vaccines marketed by Mylan.
Influvac
Influvac Tetra
They contain inactivated purified surface fragments (subunits) from the three different strains of the influenza virus (A/H1N1, A/H3N2, and Influenza B virus) that are selected and distributed by the World Health Organization, on the basis of their latest recommendations. Previously, they were produced and marketed by Abbott Laboratories
In February 2010, Abbott acquired the vaccines subunit from Solvay Pharmaceuticals included in its $6.2 billion purchase and the subunit influenza vaccine — Influvac has been commercially available on the market since the early nineteen-eighties. With the acquisition of Solvay, Abbott retained access to the Eastern European, Middle Eastern & Latin American markets. Approximately $850 million of sales revenue from vaccines was reported by Solvay Pharmaceuticals in 2009.
In February 2015, Mylan Laboratories completed the deal with Abbott to purchase Abbott's generic drugs business in developed markets, which includes Influvac.
In some countries, Influvac is marketed by Viatris after Upjohn merged with Mylan to create Viatris.
== Novartis ==
Optaflu was a trivalent surface antigen inactivated vaccine, the first flu vaccine made in mammalian cell cultures rather than chicken eggs, manufactured by Novartis.
In April 2007, Novartis received a positive opinion supporting European Union approval of Optaflu. In 2014, Novartis' flu vaccine unit was sold to CSL Limited, and placed under CSL subsidiary, bioCSL (Seqirus) as marketing authorization holder. In 2017, bioCSL decided to discontinue the usage of the Optaflu brand for commercial reasons.
== Sanofi-Aventis ==
Vaxigrip Tetra and Fluquadri are quadrivalent split virus inactivated vaccines by Sanofi-Aventis.
Vaxigrip Tetra
Fluquadri
== Sanofi Pasteur ==
Sanofi Pasteur produces the following vaccines:
Fluzone
Vaxigrip/Vaxigrip Tetra
Flublok
=== Fluzone ===
Fluzone and its quadrivalent formulation are split virus inactivated vaccines distributed by Sanofi Pasteur mainly in the United States.
==== Dosage and storage ====
Fluzone is typically administered in a single dose by intramuscular injection; an intradermal injection is also available. It is presented as a 0.25 ml syringe for pediatric use, as a 0.5 ml syringe for adults and children, as a 0.5 ml vial for adults and children, and as a 5 ml vial for adults and children. Fluzone must be refrigerated under temperatures from 2 to 8 °C (36 to 46 °F) and is inactivated by freezing. Fluzone was initially approved in 1980 by the FDA.
==== Adverse effects ====
The following adverse effects have been reported:
Mild soreness, local pain and swelling at the local of the injection
In small children and in people with no previous exposure to a flu vaccine, episodes of fever, malaise, myalgia (muscle pain)
In people who are sensitive to egg protein, allergic reactions may ensue, such as hives, angioedema, asthma and anaphylaxis
==== High-dose vaccine ====
A high-dose vaccine (Fluzone High-Dose) four times the strength of standard flu vaccine was approved by the FDA in 2009. This vaccine is intended for people 65 and over, who typically have weakened immune response due to normal aging. The vaccine produces a greater immune response than standard vaccine. According to the CDC, "a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine [in August, 2014] indicated that the high-dose vaccine was 24.2% more effective in preventing flu in adults 65 years of age and older relative to a standard-dose vaccine." The CDC recommends the high-dose vaccine for people 65 and over but expresses no preference between it and standard vaccine. Further studies were underway as of 2014.
=== Vaxigrip/Vaxigrip Tetra ===
Vaxigrip and its quadrivalent formulation Vaxigrip Tetra are split virus inactivated vaccines made by Sanofi Pasteur in Europe. Vaxigrip provides immune responses to three influenza strains and VaxigripTetra adds another B strain. VaxigripTetra was approved in Europe in 2016 except for infants younger than three years old.
=== Flublok/Flublok Quadrivalent ===
Flublok and its quadrivalent formulation are recombinant subunit vaccines prepared in cell cultures. Recombinant influenza vaccines are produced using recombinant virus technology. This method does not require an egg-grown vaccine virus and does not use chicken eggs in the production process. The DNA for the hemagglutinin antigen of influenza virus is added to a baculovirus. This recombinant virus is then used to infect cultured insect cells (of the moth Spodoptera frugiperda), which subsequently produce the hemagglutinin protein. The protein is harvested and purified. This is done for four different types of influenza hemagglutinin to create the Flublok Quadrivalent vaccine.
== Seqirus ==
Afluria and its quadrivalent formulation are a split virus inactivated vaccines. Fluad and its quadrivalent formulations are adjuvanted surface antigen inactivated vaccines. Flucelvax and its quadrivalent formulations are surface antigen inactivated vaccines prepared in cell cultures.
Novartis developed the first influenza vaccine, which did not need to be grown in chicken eggs, a cell-based vaccine.
In 2014, CSL Limited obtained Novartis' flu vaccine unit, and transferred it to CSL Subsidiary, bioCSL, named Seqirus.
The following are list of bioCSL flu vaccine brands:
Trivalent
Afluria, also marketed as Enzira, Fluvax, and Nilgrip in various different markets
Agrippal, also marketed as Begripal, Fluazur, Sandovac, Agriflu, and Chiroflu in various different markets
Fluad,
Fluad Pediatric, a pediatric vaccine
Flucelvax
Quadrivalent
Afluria Quadrivalent, also marketed as Afluria Quad and Afluria Tetra in various different markets
Fluad Quad
Fluad Quadrivalent
Fluad Tetra
Flucelvax Quad
Flucelvax Quadrivalent
Flucelvax Tetra
== See also ==
H5N1 vaccine
Historical annual reformulations of the influenza vaccine
Pandemrix, a historic H1N1 pandemic flu vaccine
== References ==
== External links ==
"Types of seasonal influenza vaccine". European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). 19 December 2017.
"Different Types of Flu Vaccines". U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 14 March 2024.
"Seasonal Flu Shot". U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 12 March 2024.
List of nationally authorised medicinal products Active substance: influenza vaccine (surface antigen, inactivated) (PDF). European Medicines Agency (EMA) (Report).
List of nationally authorised medicinal products Active substance: influenza vaccine (surface antigen, inactivated, adjuvanted) (PDF). European Medicines Agency (EMA) (Report).
List of nationally authorised medicinal products Active substance: influenza vaccine (split virion, inactivated) (non centrally authorised products) (PDF). European Medicines Agency (EMA) (Report). | Wikipedia/Seasonal_influenza_vaccine_brands |
The Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS) of the People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences (Chinese: 中国人民解放军军事科学院军事医学研究院) is a Chinese military medical research institute. It was established in Shanghai in 1951. It has been based in Beijing since 1958.
In October 2011, the drug "Night Eagle", developed to help soldiers cope with sleep deprivation during missions, was unveiled in an exhibition marking the institute's 60th anniversary.
In December 2014, the Chinese government announced that the Academy of Military Medical Sciences had developed an Ebola virus vaccine candidate that had been approved for clinical trials.
In December 2021, the United States Department of Commerce added the Academy of Military Medical Sciences to the Entity List, accusing it of aiding in the persecution of Uyghurs in China.
== COVID-19 vaccine ==
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the AMMS partnered with CanSino Biologics to develop Convidecia. The development team, led by Chen Wei, registered a Phase 1 trial in March 2020 and a Phase 2 trial in April 2020. It conducted its Phase III trials in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia with 40,000 participants.
In February 2021, global data from Phase III trials and 101 COVID cases showed the vaccine had a 65.7% efficacy in preventing moderate symptoms of COVID-19, and 91% efficacy in preventing severe disease. It has similar efficacy to the Janssen vaccine, another one-shot adenovirus vector vaccine with 66% efficacy in a global trial. Convidecia is also similar to other viral vector vaccines like the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine and Sputnik V vaccine. Its single-dose regimen and standard refrigerator storage requirement (2°to 8 °C) could make it a favorable vaccine option for many countries.
Convidecia is approved for use by some countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Production capacity for Ad5-NCov should reach 500 million doses in 2021. Manufacturing will take place in China, Malaysia, Mexico, and Pakistan.
The vaccine was the first one approved outside of clinical trials in an expedited decision, which authorized its use only by the Chinese military.
== See also ==
Wu Dechang, radiation toxicologist and former President of AMMS
JK-05
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website | Wikipedia/Academy_of_Military_Medical_Sciences |
The University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS; 中国科学院大学) is a public university headquartered in Shijingshan, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The university is part of the Double First-Class Construction. Officially established in 2012, the university derives from the Graduate School of the University of Science and Technology of China founded in 1978.
The University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences operates its undergraduate and graduate programs on the university's Beijing campus. Moreover, the Chinese Academy of Sciences assigns the authority of filing student status and issuing graduate degree for its affiliated institutes to the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and UCAS, and determines which university is responsible for which institute. Graduate students at most of CAS research institutes are assigned to have their student status registered at UCAS and are awarded UCAS degrees upon graduation. A small number of selected research institutes are assigned to have their graduate students register with USTC and awarded USTC degrees upon graduation. Students at CAS research institutes do not need to be physically present at the degree-issuing universities' campus to be awarded the degrees. UCAS mandates that graduate students at CAS institutes for which UCAS is responsible for issuing degrees must list their affiliation as "University of Chinese Academy of Sciences" in all their published work; failure to comply will result in their graduate degree applications not being considered.
UCAS also has colleges and schools nationwide co-existed and co-located with the CAS institutes, usually by adding extra nameplates to the institutes.
Established in 1978 as the Graduate School of the University of Science and Technology of China, the institution is the first graduate school in China. It produced the first doctoral graduate in science, the first doctoral graduate in engineering, the first female doctoral graduate, and the first graduate with dual doctorate in China. The USTC Graduate School (Beijing) was renamed as the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2000, and became an independent legal entity as the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2012. In 2014, UCAS began to recruit undergraduate students.
== History ==
In 1978, the Graduate School of the University of Science and Technology of China was founded in Beijing, as the first graduate school in China.
In 1986, the USTC Graduate School was renamed the University of Science and Technology of China Graduate School (Beijing), as USTC established another graduate school on its main campus in Hefei, Anhui.
In 2000, the USTC Graduate School (Beijing) was renamed the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In 2012, CAS Graduate School was renamed the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In 2014, UCAS began to recruit undergraduates.
On November 7, 2014, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences officially participated in the activities of the C9 League, an alliance of elite Chinese universities offering comprehensive and leading education. However, it was not an official member.
== Academics ==
=== Academic organization ===
School of Mathematical Sciences
School of Physics
School of Astronomy and Space Science
College of Engineering Science
School of Artificial Intelligence
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
College of Materials Science and Opto-Electronic Technology
College of Earth and Planetary Sciences
College of Resources and Environment
College of Life Sciences
School of Medicine
School of Computer Science and Technology
School of Cyber Security
School of Electronic, Electric and Communication Engineering
School of Microelectronics
School of Economics and Management
School of Public Policy and Management
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Foreign Languages
Sino-Danish College / Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research
International College
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Sciences
Research Center on Fictitious Economy and Data Science
CAS Key Laboratory of Big Data Mining and Knowledge Management
CAS Key Laboratory of Computational Geodynamics
Center of Architecture Research and Design
Research Center for Innovation Method
Training Center
Tsung-Dao Lee Center of Sciences and Arts
=== Institutions ===
Founded in 1978, UCAS is the first graduate school in China with the ratification of the State Council. Backed by more than 110 institutes of the CAS, which are located at more than 20 cities all over the country, UCAS is headquartered in Beijing with 4 campuses, and 5 branches in Shanghai, Chengdu, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Lanzhou. From UCAS, graduated China's first doctoral student in science, first doctoral student in engineering, first female doctoral student and first student with double doctoral degrees in China. On the 20th anniversary of UCAS in 1998, Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party Jiang Zemin of the People's Republic of China wrote this inscription for the University: "Revitalizing China through science and education, and emphasizing the cultivation and nurturing of talented people."
=== Rankings and reputation ===
UCAS is included in the Double First-Class University Plan designed by the central government of China. UCAS ranked 46th in CWUR World University Rankings 2025, placing it 3rd in China only after Tsinghua University and Peking University. UCAS is ranked 18th in NTU Rankings 2019, placing it 1st in China.
Regarding scientific research output, the Nature Index 2023 ranks UCAS the number one university in China and the Asia Pacific region, and second in the world among the global universities (after Harvard).
UCAS ranks 12th globally and 10th in Asia & China according to the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2024 based on the number of their scientific publications in the period 2019–2022.
As of 2024, UCAS is ranked 69th globally, 10th in Asia and 5th in China by the U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Ranking, with its "Artificial Intelligence", "Agricultural Science", "Biology and Biochemistry", "Biotechnology and Applied Microbiology", "Cell Biology", "Chemical Engineering", "Chemistry", "Civil Engineering", "Computer Science", "Condensed Matter Physics", "Electrical and Electronic Engineering", "Energy and Fuels", "Engineering", "Environment/Ecology", "Food Science and Technology", "Geoscience", "Material Science", "Mechanical Engineering", "Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences", "Microbiology", "Molecular Biology and Genetics", "Nanoscience and Nanotechnology", "Optics", "Pharmacology and Toxicology", "Physical Chemistry", "Physics", "Plant and animal science", "Polymer Science" and "Water resource" subjects, placed in the global top 100.
Internationally, UCAS was regarded as one of the most reputable Chinese universities by the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings where, it ranked 61-70th globally.
UCAS faculty are all based upon the research professors in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has been consistently ranked the No. 1 research institute in the world by Nature Index since the list's inception in 2014, by Nature Research. This makes UCAS arguably the best graduate school in China and one of the best in the world.
==== Nature Index ====
Nature Index tracks the affiliations of high-quality scientific articles and presents research outputs by institution and country on monthly basis.
==== Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) ====
Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) is a leading consulting organization providing policy advice, strategic insights, and consulting services to governments and universities to improve educational and research outcomes.
== Students ==
Even though UCAS mainly caters to graduate education, the university started enrolling undergraduate students in 2014. In 2015, there are 44,464 graduate students and 664 undergraduates students attend the academy.
UCAS, through its various departments and research institutes of the CAS across the country, offers the following programs to foreign students in a wide range of specialties and research fields: Master Program, PhD. Program, Program for Regular Visiting Students, and Program for Senior Visiting Students.
== Asteroid ==
Asteroid 189018 Guokeda was named in honor of the university. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 25 September 2018 (M.P.C. 111803).
== Global partner institutions ==
=== Europe ===
==== Denmark ====
Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research
Technical University of Denmark
University of Copenhagen
Aarhus University
Aalborg University
University of Southern Denmark
Roskilde University
IT University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen Business School
==== Italy ====
POLIMI Graduate School of Management
==== Netherlands ====
University of Groningen
=== North America ===
==== Canada ====
University of Toronto
==== United States ====
Tulane University
=== Asia ===
==== Hong Kong ====
City University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
==== Malaysia ====
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman
== See also ==
University of Science and Technology of China
ShanghaiTech University
University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Science and technology in China
List of universities and colleges in Beijing
List of universities in China
== References == | Wikipedia/University_of_Chinese_Academy_of_Sciences |
Peking University Health Science Center is the medical school of Peking University, which has 14 affiliated hospitals in Beijing, China. It was formerly the independent Beijing Medical University between 1952 and 2000.
== History ==
It was first established in 1902 as the Medical branch of Imperial College of Peking (later on became Peking University). It was discontinued due to government funding in 1908 and reopened on October 26, 1912, after the Qing dynasty conceded to the Republic of China in the same area in the city of Beijing. It was the first of its kind in China to teach western medicine and train medical doctors following the British medical education system. The professional degree offered to the Clinical medicine graduates is equivalent to the Scottish system 'MD'. In 1923, it adopted the name Beijing Medical University. It was separated from Peking University in 1952. In 1954, Beijing Medical University was listed by the State Council as one of the Top-Six National Key Universities. It merged back with Peking University in 2000 and is now named Peking University Health Science Center.
== Academics ==
PUHSC offers a full range of courses for eight specialties including basic medical sciences, clinical medicine, preventive medicine, stomatology, pharmacy, nursing, medical laboratory diagnosis and biomedical English. It has 57 accredited doctoral programs. PUHSC hosts six postdoctoral programs. PUHSC has an enrollment of 927 doctoral students and 388 international students.
PUHSC has developed 20 disciplines that have gained national recognition. Besides, it has one national key laboratory, 10 ministry-level key laboratories, 23 joint research centers, and 20 research institutes at university level. PUHSC has 11 schools, one institute and one division: School of Basic Medical Sciences, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Public Health, School of Nursing, School of Stomatology, the First School of Clinical Medicine (Beida Hospital), the Second School of Clinical Medicine (the People's Hospital), the Third School of Clinical Medicine (the Third Hospital), Institute of Mental Health (the Sixth Hospital), the School of Oncology (Beijing Tumor Hospital), Peking University Shenzhen School of Medicine, Peking University School of Telemedical Education, and the Division of Humanity and Fundamental Sciences. In addition, 15 hospitals in Beijing serve as teaching hospitals.
== Rankings and reputation ==
Clinical medicine of the Peking University Health Science Center is consistently ranked among the top three medical schools in China and #24 globally by Times Higher Education World University Rankings as of 2022.
For the high quality of research in life science, it ranked first in the Asia & Oceania region and 23rd globally among the leading universities in the Nature Index 2022 Annual Tables.
Its "Dentistry & Oral Sciences", "Public Health" and "Nursing" were ranked #43, #51 and #76 in the world respectively by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Its "Clinical Medicine" also ranked #69 globally by the U.S. News & World Report globally.
== Alumni ==
Zhong Nanshan - Discovered the SARS coronavirus
Tu Youyou—One of three co-winners of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and winner of the 2011 Albert Lasker Award in Clinical Medicine, both awarded for discovering the important anti-malarial drug artemisinin (also known as Qinghaosu).
Qiao Jie
Shu Chien- National Medal of Science, USA (2011)
== See also ==
Peking University First Hospital
Peking University Third Hospital
Healthcare system reform in the People's Republic of China
== References ==
== External links ==
Peking University Health Science Center | Wikipedia/Peking_University_Health_Science_Center |
The Laboratory Response Network (LRN) is a collaborative effort within the US federal government involving the Association of Public Health Laboratories and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most state public health laboratories participate as reference laboratories (formerly level B/C) of the LRN. These facilities support hundreds of sentinel (formerly level A) laboratories in local hospitals throughout the United States and can provide sophisticated confirmatory diagnosis and typing of biological agents that may be used in a bioterrorist attack or other bio-agent incident. The LRN was established in 1999.
== Levels ==
The LRN consists of a loose network of government labs at three levels:
=== Sentinel Laboratories ===
These laboratories, found in many hospitals and local public health facilities, have the ability to rule out specific bioterrorism threat agents, to handle specimens safely, and to forward specimens to higher-level labs within the network.
=== Reference Laboratories ===
These laboratories (more than 100), typically found at state health departments and at military, veterinary, agricultural, and water-testing facilities, can rule on the presence of the various biological threat agents. They can use BSL-3 practices and can often conduct nucleic acid amplification and molecular typing studies.
=== National Laboratories ===
These laboratories, including those at CDC and U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), can use BSL-4 practices and serve as the final authority in the evaluation of potential bioterrorism specimens. They provide specialized reagents to lower level laboratories and have the ability to bank specimens, perform serotyping, and detect genetic recombinants and chimeras.
== References ==
== See also ==
BioWatch | Wikipedia/Laboratory_Response_Network |
A counterfeit medication or a counterfeit drug is a medication or pharmaceutical item which is produced and sold with the intent to deceptively represent its origin, authenticity, or effectiveness. A counterfeit drug may contain inappropriate quantities of active ingredients, or none, may be improperly processed within the body (e.g., absorption by the body), may contain ingredients that are not on the label (which may or may not be harmful), or may be supplied with inaccurate or fake packaging and labeling.
Counterfeit drugs are related to pharma fraud. Drug manufacturers and distributors are increasingly investing in countermeasures, such as traceability and authentication technologies, to try to minimise the impact of counterfeit drugs. Antibiotics with insufficient quantities of an active ingredient add to the problem of antimicrobial resistance.
Legitimate, correctly labeled, low-cost generic drugs are not counterfeit or fake, although they can be counterfeited much as brand name drugs can be, but can be caught up in anticounterfeiting enforcement measures. In that respect, a debate is raging as to whether "counterfeit products [are] first and foremost a threat to human health and safety or [whether] provoking anxiety [is] just a clever way for wealthy nations to create sympathy for increased protection of their intellectual property rights". Generic drugs are subject to normal regulations in countries where they are manufactured and sold.
== Prescription and over-the-counter drugs ==
Counterfeit medicinal drugs include those with less or none of the stated active ingredients, with added, sometimes hazardous, adulterants, substituted ingredients, completely misrepresented, or sold with a false brand name. Otherwise, legitimate drugs that have passed their date of expiry are sometimes remarked with false dates. Low-quality counterfeit medication may cause any of several dangerous health consequences, including side effects or allergic reactions, in addition to their obvious lack of efficacy due to having less or none of their active ingredients.
Since counterfeiting is difficult to detect, investigate, quantify, or stop, the quantity of counterfeit medication is difficult to determine. In 2003, the World Health Organization cited estimates that the annual earnings from substandard and/or counterfeit drugs were over US$32 billion.
The considerable difference between the cost of manufacturing counterfeit medication and price counterfeiters charge is a lucrative incentive. Fake antibiotics with a low concentration of the active ingredients can do damage worldwide by stimulating the development of drug resistance in surviving bacteria. Courses of antibiotic treatment which are not completed can be dangerous or even life-threatening. If a low-potency counterfeit drug is involved, completion of a course of treatment cannot be fully effective. Counterfeit drugs have even been known to have been involved in clinical drug trials.
Several technologies may prove helpful in combating the counterfeit drug problem. An example is radio-frequency identification, which uses electronic devices to track and identify items, such as pharmaceutical products, by assigning individual serial numbers to the containers holding each product. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working towards an ePedigree system to track drugs from factory to pharmacy. This technology may prevent the diversion or counterfeiting of drugs by allowing wholesalers and pharmacists to determine the identity and dosage of individual products. Some techniques, such as Raman spectroscopy and energy-dispersive X-Ray diffraction (EDXRD) can be used to discover counterfeit drugs while still inside their packaging.
=== China ===
The National Medical Products Administration is not responsible for regulating pharmaceutical ingredients manufactured and exported by chemical companies. This regulatory lack, which has resulted in considerable international news coverage unfavorable to China, has been known for a decade, but failure of Chinese regulatory agencies to cooperate has prevented improvement. In May 2005, the Chinese press agency Xinhua reported that the World Health Organization had established Rapid Alert System, the world's first web-based system for tracking the activities of drug counterfeiters, in light of the increasing severity of the problem of counterfeit drugs.
=== India ===
G. N. Singh, India's top drug regulator, said in a 2014 interview: "If I have to follow U.S. standards in inspecting facilities supplying to the Indian market, […] we will have to shut almost all of those."
According to Outsourcing Pharma in 2012, 75% of counterfeit drugs supplied worldwide had some origins in India, followed by 7% from Egypt and 6% from China.
In 2009, the Central Drug Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO), the drug regulatory authority of India conducted a nationwide survey, and announced that of "24,000 samples [that] were collected from all over India and tested. It was found that only 11 samples or 0.046% were spurious." In 2017 a similar survey found 3.16% of the medicines sampled were substandard and 0.0245% were fake. Those more commonly prescribed are probably more often faked.
In 2017, industry body ASSOCHAM wrote in the paper “Fake and Counterfeit Drugs In India –Booming Biz” that fake drugs constitute US$4.25 billion of the total US$14–17 billion of domestic drug market. Around 25% of India's drugs are fake, counterfeit or substandard. If the fake drugs market grows at the current rate of 25%, it will cross the US$10 billion mark by 2017. Trade in fake drugs is driven caused by lack of adequate regulations, shortage of drug inspectors and a lack of lab facilities to check the purity of drugs. Other key factors include storage of spurious drugs by chemists, weaknesses in drug distribution system, lack of awareness among consumers and lack of law enforcement.
In 2022, Indian made cough syrups caused the deaths of more than 60 children in Gambia and 20 in Uzbekistan. In July 2023, an Indian-made bottle of Cold Out purchased at a pharmacy in Baghdad contained 2.1 per cent ethylene glycol, according to Valisure LLC, which is about 21 times the widely accepted limit. In July 2023, the WHO said cough syrups of Indian origin contained unsafe levels of diethylene glycol. Consequently, 12 children died in Cameroon as a result of ingesting the tainted syrup.
=== Pakistan ===
The 2012 Pakistan fake medicine crisis revealed the scale of production of counterfeit medications in Pakistan. Over 100 heart patients died after administration of adulterated drugs by the Punjab Institute of Cardiology. Pakistan did not have any regulatory enforcement on production of medicines until this crisis occurred. In response to the crisis, a regulatory body was finally set up in February 2012.
=== United States ===
The United States has a growing problem with counterfeit drugs. In 2012, tainted steroids killed 11 people near Boston and sickened another 100. In another case, vials of the cancer medicine Avastin were found to contain no active ingredients. The vials were sourced in Turkey, shipped to Switzerland, then Denmark, finally to the United Kingdom from which they were exported to U.S. wholesale distributors. The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. wholesale distributor was hired by Canada Drugs, which also owns CanadaDrugs.com, a retail pharmacy website that sells prescription medication internationally, with a focus on the American market.
Between 2007 and 2008, 149 Americans died from a contaminated blood thinner called Heparin that was legally imported into the United States. Investigated by the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations, the Albers Medical investigation is the most prolific example to date.
In August 2005, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri issued a press release announcing that three businesses and eleven individuals were indicted for their involvement in a $42 million conspiracy to sell counterfeit, smuggled and misbranded Lipitor and other drugs and for participating in a conspiracy to sell stolen drugs. As part of this investigation, the FDA initiated a recall of more than 18 million Lipitor tablets, which ranks as the largest recall in the history of criminal investigations of counterfeit medications.
Participants in this scheme conspired to purchase and sell counterfeit, misbranded and illegally imported drugs. Foreign versions of Lipitor and Celebrex were smuggled into the U.S. from South America and resold after being repackaged to conceal the true origin of the drugs. Counterfeit Lipitor was manufactured in South America and smuggled into the US, where it sold after commingling with the genuine foreign Lipitor. Participants conspired to buy, sell and traffic almost eight million dollars worth of stolen Glaxo Smith Kline and Roche drugs, using fake pedigrees to launder the drugs and thereby concealing that they were stolen.
There also were charges related to the sale of counterfeit Procrit, as well as counterfeit and misbranded Serostim and Neupogen. Procrit is an injectable drug used in the treatment of anemia, Serostim is Serono's brand name form of synthetic somatropin (i.e. human growth hormone formed using laboratory methods of genetic recombination) marketed for HIV-associated wasting, and Neupogen is an injectable drug used by cancer patients to stimulate the production of white blood cells in order to decrease the incidence of infections.
In 2005, the FDA held a Congressional hearing to review the situation. The U.S. is an especially attractive market for counterfeiters, because 40% of worldwide annual prescription drug sales were made in the United States in 2007. In 2011, a "PROTECT IP Act" was proposed to deter advertising.
Between 2002 and 2010, drug imports to the U.S. more than doubled, with 80% of drugs' active ingredients imported, now accounting for 40% of finished medicines.
In 2015, the U.S. residents determined to be at the greatest risk of exposure to counterfeit products through personal prescription drug importation, are aged greater than 45 years, reside in the south or west regions of the U.S., are of Hispanic ethnicity, college educated, poor or near poor poverty status, lacking U.S. citizenship, traveling to developing countries, lacking health insurance, managing high family out-of-pocket medical costs, having trouble finding a healthcare provider, self-reporting fair or poor health status, filling a prescription on the Internet, and using online chat groups to learn about health. Recent evidence suggests that provision of health insurance coverage may effectively reduce importation and the subsequent risk of exposure to counterfeit medicines, especially among particular subpopulations.
=== Africa ===
Fake antimalarial medication has been threatening efforts to control malaria in Africa, including the development of antimalarial resistance.
Other medicines have been documented to be of dangerously poor quality. In October 2022, the deaths of at least 70 children in Gambia were linked to cough syrups manufactured in India, which had high levels of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol. There were delays in government response, despite doctors pressing for this.
In 2011, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 64% of Nigeria's imported antimalarial medication drugs were fake. By 2023, the problem of substandard and falsified medicines had lessened somewhat since the peak. Nigeria is Africa's largest drugs market, and over 70% of its drugs are imported from India and China, considered the "biggest source of fakes."
One response has been attempts to bolster domestic production of medicines, but challenges include insecurity and unstable electricity. There have been investments in technologies to increase detection and verification of poor-quality medicines. In 2018, Tramadol, a powerful and addictive opioid, became a major problem. A huge black market has emerged, and an increasing number of addicts overdose and die.
=== United Kingdom ===
The MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) are responsible for the regulation of prescription medication in the UK. Trafficking of counterfeit medication into the UK has become a growing problem, with ever increasing numbers of illicit drugs confiscated at the UK border. A large portion of the medication coming into the UK constitutes erectile dysfunction medication smuggled from abroad, one of the most popular of which is Kamagra (Sildenafil Citrate).
To help combat the issue of counterfeit drugs, the European Union directive on false medicines was published in January 2013. This came into effect in February 2019 and requires UK licensed medicine to have a unique identifier (UI) and an anti tamper device on each pack of medication. Every Pharmacy dispensing the medication is required to check the anti tamper device and update the FMD online system every time a pack has been issued.
== Anticounterfeit platforms ==
In 2007, the world's first free-to-access anticounterfeit platform was established in the West African country of Ghana. The platform, dubbed mPedigree, relies on existing GSM networks in that country to provide pharmaceutical consumers and patients with the means to verify whether their purchased medicines are from the original source through a free two-way SMS message, provided the manufacturer of the relevant medication has subscribed to a special scheme. Still in trial stages, the implementers of the platform announced in 2009 that they are in partnership with Ghana's Ministry of Health and the country's specialized agency responsible for drug safety, the Food and Drugs Board, to move the platform from pilot to full-deployment stage. A similar service is being rolled out in India.
In 2010, NAFDAC in Nigeria launched an SMS-based anticounterfeiting platform using technology from Sproxil. That system was also adopted by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in February 2011. In April 2011, CNN published a video highlighting Sproxil's solution in the fight against counterfeit drugs in Nigeria. In July 2011, Kenya's Pharmacy and Poisons Board also adopted text message-based anticounterfeiting systems and endorsed the Sproxil solution. In early 2012 it was announced that more than one million people in Africa had checked their medicines using the text-message based verification service developed by Sproxil.
An ePedigree is another important system for the automatic detection of counterfeit drugs. States such as California are increasingly requiring pharmaceutical companies to generate and store ePedigrees for each product they handle. In January 2007, EPCglobal ratified the Pedigree Standard as an international standard that specifies an XML description of the life history of a product across an arbitrarily complex supply chain.
== Illicit drugs ==
Illegal drugs can be counterfeited easily because no standards or regulations govern them or their packaging though some examples of illegal drugs are sold under "brand names" to indicate certain standards or dosage levels were being adhered to, as in the case of 1960s-era LSD, which was sold with patterns or logos printed on blotter paper. These illegal "brands" can also be counterfeited by drug dealers who want to be able to sell their products at higher prices.
Counterfeit illegal and recreational drugs range from products which do not contain any active ingredients, as in cases where lactose powder is sold as heroin, or dried herbs such as oregano are sold as cannabis, to cases where the active ingredients are "cut" with a diluent (as in cases where cocaine is mixed with lactose powder), and cases where the claimed active ingredients are substituted by something cheaper (e.g., when methamphetamine is sold as cocaine).
The use of diluents in illegal drugs reduces the potency of the drugs and makes it hard for users to determine the appropriate dosage level. Diluents include "foodstuffs (flour and baby milk formula), sugars (glucose, lactose, maltose, and mannitol), and inorganic materials such as powder."
The diluents used, often depend on the way drug purchasers consume particular drugs. Drug dealers selling heroin to users who inject, dilute the drug with different products from dealers selling to users who smoke, or insufflate the drug. Diluents which can easily form a solution with water for injecting heroin can be problematic for users who are sniffing the powder. When cocaine is mixed with diluents for the purpose of injection, the "...diluents can produce serious abscesses and pain if the user misses the vein and injects into muscle tissue."
"Diluents and adulterants are often added to No. 3 heroin", including sugar, quinine, barbital and caffeine, some of which "can cause serious side effects." Dr. Hirsch, the New York Medical Examiner, claimed that buying illegal drugs is "... like playing Russian roulette," because "there is no way of knowing just what a heroin dealer has slipped into the packets." In some cases, if a dealer does not take the time to dilute the drug with lactose or other fillers, a "very potent blend of heroin" is sold, which can lead to overdoses.
Claims that illegal drugs are routinely cut with substances such as rat poison and crushed glass, often cited in antidrug pamphlets, are largely unsubstantiated.
Some countries, cities and organizations deploy drug checking services in order to improve the ability of users to make a more accurate risk assessment.
== Packaging ==
Custom package seals, authentication labels, holograms, and security printing, can be valued parts of an entire security system. They help verify that enclosed drugs are what the package says they are. Drug counterfeiters, however, often work with package counterfeiters, some of whom can be sophisticated. No packaging system is completely secure.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Counterfeit medications at Wikimedia Commons
"Fake Prescription Pills". Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
"Misuse of Prescription, Opioids, and Fake Pills". www.samhsa.gov. | Wikipedia/Counterfeit_drug |
Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Online Network (GIDEON) is a web-based program for decision support and informatics in the fields of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine. Due to the advancement of both disease research and digital media, print media can no longer follow the dynamics of outbreaks and epidemics as they emerge in "real time." As of 2005, more than 300 generic infectious diseases occur haphazardly in time and space and are challenged by over 250 drugs and vaccines. 1,500 species of pathogenic bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi have been described. GIDEON works to combat this by creating a diagnosis through geographical indicators, a map of the status of the disease in history, a detailed list of potential vaccines and treatments, and finally listing all the potential species of the disease or outbreak such as bacterial classifications.
== Organization ==
GIDEON consists of four modules. The first Diagnosis module generates a Bayesian ranked differential diagnosis based on signs, symptoms, laboratory tests, country of origin and incubation period – and can be used for diagnosis support and simulation of all infectious diseases in all countries. Since the program is web-based, this module can also be adapted to disease and bioterror surveillance.
The second module follows the epidemiology of individual diseases, including their global background and status in each of 205 countries and regions. All past and current outbreaks of all diseases, in all countries, are described in detail. The user may also access a list of diseases compatible with any combination of agent, vector, vehicle, reservoir and country (for example, one could list all the mosquito-borne flaviviruses of Brazil which have an avian reservoir). Over 30,000 graphs display all the data, and are updated in "real time". These graphs can be used for preparation of PowerPoint displays, pamphlets, lecture notes, etc. Several thousand high-quality images are also available, including clinical lesions, roentgenograms, Photomicrographs and disease life cycles.
The third module is an interactive encyclopedia which incorporates the pharmacology, usage, testing standards and global trade names of all antiinfective drugs and vaccines.
The fourth module is designed to identify or characterize all species of bacteria, mycobacteria and yeasts. The database includes 50 to 100 taxa which may not appear in standard texts and laboratory databases for several months.
Additional options allow users to add data (in their own font / language) relevant to their own institution, electronic patient charts, material from the internet, important telephone numbers, drug prices, antimicrobial resistance patterns, etc. This form of custom data is particularly useful when running GIDEON on institutional networks. The data in GIDEON are derived from:
all peer-reviewed journals in the fields of Infectious Diseases, Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, Tropical Medicine, Travel Medicine, Antimicrobial Pharmacology and Clinical Microbiology
a monthly electronic literature search based on all relevant keywords
all available health ministry reports (both printed and electronic)
standard texts
abstracts of major meetings
== References == | Wikipedia/GIDEON-Global_Infectious_Disease_Epidemiology_Network |
Chagas disease, also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a tropical parasitic disease caused by Trypanosoma cruzi. It is spread mostly by insects in the subfamily Triatominae, known as "kissing bugs". The symptoms change throughout the infection. In the early stage, symptoms are typically either not present or mild and may include fever, swollen lymph nodes, headaches, or swelling at the site of the bite. After four to eight weeks, untreated individuals enter the chronic phase of disease, which in most cases does not result in further symptoms. Up to 45% of people with chronic infections develop heart disease 10–30 years after the initial illness, which can lead to heart failure. Digestive complications, including an enlarged esophagus or an enlarged colon, may also occur in up to 21% of people, and up to 10% of people may experience nerve damage.
T. cruzi is commonly spread to humans and other mammals by the kissing bug's bite wound and the bug's infected feces. The disease may also be spread through blood transfusion, organ transplantation, consuming food or drink contaminated with the parasites, and vertical transmission (from a mother to her baby). Diagnosis of early disease is by finding the parasite in the blood using a microscope or detecting its DNA by polymerase chain reaction. Chronic disease is diagnosed by finding antibodies for T. cruzi in the blood.
Prevention focuses on eliminating kissing bugs and avoiding their bites. This may involve the use of insecticides or bed-nets. Other preventive efforts include screening blood used for transfusions. Early infections are treatable with the medications benznidazole or nifurtimox, which usually cure the disease if given shortly after the person is infected, but become less effective the longer a person has had Chagas disease. When used in chronic disease, medication may delay or prevent the development of end-stage symptoms. Benznidazole and nifurtimox often cause side effects, including skin disorders, digestive system irritation, and neurological symptoms, which can result in treatment being discontinued. New drugs for Chagas disease are under development, and while experimental vaccines have been studied in animal models, a human vaccine has not been developed.
It is estimated that 6.5 million people, mostly in Mexico, Central America and South America, have Chagas disease as of 2019, resulting in approximately 9,490 annual deaths. Most people with the disease are poor, and most do not realize they are infected. Large-scale population migrations have carried Chagas disease to new regions, which include the United States and many European countries. The disease affects more than 150 types of animals.
The disease was first described in 1909 by Brazilian physician Carlos Chagas, after whom it is named. Chagas disease is classified as a neglected tropical disease.
== Signs and symptoms ==
Chagas disease occurs in two stages: an acute stage, which develops one to two weeks after the insect bite, and a chronic stage, which develops over many years. The acute stage is often symptom-free. When present, the symptoms are typically minor and not specific to any particular disease. Signs and symptoms include fever, malaise, headache, and enlargement of the liver, spleen, and lymph nodes. Sometimes, people develop a swollen nodule at the site of infection, which is called "Romaña's sign" if it is on the eyelid, or a "chagoma" if it is elsewhere on the skin. In rare cases (less than 1–5%), infected individuals develop severe acute disease, which can involve inflammation of the heart muscle, fluid accumulation around the heart, and inflammation of the brain and surrounding tissues, and may be life-threatening. The acute phase typically lasts four to eight weeks and resolves without treatment.
Unless treated with antiparasitic drugs, individuals remain infected with T. cruzi after recovering from the acute phase. Most chronic infections are asymptomatic, which is referred to as indeterminate chronic Chagas disease. However, over decades with the disease, approximately 30–40% of people develop organ dysfunction (determinate chronic Chagas disease), which most often affects the heart or digestive system.
The most common long-term manifestation is heart disease, which occurs in 14–45% of people with chronic Chagas disease. People with Chagas heart disease often experience heart palpitations, and sometimes fainting, due to irregular heart function. By electrocardiogram, people with Chagas heart disease most frequently have arrhythmias. As the disease progresses, the heart's ventricles become enlarged (dilated cardiomyopathy), which reduces its ability to pump blood. In many cases, the first sign of Chagas heart disease is heart failure, thromboembolism, or chest pain associated with abnormalities in the microvasculature.
Also common in chronic Chagas disease is damage to the digestive system, which affects 10–21% of people. Enlargement of the esophagus or colon are the most common digestive issues. Those with enlarged esophagus often experience pain (odynophagia) or trouble swallowing (dysphagia), acid reflux, cough, and weight loss. Individuals with enlarged colon often experience constipation, and may develop severe blockage of the intestine or its blood supply. Up to 10% of chronically infected individuals develop nerve damage that can result in numbness and altered reflexes or movement. While chronic disease typically develops over decades, some individuals with Chagas disease (less than 10%) progress to heart damage directly after acute disease.
Signs and symptoms differ for people infected with T. cruzi through less common routes. People infected through ingestion of parasites tend to develop severe disease within three weeks of consumption, with symptoms including fever, vomiting, shortness of breath, cough, and pain in the chest, abdomen, and muscles. Those infected congenitally typically have few to no symptoms, but can have mild non-specific symptoms, or severe symptoms such as jaundice, respiratory distress, and heart problems. People infected through organ transplant or blood transfusion tend to have symptoms similar to those of vector-borne disease, but the symptoms may not manifest for anywhere from a week to five months. Chronically infected individuals who become immunosuppressed due to HIV infection can have particularly severe and distinct disease, most commonly characterized by inflammation in the brain and surrounding tissue or brain abscesses. Symptoms vary widely based on the size and location of brain abscesses, but typically include fever, headaches, seizures, loss of sensation, or other neurological issues that indicate particular sites of nervous system damage. Occasionally, these individuals also experience acute heart inflammation, skin lesions, and disease of the stomach, intestine, or peritoneum.
== Cause ==
Chagas disease is caused by infection with the protozoan parasite T. cruzi, which is typically introduced into humans through the bite of triatomine bugs, also called "kissing bugs". When the insect defecates at the bite site, motile T. cruzi forms called trypomastigotes enter the bloodstream and invade various host cells. Inside a host cell, the parasite transforms into a replicative form called an amastigote, which undergoes several rounds of replication. The replicated amastigotes transform back into trypomastigotes, which burst the host cell and are released into the bloodstream. Trypomastigotes then disseminate throughout the body to various tissues, where they invade cells and replicate. Over many years, cycles of parasite replication and immune response can severely damage these tissues, particularly the heart and digestive tract.
=== Transmission ===
T. cruzi can be transmitted by various triatomine bugs in the genera Triatoma, Panstrongylus, and Rhodnius. The primary vectors for human infection are the species of triatomine bugs that inhabit human dwellings, namely Triatoma infestans, Rhodnius prolixus, Triatoma dimidiata and Panstrongylus megistus. These insects are known by a number of local names, including vinchuca in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay, barbeiro (the barber) in Brazil, pito in Colombia, chinche in Central America, and chipo in Venezuela. The bugs tend to feed at night, preferring moist surfaces near the eyes or mouth. A triatomine bug can become infected with T. cruzi when it feeds on an infected host. T. cruzi replicates in the insect's intestinal tract and is shed in the bug's feces. When an infected triatomine feeds, it pierces the skin and takes in a blood meal, defecating at the same time to make room for the new meal. The bite is typically painless, but causes itching. Scratching at the bite introduces the T. cruzi-laden feces into the bite wound, initiating infection.
In addition to classical vector spread, Chagas disease can be transmitted through the consumption of food or drink contaminated with triatomine insects or their feces. Since heating or drying kills the parasites, drinks and especially fruit juices are the most frequent source of infection. This oral route of transmission has been implicated in several outbreaks, where it led to unusually severe symptoms, likely due to infection with a higher parasite load than from the bite of a triatomine bug—a single crushed triatomine in a food or beverage harboring T cruzi can contain about 600,000 metacyclic trypomastigotes, while triatomine fecal matter contains 3,000-4,000 per μL.
T. cruzi can be transmitted independently of the triatomine bug during blood transfusion, following organ transplantation, or across the placenta during pregnancy. Transfusion with the blood of an infected donor infects the recipient 10–25% of the time. To prevent this, blood donations are screened for T. cruzi in many countries with endemic Chagas disease, as well as the United States. Similarly, transplantation of solid organs from an infected donor can transmit T. cruzi to the recipient. This is especially true for heart transplant, which transmits T. cruzi 75–100% of the time, and less so for transplantation of the liver (0–29%) or a kidney (0–19%). An infected mother can pass T. cruzi to her child through the placenta; this occurs in up to 15% of births by infected mothers. As of 2019, 22.5% of new infections occurred through congenital transmission.
== Pathophysiology ==
In the acute phase of the disease, signs and symptoms are caused directly by the replication of T. cruzi and the immune system's response to it. During this phase, T. cruzi can be found in various tissues throughout the body and circulating in the blood. During the initial weeks of infection, parasite replication is brought under control by the production of antibodies and activation of the host's inflammatory response, particularly cells that target intracellular pathogens such as NK cells and macrophages, driven by inflammation-signaling molecules like TNF-α and IFN-γ.
During chronic Chagas disease, long-term organ damage develops over the years due to continued replication of the parasite and damage from the immune system. Early in the course of the disease, T. cruzi is found frequently in the striated muscle fibers of the heart. As disease progresses, the heart becomes generally enlarged, with substantial regions of cardiac muscle fiber replaced by scar tissue and fat. Areas of active inflammation are scattered throughout the heart, with each housing inflammatory immune cells, typically macrophages and T cells. Late in the disease, parasites are rarely detected in the heart, and may be present at only very low levels.
In the heart, colon, and esophagus, chronic disease leads to a massive loss of nerve endings. In the heart, this may contribute to arrhythmias and other cardiac dysfunction. In the colon and esophagus, loss of nervous system control is the major driver of organ dysfunction. Loss of nerves impairs the movement of food through the digestive tract, which can lead to blockage of the esophagus or colon and restriction of their blood supply.
The parasite can insert kinetoplast DNA into host cells, an example of horizontal gene transfer. Vertical inheritance of the inserted kDNA has been demonstrated in rabbits and birds. In chickens, offspring carrying inserted kDNA show symptoms of disease despite carrying no live trypanosomes. In 2010, integrated kDNA was found to be vertically transmitted in five human families.
== Diagnosis ==
The presence of T. cruzi in the blood is diagnostic of Chagas disease. During the acute phase of infection, it can be detected by microscopic examination of fresh anticoagulated blood, or its buffy coat, for motile parasites; or by preparation of thin and thick blood smears stained with Giemsa, for direct visualization of parasites. Blood smear examination detects parasites in 34–85% of cases. The sensitivity increases if techniques such as microhematocrit centrifugation are used to concentrate the blood. On microscopic examination of stained blood smears, T. cruzi trypomastigotes appear as S or U-shaped organisms with a flagellum connected to the body by an undulating membrane. A nucleus and a smaller structure called a kinetoplast are visible inside the parasite's body; the kinetoplast of T. cruzi is relatively large, which helps to distinguish it from other species of trypanosomes that infect humans.
Alternatively, T. cruzi DNA can be detected by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In acute and congenital Chagas disease, PCR is more sensitive than microscopy, and it is more reliable than antibody-based tests for the diagnosis of congenital disease because it is not affected by the transfer of antibodies against T. cruzi from a mother to her baby (passive immunity). PCR is also used to monitor T. cruzi levels in organ transplant recipients and immunosuppressed people, which allows infection or reactivation to be detected at an early stage.
In chronic Chagas disease, the concentration of parasites in the blood is too low to be reliably detected by microscopy or PCR, so the diagnosis is usually made using serological tests, which detect immunoglobulin G antibodies against T. cruzi in the blood. Two positive serology results, using different test methods, are required to confirm the diagnosis. If the test results are inconclusive, additional testing methods such as Western blot can be used.
Various rapid diagnostic tests for Chagas disease are available. These tests are easily transported and can be performed by people without special training. They are useful for screening large numbers of people and testing people who cannot access healthcare facilities, but their sensitivity is relatively low, and it is recommended that a second method is used to confirm a positive result.
T. cruzi parasites can be grown from blood samples by blood culture, xenodiagnosis, or by inoculating animals with the person's blood. In the blood culture method, the person's red blood cells are separated from the plasma and added to a specialized growth medium to encourage multiplication of the parasite. It can take up to six months to obtain the result. Xenodiagnosis involves feeding the blood to triatomine insects, and then examining their feces for the parasite 30 to 60 days later. These methods are not routinely used, as they are slow and have low sensitivity.
== Prevention ==
Efforts to prevent Chagas disease have largely focused on vector control to limit exposure to triatomine bugs. Insecticide-spraying programs have been the mainstay of vector control, consisting of spraying homes and the surrounding areas with residual insecticides. This was originally done with organochlorine, organophosphate, and carbamate insecticides, which were supplanted in the 1980s with pyrethroids. These programs have drastically reduced transmission in Brazil and Chile, and eliminated major vectors from certain regions: Triatoma infestans from Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and parts of Peru and Paraguay, as well as Rhodnius prolixus from Central America. Vector control in some regions has been hindered by the development of insecticide resistance among triatomine bugs. In response, vector control programs have implemented alternative insecticides (e.g. fenitrothion and bendiocarb in Argentina and Bolivia), treatment of domesticated animals (which are also fed on by triatomine bugs) with pesticides, pesticide-impregnated paints, and other experimental approaches. In areas with triatomine bugs, transmission of T. cruzi can be prevented by sleeping under bed nets and by housing improvements that prevent triatomine bugs from colonizing houses.
Blood transfusion was formerly the second-most common mode of transmission for Chagas disease. T. cruzi can survive in refrigerated stored blood, and can survive freezing and thawing, allowing it to persist in whole blood, packed red blood cells, granulocytes, cryoprecipitate, and platelets. The development and implementation of blood bank screening tests have dramatically reduced the risk of infection during a blood transfusion. Nearly all blood donations in Latin American countries undergo Chagas screening. Widespread screening is also common in non-endemic nations with significant populations of immigrants from endemic areas, including the United Kingdom (implemented in 1999), Spain (2005), the United States (2007), France and Sweden (2009), Switzerland (2012), and Belgium (2013). Serological tests, typically ELISAs, are used to detect antibodies against T. cruzi proteins in donor blood.
Other modes of transmission have been targeted by Chagas disease prevention programs. Treating T. cruzi-infected mothers during pregnancy reduces the risk of congenital transmission of the infection. To this end, many countries in Latin America have implemented routine screening of pregnant women and infants for T. cruzi infection, and the World Health Organization recommends screening all children born to infected mothers to prevent congenital infection from developing into chronic disease. Similarly to blood transfusions, many countries with endemic Chagas disease screen organs for transplantation with serological tests.
There is no vaccine against Chagas disease. Several experimental vaccines have been tested in animals infected with T. cruzi and were able to reduce parasite numbers in the blood and heart, but no vaccine candidates had undergone clinical trials in humans as of 2016.
== Management ==
Chagas disease is managed using antiparasitic drugs to eliminate T. cruzi from the body, and symptomatic treatment to address the effects of the infection. As of 2018, benznidazole and nifurtimox were the antiparasitic drugs of choice for treating Chagas disease, though benznidazole is the only drug available in most of Latin America. For either drug, treatment typically consists of two to three oral doses per day for 60 to 90 days. Antiparasitic treatment is most effective early in the course of infection: it eliminates T. cruzi from 50 to 80% of people in the acute phase (WHO: "nearly 100 %"), but only 20–60% of those in the chronic phase. Treatment of chronic disease is more effective in children than in adults, and the cure rate for congenital disease approaches 100% if treated in the first year of life. Antiparasitic treatment can also slow the progression of the disease and reduce the possibility of congenital transmission. Elimination of T. cruzi does not cure the cardiac and gastrointestinal damage caused by chronic Chagas disease, so these conditions must be treated separately. Antiparasitic treatment is not recommended for people who have already developed dilated cardiomyopathy.
Benznidazole is usually considered the first-line treatment because it has milder adverse effects than nifurtimox, and its efficacy is better understood. Both benznidazole and nifurtimox have common side effects that can result in treatment being discontinued. The most common side effects of benznidazole are skin rash, digestive problems, decreased appetite, weakness, headache, and sleeping problems. These side effects can sometimes be treated with antihistamines or corticosteroids, and are generally reversed when treatment is stopped. However, benznidazole is discontinued in up to 29% of cases. Nifurtimox has more frequent side effects, affecting up to 97.5% of individuals taking the drug. The most common side effects are loss of appetite, weight loss, nausea and vomiting, and various neurological disorders including mood changes, insomnia, paresthesia and peripheral neuropathy. Treatment is discontinued in up to 75% of cases. Both drugs are contraindicated for use in pregnant women and people with liver or kidney failure. As of 2019, resistance to these drugs has been reported.
=== Complications ===
In the chronic stage, treatment involves managing the clinical manifestations of the disease. The treatment of Chagas cardiomyopathy is similar to that of other forms of heart disease. Beta blockers and ACE inhibitors may be prescribed, but some people with Chagas disease may not be able to take the standard dose of these drugs because they have low blood pressure or a low heart rate. To manage irregular heartbeats, people may be prescribed anti-arrhythmic drugs such as amiodarone, or have a pacemaker implanted. Blood thinners may be used to prevent thromboembolism and stroke. Chronic heart disease caused by untreated T. cruzi infection is a common reason for heart transplantation surgery. Because transplant recipients take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent organ rejection, they are monitored using PCR to detect reactivation of the disease. People with Chagas disease who undergo heart transplantation have higher survival rates than the average heart transplant recipient.
Mild gastrointestinal disease may be treated symptomatically, such as by using laxatives for constipation or taking a prokinetic drug like metoclopramide before meals to relieve esophageal symptoms. Surgery to sever the muscles of the lower esophageal sphincter (cardiomyotomy) may be performed in more severe cases of esophageal disease, and surgical removal of the affected part of the organ may be required for advanced megacolon and megaesophagus.
== Epidemiology ==
In 2019, an estimated 6.5 million people worldwide had Chagas disease, with approximately 173,000 new infections and 9,490 deaths each year. The disease resulted in a global annual economic burden estimated at US$7.2 billion in 2013, 86% of which is borne by endemic countries. Chagas disease results in the loss of over 800,000 disability-adjusted life years each year.
The endemic area of Chagas disease stretches from the southern United States to northern Chile and Argentina, with Bolivia (6.1%), Argentina (3.6%), and Paraguay (2.1%) exhibiting the highest prevalence of the disease. Within continental Latin America, Chagas disease is endemic to 21 countries: Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In endemic areas, due largely to vector control efforts and screening of blood donations, annual infections and deaths have fallen by 67% and more than 73% respectively from their peaks in the 1980s to 2010. Transmission by insect vector and blood transfusion has been completely interrupted in Uruguay (1997), Chile (1999), and Brazil (2006), and in Argentina, vectorial transmission had been interrupted in 13 of the 19 endemic provinces as of 2001. During Venezuela's humanitarian crisis, vectorial transmission has begun occurring in areas where it had previously been interrupted, and Chagas disease seroprevalence rates have increased. Transmission rates have also risen in the Gran Chaco region due to insecticide resistance and in the Amazon basin due to oral transmission.
While the rate of vector-transmitted Chagas disease has declined throughout most of Latin America, the rate of orally transmitted disease has risen, possibly due to increasing urbanization and deforestation bringing people into closer contact with triatomines and altering the distribution of triatomine species. Orally transmitted Chagas disease is of particular concern in Venezuela, where 16 outbreaks have been recorded between 2007 and 2018.
Chagas exists in two different ecological zones. In the Southern Cone region, the main vector lives in and around human homes. In Central America and Mexico, the main vector species lives both inside dwellings and in uninhabited areas. In both zones, Chagas occurs almost exclusively in rural areas, where T. cruzi also circulates in wild and domestic animals. T. cruzi commonly infects more than 100 species of mammals across Latin America including opossums (Didelphis spp.), armadillos, marmosets, bats, various rodents and dogs all of which can be infected by the vectors or orally by eating triatomine bugs and other infected animals. For entomophagous animals this is a common mode. Didelphis spp. are unique in that they do not require the triatomine for transmission, completing the life cycle through their own urine and feces. Veterinary transmission also occurs through vertical transmission through the placenta, blood transfusion and organ transplants.
=== Non-endemic countries ===
Though Chagas is traditionally considered a disease of rural Latin America, international migration has dispersed those with the disease to numerous non-endemic countries, primarily in North America and Europe. As of 2020, approximately 300,000 infected people are living in the United States, and in 2018 it was estimated that 30,000 to 40,000 people in the United States had Chagas cardiomyopathy. The vast majority of cases in the United States occur in immigrants from Latin America, but local transmission is possible. Eleven triatomine species are native to the United States, and some southern states have persistent cycles of disease transmission between insect vectors and animal reservoirs, which include woodrats, possums, raccoons, armadillos and skunks. However, locally acquired infection is very rare: only 28 cases were documented from 1955 to 2015. As of 2013, the cost of treatment in the United States was estimated to be US$900 million annually (global cost $7 billion), which included hospitalization and medical devices such as pacemakers.
Chagas disease affected approximately 68,000 to 123,000 people in Europe as of 2019. Spain, which has a high rate of immigration from Latin America, has the highest prevalence of the disease. It is estimated that 50,000 to 70,000 people in Spain are living with Chagas disease, accounting for the majority of European cases. The prevalence varies widely within European countries due to differing immigration patterns. Italy has the second highest prevalence, followed by the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
== History ==
T. cruzi likely circulated in South American mammals long before the arrival of humans on the continent. T. cruzi has been detected in ancient human remains across South America, from a 9000-year-old Chinchorro mummy in the Atacama Desert, to remains of various ages in Minas Gerais, to an 1100-year-old mummy as far north as the Chihuahuan Desert near the Rio Grande. Many early written accounts describe symptoms consistent with Chagas disease, with early descriptions of the disease sometimes attributed to Miguel Diaz Pimenta (1707), Luís Gomes Ferreira (1735), and Theodoro J. H. Langgaard (1842).
The formal description of Chagas disease was made by Carlos Chagas in 1909 after examining a two-year-old girl with fever, swollen lymph nodes, and an enlarged spleen and liver. Upon examination of her blood, Chagas saw trypanosomes identical to those he had recently identified from the hindgut of triatomine bugs and named Trypanosoma cruzi in honor of his mentor, Brazilian physician Oswaldo Cruz. He sent infected triatomine bugs to Cruz in Rio de Janeiro, who showed the bite of the infected triatomine could transmit T. cruzi to marmoset monkeys as well. In just two years, 1908 and 1909, Chagas published descriptions of the disease, the organism that caused it, and the insect vector required for infection. Almost immediately thereafter, at the suggestion of Miguel Couto, then professor of the Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro, the disease was widely referred to as "Chagas disease". Chagas' discovery brought him national and international renown, but in highlighting the inadequacies of the Brazilian government's response to the disease, Chagas attracted criticism to himself and to the disease that bore his name, stifling research on his discovery and likely frustrating his nomination for the Nobel Prize in 1921.
In the 1930s, Salvador Mazza rekindled Chagas disease research, describing over a thousand cases in Argentina's Chaco Province. In Argentina, the disease is known as mal de Chagas-Mazza in his honor. Serological tests for Chagas disease were introduced in the 1940s, demonstrating that infection with T. cruzi was widespread across Latin America. This, combined with successes eliminating the malaria vector through insecticide use, spurred the creation of public health campaigns focused on treating houses with insecticides to eradicate triatomine bugs. The 1950s saw the discovery that treating blood with crystal violet could eradicate the parasite, leading to its widespread use in transfusion screening programs in Latin America. Large-scale control programs began to take form in the 1960s, first in São Paulo, then various locations in Argentina, then national-level programs across Latin America. These programs received a major boost in the 1980s with the introduction of pyrethroid insecticides, which did not leave stains or odors after application and were longer-lasting and more cost-effective. Regional bodies dedicated to controlling Chagas disease arose through support of the Pan American Health Organization, with the Initiative of the Southern Cone for the Elimination of Chagas Diseases launching in 1991, followed by the Initiative of the Andean countries (1997), Initiative of the Central American countries (1997), and the Initiative of the Amazon countries (2004).
== Research ==
=== Treatments ===
Fexinidazole, an antiparasitic drug approved for treating African trypanosomiasis, has shown activity against Chagas disease in animal models. As of 2019, it is undergoing phase II clinical trials for chronic Chagas disease in Spain. Other drug candidates include GNF6702, a proteasome inhibitor that is effective against Chagas disease in mice and is undergoing preliminary toxicity studies, and AN4169, which has had promising results in animal models.
Several experimental vaccines have been tested in animals. In addition to subunit vaccines, some approaches have involved vaccination with attenuated T. cruzi parasites or organisms that express some of the same antigens as T. cruzi but do not cause human disease, such as Trypanosoma rangeli or Phytomonas serpens. DNA vaccination has also been explored. As of 2019, vaccine research has mainly been limited to small animal models.
=== Diagnostic tests ===
As of 2018, standard diagnostic tests for Chagas disease were limited in their ability to measure the effectiveness of antiparasitic treatment, as serological tests may remain positive for years after T. cruzi is eliminated from the body, and PCR may give false-negative results when the parasite concentration in the blood is low. Several potential biomarkers of treatment response are under investigation, such as immunoassays against specific T. cruzi antigens, flow cytometry testing to detect antibodies against different life stages of T. cruzi, and markers of physiological changes caused by the parasite, such as alterations in coagulation and lipid metabolism.
Another research area is the use of biomarkers to predict the progression of chronic disease. Serum levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha, brain and atrial natriuretic peptide, and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 have been studied as indicators of the prognosis of Chagas cardiomyopathy.
T. cruzi shed acute-phase antigen (SAPA), which can be detected in blood using ELISA or Western blot, has been used as an indicator of early acute and congenital infection. An assay for T. cruzi antigens in urine has been developed to diagnose congenital disease.
== See also ==
Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative
Chagas: Time to Treat campaign
Association for the Promotion of Independent Disease Control in Developing Countries
== References ==
== External links ==
Chagas information at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
Chagas information from the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative
Chagas disease information for travellers from the International Association for Medical Assistance to Travellers | Wikipedia/Chagas_disease |
The Hospital for Tropical Diseases (HTD) is a specialist tropical disease hospital located in London, United Kingdom. It is part of the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is closely associated with University College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. It is the only NHS hospital dedicated to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of tropical diseases and travel-related infections. It employs specialists in major tropical diseases including malaria, leprosy and tuberculosis. It also provides an infectious disease treatment service for University College Hospital.
== History ==
The hospital's origins lie in a meeting of the Seaman's Hospital Society on 8 March 1821 at which it was decided to establish a floating hospital for injured seamen. The hospital moved onto dry land as the Dreadnought Seamen's Hospital in 1870 under the management of the Greenwich Hospital. Patrick Manson became physician to the Society in 1892 and promoted an interest in tropical diseases; he has been called the "father of tropical medicine".
In 1920, the Dreadnought Seaman's Society provided funds to allow the establishment of a Hospital for Tropical Diseases, initially based at 25 Gordon Street in London, but evacuated to Greenwich in 1939.
After the Second World War the hospital moved to temporary premises in Devonshire Street in 1947 and, after joining the National Health Service in 1948, it moved to more permanent premises at St Pancras Hospital which were opened by the Duchess of Kent in May 1951. The hospital moved to new facilities at Capper Street which were opened by Anne, Princess Royal in June 1999, and to the new University College Hospital Tower in Euston Road in July 2004.
== See also ==
Healthcare in London
List of hospitals in England
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Cook GC, Webb AJ (2001). "The Albert Dock Hospital, London: the original site (in 1899) of Tropical Medicine as a new discipline". Acta Trop. 79 (3): 249–55. doi:10.1016/S0001-706X(01)00127-9. PMID 11412810.
"Albert Dock Seamen's Hospital". Archives in London and the M25 area. Archived from the original on 25 December 2015. Retrieved 6 December 2007.
== External links ==
The Hospital for Tropical Diseases
The Dreadnought Seamen's hospital Archived 24 February 2020 at the Wayback Machine history by PortCities | Wikipedia/Hospital_for_Tropical_Diseases |
Water treatment is any process that improves the quality of water to make it appropriate for a specific end-use. The end use may be drinking, industrial water supply, irrigation, river flow maintenance, water recreation or many other uses, including being safely returned to the environment. Water treatment removes contaminants and undesirable components, or reduces their concentration so that the water becomes fit for its desired end-use. This treatment is crucial to human health and allows humans to benefit from both drinking and irrigation use.
== Types ==
=== Drinking water treatment ===
Water contamination is primarily caused by the discharge of untreated wastewater from enterprises. The effluent from various enterprises, which contains varying levels of contaminants, is dumped into rivers or other water resources. The wastewater may have a high proportion of organic and inorganic contaminants at the initial discharge. Industries generate wastewater as a result of fabrication processes, processes dealing with paper and pulp, textiles, chemicals, and from various streams such as cooling towers, boilers, and production lines.
Treatment for drinking water production involves the removal of contaminants and/or inactivation of any potentially harmful microbes from raw water to produce water that is pure enough for human consumption without any short term or long term risk of any adverse health effect. In general terms, the greatest microbial risks are associated with ingestion of water that is contaminated with human or animal (including bird) feces. Feces can be a source of pathogenic bacteria, viruses, protozoa and helminths. The removal or destruction of microbial pathogens is essential, and commonly involves the use of reactive chemical agents such as suspended solids, to remove bacteria, algae, viruses, fungi, and minerals including iron and manganese. Research including Professor Linda Lawton's group at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen is working to improve detection of cyanobacteria. These substances continue to cause great harm to several less developed countries who do not have access to effective water purification systems.
Measures taken to ensure water quality not only relate to the treatment of the water, but to its conveyance and distribution after treatment. It is therefore common practice to keep residual disinfectants in the treated water to kill bacteriological contamination during distribution and to keep the pipes clean.
Water supplied to domestic properties such as for tap water or other uses, may be further treated before use, often using an in-line treatment process. Such treatments can include water softening or ion exchange.
=== Wastewater treatment ===
=== Industrial water treatment ===
== Processes ==
For the elimination of hazardous chemicals from the water, many treatment procedures have been applied.
The processes involved in removing the contaminants include physical processes such as settling and filtration, chemical processes such as disinfection and coagulation, and biological processes such as slow sand filtration.
A combination selected from the following processes (depending on the season and contaminants and chemicals present in the raw water) is used for municipal drinking water treatment worldwide.
=== Chemical ===
Different chemical procedures for the conversion into final products or the removal of pollutants are used for the safe disposal of contaminants.
Pre-chlorination for algae control and arresting biological growth.
Aeration along with pre-chlorination for removal of dissolved iron when present with relatively small amounts of manganese.
Disinfection for killing bacteria, viruses and other pathogens, using chlorine, ozone and ultra-violet light.
=== Physical ===
Physical techniques of water/waste water treatment rely on physical phenomena to complete the removal process, rather than biological or chemical changes.
Most common physical techniques are:
Sedimentation is one of the most important main wastewater treatment procedures. Gravity settling is a method of separating particles from a fluid. The particle in suspension remains stable in quiescent conditions due to the decrease in water velocity throughout the water treatment process, following which the particles settle by gravitational force. For solids separation that is the removal of suspended solids trapped in the floc.
Filtration is the technique of removing pollutants based on their particle size. Pollutant removal from waste water permits water to be reused for a variety of purposes. The types of filters used in the procedure differ depending on the contaminants present in the water. Particle filtration and Membrane filtration are the two main forms of waste water filtration.
Dissolved air flotation (Degasification) is the process of removing dissolved gases from a solution . Henry's law states that the amount of dissolved gas in a liquid is proportionate to the partial pressure of the gas. Degasification is a low-cost method of removing carbon dioxide gas from waste water that raises the pH of the water by removing the gas.
Deaerator is used to reduce oxygen and nitrogen in boiler feed water applications.
=== Physico-chemical ===
Also referred to as "Conventional" Treatment
Coagulation for flocculation. The addition of coagulants destabilizes colloidal suspensions by neutralizing their charges, resulting in the aggregation of smaller particles during the coagulation process.
Coagulant aids, also known as polyelectrolytes – to improve coagulation and for more robust floc formation.
Polyelectrolytes or also known in the field as polymers, usually consist of either a positive or negative charge. The nature of the polyelectrolyte used is purely based on the source water characteristics of the treatment plant.
These will usually be used in conjunction with a primary coagulant such as ferric chloride, ferric sulfate, or alum.
Chemical precipitation is a common process used to reduce heavy metals concentrations in wastewater. The dissolved metal ions are transformed to an insoluble phase by a chemical interaction with a precipitant agent such as lime. In industrial applications stronger alkalis may be used to effect complete precipitation. In drinking water treatment, the common-ion effect is often used to help reduce water hardness.
Flotation uses bubble attachment to separate solids or dispersed liquids from a liquid phase.
==== Membrane filtration ====
Membrane filtration can remove suspended solids and organic components, and inorganic pollutants such heavy metals. For heavy metal removal, several forms of membrane filtration, such as ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and reverse osmosis, can be used depending on the particle size that can be maintained. Aminophosphonates can be added for antiscalant properties to maintain filtration.
==== Ion exchange ====
Ion exchange is a reversible ion exchange process in which an insoluble substance (resin) takes ions from an electrolytic solution and releases additional ions of the same charge in a chemically comparable amount without changing the resin's structure.
==== Electrochemical treatment techniques ====
Electrodialysis (ED)
Membrane electrolysis (ME)
Electrochemical precipitation (EP)
==== Adsorption ====
Adsorption is a mass transfer process in which a substance is transported from the liquid phase to the surface of a solid/liquid (adsorbent) and becomes physically and chemically bonded (adsorbate). Adsorption can be classified into two forms based on the type of attraction between the adsorbate and the adsorbent: physical and chemical adsorption, commonly known as physisorption and chemisorptions.
===== Activated carbon =====
Activated carbons (ACs) or biological-activated carbon (BAC) are effective adsorbents for a wide variety of contaminants. The adsorptive removal of color, aroma, taste, and other harmful organics and inorganics from drinking water and wastewater is one of their industrial applications.
Both a high surface area and a large pore size can improve the efficiency of activated carbon. Activated carbon was utilized by a number of studies to remove heavy metals and other types of contaminants from wastewater. The cost of activated carbon is rising due to a shortage of commercial activated carbon (AC). Because of its high surface area, porosity, and flexibility, activated carbon has a lot of potential in wastewater treatment.
=== Biological ===
This is the method by which dissolved and suspended organic chemical components are eliminated through biodegradation, in which an optimal amount of microorganism is given to re-enact the same natural self-purification process. Through two distinct biological process, such as biological oxidation and biosynthesis, microorganisms can degrade organic materials in wastewater. Microorganisms involved in wastewater treatment produce end products such as minerals, carbon dioxide, and ammonia during the biological oxidation process. The minerals (products) remained in the wastewater and were discharged with the effluent. Microorganisms use organic materials in wastewater to generate new microbial cells with dense biomass that is eliminated by sedimentation throughout the biosynthesis process.
== Standards ==
Many developed countries specify standards to be applied in their own country. In Europe, this includes the European Drinking Water Directive and in the United States the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) establishes standards as required by the Safe Drinking Water Act. For countries without a legislative or administrative framework for such standards, the World Health Organization publishes guidelines on the standards that should be achieved. China adopted its own drinking water standard GB3838-2002 (Type II) enacted by Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2002.
Where drinking water quality standards do exist, most are expressed as guidelines or targets rather than requirements, and very few water standards have any legal basis or, are subject to enforcement. Two exceptions are the European Drinking Water Directive and the Safe Drinking Water Act in the United States, which require legal compliance with specific standards.
== Developing countries ==
Appropriate technology options in water treatment include both community-scale and household-scale point-of-use (POU) or self-supply designs. Such designs may employ solar water disinfection methods, using solar irradiation to inactivate harmful waterborne microorganisms directly, mainly by the UV-A component of the solar spectrum, or indirectly through the presence of an oxide photocatalyst, typically supported TiO2 in its anatase or rutile phases. Despite progress in SODIS technology, military surplus water treatment units like the ERDLator are still frequently used in developing countries. Newer military style Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units (ROWPU) are portable, self-contained water treatment plants are becoming more available for public use.
For waterborne disease reduction to last, water treatment programs that research and development groups start in developing countries must be sustainable by the citizens of those countries. This can ensure the efficiency of such programs after the departure of the research team, as monitoring is difficult because of the remoteness of many locations.
Energy Consumption: Water treatment plants can be significant consumers of energy. In California, more than 4% of the state's electricity consumption goes towards transporting moderate quality water over long distances, treating that water to a high standard. In areas with high quality water sources which flow by gravity to the point of consumption, costs will be much lower.
Much of the energy requirements are in pumping. Processes that avoid the need for pumping tend to have overall low energy demands. Those water treatment technologies that have very low energy requirements including trickling filters, slow sand filters, gravity aqueducts.
A 2021 study found that a large-scale water chlorination program in urban areas of Mexico massively reduced childhood diarrheal disease mortality rates.
== Materials ==
Stainless steels, such as Type 304L and 316L, are used extensively in the fabrication of water treatment plants due to their corrosion resistance to water and to the corrosivity of chlorination used for disinfection.
== See also ==
Control of water pollution – Contamination of water bodies
Clean Water Act – 1972 U.S. federal law regulating water pollution
Peak water – Concept on the quality and availability of freshwater resources
Pulsed-power water treatment – Using electro-magnetic fields on cooling water
Solar water disinfection – Portable water purification powered by sunlight
Raw water#Treatment – Untreated water found in a natural environment
Water purification – Process of removing impurities from water
Water quality – Assessment against standards for use
Water softening – Removing positive ions from hard water
Water supply – Provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations or others
== References ==
== External links ==
International Water Association Professional / research organization
NSF International – Independent non-profit standards organization
WHO.int, WHO Guidelines
Safe and Sustainable Water for Haiti web site hosted by Grand Valley State University | Wikipedia/Water_treatment |
Cervicography is a diagnostic medical procedure in which a non-physician takes pictures of the cervix and submits them to a physician for interpretation. Other related procedures are speculoscopy and colposcopy. The procedure is considered a screening test for cervical cancer and is complementary to Pap smear. The technique was initially developed by Adolf Stafl, MD, of Medical College of Wisconsin in 1981.
Unlike colposcopy, cervicography does not have a current CPT/HCPCS code and typically is not covered by most medical insurance companies. (Cervicography was given a Category III CPT code of 0003T, but this was discontinued in 2006.)
Cervicography is no more sensitive than Pap smear screening, and has a higher false positive rate (thus increasing the number of colposcopies needed).
Whether cervicography could have a role in countries where Pap smear screening programs are not in place depends on cost effectiveness and remained to be determined as of 1998. A 2005 study found the sensitivity and specificity of cervicography for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia to be 72.3% and 93.2% respectively; however, a 2007 study criticized the sensitivity figure as "likely... inflated" because the "gold standard" of colposcopy/biopsy may have missed cases of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia.
== References == | Wikipedia/Cervicography |
Vaccine hesitancy is a delay in acceptance, or refusal of vaccines despite availability and supporting evidence. The term covers refusals to vaccinate, delaying vaccines, accepting vaccines but remaining uncertain about their use, or using certain vaccines but not others. Although adverse effects associated with vaccines are occasionally observed, the scientific consensus that vaccines are generally safe and effective is overwhelming. Vaccine hesitancy often results in disease outbreaks and deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases. Therefore, the World Health Organization characterizes vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten global health threats.
Vaccine hesitancy is complex and context-specific, varying across time, place and vaccines. It can be influenced by factors such as lack of proper scientifically based knowledge and understanding about how vaccines are made or work, as well as psychological factors including fear of needles and distrust of public authorities, a person's lack of confidence (mistrust of the vaccine and/or healthcare provider), complacency (the person does not see a need for the vaccine or does not see the value of the vaccine), and convenience (access to vaccines). It has existed since the invention of vaccination and pre-dates the coining of the terms "vaccine" and "vaccination" by nearly eighty years.
"Anti-vaccinationism" refers to total opposition to vaccination. Anti-vaccinationists have been known as "anti-vaxxers" or "anti-vax". The specific hypotheses raised by anti-vaccination advocates have been found to change over time. Anti-vaccine activism has been increasingly connected to political and economic goals.
Although myths, conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation spread by the anti-vaccination movement and fringe doctors leads to vaccine hesitancy and public debates around the medical, ethical, and legal issues related to vaccines, there is no serious hesitancy or debate within mainstream medical and scientific circles about the benefits of vaccination.
Proposed laws that mandate vaccination, such as California Senate Bill 277 and Australia's No Jab No Pay, have been opposed by anti-vaccination activists and organizations. Opposition to mandatory vaccination may be based on anti-vaccine sentiment, concern that it violates civil liberties or reduces public trust in vaccination, or suspicion of profiteering by the pharmaceutical industry.
== Effectiveness ==
Scientific evidence for the effectiveness of large-scale vaccination campaigns is well established. It is estimated that two to three million deaths are prevented each year worldwide by vaccination, and it is thought that an additional 1.5 million deaths could be prevented each year if all recommended vaccines were used. Vaccination campaigns helped eradicate smallpox, which once killed as many as one in seven children in Europe, and have nearly eradicated polio. As a more modest example, infections caused by Haemophilus influenzae (Hib), a major cause of bacterial meningitis and other serious diseases in children, have decreased by over 99% in the US since the introduction of a vaccine in 1988. It is estimated that full vaccination, from birth to adolescence, of all US children born in a given year would save 33,000 lives and prevent 14 million infections.
There is anti-vaccine literature that argues that reductions in infectious disease result from improved sanitation and hygiene (rather than vaccination) or that these diseases were already in decline before the introduction of specific vaccines. These claims are not supported by scientific data; the incidence of vaccine-preventable diseases tended to fluctuate over time until the introduction of specific vaccines, at which point the incidence dropped to near zero. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website aimed at countering common misconceptions about vaccines argued, "Are we expected to believe that better sanitation caused the incidence of each disease to drop, just at the time a vaccine for that disease was introduced?"
Another rallying cry of the anti-vaccine movement is to call for randomized clinical trials in which an experimental group of children are vaccinated while a control group are unvaccinated. Such a study would never be approved because it would require deliberately denying children standard medical care, rendering the study unethical. Studies have been done that compare vaccinated to unvaccinated people, but the studies are typically not randomized. Moreover, literature already exists that demonstrates the safety of vaccines using other experimental methods.
Other critics argue that the immunity granted by vaccines is only temporary and requires boosters, whereas those who survive the disease become permanently immune. As discussed below, the philosophies of some alternative medicine practitioners are incompatible with the idea that vaccines are effective.
=== Population health ===
Incomplete vaccine coverage increases the risk of disease for the entire population, including those who have been vaccinated, because it reduces herd immunity. For example, the measles vaccine is given to children 9–12 months old, and the window between the disappearance of maternal antibody and seroconversion means that vaccinated children are frequently still vulnerable. Strong herd immunity reduces this vulnerability. Increasing herd immunity during an outbreak or when there is a risk of an outbreak is perhaps the most widely accepted justification for mass vaccination. When a new vaccine is introduced, mass vaccination can help increase coverage rapidly.
If enough of a population is vaccinated, herd immunity takes effect, decreasing risk to people who cannot receive vaccines because they are too young or old, immunocompromised, or have severe allergies to the ingredients in the vaccine. The outcome for people with compromised immune systems who get infected is often worse than that of the general population.
=== Cost-effectiveness ===
Commonly used vaccines are a cost-effective and preventive way of promoting health, compared to the treatment of acute or chronic disease. In 2001, the United States spent approximately $2.8 billion to promote and implement routine childhood immunizations against seven diseases. The societal benefits of those vaccinations were estimated to be $46.6 billion, yielding a benefit-cost ratio of 16.5.
=== Necessity ===
When a vaccination program successfully reduces the disease threat, it may reduce the perceived risk of disease as cultural memories of the effects of that disease fade. At this point, parents may feel they have nothing to lose by not vaccinating their children. If enough people hope to become free-riders, gaining the benefits of herd immunity without vaccination, vaccination levels may drop to a level where herd immunity is ineffective. According to Jennifer Reich, those parents who believe vaccination to be quite effective but might prefer their children to remain unvaccinated, are those who are the most likely to be convinced to change their mind, as long as they are approached properly.
== Safety concerns ==
While some anti-vaccinationists openly deny the improvements vaccination has made to public health or believe in conspiracy theories, it is much more common to cite concerns about safety. As with any medical treatment, there is a potential for vaccines to cause serious complications, such as severe allergic reactions, but unlike most other medical interventions, vaccines are given to healthy people and so a higher standard of safety is demanded. While serious complications from vaccinations are possible, they are extremely rare and much less common than similar risks from the diseases they prevent. As the success of immunization programs increases and the incidence of disease decreases, public attention shifts away from the risks of disease to the risk of vaccination, and it becomes challenging for health authorities to preserve public support for vaccination programs.
The overwhelming success of certain vaccinations has made certain diseases rare, and, consequently, has led to incorrect heuristic thinking in weighing risks against benefits among people who are vaccine-hesitant. Once such diseases (e.g., Haemophilus influenzae B) decrease in prevalence, people may no longer appreciate how serious the illness is due to a lack of familiarity with it, and become complacent. The lack of personal experience with these diseases reduces the perceived danger and thus reduces the perceived benefit of immunization. Conversely, certain illnesses (e.g., influenza) remain so common that vaccine-hesitant people mistakenly perceive the illness to be non-threatening despite clear evidence that the illness poses a significant threat to human health. Omission and disconfirmation biases also contribute to vaccine hesitancy.
Various concerns about immunization have been raised. They have been addressed and the concerns are not supported by evidence. Concerns about immunization safety often follow a pattern. First, some investigators suggest that a medical condition of increasing prevalence or unknown cause is an adverse effect of vaccination. The initial study and subsequent studies by the same group have an inadequate methodology, typically a poorly controlled or uncontrolled case series. A premature announcement is made about the alleged adverse effect, resonating with individuals who have the condition, and underestimating the potential harm of forgoing vaccination to those whom the vaccine could protect. Other groups attempt to replicate the initial study but fail to get the same results. Finally, it takes several years to regain public confidence in the vaccine. Adverse effects ascribed to vaccines typically have an unknown origin, an increasing incidence, some biological plausibility, occurrences close to the time of vaccination, and dreaded outcomes. In almost all cases, the public health effect is limited by cultural boundaries: English speakers worry about one vaccine causing autism, while French speakers worry about another vaccine causing multiple sclerosis, and Nigerians worry that a third vaccine causes infertility.
=== Ingredients concerns ===
==== Thiomersal ====
Thiomersal (called "thimerosal" in the US) is an antifungal preservative used in small amounts in some multi-dose vaccines (where the same vial is opened and used for multiple patients) to prevent contamination of the vaccine. Despite thiomersal's efficacy, the use of thiomersal is controversial because it can be metabolized or degraded in the body to ethylmercury (C2H5Hg+) and thiosalicylate. As a result, in 1999, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked vaccine makers to remove thiomersal from vaccines as quickly as possible on the precautionary principle. Thiomersal is now absent from all common US and European vaccines, except for some preparations of influenza vaccine. Trace amounts remain in some vaccines due to production processes, at an approximate maximum of one microgramme, around 15% of the average daily mercury intake in the US for adults and 2.5% of the daily level considered tolerable by the WHO. The action sparked concern that thiomersal could have been responsible for autism. The idea is now considered disproven, as incidence rates for autism increased steadily even after thiomersal was removed from childhood vaccines. Currently there is no accepted scientific evidence that exposure to thiomersal is a factor in causing autism. Since 2000, parents in the United States have pursued legal compensation from a federal fund arguing that thiomersal caused autism in their children. A 2004 Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee favored rejecting any causal relationship between thiomersal-containing vaccines and autism. The concentration of thiomersal used in vaccines as an antimicrobial agent ranges from 0.001% (1 part in 100,000) to 0.01% (1 part in 10,000). A vaccine containing 0.01% thiomersal has 25 micrograms of mercury per 0.5 mL dose, roughly the same amount of elemental mercury found in a three-ounce (85 g) can of tuna. There is robust peer-reviewed scientific evidence supporting the safety of thiomersal-containing vaccines.
==== Aluminium ====
Aluminum compounds are used as immunologic adjuvants to increase the effectiveness of many vaccines. The aluminum in vaccines simulates or causes small amounts of tissue damage, driving the body to respond more powerfully to what it sees as a serious infection and promoting the development of a lasting immune response. In some cases these compounds have been associated with redness, itching, and low-grade fever, but the use of aluminum in vaccines has not been associated with serious adverse events. In some cases, aluminum-containing vaccines are associated with macrophagic myofasciitis (MMF), localized microscopic lesions containing aluminum salts that persist for up to 8 years. However, recent case-controlled studies have found no specific clinical symptoms in individuals with biopsies showing MMF, and there is no evidence that aluminum-containing vaccines are a serious health risk or justify changes to immunization practice.
Infants are exposed to greater quantities of aluminum in daily life in breastmilk and infant formula than in vaccines. In general, people are exposed to low levels of naturally occurring aluminum in nearly all foods and drinking water. The amount of aluminum present in vaccines is small, less than one milligram, and such low levels are not believed to be harmful to human health.
Overall while the state of knowledge on adjuvant safety is uncertain and no drug is perfectly safe, serious adverse effects from adjuvants are extremely rare.
==== Formaldehyde ====
Vaccine hesitant people have also voiced strong concerns about the presence of formaldehyde in vaccines. Formaldehyde is used in very small concentrations to inactivate viruses and bacterial toxins used in vaccines. Very small amounts of residual formaldehyde can be present in vaccines but are far below values harmful to human health. The levels present in vaccines are minuscule when compared to naturally occurring levels of formaldehyde in the human body and pose no significant risk of toxicity. The human body continuously produces formaldehyde naturally and contains 50–70 times the greatest amount of formaldehyde present in any vaccine. Furthermore, the human body is capable of breaking down naturally occurring formaldehyde as well as the small amount of formaldehyde present in vaccines. There is no evidence linking the infrequent exposures to small quantities of formaldehyde present in vaccines with cancer.
=== MMR vaccine ===
In the UK, the MMR vaccine was the subject of controversy after the publication in The Lancet of a 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and others reporting case histories of twelve children mostly with autism spectrum disorders with onset soon after administration of the vaccine. At a 1998 press conference, Wakefield suggested that giving children the vaccines in three separate doses would be safer than a single vaccination. This suggestion was not supported by the paper, and several subsequent peer-reviewed studies have failed to show any association between the vaccine and autism. It later emerged that Wakefield had received funding from litigants against vaccine manufacturers and that he had not informed colleagues or medical authorities of his conflict of interest: Wakefield reportedly stood to earn up to $43 million per year selling diagnostic kits. Had this been known, publication in The Lancet would not have taken place in the way that it did. Wakefield has been heavily criticized on scientific and ethical grounds for the way the research was conducted and for triggering a decline in vaccination rates, which fell in the UK to 80% in the years following the study. In 2004, the MMR-and-autism interpretation of the paper was formally retracted by ten of its thirteen coauthors, and in 2010 The Lancet's editors fully retracted the paper. Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register, with a statement identifying deliberate falsification in the research published in The Lancet, and is barred from practicing medicine in the UK.
The CDC, the IOM of the National Academy of Sciences, Australia's Department of Health, and the UK National Health Service have all concluded that there is no evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. A Cochrane review concluded that there is no credible link between the MMR vaccine and autism, that MMR has prevented diseases that still carry a heavy burden of death and complications, that the lack of confidence in MMR has damaged public health, and that the design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies are largely inadequate. Additional reviews agree, with studies finding that vaccines are not linked to autism even in high risk populations with autistic siblings.
In 2009, The Sunday Times reported that Wakefield had manipulated patient data and misreported results in his 1998 paper, creating the appearance of a link with autism. A 2011 article in the British Medical Journal described how the data in the study had been falsified by Wakefield so that it would arrive at a predetermined conclusion. An accompanying editorial in the same journal described Wakefield's work as an "elaborate fraud" that led to lower vaccination rates, putting hundreds of thousands of children at risk and diverting energy and money away from research into the true cause of autism.
A special court convened in the United States to review claims under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program ruled on February 12, 2009, that the evidence "failed to demonstrate that thimerosal-containing vaccines can contribute to causing immune dysfunction, or that the MMR vaccine can contribute to causing either autism or gastrointestinal dysfunction", and that parents of autistic children were therefore not entitled to compensation in their contention that certain vaccines caused autism in their children.
=== Vaccine overload ===
Vaccine overload, a non-medical term, is the notion that giving many vaccines at once may overwhelm or weaken a child's immature immune system and lead to adverse effects. Despite scientific evidence that strongly contradicts this idea, there are still parents of autistic children that believe that vaccine overload causes autism. The resulting controversy has caused many parents to delay or avoid immunizing their children. Such parental misperceptions are major obstacles towards immunization of children.
The concept of vaccine overload is flawed on several levels. Despite the increase in the number of vaccines over recent decades, improvements in vaccine design have reduced the immunologic load from vaccines; the total number of immunological components in the 14 vaccines administered to US children in 2009 is less than ten percent of what it was in the seven vaccines given in 1980. A study published in 2013 found no correlation between autism and the antigen number in the vaccines the children were administered up to the age of two. There were 1,008 children in the study, one quarter of whom were diagnosed with autism, and the whole cohort was born between 1994 and 1999, when the routine vaccine schedule could contain more than 3,000 antigens (in a single shot of DTP vaccine). The vaccine schedule in 2012 contains several more vaccines, but the number of antigens the child is exposed to by the age of two is 315. Vaccines pose a very small immunologic load compared to the pathogens naturally encountered by a child in a typical year; common childhood conditions such as fevers and middle-ear infections pose a much greater challenge to the immune system than vaccines, and studies have shown that vaccinations, even multiple concurrent vaccinations, do not weaken the immune system or compromise overall immunity. The lack of evidence supporting the vaccine overload hypothesis, combined with these findings directly contradicting it, has led to the conclusion that currently recommended vaccine programs do not "overload" or weaken the immune system.
Any experiment based on withholding vaccines from children is considered unethical, and observational studies would likely be confounded by differences in the healthcare-seeking behaviors of under-vaccinated children. Thus, no study directly comparing rates of autism in vaccinated and unvaccinated children has been done. However, the concept of vaccine overload is biologically implausible, as vaccinated and unvaccinated children have the same immune response to non-vaccine-related infections, and autism is not an immune-mediated disease, so claims that vaccines could cause it by overloading the immune system go against current knowledge of the pathogenesis of autism. As such, the idea that vaccines cause autism has been effectively dismissed by the weight of current evidence.
=== Prenatal infection ===
There is evidence that schizophrenia is associated with prenatal exposure to rubella, influenza, and toxoplasmosis infection. For example, one study found a sevenfold increased risk of schizophrenia when mothers were exposed to influenza in the first trimester of gestation. This may have public health implications, as strategies for preventing infection include vaccination, simple hygiene, and, in the case of toxoplasmosis, antibiotics. Based on studies in animal models, theoretical concerns have been raised about a possible link between schizophrenia and maternal immune response activated by virus antigens; a 2009 review concluded that there was insufficient evidence to recommend routine use of trivalent influenza vaccine during the first trimester of pregnancy, but that the vaccine was still recommended outside the first trimester and in special circumstances such as pandemics or in women with certain other conditions. The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Family Physicians all recommend routine flu shots for pregnant women, for several reasons:
their risk for serious influenza-related medical complications during the last two trimesters;
their greater rates for flu-related hospitalizations compared to non-pregnant women;
the possible transfer of maternal anti-influenza antibodies to children, protecting the children from the flu; and
several studies that found no harm to pregnant women or their children from the vaccinations.
Despite this recommendation, only 16% of healthy pregnant US women surveyed in 2005 had been vaccinated against the flu.
=== Sudden infant death syndrome ===
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is most common in infants around the time in life when they receive many vaccinations. Since the cause of SIDS has not been fully determined, this led to concerns about whether vaccines, in particular diphtheria-tetanus toxoid vaccines, were a possible causal factor. Several studies investigated this and found no evidence supporting a causal link between vaccination and SIDS. In 2003, the Institute of Medicine favored rejection of a causal link to DTwP vaccination and SIDS after reviewing the available evidence. Additional analyses of VAERS data also showed no relationship between vaccination and SIDS. Studies have shown a negative correlation between SIDs and vaccination. That is vaccinated children are less likely to die but no causal link has been found. One suggestion is that infants who are less likely to develop SIDS are more likely to be presented for vaccination.
=== Anthrax vaccines ===
In the mid-1990s media reports on vaccines discussed the Gulf War Syndrome, a multi-symptomatic disorder affecting returning US military veterans of the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War. Among the first articles of the online magazine Slate was one by Atul Gawande in which the required immunizations received by soldiers, including an anthrax vaccination, were named as one of the likely culprits for the symptoms associated with the Gulf War Syndrome. In the late 1990s Slate published an article on the "brewing rebellion" in the military against anthrax immunization because of "the availability to soldiers of vaccine misinformation on the Internet". Slate continued to report on concerns about the required anthrax and smallpox immunization for US troops after the September 11 attacks and articles on the subject also appeared on the Salon website. The 2001 anthrax attacks heightened concerns about bioterrorism and the Federal government of the United States stepped up its efforts to store and create more vaccines for American citizens. In 2002, Mother Jones published an article that was highly skeptical of the anthrax and smallpox immunization required by the United States Armed Forces. With the 2003 invasion of Iraq a wider controversy ensued in the media about requiring US troops to be vaccinated against anthrax. From 2003 to 2008 a series of court cases were brought to oppose the compulsory anthrax vaccination of US troops.
=== Swine flu vaccine ===
The US swine flu immunization campaign in response to the 1976 swine flu outbreak has become known as "the swine flu fiasco" because the outbreak did not lead to a pandemic as US President Gerald Ford had feared and the hastily rolled out vaccine was found to increase the number of Guillain–Barré Syndrome cases two weeks after immunization. Government officials stopped the mass immunization campaign due to great anxiety about the safety of the swine flu vaccine. The general public was left with greater fear of the vaccination campaign than the virus itself, and vaccination policies, in general, were challenged.: 8
During the 2009 flu pandemic, significant controversy broke out regarding whether the 2009 H1N1 flu vaccine was safe in, among other countries, France. Numerous different French groups publicly criticized the vaccine as potentially dangerous. Because of similarities between the 2009 influenza A subtype H1N1 virus and the 1976 influenza A/NJ virus many countries established surveillance systems for vaccine-related adverse effects on human health. A possible link between the 2009 H1N1 flu vaccine and Guillain–Barré Syndrome cases was studied in Europe and the United States.: 325
=== Blood transfusion ===
After the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines, vaccine hesitant people have at times demanded that they get donor blood from donors that have not received the vaccine. In the US and Canada, blood centers do not keep data on whether a donor has been COVID-19 infected or vaccinated, and in August 2021 it was estimated that 60-70% of US blood donors had COVID-19 antibodies. Research director Timothy Caulfield said that "This really highlights, I think, how powerful misinformation can be. It can really have an impact in a way that can be dangerous ... There is no evidence to support these concerns." The British Journal of Haematology called the trend "alarming" in 2021. The chief medical officer of ImpactLife said the same year that accepting such a demand "would be an operational can of worms for a medically unjustifiable request".
As of August 2021, such demands were rare in the US. As of 2024, the numbers are increasing. Doctors in Alberta, Canada, warned in November 2022 that the demands were becoming more common. The Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies (AABB) and the Canadian Blood Services have both issued guidance on how to respond to such demands.
In Italy and New Zealand, parents have gone to court to stop their children's urgent heart surgery, unless COVID-19 vaccine free blood was provided. In both cases the parents were ruled against, though they stated that they could provide willing donors they found acceptable. The New Zealand Blood Service does not label blood according to the donor's COVID-19 vaccine history, and as of 2022, about 90% of New Zealand's population over twelve years of age has had two COVID-19 vaccinations. In another Italian case, a blood transfusion for a sick 90-year-old man was refused by his two daughters, due to vaccine hesitancy concerns. Another New Zealand couple stated that they were trying to arrange their child to have her next heart surgery in India, to avoid her being given blood from COVID-19 vaccinated donors.
=== Other safety concerns ===
Other safety concerns about vaccines have been promoted on the Internet, in informal meetings, in books, and at symposia. These include hypotheses that vaccination can cause epileptic seizures, allergies, multiple sclerosis, and autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, as well as hypotheses that vaccinations can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy, hepatitis C virus, and HIV. These hypotheses have been investigated, with the conclusion that currently used vaccines meet high safety standards and that criticism of vaccine safety in the popular press is not justified. Large well-controlled epidemiologic studies have been conducted and the results do not support the hypothesis that vaccines cause chronic diseases. Furthermore, some vaccines are probably more likely to prevent or modify than cause or exacerbate autoimmune diseases.
Another common concern parents often have is about the pain associated with administering vaccines during a doctor's office visit. This may lead to parental requests to space out vaccinations; however, studies have shown a child's stress response is not different when receiving one vaccination or two. The act of spacing out vaccinations may actually lead to more stressful stimuli for the child.
== Vaccine myths and misinformation ==
Several vaccination myths contribute to parental concerns and vaccine hesitancy. These include the alleged superiority of natural infection when compared to vaccination, questioning whether the diseases vaccines prevent are dangerous, whether vaccines pose moral or religious dilemmas, suggesting that vaccines are not effective, proposing unproven or ineffective approaches as alternatives to vaccines, and conspiracy theories that center on mistrust of the government and medical institutions.
Nevertheless, despite a major measles outbreak in the United States Southwest which began February 2025 in an area of Texas with low measles immunization rates—perhaps due in part to vaccine misinformation—in March of 2025, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, under the direction of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., abruptly cancelled funding for over 40 research grants studying vaccine hesitancy.
=== Autism ===
The idea of a link between vaccines and autism has been extensively investigated and conclusively shown to be false. The scientific consensus is that there is no relationship, causal or otherwise, between vaccines and incidence of autism, and vaccine ingredients do not cause autism.
Nevertheless, the anti-vaccination movement continues to promote myths, conspiracy theories, and misinformation linking the two. A developing tactic appears to be the "promotion of irrelevant research [as] an active aggregation of several questionable or peripherally related research studies in an attempt to justify the science underlying a questionable claim", to quote the Skeptical Inquirer.
=== Vaccination during illness ===
Many parents are concerned about the safety of vaccination when their child is sick. Moderate to severe acute illness with or without a fever is indeed a precaution when considering vaccination. Vaccines remain effective during childhood illness. The reason vaccines may be withheld if a child is moderately to severely ill is because certain expected side effects of vaccination (e.g. fever or rash) may be confused with the progression of the illness. It is safe to administer vaccines to well-appearing children who are mildly ill with the common cold.
=== Natural infection ===
Another common anti-vaccine myth is that the immune system produces a better immune protection in response to natural infection when compared to vaccination. However, strength and duration of immune protection gained varies by both disease and vaccine, with some vaccines giving better protection than natural infection. For example, the HPV vaccine generates better immune protection than natural infection due to the vaccine containing higher concentrations of a viral coat protein, while also not containing proteins the HPV viruses use to inhibit immune response.
While it is true that infection with certain illnesses may produce lifelong immunity, many natural infections do not produce lifelong immunity, while carrying a higher risk of harming a person's health than vaccines. For example, natural varicella infection carries a higher risk of bacterial superinfection with Group A streptococci.
Natural measles infection carries a high risk of many serious, and sometimes life-long, complications, all of which can be avoided by vaccination. Those infected with measles rarely have a symptomatic reinfection.
Most people survive measles, though in some cases, complications may occur. Among those that experience complications, about 1 in 4 individuals will be hospitalized and 1–2 in 1000 will die. Complications are more likely in children under age 5 and adults over age 20. Pneumonia is the most common fatal complication of measles infection and accounts for 56–86% of measles-related deaths.
Possible consequences of measles virus infection include laryngotracheobronchitis, sensorineural hearing loss, and—in about 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 300,000 cases—panencephalitis, which is usually fatal. Acute measles encephalitis is another serious risk of measles virus infection. It typically occurs two days to one week after the measles rash breaks out and begins with very high fever, severe headache, convulsions and altered mentation. A person with measles encephalitis may become comatose, and death or brain injury may occur.
The measles virus can deplete previously acquired immune memory by killing cells that make antibodies, and thus weakens the immune system which can cause deaths from other diseases. Suppression of the immune system by measles lasts about two years and has been epidemiologically implicated in up to 90% of childhood deaths in third world countries, and historically may have caused rather more deaths in the United States, the UK and Denmark than were directly caused by measles. Although the measles vaccine contains an attenuated strain, it does not deplete immune memory.
=== HPV vaccine ===
The idea that the HPV vaccine is linked to increased sexual behavior is not supported by scientific evidence. A review of nearly 1,400 adolescent girls found no difference in teen pregnancy, the incidence of sexually transmitted infection, or contraceptive counseling regardless of whether they received the HPV vaccine. Thousands of Americans die each year from cancers preventable by the vaccine.
There remains a disproportionate rate of HPV-related cancers amongst LatinX populations, leading researchers to explore how messaging may be made more effective to address vaccine hesitancy.
=== Vaccine schedule ===
Other concerns have been raised about the vaccine schedule recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). The immunization schedule is designed to protect children against preventable diseases when they are most vulnerable. The practice of delaying or spacing out these vaccinations increases the amount of time the child is susceptible to these illnesses. Receiving vaccines on the schedule recommended by the ACIP is not linked to autism or developmental delay.
=== Information warfare ===
An analysis of tweets from July 2014 through September 2017 revealed an active campaign on Twitter by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian troll farm accused of interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, to sow discord about the safety of vaccines. The campaign used sophisticated Twitter bots to amplify polarizing pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine messages, containing the hashtag #VaccinateUS, posted by IRA trolls.
Throughout 2020 and 2021, the United States ran a propaganda campaign to spread disinformation about the Sinovac Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, including using fake social media accounts to spread the disinformation that the Sinovac vaccine contained pork-derived ingredients and was therefore haram under Islamic law. The campaign primarily targeted people in the Philippines and used a social media hashtag for "China is the virus" in Tagalog.
== Alternative medicine ==
Many forms of alternative medicine are based on philosophies that oppose vaccination (including germ theory denialism) and have practitioners who voice their opposition. As a consequence, the increase in popularity of alternative medicine in the 1970s planted the seeds of the modern anti-vaccination movement. More specifically, some elements of the chiropractic community, some homeopaths, and naturopaths developed anti-vaccine rhetoric. The reasons for this negative vaccination view are complicated and rest at least in part on the early philosophies that shaped the foundation of these groups.
=== Chiropractic ===
Historically, chiropractic strongly opposed vaccination based on its belief that all diseases were traceable to causes in the spine and therefore could not be affected by vaccines. Daniel D. Palmer (1845–1913), the founder of chiropractic, wrote: "It is the very height of absurdity to strive to 'protect' any person from smallpox or any other malady by inoculating them with a filthy animal poison." Vaccination remains controversial within the profession. Most chiropractic writings on vaccination focus on its negative aspects. A 1995 survey of US chiropractors found that about one third believed there was no scientific proof that immunization prevents disease. While the Canadian Chiropractic Association supports vaccination, a survey in Alberta in 2002 found that 25% of chiropractors advised patients for, and 27% advised against, vaccinations for patients or for their children.
Although most chiropractic colleges try to teach about vaccination in a manner consistent with scientific evidence, several have faculty who seem to stress negative views. A survey of a 1999–2000 cross-section of students of Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC), which does not formally teach anti-vaccination views, reported that fourth-year students opposed vaccination more strongly than did first-year students, with 29.4% of fourth-year students opposing vaccination. A follow-up study on 2011–12 CMCC students found that pro-vaccination attitudes heavily predominated. Students reported support rates ranging from 84% to 90%. One of the study's authors proposed the change in attitude to be due to the lack of the previous influence of a "subgroup of some charismatic students who were enrolled at CMCC at the time, students who championed the Palmer postulates that advocated against the use of vaccination".
==== Policy positions ====
The American Chiropractic Association and the International Chiropractic Association support individual exemptions to compulsory vaccination laws. In March 2015, the Oregon Chiropractic Association invited Andrew Wakefield, chief author of a fraudulent research paper, to testify against Senate Bill 442, "a bill that would eliminate nonmedical exemptions from Oregon's school immunization law". The California Chiropractic Association lobbied against a 2015 bill ending belief exemptions for vaccines. They had also opposed a 2012 bill related to vaccination exemptions.
=== Homeopathy ===
Several surveys have shown that some practitioners of homeopathy, particularly homeopaths without any medical training, advise patients against vaccination. For example, a survey of registered homeopaths in Austria found that only 28% considered immunization an important preventive measure, and 83% of homeopaths surveyed in Sydney, Australia, did not recommend vaccination. Many practitioners of naturopathy also oppose vaccination.
Homeopathic "vaccines" (nosodes) are ineffective because they do not contain any active ingredients and thus do not stimulate the immune system. They can be dangerous if they take the place of effective treatments. Some medical organizations have taken action against nosodes. In Canada, the labeling of homeopathic nosodes require the statement: "This product is neither a vaccine nor an alternative to vaccination."
=== Financial motives ===
Alternative medicine proponents gain from promoting vaccine conspiracy theories through the sale of ineffective and expensive medications, supplements, and procedures such as chelation therapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, sold as able to cure the 'damage' caused by vaccines. Homeopaths in particular gain through the promotion of water injections or 'nosodes' that they allege have a 'natural' vaccine-like effect. Additional bodies with a vested interest in promoting the "unsafeness" of vaccines may include lawyers and legal groups organizing court cases and class action lawsuits against vaccine providers.
Conversely, alternative medicine providers have accused the vaccine industry of misrepresenting the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, covering up and suppressing information, and influencing health policy decisions for financial gain. In the late 20th century, vaccines were a product with low profit margins, and the number of companies involved in vaccine manufacture declined. In addition to low profits and liability risks, manufacturers complained about low prices paid for vaccines by the CDC and other US government agencies. In the early 21st century, the vaccine market greatly improved with the approval of the vaccine Prevnar, along with a small number of other high-priced blockbuster vaccines, such as Gardasil and Pediarix, which each had sales revenues of over $1 billion in 2008. Despite high growth rates, vaccines represent a relatively small portion of overall pharmaceutical profits. As recently as 2010, the World Health Organization estimated vaccines to represent 2–3% of total sales for the pharmaceutical industry.
== Psychological factors ==
The rise in vaccine hesitancy has led to research on the psychology of those who actively oppose vaccines. The largest psychological factors leading to anti-vaccination attitudes are conspiratorial thinking, reactance, disgust regarding blood or needles, and individualistic or hierarchical worldviews. In contrast, demographic variables are not significant.
Researchers have also investigated the psychological roots of vaccine hesitancy with regard to specific vaccines. For instance, a 2021 study published in Nature Communications investigated psychological characteristics associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and resistance in Ireland and the UK. The study found that vaccine hesitant or resistant respondents in the two countries varied across socio-demographic and health-related variables, however, they were similar in range of psychological factors. Such respondents were less likely to obtain information about the pandemic from authoritative and traditional media sources and demonstrated similar skepticism towards these sources compared to respondents who accepted the vaccine.
=== Fear of needles ===
Blood-injection-injury phobia and general fear of needles and injections can lead people to avoid vaccinations. One survey conducted in January and February 2021 estimated this was responsible for 10% of the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the UK at the time. A 2012 survey of American parents found that a fear of needles was the most common reason for adolescents to forgo their second dose of a HPV vaccine.
Various treatments for fear of needles can help overcome this problem, from offering pain reduction at the time of injection to long-term behavioral therapy. Tensing the stomach muscles can help avoid fainting, swearing can reduce perceived pain, and distraction can also improve the perceived experience, such as by pretending to cough, performing a visual task, watching a video, or playing a video game.
To avoid dissuading people who have a needle phobia, vaccine update researchers recommend against using pictures of needles, people getting an injection, or faces displaying negative emotions (like a crying baby) in promotional materials. Instead, they recommend medically accurate photos depicting smiling, diverse people with bandages, vaccination cards, or a rolled-up sleeve; depicting vials instead of needles; and depicting the people who develop and test vaccines. Development of vaccines that can be administered orally or with a jet injector can also avoid triggering the fear of needles.
== Social factors ==
Beyond misinformation, social and economic conditions also influence how many people take vaccines. Factors such as income, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, age, and education can determine the uptake of vaccines and their impact, especially among vulnerable communities.
Social factors like whether one lives with others may affect vaccine uptake. For example, older individuals who live alone are much more likely not to take up vaccines compared to those living with other people. Other factors may be racial, with minority groups being affected by low vaccine uptake.
People with weaker immune systems or chronic illness are more likely to take up a vaccine if recommended by their physicians.
== Other reasons ==
=== Unethical human experimentation and medical racism ===
Some people in groups experiencing medical racism are less willing to trust doctors and modern medicine due to real historical incidents of unethical human experimentation and involuntary sterilization. Famous examples include drug trials in Africa without informed consent, the Guatemala syphilis experiments, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the culturing of cells from Henrietta Lacks without consent, and Nazi human experimentation.
To overcome this type of distrust, experts recommend including representative samples of majority and minority populations in drug trials, including minority groups in study design, being diligent about informed consent, and being transparent about the process of drug design and testing.
=== Malpractice and fraud ===
==== CIA fake vaccination clinic ====
In Pakistan, the CIA ran a fake vaccination clinic in an attempt to locate Osama bin Laden. As a direct consequence, there have been several attacks and deaths among vaccination workers. Several Islamist preachers and militant groups, including some factions of the Taliban, view vaccination as a plot to kill or sterilize Muslims. Efforts to eradicate polio have furthermore been disrupted by American drone strikes. Pakistan is among the only countries where polio remained endemic as of 2015.
==== Fake COVID-19 vaccines ====
In July 2021, Indian police arrested 14 people for administering doses of saline solution instead of the AstraZeneca vaccine at nearly a dozen private vaccination sites in Mumbai. The organizers, including medical professionals, charged between $10 and $17 for each dose, and more than 2,600 people paid to receive what they thought was the vaccine. The federal government downplayed the scandal, claiming these cases were isolated. McAfee stated India was among the top countries to have been targeted by fake apps to lure people with a promise of vaccines.
In Bhopal, slum residents were misled into thinking they would get an approved COVID-19 vaccine, but instead were actually part of an experimental clinical trial for the domestic vaccine Covaxin. Only 50% of participants in the trials received a vaccine with the rest receiving a placebo. One participant stated, "...I didn't know that there was a possibility you could get a water shot."
=== Religion ===
Since most religions predate the invention of vaccines, scriptures do not specifically address the topic of vaccination. However, vaccination has been opposed by some on religious grounds ever since it was first introduced. When vaccination was first becoming widespread, some Christian opponents argued that preventing smallpox deaths would be thwarting God's will and that such prevention is sinful. Opposition from some religious groups continues to the present day, on various grounds, raising ethical difficulties when the number of unvaccinated children threatens harm to the entire population. Many governments allow parents to opt out of their children's otherwise mandatory vaccinations for religious reasons; some parents falsely claim religious beliefs to get vaccination exemptions.
Many Jewish community leaders support vaccination. Among early Hasidic leaders, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810) was known for his criticism of the doctors and medical treatments of his day. However, when the first vaccines were successfully introduced, he stated: "Every parent should have his children vaccinated within the first three months of life. Failure to do so is tantamount to murder. Even if they live far from the city and have to travel during the great winter cold, they should have the child vaccinated before three months."
Although gelatin can be derived from many animals, Jewish and Islamic scholars have determined that since the gelatin is cooked and not consumed as food, vaccinations containing gelatin are acceptable. However, in 2015 and again in 2020, the possible use of porcine-based gelatin in vaccines raised religious concerns among Muslims and Orthodox Jews about the halal or kosher status of several vaccinations against COVID-19. The Muslim Council of Britain raised concern about the UK's intranasal influenza vaccine deployment in 2019 due to the presence of gelatin in the vaccine. The MCB subsequently clarified that it never advised against the vaccine, it did not have any religious authority to issue a fatwa on the matter, and that vaccines containing porcine gelatin are generally not considered haram if alternatives are unavailable (the injectable flu vaccine was also offered in Scotland, but not England).
In India, in 2018, a three-minute doctored clip circulated among Muslims claiming that the MR-VAC vaccine against measles and rubella was a "Modi government-RSS conspiracy" to stop the population growth of Muslims. The clip was taken from a TV show that exposed the baseless rumors. Hundreds of madrassas in the state of Uttar Pradesh refused permission to health department teams to administer vaccines because of rumors spread using WhatsApp.
Some Christians have objected to the use of cell cultures of some viral vaccines, and the virus of the rubella vaccine, on the grounds that they are derived from tissues taken from therapeutic abortions performed in the 1960s. The principle of double effect, originated by Thomas Aquinas, holds that actions with both good and bad consequences are morally acceptable in specific circumstances. The Vatican Curia has said that for vaccines originating from embryonic cells, Catholics have "a grave responsibility to use alternative vaccines and to make a conscientious objection", but concluded that it is acceptable for Catholics to use the existing vaccines until an alternative becomes available.
In the United States, some parents falsely claim religious exemptions when their real motivation for avoiding vaccines is supposed safety concerns. For a number of years, only Mississippi, West Virginia, and California did not provide religious exemptions. Following the 2019 measles outbreaks, Maine and New York repealed their religious exemptions, and the state of Washington did so for the measles vaccination.
According to a March 2021 poll conducted by The Associated Press/NORC, vaccine skepticism is more widespread among white evangelicals than most other blocs of Americans. Forty percent of white evangelical Protestants said they were not likely to get vaccinated against COVID-19. That compares with 25% of all Americans, 28% of white mainline Protestants and 27% of nonwhite Protestants.
== Countermeasures ==
Vaccine hesitancy is challenging and optimal strategies for approaching it remain uncertain.
Multicomponent initiatives which include targeting undervaccinated populations, improving the convenience of and access to vaccines, educational initiatives, and mandates may improve vaccination uptake.
The World Health Organization (WHO) published a paper in 2016 intending to aid experts on how to respond to vaccine deniers in public. The WHO recommends for experts to view the general public as their target audience rather than the vaccine denier when debating in a public forum. The WHO also suggests for experts to make unmasking the techniques that the vaccine denier uses to spread misinformation as the goal of the conversation. The WHO asserts that this will make the public audience more resilient against anti-vaccine tactics.
=== Providing information ===
Many interventions designed to address vaccine hesitancy have been based on the information deficit model. This model assumes that vaccine hesitancy is due to a person lacking the necessary information and attempts to provide them with that information to solve the problem. Despite many educational interventions attempting this approach, ample evidence indicates providing more information is often ineffective in changing a vaccine-hesitant person's views and may, in fact, have the opposite of the intended effect and reinforce their misconceptions.
It is unclear whether interventions intended to educate parents about vaccines improve the rate of vaccination. It is also unclear whether citing the reasons of benefit to others and herd immunity improves parents' willingness to vaccinate their children. In one trial, an educational intervention designed to dispel common misconceptions about the influenza vaccine decreased parents' false beliefs about the vaccines but did not improve uptake of the influenza vaccine. In fact, parents with significant concerns about adverse effects from the vaccine were less likely to vaccinate their children with the influenza vaccine after receiving this education.
=== Communication strategies ===
Several communication strategies are recommended for use when interacting with vaccine-hesitant parents. These include establishing honest and respectful dialogue; acknowledging the risks of a vaccine but balancing them against the risk of disease; referring parents to reputable sources of vaccine information; and maintaining ongoing conversations with vaccine-hesitant families. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends healthcare providers directly address parental concerns about vaccines when questioned about their efficacy and safety. Additional recommendations include asking permission to share information; maintaining a conversational tone (as opposed to lecturing); not spending excessive amounts of time debunking specific myths (this may have the opposite effect of strengthening the myth in the person's mind); focusing on the facts and simply identifying the myth as false; and keeping information as simple as possible (if the myth seems simpler than the truth, it may be easier for people to accept the simple myth). Storytelling and anecdote (e.g., about the decision to vaccinate one's own children) can be powerful communication tools for conversations about the value of vaccination. A New Zealand-based General Practitioner has used a comic, Jenny & the Eddies, both to educate children about vaccines and address his patients' concerns through open, trusting, and non-threatening conversations, concluding [that] "I always listen to what people have to say on any matter. That includes vaccine hesitancy. That's a very important opening stage to improving the therapeutic relationship. If I'm going to change anyone's attitude, first I need to listen to them and be open-minded." The perceived strength of the recommendation, when provided by a healthcare provider, also seems to influence uptake, with recommendations that are perceived to be stronger resulting in higher vaccination rates than perceived weaker recommendations.
=== Provider presumption and persistence ===
Limited evidence suggests that a more paternalistic or presumptive approach ("Your son needs three shots today.") is more likely to result in patient acceptance of vaccines during a clinic visit than a participatory approach ("What do you want to do about shots?") but decreases patient satisfaction with the visit. A presumptive approach helps to establish that this is the normative choice. Similarly, one study found that the way in which physicians respond to parental vaccine resistance is important. Nearly half of initially vaccine-resistant parents accepted vaccinations if physicians persisted in their initial recommendation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released resources to aid healthcare providers in having more effective conversations with parents about vaccinations.
=== Pain mitigation for children ===
Parents may be hesitant to have their children vaccinated due to concerns about the pain of vaccination. Several strategies can be used to reduce the child's pain. Such strategies include distraction techniques (pinwheels); deep breathing techniques; breastfeeding the child; giving the child sweet-tasting solutions; quickly administering the vaccine without aspirating; keeping the child upright; providing tactile stimulation; applying numbing agents to the skin; and saving the most painful vaccine for last. As above, the number of vaccines offered in a particular encounter is related to the likelihood of parental vaccine refusal (the more vaccines offered, the higher the likelihood of vaccine deferral). The use of combination vaccines to protect against more diseases but with fewer injections may provide reassurance to parents. Similarly, reframing the conversation with less emphasis on the number of diseases the healthcare provider is immunizing against (e.g., "we will do two injections (combined vaccinations) and an oral vaccine") may be more acceptable to parents than "we're going to vaccinate against seven diseases".
=== Cultural sensitivity ===
Cultural sensitivity is important to reducing vaccine hesitancy. For example, pollster Frank Luntz discovered that for conservative Americans, family is by far the "most powerful motivator" to get a vaccine (over country, economy, community, or friends). Luntz "also found a very pronounced preference for the word 'vaccine' over 'jab.'"
=== Avoiding online misinformation ===
It is recommended that healthcare providers advise parents against performing their own web search queries since many websites on the Internet contain significant misinformation. Many parents perform their own research online and are often confused, frustrated, and unsure of which sources of information are trustworthy. Additional recommendations include introducing parents to the importance of vaccination as far in advance of the initial well-child visit as possible; presenting parents with vaccine safety information while in their pediatrician's waiting room; and using prenatal open houses and postpartum maternity ward visits as opportunities to vaccinate.
Internet advertising, especially on social networking websites, is purchased by both public health authorities and anti-vaccination groups. In the United States, the majority of anti-vaccine Facebook advertising in December 2018 and February 2019 had been paid for one of two groups: Children's Health Defense and Stop Mandatory Vaccination. The ads targeted women and young couples and generally highlighted the alleged risks of vaccines, while asking for donations. Several anti-vaccination advertising campaigns also targeted areas where measles outbreaks were underway during this period. The impact of Facebook's subsequent advertising policy changes has not been studied.
=== Incentive programs ===
Several countries have implemented programs to counter vaccine hesitancy, including raffles, lotteries, rewards and mandates. In the US State of Washington, authorities have given the green light to licensed cannabis dispensaries to offer free joints as incentives to get COVID-19 vaccination in an effort dubbed "Joints for Jabs".
=== Vaccine mandates ===
Mandatory vaccination is one set of policy measures to address vaccine hesitancy by imposing penalties or burdens on those who fail to vaccinate. An example of this kind of measure is Australia's vaccine mandates around childhood vaccination, the No Jab No Pay policy. This policy linked financial payments to children's vaccine status and, while studies have found significant improvements in vaccination compliance, years later there were still issues of vaccine hesitancy. In 2021, Australian airline Qantas issued plans to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for their work force.
== Geographical distribution ==
Vaccine hesitancy is becoming an increasing concern, particularly in industrialized nations. For example, one study surveying parents in Europe found that 12–28% of surveyed parents expressed doubts about vaccinating their children. Several studies have assessed socioeconomic and cultural factors associated with vaccine hesitancy. Both high and low socioeconomic status as well as high and low education levels have all been associated with vaccine hesitancy in different populations. Other studies examining various populations around the world in different countries found that both high and low socioeconomic status are associated with vaccine hesitancy.
=== Migrant populations ===
Migrants and refugees arriving and living in Europe face various difficulties in getting vaccinated and many of them are not fully vaccinated. People arriving from Africa, Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Asia are more likely to be under-vaccinated (partial or delayed vaccination). Also, recently arrived refugees, migrants and seekers of asylum were less likely to be fully vaccinated than other people from the same groups. Those with little contact to healthcare services, no citizenship and lower income are also more likely to be under-vaccinated.
Vaccination barriers for migrants include language/literacy barriers, lack of understanding of the need for or their entitlement to vaccines, concerns about the side-effects, health professionals lack of knowledge of vaccination guidelines for migrants, and practical/legal issues, for example, having no fixed address. Vaccines uptake of migrants can be increased by customised communications, clear policies, community-guided interventions (such as vaccine advocates), and vaccine offers in local accessible settings.
=== Australia ===
An Australian study that examined the factors associated with vaccine attitudes and uptake separately found that under-vaccination correlated with lower socioeconomic status but not with negative attitudes towards vaccines. The researchers suggested that practical barriers are more likely to explain under-vaccination among individuals with lower socioeconomic status. A 2012 Australian study found that 52% of parents had concerns about the safety of vaccines.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy reportedly was spreading in remote Indigenous communities, where people are typically poorer and less educated.
=== Europe ===
Confidence in vaccines varies over place and time and among different vaccines. The Vaccine Confidence Project in 2016 found that confidence was lower in Europe than in the rest of the world. Refusal of the MMR vaccine has increased in twelve European states since 2010. The project published a report in 2018 assessing vaccine hesitancy among the public in all the 28 EU member states and among general practitioners in ten of them. Younger adults in the survey had less confidence than older people. Confidence had risen in France, Greece, Italy, and Slovenia since 2015 but had fallen in the Czech Republic, Finland, Poland, and Sweden. 36% of the GPs surveyed in the Czech Republic and 25% of those in Slovakia did not agree that the MMR vaccine was safe. Most of the GPs did not recommend the seasonal influenza vaccine. Confidence in the population correlated with confidence among GPs.
== Policy implications ==
Multiple major medical societies including the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics support the elimination of all nonmedical exemptions for childhood vaccines.
=== Individual liberty ===
Compulsory vaccination policies have been controversial as long as they have existed, with opponents of mandatory vaccinations arguing that governments should not infringe on an individual's freedom to make medical decisions for themselves or their children, while proponents of compulsory vaccination cite the well-documented public health benefits of vaccination. Others argue that, for compulsory vaccination to effectively prevent disease, there must be not only available vaccines and a population willing to immunize, but also sufficient ability to decline vaccination on grounds of personal belief.
Vaccination policy involves complicated ethical issues, as unvaccinated individuals are more likely to contract and spread disease to people with weaker immune systems, such as young children and the elderly, and to other individuals in whom the vaccine has not been effective. However, mandatory vaccination policies raise ethical issues regarding parental rights and informed consent.
In the United States, vaccinations are not truly compulsory, but they are typically required in order for children to attend public schools. As of January 2021, five states – Mississippi, West Virginia, California, Maine, and New York – have eliminated religious and philosophical exemptions to required school immunizations.
=== Children's rights ===
Medical ethicist Arthur Caplan argues that children have a right to the best available medical care, including vaccines, regardless of parental feelings toward vaccines, saying "Arguments about medical freedom and choice are at odds with the human and constitutional rights of children. When parents won't protect them, governments must."
A review of American court cases from 1905 to 2016 found that, of the nine courts that have heard cases regarding whether not vaccinating a child constitutes neglect, seven have held vaccine refusal to be a form of child neglect.
To prevent the spread of disease by unvaccinated individuals, some schools and doctors' surgeries have prohibited unvaccinated children from being enrolled, even where not required by law. Refusal of doctors to treat unvaccinated children may cause harm to both the child and public health, and may be considered unethical, if the parents are unable to find another healthcare provider for the child. Opinion on this is divided, with the largest professional association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, saying that exclusion of unvaccinated children may be an option under narrowly defined circumstances.
== History ==
=== Variolation ===
Early attempts to prevent smallpox involved deliberate inoculation with the milder form of the disease (Variola Minor) in the expectation that a mild case would confer immunity and avoid Variola Major. Originally called inoculation, this technique was later called variolation to avoid confusion with cowpox inoculation (vaccination) when that was introduced by Edward Jenner. Although variolation had a long history in China and India, it was first used in North America and England in 1721. Reverend Cotton Mather introduced variolation to Boston, Massachusetts, during the 1721 smallpox epidemic. Despite strong opposition in the community, Mather convinced Zabdiel Boylston to try it. Boylston first experimented on his 6-year-old son, his slave, and his slave's son; each subject contracted the disease and was sick for several days until the sickness vanished and they were "no longer gravely ill". Boylston went on to variolate thousands of Massachusetts residents, and many places were named for him in gratitude as a result. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced variolation to England. She had seen it used in Turkey and, in 1718, had her son successfully variolated in Constantinople under the supervision of Charles Maitland. When she returned to England in 1721, she had her daughter variolated by Maitland. This aroused considerable interest, and Sir Hans Sloane organized the variolation of some inmates in Newgate Prison. These were successful, and after a further short trial in 1722, two daughters of Caroline of Ansbach Princess of Wales were variolated without mishap. With this royal approval, the procedure became common when smallpox epidemics threatened.
Religious arguments against inoculation were soon advanced. For example, in a 1722 sermon entitled "The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation", the English theologian Reverend Edmund Massey argued that diseases are sent by God to punish sin and that any attempt to prevent smallpox via inoculation is a "diabolical operation". It was customary at the time for popular preachers to publish sermons, which reached a wide audience. This was the case with Massey, whose sermon reached North America, where there was early religious opposition, particularly by John Williams. A greater source of opposition there was William Douglass, a medical graduate of Edinburgh University and a Fellow of the Royal Society, who had settled in Boston.: 114–22
=== Smallpox vaccination ===
After Edward Jenner introduced the smallpox vaccine in 1798, variolation declined and was banned in some countries. As with variolation, there was some religious opposition to vaccination, although this was balanced to some extent by support from clergymen, such as Reverend Robert Ferryman, a friend of Jenner's, and Rowland Hill,: 221 who not only preached in its favour but also performed vaccination themselves. There was also opposition from some variolators who saw the loss of a lucrative monopoly. William Rowley published illustrations of deformities allegedly produced by vaccination, lampooned in James Gillray's famous caricature depicted on this page, and Benjamin Moseley likened cowpox to syphilis, starting a controversy that would last into the 20th century.: 203–05
There was legitimate concern from supporters of vaccination about its safety and efficacy, but this was overshadowed by general condemnation, particularly when legislation started to introduce compulsory vaccination. The reason for this was that vaccination was introduced before laboratory methods were developed to control its production and account for its failures. Vaccine was maintained initially through arm-to-arm transfer and later through production on the skin of animals, and bacteriological sterility was impossible. Further, identification methods for potential pathogens were not available until the late 19th to early 20th century. Diseases later shown to be caused by contaminated vaccine included erysipelas, tuberculosis, tetanus, and syphilis. This last, though rare – estimated at 750 cases in 100 million vaccinations – attracted particular attention. Much later, Charles Creighton, a leading medical opponent of vaccination, claimed that the vaccine itself was a cause of syphilis and devoted a book to the subject. As cases of smallpox started to occur in those who had been vaccinated earlier, supporters of vaccination pointed out that these were usually very mild and occurred years after the vaccination. In turn, opponents of vaccination pointed out that this contradicted Jenner's belief that vaccination conferred complete protection.: 17–21 The views of opponents of vaccination that it was both dangerous and ineffective led to the development of determined anti-vaccination movements in England when legislation was introduced to make vaccination compulsory.
==== England ====
Because of its greater risks, variolation was banned in England by the Vaccination Act 1840 (3 & 4 Vict. c. 29), which also introduced free voluntary vaccination for infants. Thereafter Parliament passed successive acts to enact and enforce compulsory vaccination. The Vaccination Act 1853 (16 & 17 Vict. c. 100) introduced compulsory vaccination, with fines for non-compliance and imprisonment for non-payment. The Vaccination Act 1867 (30 & 31 Vict. c. 84) extended the age requirement to 14 years and introduced repeated fines for repeated refusal for the same child. Initially, vaccination regulations were organised by the local Poor Law Guardians, and in towns where there was strong opposition to vaccination, sympathetic guardians were elected who did not pursue prosecutions. This was changed by the Vaccination Act 1871 (34 & 35 Vict. c. 98), which required guardians to act. This significantly changed the relationship between the government and the public, and organized protests increased. In Keighley, Yorkshire, in 1876 the guardians were arrested and briefly imprisoned in York Castle, prompting large demonstrations in support of the "Keighley Seven".: 108–09 The protest movements crossed social boundaries. The financial burden of fines fell hardest on the working class, who would provide the largest numbers at public demonstrations. Societies and publications were organized by the middle classes, and support came from celebrities such as George Bernard Shaw and Alfred Russel Wallace, doctors such as Charles Creighton and Edgar Crookshank, and parliamentarians such as Jacob Bright and James Allanson Picton. By 1885, with over 3,000 prosecutions pending in Leicester, a mass rally there was attended by over 20,000 protesters.
Under increasing pressure, the government appointed a Royal Commission on Vaccination in 1889, which issued six reports between 1892 and 1896, with a detailed summary in 1898. Its recommendations were incorporated into the Vaccination Act 1898 (61 & 62 Vict. c. 49), which still required compulsory vaccination but allowed exemption on the grounds of conscientious objection on presentation of a certificate signed by two magistrates. These were not easy to obtain in towns where magistrates supported compulsory vaccination, and after continued protests, a further act in 1907 allowed exemption on a simple signed declaration. Although this solved the immediate problem, the compulsory vaccination acts remained legally enforceable, and determined opponents lobbied for their repeal. No Compulsory Vaccination was one of the demands of the 1900 Labour Party General Election Manifesto. This was done as a matter of routine when the National Health Service was introduced in 1948, with "almost negligible" opposition from supporters of compulsory vaccination.
Vaccination in Wales was covered by English legislation, but the Scottish legal system was separate. Vaccination was not made compulsory there until 1863, and a conscientious objection was allowed after vigorous protest only in 1907.: 10–11
In the late 19th century, Leicester in the UK received much attention because of how smallpox was managed there. There was particularly strong opposition to compulsory vaccination, and medical authorities had to work within this framework. They developed a system that did not use vaccination but was based on the notification of cases, the strict isolation of patients and contacts, and the provision of isolation hospitals. This proved successful but required acceptance of compulsory isolation rather than vaccination. C. Killick Millard, initially, a supporter of compulsory vaccination was appointed Medical Officer of Health in 1901. He moderated his views on compulsion but encouraged contacts and his staff to accept vaccination. This approach, developed initially due to overwhelming opposition to government policy, became known as the Leicester Method. In time it became generally accepted as the most appropriate way to deal with smallpox outbreaks and was listed as one of the "important events in the history of smallpox control" by those most involved in the World Health Organization's successful Smallpox Eradication Campaign. The final stages of the campaign generally referred to as "surveillance containment", owed much to the Leicester method.
==== United States ====
In the US, President Thomas Jefferson took a close interest in vaccination, alongside Benjamin Waterhouse, chief physician at Boston. Jefferson encouraged the development of ways to transport vaccine material through the Southern states, which included measures to avoid damage by heat, a leading cause of ineffective batches. Smallpox outbreaks were contained by the latter half of the 19th century, a development widely attributed to the vaccination of a large portion of the population. Vaccination rates fell after this decline in smallpox cases, and the disease again became epidemic in the late 19th century.
After an 1879 visit to New York by prominent British anti-vaccinationist William Tebb, The Anti-Vaccination Society of America was founded. The New England Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League formed in 1882, and the Anti-Vaccination League of New York City in 1885. Tactics in the US largely followed those used in England. Vaccination in the US was regulated by individual states, in which there followed a progression of compulsion, opposition, and repeal similar to that in England. Although generally organized on a state-by-state basis, the vaccination controversy reached the US Supreme Court in 1905. There, in the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the court ruled that states have the authority to require vaccination against smallpox during a smallpox epidemic.
John Pitcairn, the wealthy founder of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (now PPG Industries), emerged as a major financier and leader of the American anti-vaccination movement. On March 5, 1907, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he delivered an address to the Committee on Public Health and Sanitation of the Pennsylvania General Assembly criticizing vaccination. He later sponsored the National Anti-Vaccination Conference, which, held in Philadelphia in October 1908, led to the creation of The Anti-Vaccination League of America. When the league organized later that month, members chose Pitcairn as their first president.
On December 1, 1911, Pitcairn was appointed by Pennsylvania Governor John K. Tener to the Pennsylvania State Vaccination Commission and subsequently authored a detailed report strongly opposing the commission's conclusions. He remained a staunch opponent of vaccination until his death in 1916.
==== Brazil ====
In November 1904, in response to years of inadequate sanitation and disease, followed by a poorly explained public health campaign led by the renowned Brazilian public health official Oswaldo Cruz, citizens and military cadets in Rio de Janeiro arose in a Revolta da Vacina, or Vaccine Revolt. Riots broke out on the day a vaccination law took effect; vaccination symbolized the most feared and most tangible aspect of a public health plan that included other features, such as urban renewal, that many had opposed for years.
=== Later vaccines and antitoxins ===
Opposition to smallpox vaccination continued into the 20th century and was joined by controversy over new vaccines and the introduction of antitoxin treatment for diphtheria. Injection of horse serum into humans as used in antitoxin can cause hypersensitivity, commonly referred to as serum sickness. Moreover, the continued production of the smallpox vaccine in animals and the production of antitoxins in horses prompted anti-vivisectionists to oppose vaccination.
Diphtheria antitoxin was serum from horses that had been immunized against diphtheria, and was used to treat human cases by providing passive immunity. In 1901, antitoxin from a horse named Jim was contaminated with tetanus and killed 13 children in St. Louis, Missouri. This incident, together with nine deaths from tetanus from contaminated smallpox vaccine in Camden, New Jersey, led directly and quickly to the passing of the Biologics Control Act in 1902. The Bundaberg tragedy of 1928 saw a diphtheria antitoxin contaminated with the Staph. aureus bacterium kill 12 children in Bundaberg, Australia, resulting in the suspension of local immunisation programs.
Robert Koch developed tuberculin in 1890. Inoculated into individuals who have had tuberculosis, it produces a hypersensitivity reaction and is still used to detect those who have been infected. However, Koch used tuberculin as a vaccine. This caused serious reactions and deaths in individuals whose latent tuberculosis was reactivated by the tuberculin. This was a major setback for supporters of new vaccines.: 30–31 Such incidents and others ensured that any untoward results concerning vaccination and related procedures received continued publicity, which grew as the number of new procedures increased.
In 1955, in a tragedy known as the Cutter incident, Cutter Laboratories produced 120,000 doses of the Salk polio vaccine that inadvertently contained some live poliovirus along with inactivated virus. This vaccine caused 40,000 cases of polio, 53 cases of paralysis, and five deaths. The disease spread through the recipients' families, creating a polio epidemic that led to a further 113 cases of paralytic polio and another five deaths. It was one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters in US history.
Later 20th-century events included the 1982 broadcast of DPT: Vaccine Roulette, which sparked debate over the DPT vaccine, and the 1998 publication of a fraudulent academic article by Andrew Wakefield which sparked the MMR vaccine controversy. Also recently, the HPV vaccine has become controversial due to concerns that it may encourage promiscuity when given to 11- and 12-year-old girls.
Arguments against vaccines in the 21st century are often similar to those of 19th-century anti-vaccinationists. Around 2014, anti-vaccine rhetoric shifted from being mostly scientific and medical arguments, such as the idea that vaccines were harming children, to political arguments, such as what David Broniatowski of George Washington University has called a "don't-tell-me-what-to-do freedom movement." At the same time, according to Renée DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, anti-vaxxers began networking with Tea Party and Second Amendment activists in a "weird libertarian crossover". This happened partly due to anti-vaccine medical arguments failing to stop the passage of SB277 in California.
==== COVID-19 ====
In mid-2020, surveys on whether people would be willing to take a potential COVID-19 vaccine estimated that 67% or 80% of people in the US would accept a new vaccination against COVID-19.
In the United Kingdom, a 16 November 2020 YouGov poll showed that 42% said they were very likely to take the vaccine and 25% were fairly likely (67% likely overall); 11% would be very unlikely and 10% fairly unlikely (21% unlikely overall) and 12% are unsure. There have been a number of reasons expressed why people might not wish to take COVID-19 vaccines, such as concerns over safety, self-perception of being "low risk", or questioning the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in particular. 8% of those reluctant to take it say it is because they oppose vaccinations overall; this amounts to just 2% of the British public.
A December 2020 Ipsos/World Economic Forum 15-country poll asked online respondents whether they agreed with the statement: "If a vaccine for COVID-19 were available, I would get it." Rates of agreement were smallest in France (40%), Russia (43%) and South Africa (53%). In the United States, 69% of those polled agreed with the statement; rates were even higher in Britain (77%) and China (80%).
A March 2021 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found the difference between white and black Americans to be within the margin of error, but 47% of Trump supporters said they would refuse a COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 30% of all adults.
In May 2021, a report titled "Global attitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccine" from the Institute of Global Health Innovation and Imperial College London, which included detailed survey data from March to May 2021 including survey data from 15 countries Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the US. It found that in 13 of the 15 countries more than 50% of people were confident in COVID-19 vaccines. In the UK 87% of survey respondents said they trusted the vaccines, which showed a significant increase in confidence following earlier less reliable polls. The survey also found trust in different vaccine brands varied, with the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine being the most trusted across all age groups in most countries and particularly the most trusted for under 65s.
A January 2022 report from Time magazine noted that the anti-vaccine movement "has repositioned itself as an opposition to mandates and government overreach." A May 2022 report from The New York Times noted that "A wave of parents has been radicalized by Covid-era misinformation to reject ordinary childhood immunizations—with potentially lethal consequences."
=== Events following reductions in vaccination ===
In several countries, reductions in the use of some vaccines were followed by increases in the diseases' morbidity and mortality. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, continued high levels of vaccine coverage are necessary to prevent a resurgence of diseases that have been nearly eliminated. Pertussis remains a major health problem in developing countries, where mass vaccination is not practiced; the World Health Organization estimates it caused 294,000 deaths in 2002. Vaccine hesitancy has contributed to the resurgence of preventable disease. For example, in 2019, the number of measles cases increased by thirty percent worldwide and many cases occurred in countries that had nearly eliminated measles.
==== Stockholm, smallpox (1873–74) ====
An anti-vaccination campaign motivated by religious objections, concerns about effectiveness, and concerns about individual rights led to the vaccination rate in Stockholm dropping to just over 40%, compared to about 90% elsewhere in Sweden. A major smallpox epidemic began there in 1873. It led to a rise in vaccine uptake and an end of the epidemic.
==== UK, pertussis (1970s–80s) ====
In a 1974 report ascribing 36 reactions to whooping cough (pertussis) vaccine, a prominent public-health academic claimed that the vaccine was only marginally effective and questioned whether its benefits outweigh its risks, and extended television and press coverage caused a scare. Vaccine uptake in the UK decreased from 81% to 31%, and pertussis epidemics followed, leading to the deaths of some children. The mainstream medical opinion continued to support the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine; public confidence was restored after the publication of a national reassessment of vaccine efficacy. Vaccine uptake then increased to levels above 90%, and disease incidence declined dramatically.
==== Sweden, pertussis (1979–96) ====
In the vaccination moratorium period that occurred when Sweden suspended vaccination against whooping cough (pertussis) from 1979 to 1996, 60% of the country's children contracted the disease before the age of 10; close medical monitoring kept the death rate from whooping cough at about one per year.
==== Netherlands, measles (1999–2000) ====
An outbreak at a religious community and school in the Netherlands resulted in three deaths and 68 hospitalizations among 2,961 cases. The population in the several provinces affected had a high level of immunization, with the exception of one of the religious denominations, which traditionally does not accept vaccination. Ninety-five percent of those who contracted measles were unvaccinated.
==== UK and Ireland, measles (2000) ====
As a result of the MMR vaccine controversy, vaccination rates dropped sharply in the United Kingdom after 1996. From late 1999 until the summer of 2000, there was a measles outbreak in North Dublin, Ireland. At the time, the national immunization level had fallen below 80%, and in parts of North Dublin the level was around 60%. There were more than 100 hospital admissions from over 300 cases. Three children died and several more were gravely ill, some requiring mechanical ventilation to recover.
==== Nigeria, polio, measles, diphtheria (2001–) ====
In the early first decade of the 21st century, conservative religious leaders in northern Nigeria, suspicious of Western medicine, advised their followers not to have their children vaccinated with the oral polio vaccine. The boycott was endorsed by the governor of Kano State, and immunization was suspended for several months. Subsequently, polio reappeared in a dozen formerly polio-free neighbors of Nigeria, and genetic tests showed the virus was the same one that originated in northern Nigeria. Nigeria had become a net exporter of the poliovirus to its African neighbors. People in the northern states were also reported to be wary of other vaccinations, and Nigeria reported over 20,000 measles cases and nearly 600 deaths from measles from January through March 2005. In Northern Nigeria, it is a common belief that vaccination is a strategy created by the westerners to reduce the Northerners' population. As a result of this belief, a large number of Northerners reject vaccination. In 2006, Nigeria accounted for over half of all new polio cases worldwide. Outbreaks continued thereafter; for example, at least 200 children died in a late-2007 measles outbreak in Borno State.
==== United States, measles (2005–) ====
In 2000, measles was declared eliminated from the United States because the internal transmission had been interrupted for one year; the remaining reported cases were due to importation.
A 2005 measles outbreak in the US state of Indiana was attributed to parents who had refused to have their children vaccinated.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the three biggest outbreaks of measles in 2013 were attributed to clusters of people who were unvaccinated due to their philosophical or religious beliefs. As of August 2013, three pockets of outbreak – New York City, North Carolina, and Texas – contributed to 64% of the 159 cases of measles reported in 16 states.
The number of cases in 2014 quadrupled to 644, including transmission by unvaccinated visitors to Disneyland in California, during the Disneyland measles outbreak. Some 97% of cases in the first half of the year were confirmed to be due directly or indirectly to importation (the remainder were unknown), and 49% from the Philippines. More than half the patients (165 out of 288, or 57%) during that time were confirmed to be unvaccinated by choice; 30 (10%) were confirmed to have been vaccinated. The final count of measles in 2014 was 668 cases in 27 states.
From January 1 to June 26, 2015, 178 people from 24 states and the District of Columbia were reported to have measles. Most of these cases (117 cases [66%]) were part of a large multi-state outbreak linked to Disneyland in California, continued from 2014. Analysis by the CDC scientists showed that the measles virus type in this outbreak (B3) was identical to the virus type that caused the large measles outbreak in the Philippines in 2014. On July 2, 2015, the first confirmed death from measles in twelve years was recorded. An immunocompromised woman in Washington State was infected and later died of pneumonia due to measles.
By July 2016, a three-month measles outbreak affecting at least 22 people was spread by unvaccinated employees of the Eloy, Arizona detention center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility owned by for-profit prison operator CoreCivic. Pinal County's health director presumed the outbreak likely originated with a migrant, but detainees had since received vaccinations. However convincing CoreCivic's employees to become vaccinated or demonstrate proof of immunity was much more difficult, he said.
In spring 2017, a measles outbreak occurred in Minnesota. As of June 16, 78 cases of measles had been confirmed in the state, 71 were unvaccinated and 65 were Somali-Americans. The outbreak has been attributed to low vaccination rates among Somali-American children, which can be traced back to 2008, when Somali parents began to express concern about disproportionately high numbers of Somali preschoolers in special education classes who were receiving services for autism spectrum disorder. Around the same time, disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield visited Minneapolis, teaming up with anti-vaccine groups to raise concerns that vaccines were the cause of autism, despite the fact that multiple studies have shown no connection between the MMR vaccine and autism.
From fall 2018 to early 2019, New York State experienced an outbreak of over 200 confirmed measles cases. Many of these cases were attributed to ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities with low vaccination rates in areas within Brooklyn and Rockland County. State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker stated that this was the worst outbreak of measles in his recent memory.
In January 2019, Washington state reported an outbreak of at least 73 confirmed cases of measles, most within Clark County, which has a higher rate of vaccination exemptions compared to the rest of the state. This led state governor Jay Inslee to declare a state of emergency, and the state's congress to introduce legislation to disallow vaccination exemption for personal or philosophical reasons.
==== Wales, measles (2013–) ====
In 2013, an outbreak of measles occurred in the Welsh city of Swansea. One death was reported. Some estimates indicate that while MMR uptake for two-year-olds was at 94% in Wales in 1995, it had fallen to as low as 67.5% in Swansea by 2003, meaning the region had a "vulnerable" age group. This has been linked to the MMR vaccine controversy, which caused a significant number of parents to fear allowing their children to receive the MMR vaccine. June 5, 2017, saw a new measles outbreak in Wales, at Lliswerry High School in the town of Newport.
==== United States, tetanus ====
Most cases of pediatric tetanus in the U.S. occur in unvaccinated children. In Oregon, in 2017, an unvaccinated boy had a scalp wound that his parents sutured themselves. Later the boy arrived at a hospital with tetanus. He spent 47 days in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and 57 total days in the hospital, for $811,929, not including the cost of airlifting him to the Oregon Health and Science University, Doernbecher Children's Hospital, or the subsequent two and a half weeks of inpatient rehabilitation he required. Despite this, his parents declined the administration of subsequent tetanus boosters or other vaccinations.
==== Romania, measles (2016–present) ====
As of September 2017, a measles epidemic was ongoing across Europe, especially Eastern Europe. In Romania, there were about 9300 cases, and 34 people (all unvaccinated) had died. This was preceded by a 2008 controversy regarding the HPV vaccine. In 2012, doctor Christa Todea-Gross published a free downloadable book online, this book contained misinformation about vaccination from abroad translated into Romanian, which significantly stimulated the growth of the anti-vaccine movement. The government of Romania officially declared a measles epidemic in September 2016 and started an information campaign to encourage parents to have their children vaccinated. By February 2017, however, the stockpile of MMR vaccines was depleted, and doctors were overburdened. Around April, the vaccine stockpile had been restored. By March 2019, the death toll had risen to 62, with 15,981 cases reported.
==== Samoa, measles (2019) ====
The 2019 Samoa measles outbreak began in October 2019 and as of December 12, there were 4,995 confirmed cases of measles and 72 deaths, out of a Samoan population of 201,316. A state of emergency was declared on November 17, ordering all schools to be closed, barring children under 17 from public events, and making vaccination mandatory. UNICEF has sent 110,500 vaccines to Samoa. Tonga and Fiji have also declared states of emergency.
The outbreak has been attributed to a sharp drop in measles vaccination from the previous year, following an incident in 2018 when two infants died shortly after receiving measles vaccinations, which led the country to suspend its measles vaccination program. The reason for the two infants' deaths was incorrect preparation of the vaccine by two nurses who mixed vaccine powder with expired anesthetic. As of November 30, more than 50,000 people were vaccinated by the government of Samoa.
=== 2019–2020 measles outbreaks ===
== See also ==
Chemophobia
COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy
Measles resurgence in the United States
Vaccine misinformation
Therapeutic nihilism
Vaccine shedding
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
"Immunizations, vaccines and biologicals". World Health Organization.
"Vaccines & immunizations". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. September 4, 2018.
The Vaccine War. Frontline. April 27, 2010. PBS.
Institute of Global Health Innovation (May 2021). "Global attitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccine" (PDF). Imperial College London. Covid Data Hub.
"Vaccine Education Center". Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. November 19, 2014. | Wikipedia/Vaccine_controversy |
Live Science is a science news website. The publication features stories on a wide range of topics, including space, animals, health, archaeology, human behavior, and planet Earth. It also includes a reference section with links to other websites. Its stated mission is to inform and entertain readers about science and the world around them.
== History ==
Live Science was originally made in 2004. It was acquired by ediaNetwork, later called Purch, in 2009. Purch consumer brands (including Live Science) were acquired by Future in 2018.
== Reception ==
In 2011, the Columbia Journalism Review's "News Startups Guide" called Live Science "a purebred Web animal, primarily featuring one-off stories and photo galleries produced at high speed by its mostly young staffers, almost all of whom have journalism degrees," noting that, "If you are looking for resource-intensive expositions of global warming, for instance, or thickly narrated journeys into the research process, LiveScience [sic] will disappoint. The site carries the big science news of the day, but its strength lies in the quirky diversity of its other content–oddball studies overlooked by major news organizations."
== Awards ==
2007: Winner, Award for Specialty Site Journalism (large or anization) from the Online Journalism Awards.
2008, 2010: Honoree, ebsites and Mobile Sites, Science from the Webby Awards.
2021: Listed as one of the top 10 science websites from the website "Make Use Of".
Live Science was ranked in RealClearScience's "Top 10 Websites for Science" from 2016 to 2023.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website | Wikipedia/LiveScience |
The Journal of Infectious Diseases is a peer-reviewed biweekly medical journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. It covers research on the pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of infectious diseases, on the microbes that cause them, and on immune system disorders. Cynthia Sears, an expert on gut infections, was appointed editor-in-chief in 2023.
The journal was established in 1904 and was a quarterly until 1969 when it became a monthly. In 2001, it began biweekly publication. From 1904 to 2011, the journal was published by the University of Chicago Press.
== Abstracting and indexing ==
The journal is abstracted and indexed in:
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2020 impact factor of 5.226.
== Past editors-in-chief ==
For volumes 1 through 226, the editors-in-chief were:
1904–1936 Ludvig Hektoen & Edwin O. Jordan (Volumes 1–59)
1937–1940 Ludvig Hektoen & William H. Taliaferro (Volumes 60–67)
1941–1957 William H. Taliaferro (Volumes 68–100)
1957–1960 William H. Taliaferro & James W. Moulder (Volumes 101–106)
1960–1968 James W. Moulder (Volumes 107–118)
1969–1979 Edward H. Kass (Volumes 119–139)
1979–1983 George Gee Jackson (Volumes 140–148)
1984–1988 Martha Dukes Yow (Volumes 149–158)
1989–2002 Marvin Turck (Volumes 159–186)
2003-2022 Martin S. Hirsch (Volumes 187-226)
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Hirsch, Martin (2003). "The Journal of Infectious Diseases: 99 years and counting". The Journal of Infectious Diseases. 187 (1): 1. doi:10.1086/345877.
Hirsch, Martin (2004). "Happy birthday to us!! JID reaches 100". The Journal of Infectious Diseases. 189 (1): 1–2. doi:10.1086/379742. PMID 14702145.
== External links ==
Official website | Wikipedia/The_Journal_of_Infectious_Diseases |
The Haemophilus influenzae type B vaccine, also known as Hib vaccine, is a vaccine used to prevent Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) infection. In countries that include it as a routine vaccine, rates of severe Hib infections have decreased more than 90%. It has therefore resulted in a decrease in the rate of meningitis, pneumonia, and epiglottitis.
It is recommended by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Two or three doses should be given before six months of age. In the United States a fourth dose is recommended between 12 and 15 months of age. The first dose is recommended around six weeks of age with at least four weeks between doses. If only two doses are used, another dose later in life is recommended. It is given by injection into a muscle.
Severe side effects are extremely rare. About 20 to 25% of people develop pain at the site of injection while about 2% develop a fever. There is no clear association with severe allergic reactions. The Hib vaccine is available by itself, in combination with the diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis vaccine, and in combination with the hepatitis B vaccine, among others. All Hib vaccines that are currently used are conjugate vaccine.
An initial Hib vaccine consisting of plain (unconjugated) type b polysaccharide, was introduced in the United States in 1985. but was replaced by a more effective conjugated formulation beginning in 1987. As of 2013, 184 countries include it in their routine vaccinations. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.
== Medical uses ==
Hib conjugate vaccines are effective against all manifestations of Hib disease, with a clinical efficacy among fully vaccinated children estimated to be between 95–100%. The vaccine has also been shown to be immunogenic in patients at high risk of invasive disease. Hib vaccine is not effective against non-type B Haemophilus influenzae. However, non-type B disease is rare in comparison to pre-vaccine rates of Haemophilus influenzae type B disease.
=== Impact ===
Before the introduction of the conjugate vaccine, Hib was a leading cause of childhood meningitis, pneumonia, and epiglottitis in the United States, causing an estimated 20,000 cases a year in the early 1980s. Nearly all Hib disease was in children under five years old. After routine use of Hib conjugate vaccines in the United States, the rate of invasive Hib disease decreased from 40–100 per 100,000 children down to fewer than 1 per 100,000. Similar reductions in Hib disease occurred after introduction of the vaccine in Western Europe and developing countries. However, in recent years. Haemophilus influenzae strains with other encapsulated serotypes such as a or f, or non-encapsulated strains, have been recognized to cause invasive disease, particularly in high-risk populations.
=== Recommendations ===
The CDC and the WHO recommend that all infants be vaccinated using a polysaccharide-protein conjugate Hib vaccine, starting after the age of six weeks. The vaccination is also indicated in people without a spleen.
== Side effects ==
Clinical trials and ongoing surveillance have shown the Hib vaccine to be safe. In general, adverse reactions to the vaccine are mild. The most common reactions are mild fever, loss of appetite, transient redness, swelling, or pain at the site of injection, occurring in 5–30% of vaccine recipients. More severe reactions are extremely rare.
== Mechanisms of action ==
=== Polysaccharide vaccine ===
Haemophilus influenzae type b is a bacterium with a polysaccharide capsule; the main component of this capsule is polyribosyl ribitol phosphate (PRP). Anti-PRP antibodies have a protective effect against Hib infections. However, the antibody response to PRP was quite variable in young children and diminished rapidly after administration. This problem was due to the recognition of the PRP antigen by B cells, but not T cells. In other words, even though B cell recognition was taking place, T cell recruitment (via MHC class II) was not, which compromised the immune response. This interaction with only B cells is termed T-independent (TI). This process also inhibits the formation of memory B cells, thus compromising long-term immune system memory.
=== Conjugate vaccine ===
PRP covalently linked to a protein carrier was found to elicit a greater immune response than the polysaccharide form of the vaccine. This is due to the protein carrier being highly immunogenic. The conjugate formulations show responses that are consistent with T-cell recruitment (namely a much stronger immune response). A memory effect (priming of the immune system against future attack by Hib) is also observed after administration; indicative that memory B cell formation is also improved over that of the unconjugated polysaccharide form. Since optimal contact between B cells and T cells is required (via MHC II) to maximize antibody production, it is reasoned that the conjugate vaccine allows B cells to properly recruit T cells, this is in contrast to the polysaccharide form in which it is speculated that B cells do not interact optimally with T cells leading to the TI interaction.
== Developing world ==
The introduction of the Hib vaccine in developing countries lagged behind that in developed countries for several reasons. The expense of the vaccine was large in comparison to the standard EPI vaccines. Poor disease surveillance systems and inadequate hospital laboratories failed to detect the disease, leading many experts to believe that Hib did not exist in their countries. And health systems in many countries were struggling with the current vaccines they were trying to deliver.
=== GAVI and the Hib Initiative ===
In order to remedy these issues, the GAVI Alliance took active interest in the vaccine.
== History ==
=== Polysaccharide vaccine ===
The first Hib vaccine licensed was an unconjugated polysaccharide vaccine, called PRP. This vaccine was first marketed in the United States in 1985. Similar to other unconjugated polysaccharide vaccines, serum antibody responses to PPP vaccine were highly age-dependent. Children under 18 months of age did not produce a positive response to this vaccine. As a result, the age group with the highest incidence of Hib disease was unprotected, limiting the usefulness of the vaccine. Also, post-licensure studies by Michael Osterholm and his colleagues, and Dan M. Granoff et al. suggested that the PRP vaccine was largely ineffective in preventing invasive Hib disease in children 18 to 59 months, the age group recommended for vaccination . The vaccine was withdrawn from the market in 1988.
=== Conjugate vaccine ===
The shortcomings of the polysaccharide vaccine led to the production of the Hib polysaccharide-protein conjugate vaccine. In 1987, the first Hib conjugate vaccine, which used diphtheria toxoid as the carrier protein (PRP-D), was licensed in the U.S. and initially recommended for children ages 18 to 59 months of age. This vaccine was based on work done by Lasker Award-winning American scientists John Robbins and Rachel Schneerson at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and Porter Anderson and David Smith then at Boston Children's Hospital. Attaching Hib polysaccharide to a protein carrier greatly increased the ability of the immune system of young children to recognize the polysaccharide and develop immunity. In contrast to the unconjugated PRP vaccine, PRP-D vaccines were highly effective in controlling Hib disease in the age group being immunized (18 to 59 months). Unexpectedly. the vaccine also was associated with a dramatic decline in Hib disease in the age group less than 18 months, which at the time was not being vaccinated (evidence of indirect community protection or “herd immunity”. Trudy Murphy and her colleagues reported that healthy children in a daycare center who had been immunized with PRP-D had a lower rate of Hib colonization in their noses and throats than healthy unvaccinated children, which was not observed in children vaccinated with unconjugated PRP vaccine. These results explained the ability of PRP-D conjugate vaccine to lower transmission of Hib from conjugate-vaccinated to unvaccinated children, and provide indirect community protection from conjugate vaccination.
There are currently three types of conjugate vaccine, utilizing different carrier proteins for the conjugation process: inactivated tetanospasmin (also called tetanus toxoid); mutant diphtheria protein; and meningococcal group B outer membrane protein. The Hib vaccine using a meningococcal outer membrane carrier protein has unique immunostimulatory properties, eliciting an anticapsular response to a single injection given to infants as young as 2 months of age. In contrast, Hib conjugate vaccines using other protein carriers require two or three injections to reliably elicit anticapsular antibody responses in infants less than six months of age.
=== Combination vaccines ===
Multiple combinations of Hib and other vaccines have been licensed in the United States, reducing the number of injections necessary to vaccinate a child. Hib vaccines combined with diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis–polio vaccines and hepatitis B vaccines are available in the United States. The World Health Organization (WHO) has certified several Hib vaccine combinations, including a pentavalent diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus-hepatitis B-Hib, for use in developing countries. There is not yet sufficient evidence on how effective this combined pentavalent vaccine is compared to the individual vaccines.
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
"Haemophilus Influenzae Type b (Hib) Vaccine Information Statement". U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 27 April 2023.
"Haemophilus B Conjugate Vaccine (Meningococcal Protein Conjugate)". U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 7 November 2022.
"Haemophilus b Conjugate Vaccine (Tetanus Toxoid Conjugate)". U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 14 October 2022. Archived from the original on 3 August 2020.
"Hiberix". U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 21 December 2023. Archived from the original on 30 September 2019. | Wikipedia/Haemophilus_vaccine |
Vegetotherapy is a form of Reichian psychotherapy that involves the physical manifestations of emotions.
== Development ==
The fundamental text of vegetotherapy is Wilhelm Reich's Psychischer Kontakt und vegetative Strömung (1935), later included in the expanded edition of Reich's Character Analysis (1933 and 1949). The practice grew out of Reich's extension of psychoanalysis to cover what he called "character analysis", which involved alleviating a person's body armor and the character defenses that maintain an individual in a state of neurosis.
Reich argued that "the feeling of unity of all body sensations ... increases with each new dissolution of an armor ring," leading ultimately to a merger with the autonomic functions of the body. He considered that "orgone physics reduces the emotional functions of humans even much further, to the forms of movement of molluscs and protozoa". After his claim to have thus discovered "orgone" or life energy, vegetotherapy was accordingly adapted and succeeded by "psychiatric orgone therapy".
Subsequently, neo-Reichian therapists have adopted the body work of vegetotherapy in various forms into their therapeutic practices.
== Practice ==
The practice of vegetotherapy involves the analyst enabling the patient to physically simulate the bodily effects of strong emotions. In this technique, the patient is asked to remove his or her outer clothing, lie down on a sheet-covered bed in the doctor's office, and breathe deeply and rhythmically.
An additional technique is to palpate or tickle areas of muscular tension, also known as "body armour". This activity and stimulation eventually causes the patient to experience the simulated emotions, thus theoretically releasing emotions pent up inside both the body and the psyche (compare with primal therapy).
Screaming and vomiting may occur as the catharsis of emotive expression breaks down the cathexis of stored emotions. While experiencing a simulated emotional state, the patient may reflect on past experiences that may be the source of his or her unresolved emotions. These emotions are described as "stored emotions," and in Reichian analysis are seen as manifesting in the body. Vegetotherapy relies on a theory of stored emotions, or affects, where emotions build tensions in the structure of the body. This tension can be seen in shallow or restricted breathing, posture, facial expression, muscular stress (particularly in the circular muscles), and low libido. Good sexual function and unrestricted, natural breathing are seen as evidence of recovery.
Examples of vegetotherapy, as well as interviews with analysts and patients who have undergone vegetotherapy, can be seen in the film Room for Happiness, directed by Dick Young and approved by the American College of Orgonomy.
== Criticism ==
Psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel has criticized Reich's relaxation techniques. Although he accepts the fact that there are positive effects of vegetotherapy, he sees two potential problems. First, the possibility of psychological splitting that prevents changes in the body from affecting the mind and second, the need for subsequent working through to integrate the abreacted material into the psyche.
== See also ==
Alternative medicine
Body psychotherapy
Gerda Boyesen
Neo-Reichian massage
Primal scream therapy
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Reich, Wilhelm: Psychic Contact and Vegetative Current. (Chap. xiv of Character Analysis, 1949 ff)
Orig. in Reich's Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie
== External links ==
Vegetotherapy page from A Skeptical Scrutiny of the Works and Theories of Wilhelm Reich | Wikipedia/Vegetotherapy |
The Tartarian Empire is a group of pseudohistorical conspiracy theories, including ideas of a "hidden past" and "mud floods", which originated as pseudoscientific Russian nationalism.
Tartary, or Tartaria, is a historical name for Central Asia and Siberia. Conspiracy theories assert that Tartary, or the Tartarian Empire, was a lost civilization with advanced technology and culture. This ignores well-documented accounts of Tartary within the history of Asia. In the present day, Tartary covers a region spanning central Afghanistan to northern Kazakhstan as well as areas in Mongolia, China, and the Russian Far East.
== Background ==
The theory of Great Tartaria as a suppressed lost land or civilization originated in Russia, with aspects first appearing in Anatoly Fomenko's new chronology in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, and was then popularized by the racial occult history of Nikolai Levashov. In Russian pseudoscience, known for its nationalism, Tartaria is presented as the "real" name for Russia, which was maliciously "ignored" in the West. The Russian Geographical Society has debunked the conspiracy theory as an extremist fantasy, and far from denying the existence of the term, has used the opportunity to share numerous maps of "Tartary" in its collection. Since about 2016, conspiracy theories about the supposed lost empire of "Tartaria" have gained popularity on the internet, divorced from its original Russian nationalist frame.
== Conspiracy theory ==
The globalized version of the conspiracy theory is based on an alternative view of architectural history. Adherents propose that demolished buildings such as the Singer Building, the original New York Penn Station, and the temporary grounds of the 1915 World's Fair in San Francisco were actually the buildings of a vast empire based in Tartary that has been suppressed from history. Sumptuously styled Gilded Age buildings are often held out as really having been built by the supposed Tartaria. Other buildings, such as the Great Pyramids and the White House, are further held out as Tartarian constructions. The conspiracy theory only vaguely describes how such a supposedly advanced civilization, which had reputedly achieved world peace, could have fallen and been hidden. Proponents of the theory also frequently claim that Tartarians have developed unlimited wireless energy.
In the conspiracy theory, the idea that a "mud flood" wiped out much of the world via depopulation and thus old buildings is common, supported by the fact that many buildings across the world have architectural elements like doors, windows, and archways submerged many feet below "ground level". Both World War I and II are cited as a way in which Tartaria was destroyed and hidden, reflecting the reality that the extensive bombing campaigns of World War II did destroy many historic buildings. The general evidence for the theory is that there are similar styles of building around the world, such as capitol buildings with domes, or star forts. Also, many photographs from the turn of the 20th century appear to show deserted city streets in many capital cities across the world. When people do start to appear in the photographs, there is a striking contrast between horse-and-cart users in the muddy streets and the elaborate, highly ornate stone mega-structures that tower above the inhabitants of the cities, which is seen even in modern cities where extreme poverty is contrasted with skyscrapers.
Zach Mortice, writing for Bloomberg, believes that the theory reflects a cultural discontent with modernism and a supposition that traditional styles are inherently good and modern styles are bad. He describes the theory as "the QAnon of architecture". Moritz Maurer, a religious scholar, links Tartarian imagery to the "giant trees" theory, in which colossal, flat buttes are envisioned as the stumps of primordial "mother trees" cut down at some point in the past by unknown nefarious agents. Maurer attributes the lack of a clear narrative for both conspiracies to the image-based social media on which they are presented, describing it as "meme culture" and also comparing it to QAnon.
== See also ==
Ancient astronauts
Anti-Normanism
Chinese Tartary, an archaic geographical term
Hyperborea, in Greek mythology, a mythical people in the far north of the world
== References ==
== Sources == | Wikipedia/Tartarian_Empire_(conspiracy_theory) |
The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy is an antisemitic and anti-Masonic conspiracy theory involving an alleged secret coalition of Jews and Freemasons. These theories are popular on the far-right, particularly in France, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Russia, Serbia, Eastern Europe, and Japan, with similar allegations still being published.
== The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ==
The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory merges two older strains of conspiracy claims: Masonic conspiracy theories claims and antisemitic conspiracy claims. It was heavily influenced by publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated document that appeared in the Russian Empire purporting to be an exposé of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. The Protocols claim that the Jews had infiltrated Freemasonry and were using the fraternity to further their aims. Adherents of the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy took the claim made by the Protocols to extremes and claimed that the leaders of Freemasonry and the leaders of the Jewish plot were one and the same.
An example was the Spanish Roman Catholic priest Juan Tusquets Terrats, whose Orígenes de la revolución española and other works built on the Protocols, which he translated, to claim that Jews used Freemasons and communists to undermine Christian and Spanish civilisation, providing a justification for the Francoist régime, which expanded the threat to an international Judeo-Masonic-Communist conspiracy (see also: Jewish Bolshevism).
== Conceptual influence ==
According to Danny Keren, a member of the Department of Computer Science at University of Haifa, the "conceptual inspiration" of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was the 1797 treatise, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism by the French priest Augustin Barruel, which claimed the Revolution was a Masonic-led conspiracy with the aim of overthrowing the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. According to Keren:
[I]n his treatise, Barruel did not himself blame the Jews, who were emancipated as a result of the Revolution. However, in 1806, Barruel circulated a fabricated letter, probably sent to him by members of the state police opposed to Napoleon Bonaparte's liberal policy toward the Jews, calling attention to the alleged part of the Jews in the conspiracy he had earlier attributed to the Masons. This myth of an international Jewish conspiracy reappeared later on in 19th century Europe in places such as Germany and Poland.
According to the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon website:
While it is both simplistic and specious to lay the responsibility for the French Revolution at the door of Freemasonry, there is no question that freemasons, as individuals, were active in building, and rebuilding, a new society. Considering the large number of bodies claiming masonic authority, many men identified today as freemasons were probably unaware of each other's masonic association and clearly cannot be seen as acting in concert. Yet they did share certain beliefs and ideals.
French Masonry of the time was exclusive, denying initiation to Jews and many other classes of people.
== Barry Domvile and The Link ==
Retired admiral Barry Domvile, founder of British pro-Nazi association The Link, coined the title "Judmas" for the alleged Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. Domvile claimed that the "activities of Judmas are confined to a small section of both Jews and Masons: the large majority have no idea of the work undertaken behind the façade of Judmas." Domvile alleged that "the aim of these international Jews is a World state kept in subjection by the power of money, and working for its Jewish masters" and that "Masonry is the executive partner for the conduct of Jewish policy."
Domvile said that he first started thinking about a Jewish-Masonic theory as a result of Adolf Hitler. Domvile referred both to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and to The Secret Powers Behind Revolution by viscount Léon de Poncins. Domvile was aware that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had been denounced as a forgery, but regarded their authorship as "immaterial".
== Post-Soviet Russia ==
The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theories found new currency among the various marginal political forces in post-Soviet Russia, where widespread destitution created fertile ground for conspiracy theories, combined with blood libel and Holocaust denial. These viewpoints are also voiced by several antisemitic writers, notably by Oleg Platonov, Vadim Kozhinov and Grigory Klimov. An opinion poll conducted in Moscow circa 1990 has shown that 18% of Moscow residents believed that there is Zionist conspiracy against Russia and further 25% did not exclude such a possibility.
== Link to the Bilderberg group ==
Contemporary conspiracy theorists, who hew to theories centered on the Bilderberg Group and an alleged impending New World Order, often draw upon older concepts found in the Jewish-Masonic conspiracy theory, frequently blaming the Rothschild family or "international bankers". Because of the use of themes and tropes traditionally viewed as antisemitic, these contemporary conspiracy theorists tend to draw the ire of groups sensitive to antisemitic terminology, such as the Anti-Defamation League.
== In popular culture ==
The conspiracy is mentioned in Umberto Eco's novel The Prague Cemetery.
== Gallery ==
== See also ==
Synarchism
Andinia Plan
Antisemitism
Anti-Marxism
Anti-Masonry
Antisemitic trope
Anti-communism
Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory
Jewish Bolshevism
Great Seal of the United States
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Sources ===
== Further reading ==
Admiral Sir Barry Domvile KBE, CB, CMG, From Admiral to Cabin Boy, Boswell Publishing, London, 1947.
Peter Knight, Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2003, ISBN 978-1-57607-812-9
Vicomte Léon de Poncins, The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, Boswell Publishing, London, 1929.
Richard Giffiths, Patriotism Perverted, Captain Ramsay and the Far Right Club and British Anti-Semitism 1939–40, Constable & Co., London, 1998, ISBN 0-09-467920-7, online at Google Books
== External links ==
"The Judeo-Masonic Conspiracy" | Wikipedia/Judeo-Masonic_conspiracy_theory |
In 2017, a conspiracy theory began that U.S. first lady Melania Trump was replaced, or was sometimes replaced, by a body double, and that the "real" Melania was dead, refusing to attend occasional events, or had exited from public life entirely. Supporters of the theory allege physical differences in facial features, bodily dimensions, or behavior between the original and supposed "replacement" Melania, and changes in President Donald Trump's language in referring to Melania.
Theories arose at several periods during Trump's presidency, particularly in October 2017, May-June 2018, March 2019, and October 2020. Trump himself addressed the theory through tweets and in comments to reporters, denouncing it as false and "fake news".
A number of mainstream media sources labelled the theory false, with some labelling it "a ridiculous conspiracy theory" and "a non-story". Vox described the theory as conforming to various narratives surrounding the First Lady, which "[paint] Melania as either unwilling to be part of the administration or as someone who hates her husband so much that she’s found a body double to stand in".
== Origins ==
In 2017, The Guardian columnist Marina Hyde claimed to have inadvertently launched the theory, tweeting "Absolutely convinced Melania is being played by a Melania impersonator these days. Theory: she left him weeks ago" on October 13. However, Business Insider referenced tweets speculating about a body double from the month before Hyde tweeted. A Facebook post by actress Andrea Wagner Barton, also published on October 13 in support of the theory, was shared nearly 100,000 times.
Social media posts discussing the theory noted a photograph in which Melania looked very similar to a woman pictured next to her, apparently a Secret Service agent, while other posts highlighted that Trump referred aloud to "my wife, Melania, who happens to be right here".
On May 14, 2018, Melania reportedly underwent an embolization, a minimally invasive procedure that deliberately blocks a blood vessel in order to treat a benign kidney condition. The procedure was reportedly successful and performed without complications. During this period, Melania was not seen in public for five weeks, with the White House also refusing to comment on her absence for most of this period, generating further theories. In one instance, when asked about Melania, Trump told pool reporters that she was watching them from a window, pointing to the window in question, which was clearly empty. Following Melania's reported return to the White House following surgery, Trump tweeted a welcome which misspelled her name as "Melanie".
An alternative theory regarding Melania's public appearances, posited following her time spent recovering from surgery, was that Melania had had plastic surgery, possibly a facelift or breast enlargement, resulting in her appearing different.
== Resurgences ==
The body double theory arose again in July 2018, stemming from images of Melania exiting Air Force One in Brussels.
The theory was raised again in 2019 following a Trump visit to an Alabama tornado site. The TV show The View had a segment on "a surge of internet chatter about the former fashion model’s Alabama appearance under the #fakeMelania hashtag."
The theory resurfaced again in October 2020, with observers finding differences between Melania and the woman who accompanied Trump to the final presidential debate. Director Zack Bornstein tweeted: "The only thing I'll miss from this administration is them swapping in new Melanias and just pretending we won't notice like a 4-year-old with a guppy." Former White House Communications Director, Anthony Scaramucci, seemed to confirm the rumor while a guest on Have You Been Paying Attention?, stating "You know Michael Cohen, the President’s lawyer, insists that there is a body double and insists that actually her sister sometimes replaces her on the campaign trail... Usually when you see somebody more affectionate with Mr. Trump."
The theory again arose on election night in 2024, when many reported believing that the woman Trump showed up to vote with, who wore sunglasses to the voting booth, was not Melania.
== Response ==
Following his trip to Alabama in March 2018, Donald Trump tweeted that "the Fake News photoshopped pictures of Melania propelled conspiracy theories that it’s actually not her by my side in Alabama and other places." Trump gave no evidence of any photoshopped pictures. Melania's spokeswoman called the segment on The View "shameful" and "beyond petty".
One scholar, University of Pennsylvania history professor Sophia Rosenfeld, noted that the conspiracy theory of Melania's replacement follows a long line of similar claims of noted figures: "Pornographic libelles featuring a sex-obsessed Marie-Antoinette in the years before the French Revolution are simply the ancestors of today's 'news stories' claiming Michelle Obama or Melania Trump is actually a man, or a body double, or a lesbian, or anything else salacious."
=== Parodies ===
Late night talk show host Stephen Colbert parodied the theory on his show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert by having both actresses Laura Benanti and Christine Baranski appear on his show as a Melania impersonator in 2019.
In October 2020, Seth Meyers parodied the theory on his show Late Night with Seth Meyers by having Amber Ruffin portray a Melania impersonator.
Tracey Ullman's comedy series Tracey Breaks the News parodied the theory with several episodes in which Melania Trump (Carlotta Morelli) is actually a robot created and controlled by the Russian government.
== See also ==
Avril Lavigne replacement conspiracy theory
List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump
Paul is dead
Public image of Melania Trump
BlueAnon
== References == | Wikipedia/Melania_Trump_replacement_conspiracy_theory |
The New World Order (NWO) is a term often used in conspiracy theories which hypothesize a secretly emerging totalitarian world government. The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian one-world government—which will replace sovereign nation-states—and an all-encompassing propaganda whose ideology hails the establishment of the New World Order as the culmination of history's progress. Many influential historical and contemporary figures have therefore been alleged to be part of a cabal that operates through many front organizations to orchestrate significant political and financial events, ranging from causing systemic crises to pushing through controversial policies, at both national and international levels, as steps in an ongoing plot to achieve world domination.
Before the early 1990s, New World Order conspiracism was limited to two American countercultures, primarily the militantly anti-government right, and secondarily the part of fundamentalist Christianity concerned with the eschatological end-time emergence of the Antichrist. Academics who study conspiracy theories and religious extremism, such as Michael Barkun and Chip Berlet, observed that right-wing populist conspiracy theories about a New World Order not only had been embraced by many seekers of stigmatized knowledge but also had seeped into popular culture, thereby fueling a surge of interest and participation in survivalism and paramilitarism as many people actively prepare for apocalyptic and millenarian scenarios. These political scientists warn that mass hysteria over New World Order conspiracy theories could eventually have devastating effects on American political life, ranging from escalating lone-wolf terrorism to the rise to power of authoritarian ultranationalist demagogues.
== History of the term ==
=== General usage (pre-Cold War) ===
During the 20th century, political figures such as Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill used the term "new world order" to refer to a new period of history characterized by a dramatic change in world political thought and in the global balance of power after World War I and World War II. The interwar and post-World War II period were seen as opportunities to implement idealistic proposals for global governance by collective efforts to address worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to resolve, while nevertheless respecting the right of nations to self-determination. Such collective initiatives manifested in the formation of intergovernmental organizations such as the League of Nations in 1920, the United Nations (UN) in 1945, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, along with international regimes such as the Bretton Woods system and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), implemented to maintain a cooperative balance of power and facilitate reconciliation between nations to prevent the prospect of another global conflict. These cosmopolitan efforts to instill liberal internationalism were regularly criticized and opposed by American paleoconservative business nationalists from the 1930s on.
Progressives welcomed international organizations and regimes such as the United Nations in the aftermath of the two World Wars, but argued that these initiatives suffered from a democratic deficit and were therefore inadequate not only to prevent another world war, but also to foster global justice, as the UN was chartered to be a free association of sovereign nation-states rather than a transition to democratic world government. Thus, cosmopolitan activists around the globe, perceiving the IGOs as too ineffectual for global change, formed a world federalist movement.
British writer and futurist H. G. Wells went further than progressives in the 1940s, by appropriating and redefining the term "new world order" as a synonym for the establishment of a technocratic world state and of a planned economy, garnering popularity in state socialist circles.
=== Usage as reference to a conspiracy (Cold War era) ===
During the Second Red Scare, both secular and Christian right American agitators, largely influenced by the work of Canadian conspiracy theorist William Guy Carr, increasingly embraced and spread dubious fears of Freemasons, Illuminati and Jews as the alleged driving forces behind an "international communist conspiracy". The threat of "Godless communism", in the form of an atheistic, bureaucratic collectivist world government, demonized as the "Red Menace", became the focus of apocalyptic millenarian conspiracism. The Red Scare came to shape one of the core ideas of the political right in the United States, which is that liberals and progressives, with their welfare-state policies and international cooperation programs such as foreign aid, supposedly contribute to a gradual process of global collectivism that will inevitably lead to nations being replaced with a communistic/collectivist one-world government. James Warburg, appearing before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1950, famously stated: "We shall have world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government will be achieved by consent or by conquest."
Right-wing populist advocacy groups with a paleoconservative world-view, such as the John Birch Society, disseminated a multitude of conspiracy theories in the 1960s claiming that the governments of both the United States and the Soviet Union were controlled by a cabal of corporate internationalists, "greedy" bankers and corrupt politicians who were intent on using the UN as the vehicle to create a "One World Government". This anti-globalist conspiracism fueled the campaign for U.S. withdrawal from the UN. American writer Mary M. Davison, in her booklet The Profound Revolution (1966), traced the alleged New World Order conspiracy to the establishment of the U.S. Federal Reserve in 1913 by international bankers, whom she claimed later formed the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921 as a shadow government. At the time the booklet was published, many readers would have interpreted "international bankers" as a reference to a postulated "international Jewish banking conspiracy" masterminded by the Rothschild family.
Arguing that the term "New World Order" is used by a secretive global elite dedicated to the eradication of the sovereignty of the world's nations, American writer Gary Allen—in his books None Dare Call It Conspiracy (1971), Rockefeller: Campaigning for the New World Order (1974), and Say "No!" to the New World Order (1987)—articulated the anti-globalist theme of contemporary right-wing conspiracism in the U.S. After the fall of communism in the early 1990s, the de facto subject of New World Order conspiracism shifted from crypto-communists, perceived to be plotting to establish an atheistic world communist government, to globalists, perceived to be plotting to implement a collectivist generally, unified world government ultimately controlled by an untouchable oligarchy of international bankers, corrupt politicians, and corporatists, or the United Nations itself. The shift in perception was inspired by growing opposition to corporate internationalism on the American right in the 1990s.
In his speech, Toward a New World Order, delivered on 11 September 1990 during a joint session of the US Congress, President George H. W. Bush described his objectives for post-Cold War global governance in cooperation with post-Soviet states. He stated:
Until now, the world we've known has been a world divided—a world of barbed wire and concrete block, conflict, and the cold war. Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the genuine prospect of new world order. In the words of Winston Churchill, a "world order" in which "the principles of justice and fair play ... protect the weak against the strong ..." A world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders. A world in which freedom and respect for human rights find a home among all nations.
The New York Times observed that progressives were denouncing this new world order as a rationalization of American imperial ambitions in the Middle East at the time. At the same time conservatives rejected any new security arrangements altogether and fulminated about any possibility of a UN revival. Chip Berlet, an American investigative reporter specializing in the study of right-wing movements in the US, wrote that the Christian and secular far-right were especially terrified by Bush's speech. Fundamentalist Christian groups interpreted Bush's words as signaling the End Times. At the same time, more secular theorists approached it from an anti-communist and anti-collectivist standpoint and feared for hegemony over all countries by the United Nations.
=== Post-Cold War usage ===
The New World Order has been a focus of the American Christian right, and specifically the Protestant right. The NWO is seen as a prophesied anti-Christian enemy established by globalists which uses perceived secular philosophies such as environmentalism, feminism, and socialism (collectively referred to as globalism) to thwart Christianity through the work of organizations such as the United Nations, European Union, World Trade Organization, and World Health Organization. Organizations like the UN, as well as concepts such as the New World Order and globalism have played a significant role in right-wing Protestant prophecy media.
American televangelist Pat Robertson, with his best-selling book The New World Order (1991), became the most prominent Christian disseminator of conspiracy theories about recent American history. He describes a scenario where Wall Street, the Federal Reserve System, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission control the flow of events from behind the scenes, constantly nudging people covertly in the direction of world government for the Antichrist.
It has been observed that, throughout the 1990s, the galvanizing language used by conspiracy theorists such as Linda Thompson, Mark Koernke and Robert K. Spear led to militancy and the rise of the American militia movement. The militia movement's anti-government ideology was spread through speeches at rallies and meetings, books and videotapes sold at gun shows, shortwave and satellite radio, fax networks, and computer bulletin boards. It has been argued that it was overnight AM radio shows and propagandistic viral content on the internet that most effectively contributed to more extremist responses to the perceived threat of the New World Order. This led to the substantial growth of New World Order conspiracism, with it retroactively finding its way into the previously apolitical literature of numerous Kennedy assassinologists, ufologists, lost land theorists and—partially inspired by fears surrounding the "Satanic panic"—occultists. From the mid-1990s onward, the amorphous appeal of those subcultures transmitted New World Order conspiracism to a larger audience of seekers of stigmatized knowledge, with the common characteristic of disillusionment of political efficacy.
From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, Hollywood conspiracy-thriller television shows and films also played a role in introducing a general audience to various fringe, esoteric theories related to New World Order conspiracism—which by that point had developed to include black helicopters, FEMA "concentration camps", etc.—theories which for decades previously were confined to largely right-wing subcultures. The 1993–2002 television series The X-Files, the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory and the 1998 film The X-Files: Fight the Future are often cited as notable examples.
Following the start of the 21st century, and specifically during the 2008 financial crisis, many politicians and pundits, such as Gordon Brown and Henry Kissinger, used the term "new world order" in their advocacy for a comprehensive reform of the global financial system and their calls for a "New Bretton Woods" taking into account emerging markets such as China and India. These public declarations reinvigorated New World Order conspiracism, culminating in talk-show host Sean Hannity stating on his Fox News program Hannity that the "conspiracy theorists were right". Progressive media-watchdog groups have repeatedly criticized Fox News in general, and its now-defunct opinion show Glenn Beck in particular, for not only disseminating New World Order conspiracy theories to mainstream audiences, but possibly agitating so-called "lone wolf" extremism, particularly from the radical right.
In 2009, American film directors Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel released New World Order, a critically acclaimed documentary film which explores the world of conspiracy theorists—such as American radio host Alex Jones—who vigorously oppose what they perceive as an emerging New World Order. The growing dissemination and popularity of conspiracy theories has also created an alliance between right-wing agitators and hip hop music's left-wing rappers (such as KRS-One, Professor Griff of Public Enemy and Immortal Technique), illustrating how anti-elitist conspiracism can create unlikely political allies in efforts to oppose a political system.
== Conspiracy theories ==
There are numerous systemic conspiracy theories through which the concept of a New World Order is viewed. The following is a list of the major ones in roughly chronological order:
=== End time ===
Since the 19th century, many apocalyptic millennial Christian eschatologists, starting with John Nelson Darby, have predicted a globalist conspiracy to impose a tyrannical New World Order governing structure as the fulfillment of prophecies about the "end time" in the Bible, specifically in the Book of Ezekiel, the Book of Daniel, the Olivet Discourse found in the Synoptic Gospels, 2 Esdras 11:32 and Revelation 13:7. They claim that people who have made a deal with the Devil to gain wealth and power have become pawns in a supernatural chess game to move humanity into accepting a utopian world government that rests on the spiritual foundations of a syncretic-messianic world religion, which will later reveal itself to be a dystopian world empire that imposes the imperial cult of an "Unholy Trinity" of Satan, the Antichrist and the False Prophet. In many contemporary Christian conspiracy theories, the False Prophet will be either the last pope of the Catholic Church (groomed and installed by an Alta Vendita or Jesuit conspiracy), a guru from the New Age movement, or even the leader of an elite fundamentalist Christian organization like the Fellowship, while the Antichrist will be either the President of the European Union, the Caliph of a pan-Islamic state, or even the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Some of the most vocal critics of end-time conspiracy theories come from within Christianity. In 1993, historian Bruce Barron wrote a stern rebuke of apocalyptic Christian conspiracism in the Christian Research Journal, when reviewing Robertson's 1991 book The New World Order. Another critique can be found in historian Gregory S. Camp's 1997 book Selling Fear: Conspiracy Theories and End-Times Paranoia. Religious studies scholar Richard T. Hughes argues that "New World Order" rhetoric libels the Christian faith, since the "New World Order" as defined by Christian conspiracy theorists has no basis in the Bible whatsoever. Furthermore, he argues that not only is this idea unbiblical, it is positively anti-biblical and fundamentally anti-Christian, because by misinterpreting key passages in the Book of Revelation, it turns a comforting message about the coming kingdom of God into one of fear, panic and despair in the face of an allegedly approaching one-world government. Progressive Christians, such as preacher-theologian Peter J. Gomes, caution Christian fundamentalists that a "spirit of fear" can distort scripture and history through dangerously combining biblical literalism, apocalyptic timetables, demonization and oppressive prejudices, while Camp warns of the "very real danger that Christians could pick up some extra spiritual baggage" by credulously embracing conspiracy theories. They therefore call on Christians who indulge in conspiracism to repent.
=== Freemasonry ===
Freemasonry is one of the world's oldest secular fraternal organizations and arose in Great Britain during the 18th century. Over the years, several allegations and conspiracy theories have been directed towards Freemasonry, including the allegation that Freemasons have a hidden political agenda and are conspiring to bring about a New World Order, a world government organized according to Masonic principles or governed only by Freemasons.
The esoteric nature of Masonic symbolism and rites led to Freemasons first being accused of secretly practicing Satanism in the late 18th century. The original allegation of a conspiracy within Freemasonry to subvert religions and governments to take over the world traces back to Scottish author John Robison, whose reactionary conspiracy theories crossed the Atlantic and influenced outbreaks of Protestant anti-Masonry in the United States during the 19th century. In the 1890s, French writer Léo Taxil wrote a series of pamphlets and books denouncing Freemasonry and charging their lodges with worshiping Lucifer as the Supreme Being and Great Architect of the Universe. Despite the fact that Taxil admitted that his claims were all a hoax, they were and still are believed and repeated by numerous conspiracy theorists and had a huge influence on subsequent anti-Masonic claims about Freemasonry.
Some conspiracy theorists eventually speculated that some Founding Fathers of the United States, such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, were having Masonic sacred geometric designs interwoven into American society, particularly in the Great Seal of the United States, the United States one-dollar bill, the architecture of National Mall landmarks and the streets and highways of Washington, D.C., as part of a master plan to create the first "Masonic government" as a model for the coming New World Order.
Freemasons rebut these claims of a Masonic conspiracy. Freemasonry, which promotes rationalism, places no power in occult symbols themselves, and it is not a part of its principles to view the drawing of symbols, no matter how large, as an act of consolidating or controlling power. Furthermore, there is no published information establishing the Masonic membership of the men responsible for the design of the Great Seal. While conspiracy theorists assert that there are elements of Masonic influence on the Great Seal of the United States and that these elements were intentionally or unintentionally used because the creators were familiar with the symbols, in fact, the all-seeing Eye of Providence and the unfinished pyramid were symbols used as much outside Masonic lodges as within them in the late 18th century. Therefore, the designers were drawing from common esoteric symbols. The Latin phrase "novus ordo seclorum", appearing on the reverse side of the Great Seal since 1782 and the back of the one-dollar bill since 1935, translates to "New Order of the Ages", and alludes to the beginning of an era where the United States of America is an independent nation-state; conspiracy theorists often mistranslate it as "New World Order".
Although the European continental branch of Freemasonry has organizations that allow political discussion within their Masonic Lodges, Masonic researcher Trevor W. McKeown argues that the accusations ignore several facts. Firstly, the many Grand Lodges are independent and sovereign, meaning they act independently and do not have a common agenda. The points of belief of the various lodges often differ. Secondly, famous Freemasons have always held views that span the political spectrum and show no particular pattern or preference. As such, the term "Masonic government" is erroneous; there is no consensus among Freemasons about what an ideal government would look like.
=== Illuminati ===
The Order of the Illuminati was an Enlightenment-age secret society founded by university professor Adam Weishaupt on 1 May 1776, in Upper Bavaria, Germany. The movement consisted of advocates of freethought, secularism, liberalism, republicanism, and gender equality, recruited from the German Masonic Lodges, who sought to teach rationalism through mystery schools. In 1785, the order was infiltrated, broken up, and suppressed by the government agents of Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, in his preemptive campaign to neutralize the threat of secret societies ever becoming hotbeds of conspiracies to overthrow the Bavarian monarchy and its state religion, Roman Catholicism. There is no evidence that the Bavarian Illuminati survived its suppression in 1785.
In the late 18th century, reactionary conspiracy theorists, such as Scottish physicist John Robison and French Jesuit priest Augustin Barruel, began speculating that the Illuminati had survived their suppression and become the masterminds behind the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The Illuminati were accused of being subversives who were attempting to secretly orchestrate a revolutionary wave in Europe and the rest of the world by spreading the most radical ideas and movements of the Enlightenment—anti-clericalism, anti-monarchism, and anti-patriarchalism— which the accusers feared would lead to the destruction of the natural order of things. During the 19th century, fear of an Illuminati conspiracy was a real concern of the European ruling classes, and their oppressive reactions to this unfounded fear provoked in 1848 the very revolutions they sought to prevent.
During the interwar period of the 20th century, fascist propagandists, such as British revisionist historian Nesta Helen Webster and American socialite Edith Starr Miller, not only popularized the myth of an Illuminati conspiracy but claimed that it was a subversive secret society which served the Jewish elites that supposedly propped up both finance capitalism and Soviet communism to divide and rule the world. American evangelist Gerald Burton Winrod and other conspiracy theorists within the fundamentalist Christian movement in the United States—which emerged in the 1910s as a backlash against the principles of Enlightenment secular humanism, modernism, and liberalism—became the main channel of dissemination of Illuminati conspiracy theories in the U.S.. Right-wing populists, such as members of the John Birch Society, subsequently began speculating that some collegiate fraternities (Skull and Bones), gentlemen's clubs (Bohemian Club), and think tanks (Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission) of the American upper class are front organizations of the Illuminati, which they accuse of plotting to create a New World Order through a one-world government. The Illuminatus! Trilogy, a series of three satirical novels by American writers Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, first published in 1975, which attributed the alleged major cover-ups of the era – such as who shot John F. Kennedy – to the Illuminati, was extremely influential in popularizing the myth of an Illuminati superconspiracy during the 1960s and onward.
=== The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ===
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an antisemitic canard, originally published in Russian in 1903, alleging a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to achieve world domination. The text purports to be the minutes of the secret meetings of a cabal of Jewish masterminds, which has co-opted Freemasonry and is plotting to rule the world on behalf of all Jews because they believe themselves to be the chosen people of God. The Protocols incorporate many of the core conspiracist themes outlined in the Robison and Barruel attacks on the Freemasons and overlay them with antisemitic allegations about anti-Tsarist movements in Russia. The Protocols reflect themes similar to more general critiques of Enlightenment liberalism by conservative aristocrats who support monarchies and state religions. The interpretation intended by the publication of The Protocols is that if one peels away the layers of the Masonic conspiracy, past the Illuminati, one finds the rotten Jewish core.
Numerous polemicists, such as Irish journalist Philip Graves in a 1921 article in The Times, and British academic Norman Cohn in his 1967 book Warrant for Genocide, have proven The Protocols to be both a hoax and a clear case of plagiarism. There is general agreement that Russian-French writer and political activist Matvei Golovinski fabricated the text for Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian Empire, as a work of counter-revolutionary propaganda prior to the 1905 Russian Revolution, by plagiarizing, almost word for word in some passages, from The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a 19th-century satire against Napoleon III of France written by French political satirist and Legitimist militant Maurice Joly.
Responsible for feeding many antisemitic and anti-Masonic mass hysteria of the twentieth century, The Protocols has been influential in the development of some conspiracy theories, including some New World Order theories, and repeatedly appears in certain contemporary conspiracy literature. For example, the authors of the 1982 controversial book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail concluded that The Protocols was the most persuasive piece of evidence for the existence and activities of the Priory of Sion. They speculated that this secret society was working behind the scenes to establish a theocratic "United States of Europe". Politically and religiously unified through the imperial cult of a Merovingian Great Monarch—supposedly descended from a Jesus bloodline—who occupies both the throne of Europe and the Holy See, this "Holy European Empire" would become the hyperpower of the 21st century. Although the Priory of Sion itself has been exhaustively debunked by journalists and scholars as a hoax, some apocalyptic millenarian Christian eschatologists who believe The Protocols is authentic became convinced that the Priory of Sion was a fulfillment of prophecies found in the Book of Revelation and further proof of an anti-Christian conspiracy of epic proportions signaling the imminence of a New World Order.
Skeptics argue that the current gambit of contemporary conspiracy theorists who use The Protocols is to claim that they "really" come from some group other than the Jews, such as fallen angels or alien invaders. Although it is hard to determine whether the conspiracy-minded actually believe this or are simply trying to sanitize a discredited text, skeptics argue that it does not make much difference, since they leave the actual, antisemitic text unchanged, giving The Protocols credibility and circulation.
=== Round table ===
During the second half of Britain's "imperial century" between 1815 and 1914, English-born South African businessman, mining magnate, and politician Cecil Rhodes advocated the British Empire reannexing the United States of America and reforming itself into an "Imperial Federation" to bring about a hyperpower and lasting world peace. In his first will, written in 1877 at the age of 23, he expressed his wish to fund a secret society (known as the Society of the Elect) that would advance this goal:
To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia [Crete], the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity.
In 1890, thirteen years after "his now-famous will," Rhodes elaborated on the same idea: establishment of "England everywhere," which would "ultimately lead to the cessation of all wars, and one language throughout the world." "The only thing feasible to carry out this idea is a secret society gradually absorbing the wealth of the world ["and human minds of the higher-order"] to be devoted to such an object."
Rhodes also concentrated on the Rhodes Scholarship, which had British statesman Alfred Milner as one of its trustees. Established in 1902, the original goal of the trust fund was to foster peace among the great powers by creating a sense of fraternity and a shared world view among future British, American, and German leaders by having enabled them to study for free at the University of Oxford.
Milner and British official Lionel George Curtis were the architects of the Round Table movement, a network of organizations promoting closer union between Britain and its self-governing colonies. To this end, Curtis founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in June 1919 and, with his 1938 book The Commonwealth of God, began advocating for the creation of an imperial federation that eventually reannexes the U.S., which would be presented to Protestant churches as being the work of the Christian God to elicit their support. The Commonwealth of Nations was created in 1949, but it would only be a free association of independent states rather than the powerful imperial federation imagined by Rhodes, Milner, and Curtis.
The Council on Foreign Relations began in 1917 with a group of New York academics who were asked by President Woodrow Wilson to offer options for the foreign policy of the United States in the interwar period. Originally envisioned as a group of American and British scholars and diplomats, some of whom belonging to the Round Table movement, it was a subsequent group of 108 New York financiers, manufacturers, and international lawyers organized in June 1918 by Nobel Peace Prize recipient and U.S. secretary of state Elihu Root, that became the Council on Foreign Relations on 29 July 1921. The first of the council's projects was a quarterly journal launched in September 1922, called Foreign Affairs. The Trilateral Commission was founded in July 1973, at the initiative of American banker David Rockefeller, who was chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations at that time. It is a private organization established to foster closer cooperation among the United States, Europe, and Japan. The Trilateral Commission is widely seen as a counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations.
In the 1960s, right-wing populist individuals and groups with a paleoconservative worldview, such as members of the John Birch Society, were the first to combine and spread a business nationalist critique of corporate internationalists networked through think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations with a grand conspiracy theory casting them as front organizations for the Round Table of the "Anglo-American Establishment", which are financed by an "international banking cabal" that has supposedly been plotting from the late 19th century on to impose an oligarchic new world order through a global financial system. Anti-globalist conspiracy theorists therefore fear that international bankers are planning to eventually subvert the independence of the U.S. by subordinating national sovereignty to a strengthened Bank for International Settlements.
The research findings of historian Carroll Quigley, author of the 1966 book Tragedy and Hope, are taken by both conspiracy theorists of the American Old Right (W. Cleon Skousen) and New Left (Carl Oglesby) to substantiate this view, even though Quigley argued that the Establishment is not involved in a plot to implement a one-world government but rather British and American benevolent imperialism driven by the mutual interests of economic elites in the United Kingdom and the United States. Quigley also argued that, although the Round Table still exists today, its position in influencing the policies of world leaders has been much reduced from its heyday during World War I and slowly waned after the end of World War II and the Suez Crisis. Today the Round Table is largely a ginger group, designed to consider and gradually influence the policies of the Commonwealth of Nations, but faces strong opposition. Furthermore, in American society after 1965, the problem, according to Quigley, was that no elite was in charge and acting responsibly.
Larry McDonald, the second president of the John Birch Society and a conservative Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives who represented the 7th congressional district of Georgia, wrote a foreword for Allen's 1976 book The Rockefeller File, wherein he claimed that the Rockefellers and their allies were driven by a desire to create a one-world government that combined "super-capitalism" with communism and would be fully under their control. He saw a conspiracy plot that was "international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent."
In his 2002 autobiography Memoirs, David Rockefeller wrote:
For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents ... to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.
Barkun argues that this statement is partly facetious (the claim of "conspiracy" and "treason") and partly serious—the desire to encourage trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Europe, and Japan; for example — an ideal that used to be a hallmark of the internationalist wing of the Republican Party (known as "Rockefeller Republicans" in honor of Nelson Rockefeller) when there was an internationalist wing. The statement, however, is taken at face value and widely cited by conspiracy theorists as proof that the Council on Foreign Relations uses its role as the brain trust of American presidents, senators and representatives to manipulate them into supporting a New World Order in the form of a one-world government.
In a 13 November 2007 interview with Canadian journalist Benjamin Fulford, Rockefeller countered that he felt no need for a world government and wished for the world's governments to work together and collaborate. He also stated that it seemed neither likely nor desirable to have only one elected government rule worldwide. He criticized accusations of him being "ruler of the world" as nonsensical.
Some American social critics, such as Laurence H. Shoup, argue that the Council on Foreign Relations is an "imperial brain trust" which has, for decades, played a central behind-the-scenes role in shaping U.S. foreign policy choices for the post-World War II international order and the Cold War by determining what options show up on the agenda and what options do not even make it to the table; others, such as G. William Domhoff, argue that it is in fact a mere policy discussion forum which provides the business input to U.S. foreign policy planning. Domhoff argues that "[i]t has nearly 3,000 members, far too many for secret plans to be kept within the group. All the council does is sponsor discussion groups, debates, and speakers. As far as being secretive, it issues annual reports and allows access to its historical archives." However, all these critics agree that "[h]istorical studies of the CFR show that it has a very different role in the overall power structure than what is claimed by conspiracy theorists."
=== The Open Conspiracy ===
In his 1928 book The Open Conspiracy British writer and futurist H. G. Wells promoted cosmopolitanism and offered blueprints for a world revolution and World Brain to establish a technocratic world state and planned economy. Wells warned, however, in his 1940 book The New World Order that:
... when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people ... will hate the new world order, be rendered unhappy by the frustration of their passions and ambitions through its advent and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.
Wells's books were influential in giving a second meaning to the term "new world order", which would only be used by state socialist supporters and anti-communist opponents. However, despite the popularity and notoriety of his ideas, Wells failed to exert a deeper and more lasting influence because he was unable to concentrate his energies on a direct appeal to intelligentsias who would, ultimately, have to coordinate the Wellsian new world order.
=== New Age ===
British neo-Theosophical occultist Alice Bailey, one of the founders of the so-called New Age movement, prophesied in 1940 the eventual victory of the Allies of World War II over the Axis powers (which occurred in 1945) and the establishment by the Allies of a political and religious New World Order. She saw a federal world government as the culmination of Wells' Open Conspiracy but favorably argued that it would be synarchist because it was guided by the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom, intent on preparing humanity for the mystical second coming of Christ, and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. According to Bailey, a group of ascended masters called the Great White Brotherhood works on the "inner planes" to oversee the transition to the New World Order but, for now, the members of this Spiritual Hierarchy are only known to a few occult scientists, with whom they communicate telepathically, but as the need for their personal involvement in the plan increases, there will be an "Externalization of the Hierarchy" and everyone will know of their presence on Earth.
Bailey's writings, along with American writer Marilyn Ferguson's 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy, contributed to conspiracy theorists of the Christian right viewing the New Age movement as the "false religion" that would supersede Christianity in a New World Order. Skeptics argue that the term "New Age movement" is a misnomer, generally used by conspiracy theorists as a catch-all rubric for any new religious movement that is not fundamentalist Christian. By this logic, anything that is not Christian is by definition actively and willfully anti-Christian.
Paradoxically, since the first decade of the 21st century, New World Order conspiracism is increasingly being embraced and propagandized by New Age occultists, who are people bored by rationalism and drawn to stigmatized knowledge—such as alternative medicine, astrology, quantum mysticism, spiritualism, and theosophy. Thus, New Age conspiracy theorists, such as the makers of documentary films like Esoteric Agenda, claim that globalists who plot on behalf of the New World Order are simply misusing occultism for Machiavellian ends, such as adopting 21 December 2012 as the exact date for the establishment of the New World Order to take advantage of the growing 2012 phenomenon, which has its origins in the fringe Mayanist theories of New Age writers José Argüelles, Terence McKenna, and Daniel Pinchbeck.
Skeptics argue that the connection of conspiracy theorists and occultists follows from their common fallacious premises. First, any widely accepted belief must necessarily be false. Second, stigmatized knowledge—what the Establishment spurns—must be true. The result is a large, self-referential network in which, for example, some UFO religionists promote anti-Jewish phobias while some antisemites practice Peruvian shamanism.
=== Fourth Reich ===
Conspiracy theorists often use the term "Fourth Reich" simply as a pejorative synonym for the "New World Order" to imply that its state ideology and government will be similar to Germany's Third Reich.
Conspiracy theorists, such as American writer Jim Marrs, claim that some ex-Nazis, who survived the fall of the Greater German Reich, along with sympathizers in the United States and elsewhere, given haven by organizations like ODESSA and Die Spinne, has been working behind the scenes since the end of World War II to enact at least some principles of Nazism (e.g., militarism, imperialism, widespread spying on citizens, corporatism, the use of propaganda to manufacture a national consensus) into culture, government, and business worldwide, but primarily in the U.S. They cite the influence of ex-Nazi scientists brought in under Operation Paperclip to help advance aerospace manufacturing in the U.S. with technological principles from Nazi UFOs, and the acquisition and creation of conglomerates by ex-Nazis and their sympathizers after the war, in both Europe and the U.S.
This neo-Nazi conspiracy is said to be animated by an "Iron Dream" in which the American Empire, having thwarted the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy and overthrown its Zionist Occupation Government, gradually establishes a Fourth Reich formerly known as the "Western Imperium"—a pan-Aryan world empire modeled after Adolf Hitler's New Order—which reverses the "decline of the West" and ushers a golden age of white supremacy.
Skeptics argue that conspiracy theorists grossly overestimate the influence of ex-Nazis and neo-Nazis on American society and point out that political repression at home and imperialism abroad have a long history in the United States that predates the 20th century. Political theorist Sheldon Wolin has expressed concern that the twin forces of democratic deficit and superpower status have paved the way in the U.S. for the emergence of an inverted totalitarianism which contradicts many principles of Nazism.
=== Alien invasion ===
Since the late 1970s, extraterrestrials from other habitable planets or parallel dimensions (such as "Greys") and intraterrestrials from Hollow Earth (such as "Reptilians") have been included in the New World Order conspiracy, in more or less dominant roles, as in the theories put forward by American writers Stan Deyo and Milton William Cooper, and British writer David Icke.
The common theme in these conspiracy theories is that aliens have been among us for decades, centuries or millennia. Still, a government cover-up enforced by "Men in black" has shielded the public from knowledge of a secret alien invasion. Motivated by speciesism and imperialism, these aliens have been and are secretly manipulating developments and changes in human society to more efficiently control and exploit human beings. In some theories, alien infiltrators have shapeshifted into human form and move freely throughout human society, even to the point of taking control of command positions in governmental, corporate, and religious institutions, and are now in the final stages of their plan to take over the world. A mythical covert government agency of the United States code-named Majestic 12 is often imagined being the shadow government which collaborates with the alien occupation and permits alien abductions, in exchange for assistance in the development and testing of military "flying saucers" at Area 51, for United States armed forces to achieve full-spectrum dominance.
Those who adhere to the psychosocial hypothesis for unidentified flying objects argue that the convergence of New World Order conspiracy theory and UFO conspiracy theory is a product of not only the era's widespread mistrust of governments and the popularity of the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs but of the far right and ufologists joining forces. Barkun notes that the only positive side to this development is that, if conspirators plotting to rule the world are believed to be aliens, traditional human scapegoats (Freemasons, Illuminati, Jews, etc.) are downgraded or exonerated.
=== Brave New World ===
Antiscience and neo-Luddite conspiracy theorists emphasize technology forecasting in their New World Order conspiracy theories. They speculate that the global power elite are reactionary modernists pursuing a transhumanist plan to develop and use human enhancement technologies to become a "posthuman ruling caste", while change accelerates toward a technological singularity—a theorized future point of discontinuity when events will accelerate at such a pace that normal unenhanced humans will be unable to predict or even understand the rapid changes occurring in the world around them. Conspiracy theorists fear the outcome will either be the emergence of a Brave New World-like dystopia—a "Brave New World Order"—or the extinction of the human species.
Democratic transhumanists, such as American sociologist James Hughes, counter that many influential members of the United States establishment are bioconservatives strongly opposed to human enhancement, as demonstrated by President Bush's Council on Bioethics's proposed international treaty prohibiting human cloning and germline engineering. Furthermore, he argues that conspiracy theorists underestimate how fringe the transhumanist movement really is.
== Postulated implementations ==
Just as there are several overlapping or conflicting theories among conspiracists about the nature of the New World Order, so are there several beliefs about how its architects and planners will implement it:
=== Gradualism ===
Conspiracy theorists generally speculate that the New World Order is being implemented gradually, citing the formation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System in 1913; the League of Nations in 1919; the International Monetary Fund in 1944; the United Nations in 1945; the World Bank in 1945; the World Health Organization in 1948; the European Union and the Euro in 1993; the World Trade Organization in 1998; the African Union in 2002, and the Union of South American Nations in 2008 as major milestones.
An increasingly popular conspiracy theory among American right-wing populists is that the hypothetical North American Union and the amero currency, proposed by the Council on Foreign Relations and its counterparts in Mexico and Canada, will be the next milestone in the implementation of the New World Order. The theory holds that a group of shadowy and mostly nameless international elites is planning to replace the federal government of the United States with a transnational government. Therefore, conspiracy theorists believe the borders between Mexico, Canada, and the United States are in the process of being erased, covertly, by a group of globalists whose ultimate goal is to replace national governments in Washington, D.C., Ottawa, and Mexico City with a European-style political union and a bloated E.U.-style bureaucracy.
Skeptics argue that the North American Union exists only as a proposal contained in one of a thousand academic and policy papers published each year that advocate all manner of idealistic but ultimately unrealistic approaches to social, economic, and political problems. Most of these are passed around in their circles and eventually filed away and forgotten by junior staffers in congressional offices. However, some of these papers become touchstones for the conspiracy-minded and form the basis of all kinds of unfounded xenophobic fears, especially during times of economic anxiety.
For example, in March 2009, due to the 2008 financial crisis, the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation pressed for urgent consideration of a new international reserve currency and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development proposed greatly expanding the I.M.F.'s special drawing rights. Conspiracy theorists fear these proposals are a call for the U.S. to adopt a single global currency for a New World Order.
Judging that both national governments and global institutions have proven ineffective in addressing global problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to solve, some political scientists critical of New World Order conspiracism, such as Mark C. Partridge, argue that regionalism will be the major force in the coming decades, pockets of power around regional centers: Western Europe around Brussels, the Western Hemisphere around Washington, D.C., East Asia around Beijing, and Eastern Europe around Moscow. As such, the E.U., the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and the G-20 will likely become more influential as time progresses. The question then is not whether global governance is gradually emerging, but rather how will these regional powers interact with one another.
=== Coup d'état ===
American right-wing populist conspiracy theorists, especially those who joined the militia movement in the United States, speculate that the New World Order will be implemented through a dramatic coup d'état by a "secret team", using black helicopters, in the U.S. and other nation-states to bring about a totalitarian world government controlled by the United Nations and enforced by troops of foreign U.N. peacekeepers. Following the Rex 84 and Operation Garden Plot plans, this military coup would involve the suspension of the Constitution, the imposition of martial law, and the appointment of military commanders to head state and local governments and to detain dissidents.
These conspiracy theorists, who are all strong believers in a right to keep and bear arms, are extremely fearful that the passing of any gun control legislation will be later followed by the abolition of personal gun ownership and a campaign of gun confiscation, and that the refugee camps of emergency management agencies such as FEMA will be used for the internment of suspected subversives, making little effort to distinguish true threats to the New World Order from pacifist dissidents.
Before 2000, some survivalists believed this process would be set in motion by the predicted Y2K problem causing societal collapse. Since many left-wing and right-wing conspiracy theorists believe that the 11 September attacks were a false flag operation carried out by the United States intelligence community, as part of a strategy of tension to justify political repression at home and preemptive war abroad, they have become convinced that a more catastrophic terrorist incident will be responsible for triggering Executive Directive 51 to complete the transition to a police state.
Skeptics argue that unfounded fears about an imminent or eventual gun ban, military coup, internment, or U.N. invasion and occupation are rooted in the siege mentality of the American militia movement but also an apocalyptic millenarianism which provides a basic narrative within the political right in the U.S., claiming that the idealized society (i.e., constitutional republic, Jeffersonian democracy, "Christian nation", "white nation") is thwarted by subversive conspiracies of liberal secular humanists who want "Big Government" and globalists who plot on behalf of the New World Order.
=== Mass surveillance ===
Conspiracy theorists concerned with surveillance abuse believe that the New World Order is being implemented by the cult of intelligence at the core of the surveillance-industrial complex through mass surveillance and the use of Social Security numbers, the bar-coding of retail goods with Universal Product Code markings, and, most recently, RFID tagging by microchip implants.
Claiming that corporations and government are planning to track every move of consumers and citizens with RFID as the latest step toward a 1984-like surveillance state, consumer privacy advocates, such as Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, have become Christian conspiracy theorists who believe spychips must be resisted because they argue that modern database and communications technologies, coupled with point of sale data-capture equipment and sophisticated ID and authentication systems, now make it possible to require a biometrically associated number or mark to make purchases. They fear that the ability to implement such a system closely resembles the Number of the beast prophesied in the Book of Revelation.
In January 2002, the Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying information technology to counter asymmetric threats to national security. Following public criticism that the development and deployment of these technologies could potentially lead to a mass surveillance system, the IAO was defunded by the United States Congress in 2003. The second source of controversy involved IAO's original logo, which depicted the "all-seeing" Eye of Providence atop of a pyramid looking down over the globe, accompanied by the Latin phrase scientia est potentia (knowledge is power). Although DARPA eventually removed the logo from its website, it left a lasting impression on privacy advocates. It also inflamed conspiracy theorists, who misinterpret the "eye and pyramid" as the Masonic symbol of the Illuminati, an 18th-century secret society they speculate continues to exist and is plotting on behalf of a New World Order.
American historian Richard Landes, who specialized in the history of apocalypticism and was co-founder and director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, argues that new and emerging technologies often trigger alarmism among millenarians. Even the introduction of Gutenberg's printing press in 1436 caused waves of apocalyptic thinking. The Year 2000 problem, bar codes, and Social Security numbers all triggered end-time warnings which either proved to be false or were no longer taken seriously once the public became accustomed to these technological changes. Civil libertarians argue that the privatization of surveillance and the rise of the surveillance-industrial complex in the United States does raise legitimate concerns about the erosion of privacy. However, skeptics of mass surveillance conspiracism caution that such concerns should be disentangled from secular paranoia about Big Brother or religious hysteria about the Antichrist.
=== Occultism ===
Conspiracy theorists of the Christian right, starting with British revisionist historian Nesta Helen Webster, believe there is an ancient occult conspiracy—started by the first mystagogues of Gnosticism and perpetuated by their alleged esoteric successors, such as the Kabbalists, Cathars, Knights Templar, Hermeticists, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and, ultimately, the Illuminati—which seeks to subvert the Judeo-Christian foundations of the Western world and implement the New World Order through a one-world religion that prepares the masses to embrace the imperial cult of the Antichrist. More broadly, they speculate that globalists who plot on behalf of a New World Order are directed by occult agencies of some sort: unknown superiors, spiritual hierarchies, demons, fallen angels or Lucifer. They believe that these conspirators use the power of occult sciences (numerology), symbols (Eye of Providence), rituals (Masonic degrees), monuments (National Mall landmarks), buildings (Manitoba Legislative Building) and facilities (Denver International Airport) to advance their plot to rule the world.
For example, in June 1979, an unknown benefactor under the pseudonym "R. C. Christian" had a huge granite megalith built in the U.S. state of Georgia, which acts like a compass, calendar, and clock. A message comprising ten guides is inscribed on the occult structure in many languages to serve as instructions for survivors of a doomsday event to establish a more enlightened and sustainable civilization than the destroyed one. The "Georgia Guidestones" has subsequently become a spiritual and political Rorschach test onto which any number of ideas can be imposed. Some New Agers and neo-pagans revere it as a ley-line power nexus while a few conspiracy theorists are convinced that they are engraved with the New World Order's anti-Christian "Ten Commandments." Should the Guidestones survive for centuries as their creators intended, many more meanings could arise, equally unrelated to the designer's original intention.
Skeptics argue that the demonization of Western esotericism by conspiracy theorists is rooted in religious intolerance but also in the same moral panics that have fueled witch trials in the Early Modern period, and satanic ritual abuse allegations in the United States.
=== Population control ===
Conspiracy theorists believe that the New World Order will also be implemented through human population control to more easily monitor and control the movement of individuals. The means range from stopping the growth of human societies through reproductive health and family planning programs, which promote abstinence, contraception and abortion, or intentionally reducing the bulk of the world population through genocides by mongering unnecessary wars, through plagues by engineering emergent viruses and tainting vaccines, and through environmental disasters by controlling the weather (HAARP, chemtrails), etc. Conspiracy theorists argue that globalists plotting on behalf of a New World Order are neo-Malthusians who engage in overpopulation and climate change alarmism to create public support for coercive population control and ultimately world government. United Nations Agenda 21 is condemned as "reconcentrating" people into urban areas and depopulating rural ones, even generating a dystopian novel by Glenn Beck where single-family homes are a distant memory.
Skeptics argue that fears of population control can be traced back to the traumatic legacy of the eugenics movement's "war against the weak" in the United States during the first decades of the 20th century but also the Second Red Scare in the U.S. during the late 1940s and 1950s, and to a lesser extent in the 1960s, when activists on the far right of American politics routinely opposed public health programs, notably water fluoridation, mass vaccination and mental health services, by asserting they were all part of a far-reaching plot to impose a socialist or communist regime. Their views were influenced by opposition to a number of major social and political changes that had happened in recent years: the growth of internationalism, particularly the United Nations and its programs; the introduction of social welfare provisions, particularly the various programs established by the New Deal; and government efforts to reduce inequalities in the social structure of the U.S. Opposition towards mass vaccinations in particular got significant attention in the late 2010s, so much so the World Health Organization listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten global health threats of 2019. By this time, people that refused or refused to allow their children to be vaccinated were known colloquially as "anti-vaxxers", though citing the New World Order conspiracy theory or resistance to a perceived population control plan as a reason to refuse vaccination were few and far between.
=== Mind control ===
Social critics accuse governments, corporations, and the mass media of being involved in the manufacturing of a national consensus and, paradoxically, a culture of fear due to the potential for increased social control that a mistrustful and mutually fearing population might offer to those in power. The worst fear of some conspiracy theorists, however, is that the New World Order will be implemented through the use of mind control—a broad range of tactics able to subvert an individual's control of their own thinking, behavior, emotions, or decisions. These tactics are said to include everything from Manchurian candidate-style brainwashing of sleeper agents (Project MKULTRA, "Project Monarch") to engineering psychological operations (water fluoridation, subliminal advertising, "Silent Sound Spread Spectrum", MEDUSA) and parapsychological operations (Stargate Project) to influence the masses. The concept of wearing a tin foil hat for protection from such threats has become a popular stereotype and term of derision; the phrase serves as a byword for paranoia and is associated with conspiracy theorists.
Skeptics argue that the paranoia behind a conspiracy theorist's obsession with mind control, population control, occultism, surveillance abuse, Big Business, Big Government, and globalization arises from a combination of two factors, when he or she: 1) holds strong individualist values and 2) lacks power. The first attribute refers to people who care deeply about an individual's right to make their own choices and direct their own lives without interference or obligations to a larger system (like the government), but combine this with a sense of powerlessness in one's own life. One gets what some psychologists call "agency panic," intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy to outside forces or regulators. When fervent individualists feel that they cannot exercise their independence, they experience a crisis and assume that larger forces are to blame for usurping this freedom.
== Alleged conspirators ==
According to Domhoff, many people seem to believe that the United States is ruled from behind the scenes by a conspiratorial elite with secret desires, i.e., by a small, secretive group that wants to change the government system or put the country under the control of a world government. In the past, the conspirators were usually said to be crypto-communists who were intent upon bringing the United States under a common world government with the Soviet Union, but the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 undercut that theory. Domhoff notes that most conspiracy theorists changed their focus to the United Nations as the likely controlling force in a New World Order, an idea which is undermined by the powerlessness of the U.N. and the unwillingness of even moderates within the American Establishment to give it anything but a limited role.
Although skeptical of New World Order conspiracism, political scientist David Rothkopf argues, in the 2008 book Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, that the world population of 6 billion people is governed by an elite of 6,000 individuals. Until the late 20th century, governments of the great powers provided most of the superclass, accompanied by a few heads of international movements (i.e., the Pope of the Catholic Church) and entrepreneurs (Rothschilds, Rockefellers). According to Rothkopf, in the early 21st century, economic clout—fueled by the explosive expansion of international trade, travel, and communication—rules; the nation-state's power has diminished shrinking politicians to minority power broker status; leaders in international business, finance, and the defense industry not only dominate the superclass, but they also move freely into high positions in their nations' governments and back to private life largely beyond the notice of elected legislatures (including the U.S. Congress), which remain abysmally ignorant of affairs beyond their borders. He asserts that the superclass' disproportionate influence over national policy is constructive but always self-interested and that across the world, few object to corruption and oppressive governments provided they can do business in these countries.
Viewing the history of the world as the history of warfare between secret societies, conspiracy theorists go further than Rothkopf, and other scholars who have studied the global power elite, by claiming that established upper-class families with "old money" who founded and finance the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Club, Club of Rome, Council on Foreign Relations, Rhodes Trust, Skull and Bones, Trilateral Commission, and similar think tanks and private clubs, are illuminated conspirators plotting to impose a totalitarian New World Order—the implementation of an authoritarian world government controlled by the United Nations and a global central bank, which maintains political power through the financialization of the economy, regulation and restriction of speech through the concentration of media ownership, mass surveillance, widespread use of state terrorism, and an all-encompassing propaganda that creates a cult of personality around a puppet world leader and ideologizes world government as the culmination of history's progress.
== Criticism ==
Skeptics of New World Order conspiracy theories accuse its proponents of indulging in the furtive fallacy, a belief that significant facts of history are necessarily sinister; conspiracism, a world view that centrally places conspiracy theories in the unfolding of history, rather than social and economic forces; and fusion paranoia, a promiscuous absorption of fears from any source whatsoever.
Marxists, who are skeptical of right-wing populist conspiracy theories, also accuse the global power elite of not having the best interests of all at heart, and many intergovernmental organizations of suffering from a democratic deficit, but they argue that the superclass are plutocrats only interested in brazenly imposing a neoliberal or neoconservative new world order—the implementation of global capitalism through economic and military coercion to protect the interests of transnational corporations—which systematically undermines the possibility of international socialism. Arguing that the world is in the middle of a transition from the American Empire to the rule of a global ruling class that has emerged from within the American Empire, they point out that right-wing populist conspiracy theorists, blinded by their anti-communism, fail to see that what they demonize as the "New World Order" is, ironically, the highest stage of the very capitalist economic system they defend.
Domhoff, a professor in psychology and sociology who studies theories of power, wrote in 2005 an essay entitled There Are No Conspiracies. He says that for this theory to be true, it required several "wealthy and highly educated people" to do things that don't "fit with what we know about power structures". Claims that this will happen go back decades and have always been proved wrong.
Partridge, a contributing editor to the global affairs magazine Diplomatic Courier, wrote a 2008 article entitled One World Government: Conspiracy Theory or Inevitable Future? He says that if anything, nationalism, which is the opposite of a global government, is rising. He also says that attempts at creating global governments or global agreements "have been categorical failures".
Although some cultural critics see superconspiracy theories about a New World Order as "postmodern metanarratives" that may be politically empowering, a way of giving ordinary people a narrative structure with which to question what they see around them, skeptics argue that conspiracism leads people into cynicism, convoluted thinking, and a tendency to feel it is hopeless even as they denounce the alleged conspirators.
Alexander Zaitchik from the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote a report titled "'Patriot' Paranoia: A Look at the Top Ten Conspiracy Theories", in which he personally condemns such conspiracies as an effort of the radical right to undermine society.
Concerned that the improvisational millennialism of most conspiracy theories about a New World Order might motivate lone wolves to engage in leaderless resistance leading to domestic terrorist incidents like the Oklahoma City bombing, Barkun writes that "the danger lies less in such beliefs themselves ... than in the behavior they might stimulate or justify" and warns "should they believe that the prophesied evil day had in fact arrived, their behavior would become far more difficult to predict."
Warning of the threat to American democracy posed by right-wing populist movements led by demagogues who mobilize support for mob rule or even a fascist revolution by exploiting the fear of conspiracies, Berlet writes that Right-wing populist movements can cause serious damage to a society because they often popularize xenophobia, authoritarianism, scapegoating, and conspiracism. This can lure mainstream politicians to adopt these themes to attract voters, legitimize acts of discrimination (or even violence), and open the door for revolutionary right-wing populist movements, such as fascism, to recruit from the reformist populist movements.
Criticisms of New World Order conspiracy theorists also come from within their own community. Despite believing themselves to be "freedom fighters", many right-wing populist conspiracy theorists hold views that are incompatible with their professed libertarianism, such as Christian dominionism, authoritarian ultranationalism, white supremacy and eliminationism.
== See also ==
Anti-globalization movement
Brainwashing
Climate change denial
Criticisms of globalization
Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory
== References ==
== Further reading ==
The following is a list of non-self-published non-fiction books that discuss New World Order conspiracy theories.
Carr, William Guy (1954). Pawns in the Game. Legion for the Survival of Freedom, an affiliate of the Institute for Historical Review. ISBN 0-911038-29-9. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
Still, William T. (1990). New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies. Huntington House Publishers. ISBN 0-910311-64-1.
Cooper, Milton William (1991). Behold a Pale Horse. Light Technology Publications. ISBN 0-929385-22-5.
Kah, Gary H. (1991). En Route to Global Occupation. Huntington House Publishers. ISBN 0-910311-97-8.
Martin, Malachi (1991). Keys of This Blood: Pope John Paul II Versus Russia and the West for Control of the New World Order. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-74723-1.
Robertson, Pat (1992). The New World Order. W Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8499-3394-3.
Wardner, James (1994) [1993]. The Planned Destruction of America. Longwood Communications. ISBN 0-9632190-5-7.
Keith, Jim (1995). Black Helicopters over America: Strikeforce for the New World Order. Illuminet Press. ISBN 1-881532-05-4.
Cuddy, Dennis Laurence (1999) [1994]. Secret Records Revealed: The Men, The Money and The Methods Behind the New World Order. Hearthstone Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 1-57558-031-4.
Marrs, Jim (2001) [2001]. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-093184-1.
Lina, Jüri (2004). Architects of Deception. Referent Publishing. ASIN B0017YZELI.
== External links ==
World Government summit Official Website
Quotations related to New World Order at Wikiquote | Wikipedia/New_World_Order_(conspiracy_theory) |
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocacy organization run by and for autistic individuals. ASAN advocates for the inclusion of autistic people in decisions that affect them, including: legislation, depiction in the media, and disability services.
The organization is based in Washington, D.C., where it advocates for the United States government to adopt legislation and policies that positively impact autistic people.
== Services ==
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network provides community organizing, self-advocacy support, and public policy advocacy and education for autistic youth and adults, as well as working to improve the general public's understanding of autism and related conditions. The organization is "run by and for autistic adults". ASAN's mission statement says that autistic people are equal to everyone else and are important and necessary members of society. ASAN also maintains a network of 25 local chapters based in different states, with three chapter affiliates in Canada and Australia.
== History ==
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network was co-founded on November 13, 2006, by its former president, Ari Ne'eman, and former Board of Trustees member and Vice Chair of Development, Scott Michael Robertson. By 2009, ASAN had 15 chapters.
ASAN's early work mostly focused on fighting the use of aversives, restraint, and seclusion in special education; in December 2007, they spoke out publicly against Autism Speaks, and against the NYU Child Study Center's Ransom Notes ad campaign, which compared autism, ADHD, OCD, and eating disorders to kidnappers holding children hostage. This counter-campaign put ASAN on the public's radar and has been referred to as the neurodiversity movement's coming of age. ASAN continues to protest Autism Speaks.
On July 18, 2016, Ari Ne'eman announced that he would resign as president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, to be replaced by Julia Bascom in early 2017.
In 2020, ASAN published a statement supporting the FDA's ban on the electric skin shock devices used to torture children and adults with disabilities at the Judge Rotenberg Center.
Due to developing long COVID in May 2022, Julia Bascom stepped down as executive director of ASAN at the end of 2023, appointing Avery Outlaw as interim executive director. ASAN began seeking a permanent replacement for Julia Bascom’s position, and on June 12, 2024, the organization announced that Colin Killick would become the next executive director starting November 1.
== Activism ==
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network promotes autism acceptance through public policy initiatives, research reform, cross-disability collaboration, community outreach, college advocacy, publishing, and employment initiatives. ASAN has also supported initiatives to raise the minimum wage. ASAN has opposed federal contractors paying disabled people sub-minimum wage in 2014. Their campaign to prevent workers from being paid sub-minimum wage by federal contractors was successful. In addition, ASAN has also been involved in helping businesses hire autistic individuals.
=== Scientific issues ===
ASAN is the autistic community partner for the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership In Research and Education (AASPIRE). The AASPIRE project brings together the academic community and the autistic community, in a research format called community-based participatory research, to develop and perform research projects relevant to the needs of autistic adults.
ASAN has been critical of statements made that falsely link vaccines and autism. According to ASAN, research suggests that autism has always existed at its current levels in the population.
Between 2009 and 2012, ASAN members lobbied the American Psychiatric Association's workgroup on neurodevelopmental disorders drafting new diagnostic criteria for autism for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The advocates focused on "protecting access to diagnosis" and support, blocking proposals they deemed harmful, and "improving disparities in diagnosis for marginalized groups", while encouraging the shift towards a unified diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. A formulation proposed by ASAN regarding the possibility that some autistic people learn to mask autistic characteristics is reflected in the final criteria.
In 2018, ASAN published an open letter to the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association opposing their position statement that facilitated communication (FC) and rapid prompting method (RPM) are scientifically discredited, claiming that more research on those methods is worthwhile. ASAN also lists two facilitated communication users as members of its board of trustees.
=== Special calendar events ===
ASAN's chapters work collaboratively with the national branch on nationwide projects; an example of this is Day of Mourning, an event on March 1 where local chapters of ASAN, as well as independent groups, host candlelight vigils in remembrance of disabled people murdered by their caregivers. The first campaign was suggested by Zoe Gross of California, who had heard of a case where a young autistic man was murdered by his mother, who later committed suicide. The vigils honor people with all kinds of disabilities.
In April 2013, as part of Autism Acceptance Month – a counter-movement against the cure-focused Light It Up Blue and Autism Awareness Month movements – ASAN launched an Autism Acceptance Month web site.
=== Publications ===
ASAN published a book for autistic people in college, called Navigating College Handbook. The book was considered "the first of its kind". In 2012, ASAN began the annual Autism Campus Inclusion (ACI) Summer Institute, a week-long workshop teaching autistic students to engage in activism and advocacy on their campuses. Disability rights activist Lydia Brown is an alumn of the leadership program.
The Loud Hands Project, a transmedia publishing effort for curating and hosting submissions by autistic people about voice, has also been active during 2012, in the form of a kickstarter campaign and an anthology, both founded and organized by Julia Bascom. Later in 2012, ASAN also published the anthology Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking, which features several dozen essays by autistic neurodiversity activists including Jim Sinclair and Ari Ne'eman.
=== Work with Sesame Workshop ===
In 2015, ASAN worked with Sesame Workshop to create an autistic character for Sesame Street, named Julia. In August 2019, ASAN announced it had ended its partnership with Sesame Street after it began to associate with Autism Speaks. ASAN described the materials produced by association with Autism Speaks as "incredibly harmful information [mixed] with useful information with little to no distinction", including theories and narratives about autism that are not scientifically supported, and medical advice not backed by scientific research. ASAN reports that it discussed the harmful implications of these ideas with the producers of Sesame Street, and that the producers acknowledged that the ideas were harmful but would not reconsider their collaboration with Autism Speaks.
=== Opposition to Kevin and Avonte's Law ===
ASAN opposed Kevin and Avonte's Law, which would have provided money to fight wandering behavior in autistic children. ASAN was originally neutral, but after several modifications were made, including an amendment that would have allowed for the installation of tracking devices on people with disabilities, ASAN and several other disabilities rights groups opposed the proposed law over privacy concerns. Additionally, Ne'eman said that "The use of the 'wandering' label on adults will enable abuse and restrict the civil rights of Americans with Disabilities" and that it would "make it easier for school districts and residential facilities to justify restraint and seclusion in the name of treatment." As a result, Congress did not pass Kevin and Avonte's Law. Later, a revised version of Kevin and Avonte's Law passed which did not include the language ASAN had objected to.
== Protests ==
In 2013, a local ASAN chapter successfully protested for the removal of billboards by the Seattle Children's Hospital that advocated "wiping out" autism. The protest was followed by numerous media requests to the chapter regarding the autism rights movement. Arzu Forough of the organization Washington Autism Alliance & Advocacy claimed that coverage could have misled people about the effects of autism. According to Forough, such coverage could promote the idea that autistic people have only trivial difficulties, obscuring the level of support that some autistic people need.
=== Autism Speaks ===
ASAN has protested Autism Speaks for promoting policies that are harmful to autistic people, for promoting stigma against autistic people, and for systematically excluding autistic people from debates about issues that affect them.
In 2009, ASAN and over 60 other disability advocacy groups condemned Autism Speaks for lack of representation and for exploitative and unethical practices. Before 2015, John Elder Robison was the only autistic person ever to serve on Autism Speaks's board of directors. He later resigned in protest against the organization. In 2015, Autism Speaks made a commitment to provide better representation by appointing two autistic people to its 26-member board of directors. ASAN criticized this move as insufficient, citing: continued systematic exclusion of autistic people from positions of leadership at Autism Speaks; continued misuse of funds, particularly to support research for a cure rather than to support for autistic people; and continued use of harmful messages in advertising campaigns designed to promote stigma against autistic people. ASAN stated: "Until Autism Speaks makes significant changes to their practices and policies of fighting against the existence of autistic people, these appointments to the board are superficial changes."
On April 17, 2025, ASAN released a joint statement with Autism Speaks and four other organizations, criticizing the Trump administration's policies they highlighted as negatively impacting the autistic community, including the perpetuation of stigma, the promotion of the debunked theory that vaccines make people autistic and funding cuts to healthcare, housing and education. ASAN accepted additional signatories to the statement on a rolling basis.
== See also ==
Controversies in autism
List of autism-related topics
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website | Wikipedia/Autistic_Self_Advocacy_Network |
The Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations were based on false claims by the United States government alleging that a secretive relationship existed between Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda between 1992 and 2003. U.S. president George W. Bush used it as a main reason for invading Iraq in 2003.
The conspiracy theory dates after the Gulf War in 1991, when Iraqi Intelligence Service officers met al-Qaeda members in 1992. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, the conspiracy theory gained worldwide attention. The consensus of intelligence experts, backed up by reports from the 9/11 Commission, United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and declassified United States Department of Defense reports, was that these contacts never led to a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Critics of Bush have said that he was intentionally building a case for war with Iraq with no regard for factual evidence.
== Background ==
During the lead-up to the Iraq War, questions were raised about a possible connection between Saddam Hussein's government and al-Qaeda. One question was whether the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda had a cooperative relationship.
Although some contacts between agents of Saddam's government and members of al-Qaeda have been alleged, the consensus of experts and analysts is that those contacts never led to a formal relationship. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that there was only one encounter between representatives of the Baathist regime and representatives of al-Qaeda. This meeting took place in Sudan in 1995, and the Iraqi representative (who is in custody and has been cooperating with investigators) said that after the meeting he "received word from his IIS chain-of-command that he should not see bin Laden again." The panel found evidence of only two other instances in which there was any communication between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda members. On the other two occasions, the Committee concluded, Saddam rebuffed meeting requests from an al-Qaeda operative. The intelligence community has not found other evidence of meetings between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
On the more specific question of whether Saddam was behind the attacks of September 11, 2001, the consensus is that there is no credible evidence of his government's involvement. The US intelligence community (CIA, NSA, and DIA) view, confirmed by the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission Report and the Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence, is that there was no cooperative effort between the two and Saddam did not support the 9/11 attacks; it was considered that the difference in ideology between Saddam and al-Qaeda made cooperation in any terrorist attacks unlikely. The Senate report discussed the possibility of Saddam offering al-Qaeda training and safe haven, but confirmed the CIA's conclusion that there was no evidence of operational cooperation between the two. By March 20, 2006, President George W. Bush made clear that his administration did not have evidence to prove that Saddam played a role in the attacks.
== History of claims ==
=== After the September 11 attacks ===
The Bush administration sought to link the Iraqi president to Islamist radicals early in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. President Bush allegedly made the case to Tony Blair as early as September 14, 2001, although Blair urged him not to pursue the claim.
=== Dick Cheney's allegations ===
Vice President Dick Cheney said during a Meet the Press appearance on December 9, 2001, that Iraq was harboring Abdul Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Cheney repeated the claim in another appearance on September 14, 2003: We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaida sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaida organization. We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in '93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of '93. And we've learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven. Cheney said in a January 2004 interview with National Public Radio there was "overwhelming evidence" of a relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda based on purported evidence, including Iraq's alleged harboring of Yasin.
In the 2001 and 2003 Meet the Press interviews, Cheney also reported that Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross said that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in Prague five months before the attacks; in the 2003 interview, he said that "we've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know." In 2006, Cheney acknowledged that the notion "that the meeting ever took place" had been "pretty well knocked down now."
=== Intelligence community claims and doubts ===
In the initial stages of the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency under George Tenet was rising to prominence as the lead agency in the Afghan war. When Tenet insisted in his personal meetings with President Bush that there was no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq, however, Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the CIA and Tenet. Believing that a state was involved, they questioned whether the CIA were competent enough to produce accurate information as the agency underestimated threats and failed to accurately predict events such as the Iranian Revolution, the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. They instead preferred outside analysis, of which intelligence was supplied by the Iraqi National Congress headed by Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi. The questionable intelligence acquired by this secret program was then "stovepiped" to the vice president and presented to the public. Cheney's office would sometimes leak the intelligence to reporters, where it would be reported by outlets such as The New York Times. Cheney would subsequently appear on the Sunday political television talk shows to discuss the intelligence, citing the Times to give it credence.
The prewar CIA testimony was that there was evidence of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade, with Iraq providing al-Qaeda training (combat, bomb-making, and CBRN:chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear), but they had no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other al-Qaeda strike. The CIA's report on Iraq's ties to terrorism noted in September 2002 that the CIA did not have "credible intelligence reporting" of operational collaboration between Iraq and al-Qaeda. According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the CIA reported that "al-Qaida, including Bin Ladin personally, and Saddam were leery of close cooperation," but the "mutual antipathy of the two would not prevent tactical, limited cooperation." (p. 338) The current expert consensus is that although members of Saddam's intelligence service may have met with al-Qaeda terrorists over the last decade or so, there was no evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda were linked operationally. It is now known that the main source for the CIA's claim that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making, poisons and gases included the now-recanted claims of captured al-Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The CIA has since recalled and reissued its intelligence reporting about al-Libi's recanted claims. The DIA communicated to President Bush in February 2002 its stance that al-Libi "was intentionally misleading his debriefers."
=== 9/11 Commission conclusions ===
In its report, the 9/11 Commission said that Osama bin Laden sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan and sought to attract them to his Islamic army. Those forces primarily operated in areas not under Saddam's control. To protect his ties with Iraq, Sudanese Islamic leader Hassan al-Turabi brokered an agreement with bin Laden to stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Laden seemed to honor this agreement for a time, although he continued to aid Islamic extremists in Kurdistan. During the late 1990s, these extremist groups were defeated by Kurdish forces. In 2001, the extremist groups (with help from Bin Laden) re-formed as Ansar al-Islam. Indications exist that by then, the Iraqi regime tolerated (and may have helped) Ansar al-Islam against their common Kurdish enemy.
The commission concluded that "to date [2004] we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship," however, and did not find proof "indicating that Iraq cooperated with al-Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States." This conclusion is consistent with the findings of investigations of specific aspects of the Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda relationship, including those conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and National Security Council. The Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence also reviewed the intelligence community's conclusions, and found them justifiable.
=== Operation Iraqi Freedom documents ===
The U.S. government released "Operation Iraqi Freedom documents", about which the Pentagon said that it had made "no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy." Claims have been made that information in some of the documents suggests that Saddam and al-Qaeda may have been willing to work together. 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey looked at some of the documents and "was careful to say that new documents translated last night by ABC News did not prove Saddam Hussein played a role in any way in plotting the attacks of September 11, 2001." However, Kerrey said that one document suggests that "Saddam was a significant enemy of the United States."
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence looked at the documents and said that "amateur translators won't find any major surprises, such as proof Hussein hid stockpiles of chemical weapons." The Pentagon also examined the documents and released an official study which did not report on any evidence linking Saddam to al-Qaeda. The 2006 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that "additional reviews of documents recovered in Iraq are unlikely to provide information that would contradict the Committee's findings or conclusions." Intelligence expert Steven Aftergood said that the release of the documents was being used as an opportunity to find "a retrospective justification for the war in Iraq."
=== Bush administration retraction ===
On March 21, 2006, Bush sought to distance himself from the allegation of any link: "First, just if I might correct a misperception, I don't think we ever said—at least I know I didn't say that there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein." Bush reaffirmed the White House position in stronger terms in a press conference on August 21 of that year. Ken Herman of Cox News asked, "What did Iraq have to do with ... the attack on the World Trade Center?" Bush replied, "Nothing", and added: "Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq."
Opponents of Bush's Iraq policy called his statement inconsistent with his letter to Congress of March 21, 2003. A minority (Democratic) staff report by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform said that "in 125 separate appearances, they [Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice] made ... 61 misleading statements about Iraq's relationship with al-Qaeda."
=== American public opinion ===
Polls have indicated that many Americans continued to believe that Saddam was linked to al-Qaeda, although the number who do so has slowly declined. The discrepancy has been attributed to the way the U.S. mainstream media presented facts and opinion about the war on terror.
== Skepticism ==
=== Conflicting goals and ideologies ===
Saddam Hussein was a Ba'athist, and Ba'athism combines pan-Arab nationalism with Arab socialism. The ideological founder of Ba'athism, Michel Aflaq, was a Christian. The movement is at odds with political Islam, with which Saddam had been in conflict; Saddam exiled Ayatollah Khomeini to France when the ayatollah attempted to incite the Iraqi Shia to overthrow him when Khomeini was in exile in Najaf, which was a catalyst for the Iranian Revolution and the resulting Iran-Iraq war. Khomeini pitted Saddam against Islamic radicalism; Saddam's people were inspired by the Iranian Revolution and eight years of "holy war" against Iranians who used suicide tactics. This wreaked havoc on the Iraqi armed forces, who solved the problem with chemical weapons.
During the Lebanese Civil War, Saddam supported Michel Aoun and the Christian Maronites instead of the Amal Movement or Hezbollah, which were funded by Iran and most other Arab countries. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Osama bin Laden offered to defend Saudi Arabia by sending mujahideen from Afghanistan to repel Saddam's forces. After the Gulf War, bin Laden continued to criticize Saddam's Ba'ath administration and emphasized that Saddam could not be trusted. Bin Laden told his biographer that "the land of the Arab world, the land is like a mother, and Saddam Hussein is fucking his mother." Saddam abolished sharia courts in Iraq, cracked down on Islamist movements (responding with mass executions and torture when he felt threatened by them), promoted Western ideals of society and law, and usually retained secular Sunnis, Shias and Christians in his government.
Robert Pape's study of suicide terrorism found that "al-Qaeda's transnational suicide terrorists have come overwhelmingly from America's closest allies in the Muslim world and not at all from the Muslim regimes that the U.S. State Department considers 'state sponsors of terrorism'." Pape notes that no al-Qaeda suicide attackers came from Iraq. Daniel Byman's study of state sponsorship of terrorism also did not list Iraq as a significant state sponsor and called the al-Qaeda connection "a rationale that before the war was strained and after it seems an ever-weaker reed." Counterterrorism experts Rohan Gunaratna, Bruce Hoffman and Daniel Benjamin and journalists Peter Bergen and Jason Burke (both of whom have written extensively about al-Qaeda) have found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. This conclusion agrees with investigations by the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the 9/11 Commission. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reviewed the CIA investigation, and found that the agency's conclusion that there was no evidence of operational collaboration was justified.
Although Saddam was not involved in the September 11 attacks, members of his government had contacts with al-Qaeda; however, the links are not considered by experts and analysts as convincing evidence of a collaborative, operational relationship. Former counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke writes,
The simple fact is that lots of people, particularly in the Middle East, pass along many rumors and they end up being recorded and filed by U.S. intelligence agencies in raw reports. That does not make them "intelligence". Intelligence involves analysis of raw reports, not merely their enumeration or weighing them by the pound. Analysis, in turn, involves finding independent means of corroborating the reports. Did al-Qaeda agents ever talk to Iraqi agents? I would be startled if they had not. I would also be startled if American, Israeli, Iranian, British, or Jordanian agents had somehow failed to talk to al-Qaeda or Iraqi agents. Talking to each other is what intelligence agents do, often under assumed identities or "false flags", looking for information or possible defectors.
Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, told the Voice of America that
... Saddam Hussein had his agenda and al-Qaida had its agenda, and those two agendas were incompatible. And so if there was any contact between them, it was a contact that was rebuffed rather than a contact that led to meaningful relationships between them.
=== Lack of evidence ===
An alleged meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer about which Vice President Cheney said that "we've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it" was dismissed by CIA Director George Tenet, who told the Senate Intelligence Committee in February 2004 that there was no evidence to support the meeting. The FBI had evidence that Atta was in Florida at the time and taking aircraft flight training; the Iraqi officer in question, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani, was captured and said that he had never met Atta.
Cheney's repeated accusation that Iraq harbored Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, conflicts with Iraq's 1998 offer to the FBI of extradition for Yasin in return for a statement clearing Iraq of any responsibility for the attack. Although the CIA and FBI had concluded that Iraq played no role in the attack, the Clinton administration refused the offer. Iraq also offered to extradite Yasin in 2001, after the 9/11 attacks. In June 2002, an unnamed U.S. intelligence official told 60 Minutes that Iraq had attached "extreme conditions" to Yasin's extradition. According to the official, the Iraqis wanted the U.S. to sign a document detailing Yasin's whereabouts since 1993 but the U.S. disagreed with their version of the facts. Yasin cooperated with the FBI and was released, which the bureau later called a "mistake." The CIA and FBI concluded in 1995 and 1996 that "the Iraqi government was in no way involved in the attack", and counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke called the allegations "absolutely without foundation" in 2004. The Iraqis made another offer to the Bush administration in 2003, which was also declined.
Al-Qaeda did not have any relationship with Saddam Hussein or his regime. We had to draw up a plan to enter Iraq through the north that was not under the control of his regime. We would then spread south to the areas of our fraternal Sunni brothers. The fraternal brothers of the Ansar al-Islam expressed their willingness to offer assistance to help us achieve this goal.
Former National Security Council counterterrorism directors Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon summarized the problem with the Bush administration's view in the eyes of the intelligence community: "The administration pressed its case for war most emphatically by arguing that U.S. national security was imperiled by Saddam's ties to al-Qaeda. The argument had the obvious virtue of playing to the public's desire to see the war on terrorism prosecuted aggressively and conclusively. Yet, scant proof of these links was presented. The record showed a small number of contacts between jihadists and Iraqi officials. This was treated as the tip of an unseen iceberg of cooperation, even though it fell far short of anything that resembled significant cooperation in the eyes of the counterterrorism community—as it always had. No persuasive proof was given of money, weaponry, or training being provided." Former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell Lawrence B. Wilkerson said, "[A]s the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May 2002—well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion—its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida."
== Background ==
Saddam invoked religion shortly before the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (possibly to bolster his government), adding the words "God is Great" in Arabic to the flag and referring to God in his speeches. He began the Faith Campaign in 1994, which included the construction and repair of mosques, the closure of night clubs, and changes to the law which restricted alcohol consumption.
Some sources allege that several meetings between top Iraqi operatives and bin Laden took place. These claims have been disputed by other sources, including most of the original intelligence agencies that investigated the allegations. Many in the intelligence community are skeptical about whether such meetings, if they took place at all, resulted in any meaningful relationship. Many of the claims of collaboration seem to have originated with associates of the Iraqi National Congress, whose credibility has been questioned and who have been accused of manipulating evidence to lure the United States into war on false pretenses. Raw intelligence reports also reached public awareness through the leaking of a memo from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the conclusions of which have been disputed by intelligence agencies which include the CIA. Feith's view of the relationship between Saddam and Osama differed from the official view of the intelligence community, and the memo was leaked to the media. The Pentagon issued a statement that the memo was "a classified annex containing a list and description of the requested reports, so that the committee could obtain the reports from the relevant members of the intelligence community ... The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions." It added, "Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal." Former DIA Middle East section head W. Patrick Lang told the Washington Post that the Weekly Standard article, which published Feith's memo, "is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?" According to the Post, "another former senior intelligence official said the memo is not an intelligence product but rather 'data points ... among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true.'"
It has been suggested that an understanding was reached between Iraq and al-Qaeda that al-Qaeda would not act against Saddam in exchange for Iraqi support (primarily in the form of training), but no evidence of such an understanding has been produced. Mohamed Atta allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague, but intelligence officials have concluded that no such meeting took place. A training camp in Salman Pak (south of Baghdad) was said by a number of defectors to have been used to train international terrorists (assumed to be al-Qaeda members) in hijacking techniques, using a real airplane as a prop. The defectors were inconsistent about a number of details; the camp has been examined by U.S. Marines, and intelligence analysts do not believe that it was used by al-Qaeda. Some analysts believe that it was used for counterterrorism training, and others believe it was used to train foreign fighters overtly allied with Iraq. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded, "Postwar findings support the April 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that there was no credible reporting on al-Qa'ida training at Salman Pak or anywhere else in Iraq. There have been no credible reports since the war that Iraq trained al-Qa'ida operatives at Salman Pak to conduct or support transnational terrorist operations."
In November 2001, a month after the September 11 attacks, Mubarak al-Duri was contacted by Sudanese intelligence services who told him that the FBI had sent Jack Cloonan and several other agents to speak with a number of people known to have ties to bin Laden. Al-Duri and another Iraqi colleague agreed to meet with Cloonan in a safe house overseen by the intelligence service. They laughed when asked about any connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, saying that bin Laden hated the dictator whom he considered a "Scotch-drinking, woman-chasing apostate."
== Timeline ==
Much evidence of alleged links between Iraq and al-Qaeda is based on speculation about meetings which might have taken place between Iraqi officials and al-Qaeda members; the idea that a meeting could have occurred has been interpreted as evidence of collaboration. According to terrorism analyst Evan Kohlman, "While there have been a number of promising intelligence leads hinting at possible meetings between al-Qaeda members and elements of the former Baghdad regime, nothing has been yet shown demonstrating that these potential contacts were historically any more significant than the same level of communication maintained between Osama bin Laden and ruling elements in a number of Iraq's Persian Gulf neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Qatar, and Kuwait."
== Colin Powell's address to the U.N. Security Council ==
On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the U.N. Security Council on the issue of Iraq. In his speech, Powell made several claims about Iraq's ties to terrorism. He acknowledged in January 2004 that the speech presented no hard evidence of collaboration between Saddam and al-Qaeda, and told reporters at a State Department press conference that "I have not seen smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I do believe the connections existed." After Powell left office, he acknowledged that he was skeptical about the evidence presented to him for the speech. He told Barbara Walters in an interview that he considered the speech a "blot" on his record, and feels "terrible" about assertions he made in the speech which turned out to be false: "There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me." Asked about a Saddam-al-Qaeda connection, Powell answered: "I have never seen a connection ... I can't think otherwise because I'd never seen evidence to suggest there was one."
The main claims in Powell's speech—that Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and that Saddam's government provided training and assistance to al-Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad—have been disputed by the intelligence community and terrorism experts. The CIA released an August 2004 report which concluded that there was "no conclusive evidence that the regime harbored Osama bin Laden associate Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi." A U.S. official told Reuters that "the report did not make any final judgments or come to any definitive conclusions: "To suggest the case is closed on this would not be correct." Zarqawi reportedly entered Iraq from Iran, infiltrating the Kurdish north because it was the one part of the country not under Saddam's control. Intelligence experts say that Zarqawi had few ties to Osama bin Laden, noting that he was a rival (not an affiliate) of al-Qaeda. A former Israeli intelligence official described the meeting between Zarqawi and bin Laden as "loathing at first sight." The other major claims in the speech are attributed by Powell to "an al-Qaeda source." Karen DeYoung wrote, "A year after the invasion, the [CIA] acknowledged that the information had come from a single source who had been branded a liar by U.S. intelligence officials long before Powell's presentation." The source was captured al-Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was handed over to Egypt for interrogation. According to The New York Times, al-Libi provided some accurate intelligence on al Qaeda and made some statements about Iraq and al Qaeda while in American custody; after he was handed over to Egypt, he made more-specific assertions about Iraq training al-Qaeda members in biological- and chemical-weapons use. A February 2002 DIA report expressed skepticism about al-Libi's claims, noting that he may have been subjected to harsh treatment in Egyptian custody. In February 2004, the CIA reissued al-Libi's debriefing reports to note that he had recanted information. A government official told the New York Times that al-Libi's claims of harsh treatment had not been corroborated; the CIA has refused to comment on al-Libi's case since much of its information remains classified, but current and former government officials agreed to discuss the case on condition of anonymity. Two U.S. counterterrorism officials told Newsweek that they believed the information Powell cited about al-Iraqi came from al-Libi. A CIA officer told the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that although the CIA believes al-Libi fabricated information, the agency could not determine whether – or what portions of – the original statements or later recantations are true of false. The Senate report concluded, "The Intelligence Community has found no postwar information to indicate that Iraq provided CBW training to al-Qa'ida."
== Investigations and reports ==
Several investigations by U.S. intelligence agencies, foreign intelligence agencies, and independent investigative bodies have examined aspects of alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Every investigation has concluded that the data examined did not provide compelling evidence of a cooperative relationship between the two entities. On April 29, 2007, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said on 60 Minutes, "We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al-Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America, period."
=== 1993 WTC investigations ===
After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, there were several investigations of possible collaboration between Saddam Hussein and the terrorists who attacked the building. Neil Herman, who headed the FBI investigation of the attack, noted that there was no evidence of Iraqi support for the attack despite Yasin's presence in Baghdad. "We looked at that rather extensively," he told CNN terrorism expert Peter Bergen. "There were no ties to the Iraqi government." Bergen wrote, "In sum, by the mid-'90s, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the F.B.I., the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, the C.I.A., the N.S.C., and the State Department had all found no evidence implicating the Iraqi government in the first Trade Center attack."
=== 1998 National Security Council exercise ===
Daniel Benjamin, who headed the United States National Security Council's counterterrorism division, led a 1998 exercise to analyze the CIA's contention that Iraq and al-Qaeda would not collaborate. "This was a red-team effort," Benjamin said. "We looked at this as an opportunity to disprove the conventional wisdom, and basically we came to the conclusion that the CIA had this one right." He later told The Boston Globe, "No one disputes that there have been contacts over the years. In that part of the America-hating universe, contacts happen. But that's still a long way from suggesting that they were really working together."
=== 2001 President's Daily Brief ===
Ten days after the September 11 attacks, President Bush received a classified President's Daily Brief (prepared at his request) indicating that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks and there was "scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda." The PDB wrote off the few contacts that existed between Saddam's government and al-Qaeda as attempts to monitor the group, not work with it. According to National Journal, "Much of the contents of the PDB were later incorporated, albeit in a slightly different form, into a lengthier CIA analysis examining not only Al Qaeda's contacts with Iraq, but also Iraq's support for international terrorism." This PDB was one of the documents the Bush administration refused to turn over to the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq, even on a classified basis, and refused to discuss other than acknowledging its existence.
=== 2001-02 Atta in Prague investigations ===
After 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta was allegedly seen in Prague in 2001 meeting with an Iraqi diplomat, a number of investigations analyzed the possible meeting. They concluded that all known evidence suggested that such a meeting was unlikely at best. According to the January 2003 CIA report "Iraqi Support for Terrorism", "[T]he most reliable reporting to date casts doubt on this possibility" (a meeting). CIA director George Tenet released "the most complete public assessment by the agency on the issue" in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee in July 2004, saying that the agency was "increasingly skeptical" that any such meeting took place. CIA deputy director John McLaughlin described the extent of the agency's investigation into the claim: "Well, on something like the Atta meeting in Prague, we went over that every which way from Sunday. We looked at it from every conceivable angle. We peeled open the source, examined the chain of acquisition. We looked at photographs. We looked at timetables. We looked at who was where and when. It is wrong to say that we didn't look at it. In fact, we looked at it with extraordinary care and intensity and fidelity." A New York Times investigation which included "extensive interviews with leading Czech figures" reported that Czech officials had backed off the claim.
The FBI and the Czech police chief investigated the issue and reached similar conclusions; FBI director Robert Mueller noted that the bureau's investigation "ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on, from flight reservations to car rentals to bank accounts." The 9/11 Commission investigation, which examined the FBI and Czech intelligence investigations, concluded that "[n]o evidence has been found that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001." The commission still could not "absolutely rule out the possibility" that Atta was in Prague on 9 April under an alias, but concluded: "There was no reason for such a meeting, especially considering the risk it would pose to the operation. By April 2001, all four pilots had completed most of their training, and the muscle hijackers were about to begin entering the United States. The available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting." (p. 229)
=== 2002 DIA reports ===
In February 2002, The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency issued Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary No. 044–02 in February 2002 (the existence of which was revealed on 9 December 2005 by Doug Jehl in the New York Times), which impugned the credibility of information obtained from captured al-Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The DIA summary suggested that al-Libi had been "intentionally misleading" his interrogators, and cast doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy: "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control." In April 2002, the DIA said that "there was no credible reporting on al-Qa'ida training at Salman Pak or anywhere else in Iraq".
=== 2002 British intelligence report ===
In October 2002, a British intelligence investigation of possible links between Iraq and al-Qaeda and the possibility of Iraqi WMD attacks issued a report which concluded that "al Qaeda has shown interest in gaining chemical and biological expertise from Iraq, but we do not know whether any such training was provided. We have no intelligence of current cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda and do not believe that al Qaeda plans to conduct terrorist attacks under Iraqi direction".
=== 2003 CIA report ===
The CIA released Iraqi Support for Terrorism, a report to Congress, in January 2003. The report concluded, "In contrast to the patron-client pattern between Iraq and its Palestinian surrogates, the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida appears to more closely resemble that of two independent actors trying to exploit each other—their mutual suspicion suborned by al-Qaida's interest in Iraqi assistance, and Baghdad's interest in al-Qaida's anti-U.S. attacks ... The Intelligence Community has no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other al-Qaida strike." Michael Scheuer, the main researcher assigned to review research for the report, described the review and his conclusions: "For about four weeks in late 2002 and early 2003, I and several others were engaged full time in searching CIA files—seven days a week, often far more than eight hours a day. At the end of the effort, we had gone back ten years in the files and had reviewed nearly twenty thousand documents that amounted to well over fifty thousand pages of materials ... There was no information that remotely supported the analysis that claimed there was a strong working relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. I was embarrassed because this reality invalidated the analysis I had presented on the subject in my book." Scheuer said that he was not part of the analysis team that produced "Iraqi Support for Terrorism", but was the main researcher reviewing the evidence and conclusions of that report. According to the SSCI report, "Iraqi Support for Terrorism contained the following summary judgments regarding Iraq's provision of training to al-Qaida: Regarding the Iraq-al-Qa'ida relationship, reporting from sources of varying reliability points to ... incidents of training ... The most disturbing aspect of the relationship is the dozen or so reports of varying reliability mentioning the involvement of Iraq or Iraqi nationals in al-Qa'ida's efforts to obtain CBW training." Although the report questioned information from captured al-Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, Colin Powell cited al-Libi's claims in his speech to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003; the following day, President Bush spoke in the Roosevelt Room at the White House with Powell at his side. National Security Council spokesperson Michele Davis told Newsweek that it was impossible to determine whether dissent from the DIA and questions by the CIA were seen by officials at the White House before the president spoke. A counter-terrorism official told Newsweek that although CIA reports on al-Libi were distributed widely around U.S. intelligence agencies and policy-making offices, many similarly routine reports were not read by senior policy-making officials. Davis added that Bush's remarks were "based on what was put forward to him as the views of the intelligence community", and those views came from "an aggregation" of sources. Newsweek reported, "The new documents also raise the possibility that caveats raised by intelligence analysts about al-Libi's claims were withheld from Powell when he was preparing his Security Council speech. Larry Wilkerson, who served as Powell's chief of staff and oversaw the vetting of Powell's speech, responded to an e-mail from Newsweek Wednesday stating that he was unaware of the DIA doubts about al-Libi at the time the speech was being prepared. 'We never got any dissent with respect to those lines you cite ... indeed the entire section that now we know came from [al-Libi],' Wilkerson wrote."
=== 2003 British intelligence report ===
In January 2003, British intelligence completed a classified report on Iraq. The report was leaked to the BBC, who published information about it on February 5 (the day that Colin Powell addressed the United Nations). According to the BBC, the report "says al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden views Iraq's ruling Ba'ath party as running contrary to his religion, calling it an 'apostate regime'. 'His aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq,' it says." The BBC reported that former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that intelligence indicated that the Iraqi regime appeared to be allowing a permissive environment "in which al-Qaeda is able to operate ... Certainly we have some evidence of links between al-Qaeda and various people in Iraq ... What we don't know, and the prime minister and I have made it very clear, is the extent of those links ... What we also know, however, is that the Iraqi regime have been up to their necks in the pursuit of terrorism generally."
=== 2003 Israeli intelligence ===
In February 2003, Israeli intelligence sources told the Associated Press that no link had been conclusively established between Saddam and al-Qaeda. According to the AP story, "Boaz Ganor, an Israeli counter-terrorism expert, told the AP he knows of no Iraqi ties to terror groups, beyond Baghdad's relationship with Palestinian militias and possibly Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda ... A senior Israeli security source told the AP that Israel has not yet found evidence of an Iraqi-Palestinian-Al Qaeda triangle, and that several investigations into possible Al Qaeda ties to Palestinian militias have so far not yielded substantial results. Ganor said Al Qaeda has put out feelers to Palestinian groups, but ties are at a very preliminary stage."
=== 2003 Feith memo ===
A 2007 Pentagon inspector general's report concluded that Douglas Feith's office in the Department of Defense had "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers." In October 2003, Feith (undersecretary of defense for policy and head of the controversial Office of Special Plans) sent a memo to Congress that included "a classified annex containing a list and description of the requested reports, so that the committee could obtain the reports from the relevant members of the intelligence community ... The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions." The memo was leaked to the media, and became the foundation of reports in the Weekly Standard by Stephen F. Hayes. W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of Defense Intelligence Agency, called the Feith memo "a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?" Daniel Benjamin also criticized the memo, noting that "in any serious intelligence review, much of the material presented would quickly be discarded." The Pentagon said, "Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal."
=== 2004 Carnegie study ===
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace scholars Joseph Cirincione, Jessica Tuchman Mathews and George Perkovich published their study, WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications, in January 2004. The study looked into Saddam's relationship with al-Qaeda, concluding that "although there have been periodic meetings between Iraqi and Al Qaeda agents, and visits by Al Qaeda agents to Baghdad, the most intensive searching over the last two years has produced no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam's government and Al Qaeda." It also found "some evidence that there were no operational links" between the two entities.
=== 2004 FBI interrogation reports ===
During the interrogation of Saddam Hussein in the first half of 2004, FBI special agent George Piro had 25 face-to-face meetings with Saddam Hussein while he was held as a prisoner of war at the United States military detention facility at Baghdad International Airport. Piro's reports, filed during the interrogation, were declassified and released in 2009 after a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request. Hussein had reportedly maintained that he did not collaborate with al-Qaeda, said he feared al-Qaeda would have turned on him, and was quoted as calling Osama bin Laden a "zealot."
=== 9/11 Commission Report ===
The July 2004 9/11 Commission Report addressed a possible conspiracy between the government of Iraq and al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks. The report addressed allegations of contacts between al-Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's government and concluded that there was no evidence that such contacts developed into a collaborative relationship, and they did not cooperate to commit terrorist attacks against the United States.
=== 2004 Senate report of pre-war intelligence on Iraq ===
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence examined "the quality and quantity of U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, ties to terrorist groups, Saddam Hussein's threat to stability and security in the region, and his repression of his own people;" and "the objectivity, reasonableness, independence, and accuracy of the judgments reached by the Intelligence Community". The committee examined the CIA's five intelligence products on Iraqi links to terrorism, focusing on the agency's 2003 study, in section 12 of the report: "Iraq's Links to Terrorism". It concluded that the CIA had accurately concluded that contacts between Saddam Hussein's regime and members of al-Qaeda did not constitute a formal relationship. Based on information the CIA made available to the Senate committee, it published the Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence critiquing the intelligence-gathering process.
=== 2004 CIA report ===
In August 2004, the CIA finished another assessment of possible links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The assessment had been requested by the Office of the Vice President, which asked the CIA to reexamine the possibility that Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi constituted a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda (as Colin Powell had said in his speech to the United Nations Security Council). The assessment concluded that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had harbored al-Zarqawi. A U.S. official familiar with the new CIA assessment said that intelligence analysts were unable to determine conclusively the nature of the relationship between al-Zarqawi and Saddam. "It's still being worked," he said. "It (the assessment) ... doesn't make clear-cut, bottom-line judgments" about whether Saddam's regime aided al-Zarqawi. The official told Knight Ridder, "What is indisputable is that Zarqawi was operating out of Baghdad and was involved in a lot of bad activities"; the report did not conclude, however, that Saddam's regime had provided "aid, comfort and succor" to al-Zarqawi. According to the Knight Ridder story, "Some officials believe that Saddam's secular regime kept an eye on al-Zarqawi, but didn't actively assist him." Knight Ridder reporters called the CIA study "the latest assessment that calls into question one of President Bush's key justifications for last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq."
==== 2005 update ====
In October 2005, the CIA updated its 2004 report to conclude that Saddam's regime "did not have a relationship, harbor, or even turn a blind eye toward Mr. Zarqawi and his associates". Two counterterrorism analysts told Newsweek that Zarqawi probably received medical treatment in Baghdad in 2002, but Saddam's government may never have known that he was in Iraq because he used "false cover." MSNBC reported that an intelligence official told Newsweek that, according to the report's current draft, "most evidence suggests Saddam Hussein did not provide Zarqawi safe haven before the war. It also recognizes that there are still unanswered questions and gaps in knowledge about the relationship ... The most recent CIA analysis is an update—based on fresh reporting from Iraq and interviews with former Saddam officials—of a classified report that analysts in the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence first produced more than a year ago."
=== 2006 Pentagon study ===
In February 2006, the Pentagon published a study of the "Harmony database" documents captured in Afghanistan. Although the study did not address allegations of Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda, it analyzed papers that offer insight into the history of the movement and tensions among its leadership. The Pentagon found evidence that al-Qaeda jihadists viewed Saddam as an "infidel", and advised against working with him.
=== 2006 U.S. Senate report ===
In September 2006, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released two bipartisan reports which constituted Phase II of its study of prewar intelligence claims about Iraq's pursuit of WMD and alleged links to al-Qaeda. The reports concluded, according to David Stout of The New York Times, that "there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had prewar ties to Al Qaeda and one of the terror organization's most notorious members, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." Senator John Rockefeller, the committee's ranking Democrat, said: "Today's reports show that the administration's repeated allegations of a past, present and future relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq were wrong and intended to exploit the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks."
==== Administration response ====
After the report was released, Condoleezza Rice told Fox News Sunday that she did not remember seeing that particular report and "there were ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda." In an interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press, Vice President Cheney said: "We've never been able to confirm any connection between Iraq and 9/11." He reiterated that there was a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda, citing Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad and DCI George Tenet's claim of "a relationship that went back at least a decade." Pressed about the Senate report, Cheney said: "I haven't seen the report. I haven't had a chance to read it yet."
=== 2007 Pentagon inspector general's report ===
The Pentagon's inspector general issued a February 2007 report which found that the actions of Feith's Office of Special Plans, the source of most misleading intelligence about al-Qaeda and Iraq, were inappropriate but not illegal. Senator Carl Levin, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said: "The bottom line is that intelligence relating to the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq. The inspector general's report is a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities in the DOD policy office that helped take this nation to war."
Feith said, however, that he felt vindicated by the report's conclusion that what he did was not unlawful. He told The Washington Post that his office produced a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, acknowledging that he "was not endorsing its substance."
=== 2008 Pentagon report ===
Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, a Pentagon-sponsored March 2008 study, was based on the review of over 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the 2003 US invasion. The study found no direct connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. It noted that during the early 1990s, "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives."
According to the abstract,
While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist–operatives monitored closely ... This created both the appearance of and, in some ways, a 'de facto' link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust.
The report also stated that "captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda.": 34 In July 2001, the IIS director for international intelligence ordered an investigation of a terrorist group known as the Army of Muhammad. The investigation revealed that the group "threatened Kuwaiti authorities and plans to attack American and Western interests",: 34 and was working with Osama bin Laden. According to the report, "A later memorandum from the same collection to the Director of the IIS reports that the Army of Muhammad is endeavoring to receive assistance [from Iraq] to implement its objectives, and that the local IIS station has been told to deal with them in accordance with priorities previously established. The IIS agent goes on to inform the Director that 'this organization is an offshoot of bin Laden, but that their objectives are similar but with different names that can be a way of camouflaging the organization.'": 35
ABC News noted about the report that the primary target of Saddam's terror activities was not the United States or Israel: "The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq." Saddam's primary aim was self-preservation and the elimination of potential internal threats to his power.
=== 2008 U.S. Senate report ===
In June 2008, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the final part of its Phase II investigation of the intelligence assessments that led to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq; this part of the investigation looked into statements by members of the Bush administration, and compared those statements to what the intelligence community was telling the administration at the time. The report, endorsed by eight Democrats and two Republicans on the committee, concluded that "Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence." It concluded that "Statements ... regarding Iraq's contacts with al-Qa'ida were substantiated by intelligence information. However, policymakers' statements did not accurately convey the intelligence assessments of the nature of these contacts, and left the impression that the contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation or support of al-Qa'ida" and "Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al-Qa'ida-related terrorist members were substantiated by the intelligence assessments. Intelligence assessments noted Zarqawi's presence in Iraq and his ability to travel and operate within the country. The intelligence community generally believed that Iraqi intelligence must have known about, and therefore at least tolerated, Zarqawi's presence in the country."
The New York Times called the report "especially critical of statements by the president and vice president linking Iraq to Al Qaeda and raising the possibility that Mr. Hussein might supply the terrorist group with unconventional weapons." Committee chair John D. Rockefeller IV wrote in an addendum to the report, "Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false premises."
In a minority addendum to the report signed by four Republican dissenters, the Republicans "suggested that the investigation was a partisan smoke screen to obscure the real story: that the C.I.A. failed the Bush administration by delivering intelligence assessments to policy makers that have since been discredited." The minority senators did not take issue with the majority's conclusion that there was no evidence of a Saddam-al-Qaeda conspiracy, but objected to the manner in which the report was assembled and called the finished product "a waste of Committee time and resources." The dissent focused on the committee's reluctance to include statements by previous administrations and members of Congress about prewar intelligence, and objected to the report's conclusion that President Bush and Vice President Cheney made statements that Saddam was prepared to give WMD to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States.
== Notes ==
== References == | Wikipedia/Saddam–al-Qaeda_conspiracy_theory |
Craniosacral therapy (CST) or cranial osteopathy is a form of alternative medicine that uses gentle touch to feel non-existent rhythmic movements of the skull's bones and supposedly adjust the immovable joints of the skull to achieve a therapeutic result. CST is a pseudoscience and its practice has been characterized as quackery. It is based on fundamental misconceptions about the anatomy and physiology of the human skull and is promoted as a cure-all for a variety of health conditions.
Medical research has found no significant evidence that either CST or cranial osteopathy confers any health benefit, and attempts to manipulate the bones of the skull can be harmful, particularly for children or infants. The basic assumptions of CST are not true, and practitioners produce conflicting and mutually exclusive diagnoses of the same patients.
== Effectiveness and safety ==
Practitioners of CST claim it is effective in treating a wide range of conditions, sometimes claiming it is a cancer cure, or a cure-all. Practitioners particularly advocate the use of CST on children. The American Cancer Society cautions that CST should never be used on children under age two. Pediatricians have expressed concern at the harm CST can cause to children and infants.
There is no evidence that CST is of use for people with autism and its use is potentially harmful. As of 2018 at least two deaths had been reported resulting from CST spinal manipulation. In a small study, participants with head injuries suffered worsening symptoms as a result of CST. Additionally, if used as the sole treatment for serious health conditions, choosing CST can have serious adverse consequences; the American Cancer Society recommends those with cancer or chronic conditions should consult their doctor before starting any therapy consisting of manual manipulation.
According to the American Cancer Society, although CST may relieve the symptoms of stress or tension, "available scientific evidence does not support claims that craniosacral therapy helps in treating cancer or any other disease". Cranial osteopathy has received a similar assessment, with one 1990 paper finding there was no scientific basis for any of the practitioners' claims the paper examined.
The evidence base for CST is sparse and lacks a demonstrated biologically plausible mechanism. In the absence of rigorous, well-designed randomized controlled trials, it is a pseudoscience, and its practice quackery. Tests show that CST practitioners cannot in fact identify the purported craniosacral pulse, and different practitioners will get different results for the same patient. The idea of a craniosacral rhythm cannot be scientifically supported.
=== Systematic reviews ===
In October 2012, Edzard Ernst conducted a systematic review of randomized clinical trials of craniosacral therapy. He concluded that "the notion that CST is associated with more than non-specific effects is not based on evidence from rigorous randomised clinical trials." Commenting specifically on this conclusion, Ernst wrote on his blog that he had chosen the wording as "a polite and scientific way of saying that CST is bogus." Ernst also remarked that the quality of five of the six trials he had reviewed was "deplorably poor," a sentiment that echoed an August 2012 review that noted the "moderate methodological quality of the included studies."
Ernst criticized a 2011 systematic review performed by Jakel and von Hauenschild for including observational studies and including studies with healthy volunteers. This review concluded that the evidence base surrounding craniosacral therapy and its efficacy was sparse and composed of studies with heterogeneous design. The authors of this review stated that currently available evidence was insufficient to draw conclusions.
A 2019 systematic review found limited evidence that CST may bring some relief for up to six months for people with chronic pain. However, the conclusions of this study were disputed by the Office for Science and Society at McGill University due to the poor methodological quality of the individual studies that made up the analysis.
=== Regulation ===
Edzard Ernst wrote that in 2005 in the United Kingdom, a foundation of then-Prince Charles issued a booklet listing CST as one of several popular alternative therapies, but admitted that the therapy was unregulated and lacked either a defined training program or the oversight of a professional body. Ernst wrote that this makes the therapists practising CST "less regulated than publicans."
== History ==
Cranial osteopathy, a forerunner of CST, was devised in the 1930s by William Garner Sutherland. While looking at a disarticulated skull, Sutherland was struck by the idea that the cranial sutures of the temporal bones where they meet the parietal bones were "beveled, like the gills of a fish, indicating articular mobility for a respiratory mechanism."
CST was invented by John Upledger, as an offshoot of cranial osteopathy. From 1975 to 1983, Upledger and neurophysiologist and histologist Ernest W. Retzlaff worked at Michigan State University as clinical researchers and professors. They assembled a research team to investigate the purported pulse and further study Sutherland's theory of cranial bone movement. Later, independent reviews of these studies concluded that they presented no good evidence for the effectiveness of craniosacral therapy or the existence of the proposed cranial bone movement.
== Conceptual basis ==
Practitioners of both cranial osteopathy and CST assert that there are small, rhythmic motions of the cranial bones attributed to cerebrospinal fluid pressure or arterial pressure. The premise of CST is that palpation of the cranium can be used to detect this rhythmic movement of the cranial bones and selective pressures may be used to manipulate the cranial bones to achieve a therapeutic result. However, there is no evidence that the bones of the human skull can be moved by such manipulations.
The fundamental concepts of cranial osteopathy and CST are inconsistent with the human skull, brain, and spine's known anatomy and physiology. Edzard Ernst has written "to anyone understanding a bit of physiology, anatomy etc. [CST] looks like pure nonsense."
In common with many other varieties of alternative medicine, CST practitioners believe all illness is caused by energy or fluid blockages which can be released by physical manipulation. They believe that the bones of the skull move in a rhythmic pattern which they can detect and correct.
The therapist lightly palpates the patient's body, and focuses intently on the communicated movements. A practitioner's feeling of being in tune with a patient is described as entrainment.
Comparing CST to cranial osteopathy, Upledger wrote: "Dr. Sutherland's discovery regarding the flexibility of skull sutures led to the early research behind CranioSacral Therapy– and both approaches affect the cranium, sacrum and coccyx– the similarities end there." However, modern-day cranial osteopaths largely consider the two practices to be the same, but that cranial osteopathy has "been taught to non-osteopaths under the name CranialSacral therapy."
== References == | Wikipedia/Craniosacral_therapy |
Interactive Autism Network (IAN) is a research registry which matches researchers and their studies to families who qualify to participate in and benefit from the research. The network closed to new participants in 2019. IAN facilitates ongoing research in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). The goal is to accomplish research that advances understanding and treatment of ASDs. IAN was established in 2006 at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, and is funded by Autism Speaks and the Simons Foundation.
IAN is an online (research registry) database that connects family members of autistic people with researchers in an effort to help solve the many problems associated with autism. Today there are over 30,000 individuals registered on IAN. On April 2, 2007, the Interactive Autism Network was founded by Drs. Paul and Kiely Law at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. The IAN project is supported by grant money from a non-profit organization called Autism Speaks.
== References == | Wikipedia/Interactive_Autism_Network |
The claim that there was a Jewish war against Nazi Germany is an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted in Nazi propaganda which asserts that the Jewish people, framed within the theory as a single historical actor, started World War II and sought the destruction of Germany. Alleging that war was declared in 1939 by Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, Nazis used this false notion to justify the persecution of Jews under German control on the grounds that the Holocaust was justified self-defense. Since the end of World War II, the conspiracy theory has been popular among neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.
== Origins ==
After the Central Powers' defeat in World War I, false rumors emerged in the Weimar Republic and Hungary alleging that the Jews in those countries conspired with foreign Jews in order to undermine the war effort (the stab-in-the-back myth). Some also accused European Jews of working together to start the war for the purpose of ruining Europe and leaving it vulnerable to "Jewish control". Jews were also blamed for manipulating the peace negotiations to produce an unsatisfactory result in the postwar treaties, for their own profit.
Nazis claimed that the 1933 anti-Nazi boycott was an aggressive action by Jews, and launched the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in retaliation. The British Daily Express ran a headline on 24 March 1933 regarding the anti-Nazi boycott, stating "Judea Declares War on Germany", showing that such claims were not restricted to Nazi propaganda. Before the war broke out, Adolf Hitler repeatedly opined that Jews posed a severe threat to Germany, including on 30 January 1939 when he gave his prophecy speech and predicted that a war caused by the Jews would lead to the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe".
== World War II ==
For Hitler, the start of World War II on 1 September 1939 confirmed the idea that there had been a Jewish conspiracy against Germany all along, even though Germany started the war by invading Poland. Historian Jeffrey Herf writes that "According to Hitler's paranoid logic, the Jews had launched the war so that the Nazis would be compelled to wage a war of retaliation against the Jews of Europe." Herf also wrote that "the core of Nazism's narrative of World War II" was that "A historical subject called 'international Jewry' had launched World War II with the intent of bringing about the 'Bolshevization' of the world. It would fail. Instead, Nazi Germany would retaliate for this aggression and annihilate the Jews. It would wage a 'war' against the Jews in response to the 'war' the Jews had started."
Scholar Randall Bytwerk writes: "The Nazis justified their attempt to exterminate the Jews by claiming that they were only defending themselves against Jewish plans to destroy Germany and its population." Historian Erik Sjöberg states: "the Nazis had convinced themselves that they were fighting a war in defense of the German race that the Jews had forced upon them. This was a lie perceived as truth by people who needed justification for murder."
In The German War, historian Nicholas Stargardt writes that by mid-1942, hard-line Nazi ideologues such as Martin Bormann thought that Germans "should be made to realise that they were now locked in a genocidal global conflict, which could end only with their victory or destruction". In response to queries about how to explain the "extremely harsh measures" taken against the Jews, Bormann told local Nazi operatives to justify, rather than deny, the systematic deportation that resulted in murder.
=== Chaim Weizmann's letter to Neville Chamberlain ===
On 29 August 1939, World Zionist Organization president Chaim Weizmann wrote a letter to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, which included the following statement: "In this hour of supreme crisis the consciousness that Jews have a contribution to make to the defence of sacred values impels me to write this letter. I wish to confirm in the most explicit manner the declarations which I and my colleagues have made during the last month and especially in the last week: that the Jews stand by Great Britain and will fight on the side of the democracies."
In Nazi propaganda, the letter was presented as a "Jewish declaration of war" against Nazi Germany, and a threat of an actual attack by "the Jews". The "Jewish declaration of war" became a common motif in far-right antisemitism after World War II. The Nazis also claimed that Weizmann had sent a telegram in 1942 to a "Zionist group" stating: "The Jews desire their place in the ranks, among those who have as their goal the annihilation of Germany". No evidence that Weizmann sent such a telegram has been discovered.
The head of the Reich League of the German Press, Otto Dietrich, issued directives requiring all German newspapers to promote the Jewish war conspiracy theory. One March 1943 directive required newspapers to report that: "The declaration of war by the Jews against the European nations resulted in energetic measures being taken against the Jews, not only in Germany but also in many other European states."
=== Germany Must Perish! ===
Nazi propaganda focused on and greatly exaggerated the importance of the self-published book Germany Must Perish! by the obscure American Jewish businessman Theodore N. Kaufman, which was cited as proof that Jews desired to commit genocide against Nazi Germany.
=== 1944 anti-Zionist campaign ===
In June 1944, Dietrich and Helmut Sündermann launched a campaign against Zionism, to promote the lie that the German war against Jews was defensive in nature. The origins of the Nazi genocide against the Jews were dated to 1929, when Weizmann founded the Jewish Agency. Jews were said to seek the destruction of Germany, which was used to justify Nazi attacks against the Jews. Michael Berkowitz writes that the idea of the Jewish Agency as the center of an anti-German conspiracy was "outrageous".
== Postwar ==
Notable postwar writers employing the conspiracy theory include David Irving, a Holocaust denier. German historian Ernst Nolte stated that Weizmann's telegram justified interning Jews in German-occupied Europe as prisoners of war. Furthermore, Weizmann's letter would have plausibly convinced Hitler "of his enemies' determination to annihilate him much earlier than when the first information about Auschwitz came to the knowledge of the world." Nolte's statements were contested by Jürgen Habermas during the Historikerstreit. Deborah Lipstadt wrote that Nolte's argument "lacks any internal logic", since the Nazi persecution of Jews started before 1939, and Weizmann had no armed forces to carry out any "war" against Germany.
The neo-Nazi propaganda film Europa: The Last Battle promotes the claim that Jews started both world wars as part of a plot to establish Israel by forcing the Nazis to act in self-defense.
== See also ==
Accusation in a mirror
Antisemitic canard
Austria victim theory
Eurabia conspiracy theory
Genocide justification
Holocaust inversion
Secondary antisemitism
Stab-in-the-back myth
War on Islam controversy
Great Replacement conspiracy theory
== References ==
Notes
Further reading
Miller, Clyde R. (November–December 1939). "Germany's Campaign to Place the 'War Guilt' on Jews" (PDF). Contemporary Jewish Record: 16–19.
Stargardt, Nicholas (1 September 2015). The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-45. New York: Penguin Random House. ISBN 978-0-09-953987-2.
Waddington, Lorna (2007). Hitler's Crusade: Bolshevism and the Myth of the International Jewish Conspiracy. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-84511-556-2. | Wikipedia/Jewish_war_conspiracy_theory |
Discrete trial training (DTT) is a technique used by practitioners of applied behavior analysis (ABA) that was developed by Ivar Lovaas at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). DTT uses mass instruction and reinforcers that create clear contingencies to shape new skills. Often employed as an early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) for up to 25–40 hours per week for autistic children, the technique relies on the use of prompts, modeling, and positive reinforcement strategies to facilitate the child's learning. It previously used aversives to punish unwanted behaviors. DTT has also been referred to as the "Lovaas/UCLA model", "rapid motor imitation antecedent", "listener responding", "errorless learning", and "mass trials".
== Technique ==
Discrete trial training (DTT) is a process whereby an activity is divided into smaller distinct sub-tasks and each of these is repeated continuously until a person is proficient. The trainer rewards successful completion and uses errorless correction procedures if there is unsuccessful completion by the subject to condition them into mastering the process. When proficiency is gained in each sub-task, they are re-combined into the whole activity: in this way proficiency at complex activities can be taught.: 93
DTT is carried out in a one-on-one therapist to student ratio at the table. Intervention can start when a child is as young as two years old and can last from two to six years. Progression through goals of the program are determined individually and are not determined by which year the client has been in the program. The first year seeks to reduce self-stimulating/self-regulatory ("stimming") behavior, teach listener responding, eye contact, and rapid fine and gross motor imitation, as well as to establish playing with toys in their correct manner, and integrate the family into the treatment protocol. The second year teaches early expressive language and abstract linguistic skills. The third year strives to include the individual's community in the treatment to optimize "mainstreaming" by focusing on peer interaction, basic socializing skills, basic social rules, emotional expression and variation, in addition to observational learning and pre-academic skills, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Rarely is the technique implemented for the first time with adults.
DTT is typically performed five to seven days a week with each session lasting from five to eight hours, totaling an average of 30–40 hours per week. Sessions are divided into trials with intermittent breaks, and the therapist is positioned directly across the table from the student receiving treatment. Each trial is composed of the therapist giving an instruction (i.e., "Look at me", "Do this", "Point to", etc.), in reference to an object, color, simple imitative gesture, etc., which is followed by a prompt (verbal, gestural, physical, etc.). The concept is centered on shaping the child to respond correctly to the instructions throughout the trials. Should the child fail to respond to an instruction, the therapist uses either a "partial prompt" (a simple nudge or touch on the hand or arm) or a "full prompt" to facilitate the child to successfully complete the task. Correct responses are reinforced with a reward, and the prompts are discontinued as the child begins to master each skill.
The intervention is often used in conjunction with the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) as it primes the child for an easy transition between treatment types. The PECS program serves as another common intervention technique used to conform autistic individuals. As many as 25% of autistic individuals have no functional speech. The program teaches spontaneous social communication through symbols or pictures by relying on ABA techniques. PECS operates on a similar premise to DTT in that it uses systematic chaining to teach the individual to pair the concept of expressive speech with an object. It is structured in a similar fashion to DTT, in that each session begins with a preferred reinforcer survey to ascertain what would most motivate the child and effectively facilitate learning.
== Effectiveness ==
Limited research shows DTT to be effective in enhancing spoken language, academic and adaptive skills, as many studies are of low quality research design and there needs to be more larger sample sizes.
== Society and culture ==
=== In media ===
A 1965 article in Life magazine entitled Screams, Slaps and Love has a lasting impact on public attitudes towards Lovaas's therapy. Giving little thought to how their work might be portrayed, Lovaas and parent advocate Bernie Rimland, M.D., were surprised when the magazine article appeared, since it focussed on text and selected images showing the use of aversives, including a close up of a child being slapped. Even after the use of aversives had been largely discontinued, the article continued to have an effect, galvanizing public concerns about behavior modification techniques.
=== United States cost ===
In April 2002 treatment cost in the U.S. was about US$4,200 per month ($50,000 annually) per child. The 20–40 hours per week intensity of the program, often conducted at home, may place additional stress on already challenged families.
== History ==
Discrete trial training is rooted in the hypothesis of Charles Ferster who theorized that autism was caused in part by a person's inability to react appropriately to "social reinforcers", such as praise or criticism. Lovaas's early work concentrated on showing that it was possible to strengthen autistic people's responses to these social reinforcers, but he found these improvements were not associated with any general improvement in overall behavior.
In a 1987 paper, psychologists Frank Gresham and Donald MacMillan described a number of weaknesses in Lovass's research and judged that it would be better to call the evidence for his interventions "promising" rather than "compelling".
Lovaas's original technique used aversives such as striking, shouting, and electrical shocks to punish undesired behaviors. By 1979, Lovaas had abandoned the use of aversives, and in 2012 the use of electric shocks was described as being inconsistent with contemporary practice.
== See also ==
Professional practice of behavior analysis
== References ==
== External links ==
Lovaas Institute for Early Intervention
Autism Therapy Center | Wikipedia/Discrete_trial_training |
Body psychotherapy, also called body-oriented psychotherapy, is an approach to psychotherapy which applies basic principles of somatic psychology. It originated in the work of Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud and particularly Wilhelm Reich who developed it as vegetotherapy. Branches also were developed by Alexander Lowen, and John Pierrakos, both patients and students of Reich, like Reichian body-oriented psychotherapy and Gerda Boyesen.
== History ==
Wilhelm Reich and the post-Reichians are considered the central element of body psychotherapy. From the 1930s, Reich became known for the idea that muscular tension reflected repressed emotions, what he called 'body armour', and developed a way to use pressure to produce emotional release in his clients. Reich was expelled from the psychoanalytic mainstream and his work found a home in the 'growth movement' of the 1960s and 1970s and in the countercultural project of 'liberating the body'. Perhaps as a result, body psychotherapy was marginalised within mainstream psychology and was seen in the 1980s and 1990s as 'the radical fringe of psychotherapy'. Body psychotherapy's marginal position may be connected with the tendency for charismatic leaders to emerge within it, from Reich onwards.
Alexander Lowen in his Bioenergetic analysis and John Pierrakos in Core energetics extended Reich's finding of the segmented nature of body armour: "The muscular armour has a segmented arrangement...always transverse to the torso, never along it". Lowen claimed that "No words are so clear as the language of body expression". Subsequently, the Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy added influences from Gestalt therapy to their approach.
The early 2000s saw a 'renaissance of body psychotherapy' which was part of a broader increased interest in the body and embodiment in psychology and other disciplines including philosophy, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies. Object relations theory has arguably opened the way more recently for a fuller consideration of the body-mind connection in psychotherapy.
== Branches ==
There are numerous branches of body psychotherapy, often tracing their origins to particular individuals: for example, 'Bioenergetic analysis' to the work of Lowen and Pierrakos; 'Radix' to the work of Chuck Kelley; Organismic Psychotherapy to the work of Malcolm and Katherine Brown; 'Biosynthesis' to the work of David Boadella; 'Biodynamic Psychology' to that of Gerda Boyesen; 'Rubenfeld Synergy' to Ilana Rubenfeld's work; 'Body-Mind Centering' to Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's work, and 'Body-mind Psychotherapy' to Susan Aposhyan; the development of Jack Painter's 'Postural and Energetic Integration' into a psychotherapeutic modality.
Many of these contributors to body psychotherapy were influenced by the work of Wilhelm Reich, while adding and incorporating a variety of other influences. Syntheses of these approaches are also becoming accepted and recognised in their own right (e.g. The Chiron Approach: Chiron Association of Body Psychotherapists).
Alongside the body psychotherapies built directly on the work of Reich, there is a branch of post-Jungian body psychotherapies, developed from Jung's idea of the 'somatic unconscious'. While many post-Jungians dismiss Reich and do not work with the body, contributors to Jungian derived body psychotherapy include Arnold Mindell with his concept of the 'dreambody' and the development of process oriented psychology. Process oriented psychology is known for its focus on the body and movement.
Body psychotherapy and dance movement therapy have developed separately and are professionally distinguished, however they have significant common ground and shared principles including the importance of non-verbal therapeutic techniques and the development of body-focused awareness.
A review of body psychotherapy research finds there is a small but growing empirical evidence base about the outcomes of body psychotherapy, however it is weakened by the fragmentation of the field into different branches and schools. The review reports that one of the strongest studies is longitudinal (2 year) outcome research conducted with 342 participants across 8 different schools (Hakomi Experiental Psychology, Unitive Body Psychotherapy, Biodynamic Psychology, Bioenergetic Analysis, Client-Centred Verbal and Body Psychotherapy, Integrative Body Psychotherapy, Body-Oriented Psychotherapy, and Biosynthesis). Overall efficacy was demonstrated in symptom reduction, however the study design limited further substantive conclusions.
The review of outcome research across different types of body-oriented psychotherapy concludes that the best evidence supports efficacy for treating somatoform/psychosomatic disorders and schizophrenia, while there is also support for 'generally good effects on subjectively experienced depressive and anxiety symptoms, somatisation and social insecurity.' A more recent review found that results in some of these domains were mixed or might have resulted from other causes (for example, somatic symptoms in one study improved even after therapy had ended, suggesting that the improvements may have been unrelated to the therapy).
== Trauma ==
Body psychotherapy is one modality used in a multi-modal approach to treating psychological trauma, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD).
Recovering a sense of physical boundaries through sensorimotor psychotherapy is an important part of re-establishing trust in the traumatised. Blending somatic and cognitive awareness, such an approach reaches back for inspiration to the pioneering work of Janet, as well as employing the more recent work of António Damásio.
The necessity of often working without touch with traumatised victims presents a special challenge for body psychotherapists.
== Organizations ==
The European Association for Body Psychotherapy (EABP) and The United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP) are two professional associations for body psychotherapists.
The EABP was founded in 1988 to promote the inclusion of body psychotherapy within a broader process of professionalisation, standardisation and regulation of psychotherapy in Europe, driven by the European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP). The EABP Board committed to meeting the EAP standards for establishing the scientific validity of psychotherapy modalities and achieved this in 1999/2000 for body psychotherapy as a whole, with various individual modalities subsequently also achieving this recognition. It was accepted as a European-Wide Accrediting Organisation in 2000.
EABP has a bi-annual conference; organises a Council of ten National B-P Associations; supports a FORUM of Body-Psychotherapy Organisations, which accredits more than 18 B-P training organisations in 10 different countries; the EABP website also provides a list of research papers; a searchable bibliography of body-psychotherapy publications, containing more than 5,000 entries.
The USABP was formed in June 1996 to provide professional representation for body psychotherapy practitioners in the United States. The USABP launched a peer-reviewed professional journal in 2002, the USA Body Psychotherapy Journal, which was published twice-yearly from 2002 to 2011. In 2012, the sister organisations, EABP and USABP, together launched the International Body Psychotherapy Journal.
There is also an Australian Association of Somatic Psychotherapy Australia.
== Cautions ==
The importance of ethical issues in body psychotherapy has been highlighted on account of the intimacy of the techniques used.
The term bioenergetic has a well established meaning in biochemistry and cell biology. Its use in RBOP (Reichian body-oriented psychotherapy) has been criticized as "ignoring the already well established universal consensus about energy existing in Science."
There is a group of psychotherapists who believe that psychotherapy should be thought of as a craft and evaluated based on the effectiveness of the treatment, rather than evaluated based on scientific validity. However, efficacy studies of body psychotherapy have been few in number and, although the results are supportive of the use of body psychotherapy in some contexts, this trend "is not overwhelming".
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Heller, Michael C. (2012). Body psychotherapy: history, concepts, methods. (M. Duclos, Trans.) New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-70669-7
Lowen, Alexander. (1958). The Language of the Body.
Marlock, G., Weiss, H. with Young, C. & Soth, M. (2015). The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy & Somatic Psychology. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. ISBN 978-1-58394-841-5
Cimini, Giuseppe; Ferri, Genovino (2018). Psychopathology and Character: Psychoanalysis in the Body and the Body in Psychoanalysis. Reichian Analysis. Roma: Alpes Editore. ISBN 978-8-86531-514-9
Ferri, Genovino (2017). Body Sense: Stories of Psychotherapy Supervision. Roma. Alpes Editore. ISBN 978-8-86531-414-2
== External links ==
Media related to Body psychotherapy at Wikimedia Commons | Wikipedia/Reichian_body-oriented_psychotherapy |
The voting pencil conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory that using the pencils provided in British polling stations allows the result to be changed by MI5. Promoters of the theory urge people to use pen on the basis that it makes it harder for MI5 to change the vote. The theory originated with "Yes" voters in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and was widespread among "Leave" voters during the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. On Twitter, the hashtags #Usepens and #Pencilgate were used to promote the theory. Legally, voters are free to use the pencil or bring their own pen. The Electoral Commission states that pencils are offered due to greater reliability and reduced risk of ink being transferred across a folded ballot paper.
The conspiracy theory later spread beyond the UK and featured in the 2022 Australian federal election.
The conspiracy theory also spread to Canada in the 2025 federal election. Canadian election law requires that a pencil be offered but voters are free to bring their own pen.
== References == | Wikipedia/Voting_pencil_conspiracy_theory |
The dead Internet theory is a conspiracy theory that asserts, due to a coordinated and intentional effort, the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content manipulated by algorithmic curation to control the population and minimize organic human activity. Proponents of the theory believe these social bots were created intentionally to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results in order to manipulate consumers. Some proponents of the theory accuse government agencies of using bots to manipulate public perception. The date given for this "death" is generally around 2016 or 2017. The dead Internet theory has gained traction because many of the observed phenomena are quantifiable, such as increased bot traffic, but the literature on the subject does not support the full theory.
== Origins and spread ==
The dead Internet theory's exact origin is difficult to pinpoint. In 2021, a post titled "Dead Internet Theory: Most Of The Internet Is Fake" was published onto the forum Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe esoteric board by a user named "IlluminatiPirate", claiming to be building on previous posts from the same board and from Wizardchan, and marking the term's spread beyond these initial imageboards. The conspiracy theory has entered public culture through widespread coverage and has been discussed on various high-profile YouTube channels. It gained more mainstream attention with an article in The Atlantic titled "Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet 'Died' Five Years Ago". This article has been widely cited by other articles on the topic.
== Claims ==
The dead Internet theory has two main components: that organic human activity on the web has been displaced by bots and algorithmically curated search results, and that state actors are doing this in a coordinated effort to manipulate the human population. The first part of this theory, that bots create much of the content on the internet and perhaps contribute more than organic human content, has been a concern for a while, with the original post by "IlluminatiPirate" citing the article "How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually" in New York magazine. The Dead Internet Theory goes on to include that Google, and other search engines, are censoring the Web by filtering content that is not desirable by limiting what is indexed and presented in search results. While Google may suggest that there are millions of search results for a query, the results available to a user do not reflect that. This problem is exacerbated by the phenomenon known as link rot, which is caused when content at a website becomes unavailable, and all links to it on other sites break. This has led to the theory that Google is a Potemkin village, and the searchable Web is much smaller than we are led to believe. The Dead Internet Theory suggests that this is part of the conspiracy to limit users to curated, and potentially artificial, content online.
The second half of the dead Internet theory builds on this observable phenomenon by proposing that the U.S. government, corporations, or other actors are intentionally limiting users to curated, and potentially artificial AI-generated content, to manipulate the human population for a variety of reasons. In the original post, the idea that bots have displaced human content is described as the "setup", with the "thesis" of the theory itself focusing on the United States government being responsible for this, stating: "The U.S. government is engaging in an artificial intelligence-powered gaslighting of the entire world population."
== Expert view ==
Caroline Busta, founder of the media platform New Models, was quoted in a 2021 article in The Atlantic calling much of the dead Internet theory a "paranoid fantasy," even if there are legitimate criticisms involving bot traffic and the integrity of the internet, but she said she does agree with the "overarching idea.” In an article in The New Atlantis, Robert Mariani called the theory a mix between a genuine conspiracy theory and a creepypasta.
In 2024, the dead Internet theory was sometimes used to refer to the observable increase in content generated via large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT appearing in popular Internet spaces without mention of the full theory. In a 2025 article by Thomas Sommerer, this portion of the Dead Internet Theory is explored, with Sommerer calling the displacement of human generated content with Artificial content "an inevitable event." Sommerer states the Dead Internet Theory is not scientific in nature, but reflects the public perception of the Internet. Another article in the Journal of Cancer Education discussed the impact of the perception of the Dead Internet Theory in online cancer support forums, specifically focusing on the psychological impact on patients who find that support is coming from a LLM and not a genuine human. The article also discussed the possible problems in training data for LLMs that could emerge from using AI generated content to train the LLMs.
== Evidence ==
=== Large language models ===
Generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) are a class of large language models (LLMs) that employ artificial neural networks to produce human-like content. The first of these to be well known was developed by OpenAI. These models have created significant controversy. For example, Timothy Shoup of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies said in 2022, "in the scenario where GPT-3 'gets loose', the internet would be completely unrecognizable". He predicted that in such a scenario, 99% to 99.9% of content online might be AI-generated by 2025 to 2030. These predictions have been used as evidence for the dead internet theory.
In 2024, Google reported that its search results were being inundated with websites that "feel like they were created for search engines instead of people". In correspondence with Gizmodo, a Google spokesperson acknowledged the role of generative AI in the rapid proliferation of such content and that it could displace more valuable human-made alternatives. Bots using LLMs are anticipated to increase the amount of spam, and run the risk of creating a situation where bots interacting with each other create "self-replicating prompts" that result in loops only human users could disrupt.
==== ChatGPT ====
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot whose late 2022 release to the general public led journalists to call the dead internet theory potentially more realistic than before. Before ChatGPT's release, the dead internet theory mostly emphasized government organizations, corporations, and tech-literate individuals. ChatGPT gives the average internet user access to large-language models. This technology caused concern that the Internet would become filled with content created through the use of AI that would drown out organic human content.
=== Bot traffic ===
In 2016, the security firm Imperva released a report on bot traffic and found that automated programs were responsible for 52% of web traffic. This report has been used as evidence in reports on the dead Internet theory. Imperva's report for 2023 found that 49.6% of internet traffic was automated, a 2% rise on 2022 which was partly attributed to artificial intelligence models scraping the web for training content.
=== Facebook ===
In 2024, AI-generated images on Facebook, referred to as "AI slop", began going viral. Subjects of these AI-generated images included various iterations of Jesus "meshed in various forms" with shrimp, flight attendants, and black children next to artwork they supposedly created. Many of those said iterations have hundreds or even thousands of AI comments that say "Amen". These images have been referred as an example for why the Internet feels "dead". Sommerer discussed Shrimp Jesus in detail within his article as a symbol to represent the shift in the Internet, specifically stating "Just as Jesus was supposedly the messenger for God, Shrimp Jesus is the messenger for the fatal system [we've] maneuvered ourselves into. Decoupled, proliferated, and in a state of exponential metastasis."
Facebook includes an option to provide AI-generated responses to group posts. Such responses appear if a user explicitly tags @MetaAI in a post, or if the post includes a question and no other users have responded to it within an hour.
In January 2025, interest renewed in the theory following statements from Meta on their plans to introduce new AI powered autonomous accounts. Connor Hayes, vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta stated, "We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do... They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform."
=== Reddit ===
In the past, the Reddit website allowed free access to its API and data, which allowed users to employ third-party moderation apps and train AI in human interaction. In 2023, the company moved to charge for access to its user dataset. Companies training AI are expected to continue to use this data for training future AI. As LLMs such as ChatGPT become available to the general public, they are increasingly being employed on Reddit by users and bot accounts. Professor Toby Walsh, a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales, said in an interview with Business Insider that training the next generation of AI on content created by previous generations could cause the content to suffer. University of South Florida professor John Licato compared this situation of AI-generated web content flooding Reddit to the dead Internet theory.
=== Twitter ===
==== "I hate texting" tweets ====
Since 2020, several Twitter accounts started posting tweets starting with the phrase "I hate texting" followed by an alternative activity, such as "i hate texting i just want to hold ur hand", or "i hate texting just come live with me". These posts received tens of thousands of likes, many of which are suspected to be from bot accounts. Proponents of the dead internet theory have used these accounts as an example.
==== Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter ====
The proportion of Twitter accounts run by bots became a major issue during Elon Musk's acquisition of the company. Musk disputed Twitter's claim that fewer than 5% of their monetizable daily active users (mDAU) were bots. Musk commissioned the company Cyabra to estimate what percentage of Twitter accounts were bots, with one study estimating 13.7% and another estimating 11%. CounterAction, another firm commissioned by Musk, estimated 5.3% of accounts were bots. Some bot accounts provide services, such as one noted bot that can provide stock prices when asked, while others troll, spread misinformation, or try to scam users. Believers in the dead Internet theory have pointed to this incident as evidence.
=== TikTok ===
In 2024, TikTok began discussing offering the use of virtual influencers to advertisement agencies. In a 2024 article in Fast Company, journalist Michael Grothaus linked this and other AI-generated content on social media to the dead Internet theory. In this article, he referred to the content as "AI-slime".
=== YouTube and "the Inversion" ===
On YouTube, there is a market online for fake views to boost a video's credibility and reach broader audiences. At one point, fake views were so prevalent that some engineers were concerned YouTube's algorithm for detecting them would begin to treat the fake views as default and start misclassifying real ones. YouTube engineers coined the term "the Inversion" to describe this phenomenon. YouTube bots and the fear of "the Inversion" were cited as support for the dead Internet theory in a thread on the internet forum Melonland.
=== SocialAI ===
SocialAI, an app created on September 18, 2024, by Michael Sayman, was created with the full purpose of chatting with only AI bots without human interaction. An article on the Ars Technica website linked SocialAI to the dead Internet theory.
== In popular culture ==
The dead internet theory has been discussed among users of the social media platform Twitter. Users have noted that bot activity has affected their experience. Numerous YouTube channels and online communities, including the Linus Tech Tips forums and Joe Rogan subreddit, have covered the dead Internet theory, which has helped to advance the idea into mainstream discourse. There has also been discussion and memes about this topic on the app TikTok, due to the fact that AI generated content has become more mainstream.
== See also ==
== References == | Wikipedia/Dead_Internet_theory |
The GEC-Marconi scientist deaths theory claims that between 1982 and 1990 a number of British-based GEC-Marconi scientists and engineers who worked on the Sting Ray torpedo project and United States Strategic Defense Initiative-related projects died under mysterious circumstances.
== History ==
The first deaths to gain widespread attention and be linked to the theory came in 1986–1987. In just about a year, six scientists died, three of whom had worked for the Marconi company, a subsidiary of the defence group General Electric Company. Most deaths were ruled suicides or accidents. One died after driving his car, which had been packed full of petrol containers, into a building. Another tied a rope to his neck and to a tree and then drove off in a car. A third died of carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage. No links were found between them. At the time, some opposition lawmakers in the British parliament called for an investigation into the deaths.
Proponents of the conspiracy theory link the deaths like a James Bond-esque set of assassinations, variably blaming the Soviet spy agency KGB, American spies, or even British spies. Proponents of the theory claim that the deaths were linked because of the scientists working on the same few classified projects, although most of the scientists had not been working closely together and were working on separate, mostly unclassified, projects.
== References ==
Newspapers
"Demand government explanation of deaths, disappearance". The Associated Press. 19 March 1987.
Marsh, Peter (3 April 1987). "Bizarre deaths start speculation". Financial Times. p. 6.
"Open verdict on satellite scientist's car crash". The Guardian. 23 April 1987.
Collins, Tony (30 April 1987). "Defence deaths: the facts behind the story". Computer News.
"Mystery of the dead scientists: Coincidence or conspiracy?". AP. 6 February 1988.
Shepherd, Leslie (13 April 1988). "Computer magazine says scientists' deaths don't add up". AP.
"Deaths which must be investigated". The Independent. 26 August 1988.
"Scientists' deaths 'not a plot'". The Daily Telegraph. 13 February 1989.
Books
Collins, Tony (1990). Open verdict: an account of 25 mysterious deaths in the defence industry. Sphere Books. ISBN 0-7474-0146-2.
Media
"Grave Secrets," a 20/20 segment which aired on ABC; May 5, 1989. Reported by Stone Phillips and available on the "20C History Project" YouTube channel. | Wikipedia/GEC-Marconi_scientist_deaths_conspiracy_theory |
Biblical conspiracy theories posit that much of what is believed about the Bible is a deception created to suppress a secret or ancient truth. Such conspiracy theories may claim that Jesus really had a wife and children, or that a group such as the Priory of Sion has secret information about the true descendants of Jesus; some claim that there was a secret movement to censor books that truly belonged in the Bible, etc.
This subject should not be confused with deliberately fictional Bible conspiracy theories. A number of bestselling modern novels, the most popular of which was The Da Vinci Code, have incorporated elements of Bible conspiracy theories to flesh out their storylines, rather than to push these theories as actual suggestions.
== Common theories ==
=== Jesus-myth theory ===
Some proponents of the Jesus-myth or Christ-myth theory consider that the whole of Christianity is a conspiracy. American author Acharya S (Dorothy Murdock) in The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold (1999) argues that Jesus and Christianity were created by members of various secret societies, mystery schools, and religions, that these people drew on numerous myths and rituals which existed previously, and that the church then constructed these ideas into Christianity by suppressing the originally intended understanding. In the 1930s British spiritualist Hannen Swaffer's home circle, following the teachings of the native-American spirit "Silver Birch", also claimed a Jesus-myth.
=== Church suppression of reincarnation conspiracy ===
Some New Age believers consider that Jesus taught reincarnation but the Christian Church suppressed it. Geddes MacGregor in Reincarnation in Christianity (1978) suggests that Origen's texts written in support of the belief in reincarnation somehow disappeared or were suppressed.
=== Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail ===
Some common hypotheses are that:
Mary Magdalene was one of the apostles of Jesus, possibly even the only disciple, but this was suppressed by the early Church.
Jesus had an intimate relationship with Mary Magdalene which may or may not have resulted in marriage or children; their continued bloodline is then said to be Christianity's deepest secret.
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982) is seen by many as the source of that plotline in The Da Vinci Code.
=== Resurrected Jesus as an impostor ===
The Gospel of Afranius, an atheistic Russian work that came out in English in 2022, proposes politically motivated gaslighting as the origin of the foundational Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus.
== Books ==
The Gospel of Afranius
The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History, Michael Baigent (2006)
Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God?, Morton Smith (1978)
The Jesus Dynasty, James Tabor (2006)
Jesus the Man: New Interpretations from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Barbara Thiering (1993)
The Jesus Scroll, Donovan Joyce (1972)
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (1982)
The Templar Revelation, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince (1997)
The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God?, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (1999)
The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About the Resurrection, Holger Kersten and Elmar R. Gruber (1994)
History of the First Council of Nice: A World's Christian Convention, A.D. 325; With a Life of Constantine, Dean Dudley (1880)
== See also ==
Bible code
Constantinian shift
Criticism of the Bible
Forged: Writing in the Name of God – Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
Gospel of Judas
Holy Grail
Islamic view of the Christian Bible
Panbabylonism
The True Word
The Two Babylons
Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera
Toledot Yeshu
Zeitgeist (film series)
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Atwill, Joseph (2005). Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus. Berkeley, Calif.: Ulysses. ISBN 1-56975-457-8.
Bushby, Tony (2001). The Bible Fraud: An Untold Story of Jesus Christ. PacificBlue Group. ISBN 978-0-9579007-1-4.
Cooke, Patrick (2005). The Greatest Deception: The Bible UFO Connection. Oracle Research Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9724347-3-7.
Doherty, Earl (2005). The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus. Age of Reason Publications. ISBN 978-0-9689259-1-1.
S, Acharya (1999). The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. Adventures Unlimited Press. ISBN 978-0-932813-74-9.
Harpur, Tom (2005). The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light. Toronto, Canada: Thomas Allen Publishers. ISBN 0-88762-195-3.
Phillips, Graham (2001). The Marian Conspiracy. Pan Books. ISBN 978-0-330-37202-2.
Faber Kaiser, Andreas (1977). Jesus Died in Kashmir: Jesus, Moses and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Gordon & Cremonesi. ISBN 978-0-86033-041-7.
Thompson, Thomas L. (2005). The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-08577-6.
Wells, G. A. (1999). The Jesus Myth. Chicago: Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9392-2.
== External links ==
History of the First Council of Nicea: A World's Christian Convention, A.D. 325; With a Life of Constantine by Dean Dudley, via Internet Archive. | Wikipedia/Bible_conspiracy_theory |
Conspiracy theories about body doubles used by Russian President Vladimir Putin are based on alleged instabilities in his appearance. Proponents believe that the "body doubles" have had surgery to resemble the "original" and point to facial features such as the chin, earlobes and wrinkles on his forehead as evidence, and claim that the body doubles were used because of Putin's allegedly declining health or that they were sent to areas deemed too dangerous for him.
The theory has been deployed as a tool by opponents of Putin, including by Ukrainian media and officials, as well as British tabloids. Russia has denied these allegations, and no credible evidence has emerged of this theory.
== History ==
In December 2004, the Komsomolskaya Pravda reported on an offer to purchase Putin's "ancestral home" from an alleged body double from the village of Pominovo in Tver Oblast, where his parents were from. Over time, the topic of Putin's body doubles has remained a hot topic in the media environment, also sparking discussion on social media, for example, when pre-prepared news stories were published on Kremlin.ru at times of the president's temporary disappearance. Some Internet users speculated that Putin was relying on body doubles to hide his deteriorating health. Others believed that they were being sent to locations deemed too dangerous and risky for the "original". A third version says that Putin had supposedly already died, with his body doubles running the country.
In the 2010s, a meme with a table of the "original" Putin and six of his "body doubles" ("Babbler", "Udmurt", "Banquet", "Kuchma", "Bruise" and "Diplomat") with photos and descriptions of each became popular. According to the meme, each of the "body doubles" performs certain duties or has a distinguishing feature; for example, "Babbler" is deployed for Direct Line shows, "Diplomat" participates in negotiations, "Banquet" is used "for interviews, handshakes, and photos with the public", "Kuchma" is characterized by a "record-breaking chubby chin", and "Udmurt" is "basically the worst double ever", used when "Babbler" "needs a vacation". On 5 September 2016, Russian journalist Oleg Kashin posted the meme on his Facebook page, making it more popular.
In 2018, International Business Times called the allegations "one of the more unusual conspiracy theories" when a Twitter user quoted three photos of Putin taken on different dates and suggested that the politician was actually three different people.
In 2020, due to fears of COVID-19 contamination, Putin began taking precautions in meetings, which further intensified rumors of his alleged doubles.
=== Since 2022 ===
Conspiracy rumors about Putin's use of body doubles have increased during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
==== Ukrainian claims ====
Unsubstantiated rumors about Putin's doppelgangers are regularly published by Ukrainian media and discussed by high-ranking Ukrainian politicians.
In August 2022, Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov suggested on Ukrainian TV channel 1+1 that Putin's ears looked different in several of his public appearances: "The image of each person's ear is unique. It cannot be repeated." Ukrainian Major General Vadym Skibitsky also said Putin had been using body doubles to hide his allegedly deteriorating health.
A photo of Putin taken during his visit to Moscow State University on Russian Students Day in January 2023 intensified the spread of conspiracy theories. Jason J. Smart, a correspondent for the Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post, shared a photo from the visit, claiming that he "wears high heels" and that "most public events feature a lookalike - not the real Putin. The changes in his height, ears and weight are otherwise inexplicable."
For more than a year and a half, the president has mostly remained in Russia. However, since February 2023, Putin has become more active in close encounters (e.g., a rally in Luzhniki in February, a trip to occupied Mariupol in March, a meeting in Derbent in July 2023 shortly after the Prigozhin rebellion). Some of Putin's unusual engagements in 2023 have sparked public attention and raised questions about the possible use of double bodies. As Business Insider notes, a trip to occupied Mariupol, where Putin interacted with locals, renewed rumors that Putin used doubles for public appearances. The version of The Washington Post article about Putin's trip to Mariupol removed the mention of Putin using a double from the original article.
In March 2023, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, tried to find evidence of Putin's body doubles by publishing three photos of Putin's chin and questioning whether the images showed the same person. Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's GUR press service, also claimed that Putin didn't visit Mariupol and sent a body double there; this can allegedly be seen by the different chin in the photos. Fact-checking by Reuters, Snopes and Italian openFactChecking subsequently noted that the first image offered for comparison was published in 2020, not 2023; the second photo, like the third, was taken in Mariupol, not Sevastopol. Snopes concluded that the allegations were false.
In May 2023, Kyrylo Budanov noted: "There are at least three people [body doubles] who periodically appear." In June 2023, the Security Service of Ukraine compiled a guide on how to distinguish "body doubles" from each other.
In the spring of 2023, on the channel "Visiting Gordon," former KGB officer Sergei Zhirnov spoke about Putin's doubles who allegedly "live in a bunker" and "no one lets them out anywhere."
Rumors again intensified amid Putin's trip to Dagestan in June 2023. Experts say that while it's impossible to confirm the use of a doppelganger during that trip, the Russian president likely used a different approach to bolster his public image and demonstrate his willingness to relax his caution. Putin's appearance in Dagestan was also meant to demonstrate his popularity after Yevgeny Prigozhin's rebellion. The conspiracy theory was again spread against the backdrop of the Russian president's visit to China in October 2023.
==== "General SVR" ====
The Telegram channel "General SVR", allegedly closely linked to Russian political scientist and conspiracy theorist Valery Solovei, has actively promoted this conspiracy theory. According to it, the real Putin spends most of his time in a bunker and receives guests at a long table, while meetings with the public are supposedly attended by body doubles. In March 2023, "General SVR" noted that Putin had allegedly not been to Crimea or Mariupol and that a presidential body double had gone there "for a short visit and only for a video photo shoot."
Another unsubstantiated claim has also received widespread international publicity. It was published in October 2023, claiming that Putin's heart allegedly stopped on October 26 at 20:42 Moscow time, after which his corpse was placed in a "freezer" at his residence in Valdai Discussion Club, with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev actually running the country, using Putin's "double" as a puppet. Solovei claimed that Putin's double, nicknamed "Vasilich," had visited China that same month.
Solovei has discussed Putin's serious illness since 2016, when he predicted Putin's imminent resignation due to "force majeure circumstances." The story about Putin's corpse in the refrigerator caused mostly only ridicule on the Internet.
=== Reaction of Russian authorities ===
In August 2000, Yevgeny Murov, head of the Russian Federal Security Service, said that Putin had no doubles. In 2001, Vladimir Putin denied rumors about his doubles.
In 2015, after a press conference, a journalist showed Putin a photo of a very similar person to him, to which he replied, "What double? I don't have doubles. Why do I need them?" In an interview with TASS published in February 2020, Putin admitted that he had been asked to use doppelgangers in the early 2000s "in the most difficult times of the fight against terrorism." However, he allegedly refused such a practice.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has repeatedly refuted this conspiracy theory, claiming that Putin doesn't have any body doubles. In December 2021, he noted that Putin "smiles and laughs" when he is told about body doubles. On 20 April 2023, Peskov called the claims of a "Putin body double" traveling to Putin's headquarters "strange", and on 24 April, the issue of doubles "another lie." In October 2023, he called the rumors "information hoaxes" which evoked "nothing but a smile." On 4 November, he said that information about Putin's body doubles sometimes appears in Telegram channels and that "experts" are even interested in their number. He also noted: "We have only one Putin."
On 14 December 2023, during the year's edition of Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, when asked about the body doubles, Putin said that he "thought about it and decided that only one person should resemble myself and speak in my voice, and that person will be me."
== Analysis ==
The analysis of Russian-Latvian independent media Meduza using Amazon Rekognition, a neural network for face recognition and comparison, showed that the similarity of "body doubles" is from 99.6 to 99.9%, which contradicts the conspiracy theory itself.
Clinical psychologist Matvey Sokolovskiy notes that the peculiarity of the literary image of the double is its ability to reflect the dark aspects of the hero's personality, thus suggesting evil intentions, cruel and unjust actions. Thus, adherents of the conspiracy theory about Putin's doppelgangers may view the "real Russian president" as a kind and caring grandpa who refuses repression and military conflicts with neighboring states. In such a case, decision-making by the "fake" president signals that everything around him is also "fake," which Sokolovskiy believes may have a calming effect.
In June 2023, Japanese researchers in the field of facial recognition and voice identification concluded that Putin probably had at least one body double. Putin's participation at the 2023 Moscow Victory Day Parade was chosen as a baseline comparison. When analyzing facial features, the researchers found that the president who drove a Mercedes car across the Crimean Bridge in December 2022 matched Putin at the parade by only 53%, while the latter's resemblance to Putin who visited Mariupol in March 2023 was 40%. An analysis of the word "thank you" from Putin's speech at the Eurasian Economic Forum in May 2023 revealed "strong differences" in the pronunciation of some sounds, highlighting potential differences in the president's voice at different events.
Russian independent media Proekt examined Putin's participation in public events between November 2022 and November 2023. In December 2023, Proekt concluded that Putin's unexpected periodic violations of his strictly enforced coronavirus-related restrictions, which had led a number of "Kremlin pool" journalists interviewed on condition of anonymity to believe in the doppelganger theory, could be explained by the presidential campaign.
== People who look like Putin ==
A number of Russian and Russian-language media mentioned people who look like Vladimir Putin. They participate in various events, such as weddings and corporate parties, movies, humorous programs, and offer to take pictures with them for money. Anatoliy Gorbunov, Vasiliy Khorokhordin, Vladimir Belousov, Dmitriy Grachyov were mentioned among them. According to The Washington Post, Polish Slawomir Sobala was also globally known as a "fake Putin" for "being one of the most famous, if not the most famous, professional look-alike of the Russian president".
== See also ==
Claims of Vladimir Putin's incapacity and death
Political decoy
Fake Melania
Uday Hussein § Body double allegations
== References == | Wikipedia/Conspiracy_theory_about_Vladimir_Putin's_body_doubles |
Auriculotherapy (also auricular therapy, ear acupuncture, and auriculoacupuncture) is a form of alternative medicine based on the idea that the ear is a micro system and an external organ, which reflects the entire body, represented on the auricle, the outer portion of the ear. Conditions affecting the person's physical, mental, or emotional health are assumed to be treatable by stimulating the surface of the ear exclusively. Similar mappings are used by several modalities, including the practices of reflexology and iridology. These mappings are not based on or supported by any medical or scientific evidence, and are therefore considered to be pseudoscience.
== History and development ==
French neurologist Paul Nogier invented auriculotherapy in 1957. Nogier developed a phrenological method of projection of a fetal Homunculus on the ear and published what he called the "Vascular Autonomic Signal" which measured a change in the amplitude of the pulse. That mechanism would only produce a signal upon the introduction of new information to the electromagnetic field of the patient. Nogier cited a 'principle of matching resonance' which he could use the vascular autonomic signal to detect the active points of the auricular microsystem.
Nogier's Auricular acupuncture was introduced to China in 1958.
A variation of auriculotherapy called "ear stapling" involves the long-term insertion of a medical staple in the conchal bowl of the ear. Advocates variously claim that the procedure aids in losing weight, stopping smoking, and managing stress.
== Battlefield acupuncture ==
In 2001, Richard Niemtzow developed a procedure he called "battlefield acupuncture", in an attempt to research more efficient relief for phantom limb pain and chronic pain for veterans. Battlefield Acupuncture involves placing gold aiguille semi-permanent needles at up to five sites in the ears. In 2018, the United States Department of Defense, the Veterans Center for Integrative Pain Management, and the Veterans Health Administration National Pain Management Program office completed a 3-year, $5.4 million acupuncture education and training program, which trained over 2800 providers in Battlefield Acupuncture. Retired U.S. Air Force flight surgeon Harriet Hall characterized the Department of Defense's use of acupuncture and auriculotherapy as an embarrassing "infiltration of quackery into military medicine", a waste of tax dollars, and a potential harm to patients.
== Nogier points ==
The principles of auriculotherapy are contrary to the known anatomy and physiology of the human body.
According to Nogier, the relevant structures include:
Helix, the outer prominent rim of the auricle
Antihelix, the elevated ridge anterior and parallel to the helix
Triangular fossa, a triangular depression
Scapha, the narrow curved depression between the helix and the antihelix
Tragus, the small, curved flap in front of the auricle
Antitragus, the small tubercle opposite to the tragus
Concha, the hollow next to the ear canal
Nogier claims that various points located on the ear lobe are related to the head, and facial region, those on the scapha are related to the upper limbs, those on the antihelix and antihelix crura to the trunk and lower limbs and those in the concha are related to the internal organs.
== Chinese Auricular Acupuncture ==
"Auricular acupuncture therapy is an important part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which is ascribed to a kind of micro-needle system. It has been considered to be a valuable asset in the treasure house of Chinese medicine". There are many Chinese medical classics that have the inclusion of Auricular points to treat illness as defined by Chinese medical theory. It was not until the French neurologist Paul Nogier systematically referenced and chartered the points of the ear in the late 1950s. This treatment was extensively researched, developed, and practiced as a modality in East Asia and the West.
== Criticism ==
A controlled crossover study of 36 patients failed to find any difference between the two experiments. The study concluded that auriculotherapy is not an effective therapeutic procedure for chronic pain.
The first experiment compared the effects of stimulation of auriculotherapy points versus control points. A second experiment compared the stimulation of these points with a placebo control of no stimulation. Using the McGill Pain Questionnaire, pain was not decreased at the points compared to the controls. Patients' reports of pain relief after auriculotherapy are due to placebo effects.
Also, during electrical stimulation, patients sometimes reported new pain in an unrelated body part. These referred sensations reinforce the pain relief produced by the placebo effect and may be part of why the belief in auriculotherapy persists.
== References == | Wikipedia/Auriculotherapy |
Pivotal response treatment (PRT), also referred to as pivotal response training, is a naturalistic form of applied behavior analysis used as an early intervention for children with autism that was invented by Robert Koegel and Lynn Kern Koegel. PRT advocates contend that behavior hinges on "pivotal" behavioral skills—motivation and the ability to respond to multiple cues—and that development of these skills will result in collateral behavioral improvements. It's an alternative approach to ABA from the more common form, sometimes called discrete trial training (DTT).
== History ==
Initial attempts to treat autism were mostly unsuccessful and in the 1960s researchers began to focus on behavioral intervention therapies. Though effective, limitations included significant time investment, considerable expense, and limited generalization to new environments. Lynn and Robert Koegel incorporated ideas from the natural language procedures to develop verbal communication in children with autism. They theorized that, if effort was focused on certain pivotal responses, intervention would be more successful and efficient. As they saw it, developing these pivotal behaviors would result in widespread improvement in other areas.
== Theory ==
Pivotal response treatment is a naturalistic intervention model derived from the principles of applied behavior analysis. Rather than target individual behaviors one at a time, PRT targets pivotal areas of a child's development such as motivation, responsiveness to multiple cues, self-management, and social initiations. By targeting these critical areas, PRT ideally results in collateral improvements in other social, communicative, and behavioral areas that are not specifically targeted.
The underlying motivational strategies of PRT are incorporated throughout intervention as often as possible, and they include child choice, task variation, interspersing maintenance tasks, rewarding attempts, mand training, and the use of direct and natural reinforcers. The child plays a crucial role in determining the activities and objects that will be used in the PRT exchange. Intentful attempts at the target behavior are rewarded with a natural reinforcer (e.g., if a child attempts to request for a stuffed animal, the child receives the animal, not a piece of candy or other unrelated reinforcer). Pivotal response treatment is used to teach language, decrease disruptive/self-stimulatory behaviors, and increase social, communication, and academic skills.
The two primary pivotal areas of pivotal response therapy are motivation and self-initiated activities. Three others are self-management, empathy, and the ability to respond to multiple signals, or cues. Play environments are used to teach pivotal skills, such as turn-taking, communication, and language. This training is child-directed: the child makes choices that direct the therapy. Emphasis is also placed upon the role of parents as primary intervention agents.
== Support ==
A 2020 meta analysis which included 5 RCTs concluded there was a statistically significant positive effect of PRT on expressive language skills, social interaction, and reducing repetitive behaviour. However it also notes the quality of evidence was low, so further research about the effectiveness of PRT was required. One 2019 study, not covered by the review, directly compared PRT and DTT found its effects were heterogenous; DTT worked better in some children, whereas PRT worked better in others, depending on the child's characteristics.
== References ==
== External links ==
UCSB Koegel Autism Center | Wikipedia/Pivotal_response_treatment |
Megavitamin therapy is the use of large doses of vitamins, often many times greater than the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) in the attempt to prevent or treat diseases. Megavitamin therapy is typically used in alternative medicine by practitioners who call their approach orthomolecular medicine. Vitamins are useful in preventing and treating illnesses specifically associated with dietary vitamin shortfalls, but the conclusions of medical research are that the broad claims of disease treatment by advocates of megavitamin therapy are unsubstantiated by the available evidence. It is generally accepted that doses of any vitamin greatly in excess of nutritional requirements will result either in toxicity (vitamins A and D) or in the excess simply being metabolised; thus evidence in favour of vitamin supplementation supports only doses in the normal range. Critics have described some aspects of orthomolecular medicine as food faddism or even quackery. Research on nutrient supplementation in general suggests that some nutritional supplements might be beneficial, and that others might be harmful; several specific nutritional therapies are associated with an increased likelihood of the condition they are meant to prevent.
== Multivitamin vs megavitamin ==
Megavitamin therapy must be distinguished from the usual "vitamin supplementation" approach of traditional multivitamin pills. Megavitamin doses are far higher than the levels of vitamins ordinarily available through western diets. A study of 161,000 individuals (post-menopausal women) provided, in the words of the authors, "convincing evidence that multivitamin use has little or no influence on the risk of common cancers, cardiovascular disease, or total mortality in postmenopausal women".
== History ==
In the 1930s and 1940s, some scientific and clinical evidence suggested that there might be beneficial uses of vitamins C, E, and niacin in large doses. Beginning in the 1930s in Canada, a megadose vitamin E therapy for cardiovascular and circulatory complaints was developed by Evan Shute and colleagues, named the "Shute protocol". Tentative experiments in the 1930s by Claus W. Jungeblut with larger doses of vitamin C led to Frederick Klenner's development of megadose intravenous vitamin C treatments for polio and other viruses in the 1940s. William Kaufman published articles in the 1940s that detailed his treatment of arthritis with frequent, high doses of niacinamide. Rudolf Altschul and Abram Hoffer applied large doses of the immediate release form of niacin (Vitamin B3) to treat hypercholesterolemia. In a 1956 publication entitled Biochemical Individuality, Roger J. Williams introduced concepts for individualized megavitamins and nutrients. Megavitamin therapies were also publicly advocated by Linus Pauling in the late 1960s.
== Usage as therapy ==
Although megavitamin therapies still largely remain outside of the structure of evidence-based medicine, they are increasingly used by patients, with or without the approval of their treating physicians, often after recommendations by practitioners of orthomolecular and naturopathic medicine. The proposed efficacy of various megavitamin therapies to reduce cancer risk has been contradicted by results of one clinical trial.
=== Vitamin C ===
The US Recommended Dietary Allowance for vitamin C for adult women is 76 mg/day and for adult men 90 mg/day. Although Linus Pauling was known for highly respectable research in chemistry and biochemistry, he was also known for promoting the consumption of vitamin C in large doses. Although he claimed and stood firm in his claim that consuming over 1,000 mg is helpful for one’s immune system when fighting a head cold, the results of empirical research do not align with this view. A meta-analysis concluded that supplementary vitamin C significantly lowered serum uric acid, considered a risk factor for gout. One population study reported an inverse correlation between dietary vitamin C and risk of gout. A review of clinical trials in the treatment of colds with small and large doses of Vitamin C has established that there is no evidence that it decreases the incidence of common colds. After 33 years of research, it is still not established whether vitamin C can be used as a treatment for cancer.
=== Vitamin E ===
The US Recommended Dietary Allowance for vitamin E for adult women and men is 15 mg/day. The US Food and Nutrition Board set a tolerable upper intake level (UL) at 1,000 mg (1,500 IU) per day derived from animal models that demonstrated bleeding at high doses. In the US, the popularity for vitamin E as a dietary supplement peaked around 2000, with popular doses of 400, 800 and 1000 IU/day. Declines in usage were attributed to publications of meta-analyses that showed either no benefits or negative consequences from vitamin E supplements.
=== Niacin ===
The US Recommended Dietary Allowance for niacin for adult women is 14 mg/day and for adult men 16 mg/day. Niacin is available as a prescription product, either immediate release (500 mg tablets; prescribed up to 3,000 mg/day) or extended release (500 and 1,000 mg tablets; prescribed up to 2,000 mg/day). In the US, niacin is also available as a dietary supplement at 500 to 1,000 mg/tablet. Niacin has sometimes been used in combination with other lipid-lowering medications. Systematic reviews found no effect of niacin on cardiovascular disease or death, in spite of raising high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. Reported side effects include an increased risk of diabetes.
== See also ==
Related topics
Codex Alimentarius
Essential nutrient
Health freedom movement
Life extension
List of ineffective cancer treatments
Vitamin topics
Multivitamin
Naturopathic medicine
Orthomolecular medicine
Hypervitaminosis (toxic vitamin intake)
Hypervitaminosis A
Hypervitaminosis D
Vitamin B3 § Toxicity
Megavitamin-B6 syndrome
== References ==
== External links ==
Orthomolecular Therapy at Quackwatch | Wikipedia/Megavitamin_therapy |
Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is a fringe psychological treatment developed by American psychologist Roger Callahan. Its proponents say that it can heal a variety of mental and physical ailments through specialized "tapping" with the fingers at meridian points on the upper body and hands. The theory behind TFT is a mixture of concepts "derived from a variety of sources. Foremost among these is the ancient Chinese philosophy of chi, which is thought to be the 'life force' that flows throughout the body". Callahan also bases his theory upon applied kinesiology and physics. There is no scientific evidence that TFT is effective, and the American Psychological Association has stated that it "lacks a scientific basis" and consists of pseudoscience.
== Theory and treatment ==
Callahan terms his treatment "Thought Field Therapy" because he theorizes that when a person thinks about an experience or thought associated with an emotional problem, they are tuning into a "thought field." He describes this field as "the most fundamental concept in the TFT system," stating that it "creates an imaginary, though quite real scaffold, upon which we may erect our explanatory notions".
Perturbations are said to be precisely encoded information contained in the thought field; each deformation of a person's thought field is connected to a particular problem, and is activated by thinking about that problem. Callahan maintains that these perturbations are the root cause of negative emotions and that each perturbation corresponds to a meridian point on the body. In order to eliminate the emotional upset, Callahan says that a precise sequence of meridian points must be tapped. He posits that tapping unblocks or balances the flow of qi.
Callahan states that the process can relieve a wide variety of psychological issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, addiction, and phobia. A typical treatment session lasts up to fifteen minutes, and is not repeated. Callahan has also stated that TFT can treat or prevent physical problems, including atrial fibrillation. In 1985 in his first book on TFT, he wrote that specific phobias could be cured in as little as five minutes.
Callahan also asserts that his most advanced level, Voice Technology (VT), can be performed over the phone using an undisclosed "technology". Training for the advanced VT is provided by Callahan. The fee listed on Callahan's website for this training is $5,000. Thought Field Therapy in the media: a critical analysis of one exemplar.
== Assessments and critiques ==
There is concern by clinical psychologists of the adoption of TFT as an unvalidated and pseudoscientific therapy by government bodies and the public at large.
In 2000, an article was published in the Skeptical Inquirer which argued that there is no plausible mechanism to explain how TFT could work, and described it as a baseless pseudoscience.
A 2006 Delphi poll of psychologists on discredited therapies, published in an APA journal, indicated that on average, participants rated TFT as "probably discredited". The sample included both practicing clinical psychologists and academic psychologists. Devilly states that there is no evidence for the claimed efficacy of power therapies including TFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, and others such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and they all exhibit the characteristics of pseudoscience. Lilienfeld, Lynn & Lohr also use TFT as an example of a therapy that contains some of the hallmark indicators of a pseudoscience. Specifically, they note its evasion of the peer review system and absence of boundary conditions.
Previous studies performed on TFT have received criticism in the medical literature. For example, an exploratory study done by Charles Figley, a psychologist who endeavored to find more effective treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He examined four novel therapies with a six-month follow-up evaluation (using measures that were not used immediately post treatment) and did not conduct statistical significance testing to compare the therapies. The authors stated that "In contrast to conventional psychotherapy research, the SCD methodology is not meant to compare the various treatments, and thus does not necessarily meet the criteria proposed for empirically validated treatments, although it does meet some of those criteria," and also stated that "Unfortunately, because of problems with client screening and data collection, the study fell short of reaching its goals. Moreover, the nature of the study precludes comparison of the approaches, and such a comparison was never planned."
The authors also noted that because they did not prescreen participants for PTSD, not all participants necessarily met the criteria for PTSD. The authors acknowledged that the study of TFT and the other three methods were incomplete, and noted that "these treatment approaches appear to be promising in helping clients remove the most painful aspects of their traumatic memories." The authors noted that all four approaches warranted further study.
A controlled study on Thought Field Therapy Voice Technology published in the peer reviewed journal The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, which showed no difference between the TFT VT and randomly selected tapping sequences, which provides evidence against Callahan's assertion that precise sequences derived from his claimed specialized technology make a difference in result.
Much evidence adduced in support of TFT by Callahan and other proponents comes from uncontrolled case reports that were not peer reviewed. For example, Diepold and Goldstein demonstrated that TFT altered the brain patterns of a single traumatized subject.
In 2001, in an unprecedented move, the Editor of the Journal of Clinical Psychology agreed to publish, without peer review, five articles on TFT of Callahan's choosing; these were: Callahan, 2001b and 2001c; Pignotti & Steinberg, 2001; Sakai et al., 2001; and Johnson et al., 2001. In lieu of peer review, critiques were published alongside each article.
The critics agreed that each of the five studies contained serious flaws that rendered them uninterpretable by them. They pointed out flaws which included: selecting only successful cases; focusing on a diversity of problems; failure to use a control group; failure to control for placebo effect, demand characteristics and regression to the mean; lack of valid assessment measures; use of the SUD as the only measure of efficacy other than HRV(Heart Rate Variability); using an out of context physiological measure (HRV) in an inappropriate manner; and lack of a credible theory. One of the critics, Harvard psychology professor Richard J. McNally, noting the lack of evidence for TFT, stated that “Until Callahan has done his homework, psychologists are not obliged to pay any attention to TFT.” Psychologist John Kline wrote that Callahan's article “represents a disjointed series of unsubstantiated assertions, ill-defined neologisms, and far-fetched case reports that blur boundaries between farce and expository prose”.
One of the original authors of the non-peer reviewed studies later retracted her conclusions and has reversed her earlier favorable position on TFT. The only other studies adduced in support of TFT are ones that were reported on in Callahan's newsletter, The Thought Field, and an uncontrolled study on Voice Technology consisting of radio show call-ins in a proprietary archive of a journal of collected papers on applied kinesiology. Callahan's claims about the TFT Voice Technology having unique properties and being on a par with hard science were not supported in a controlled experiment that used random sequences vs. TFT Voice Technology.
== See also ==
Acupuncture
Emotional Freedom Techniques
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing
Tapas Acupressure Technique
== References ==
== Sources ==
== External links ==
Thought Field Therapy in the Media: A Critical Analysis of One Exemplar
NPR.org: Unorthodox Therapy in New Orleans Raises Concern
NPR.org: Q&A: What's Behind Thought Field Therapy?
The Skeptic's Dictionary | Wikipedia/Thought_Field_Therapy |
The FEMA camps conspiracy theory is a belief, particularly within the American Patriot movement, that the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to imprison United States citizens in concentration camps, following the imposition of martial law in the United States after a major disaster or crisis. In some versions of the theory, only suspected dissidents will be imprisoned. In more extreme versions, large numbers of United States citizens will be imprisoned for the purposes of extermination as a New World Order is established. The theory has existed since the late 1970s, but its circulation has increased with the advent of the internet and social media platforms.
The US government imprisoned Japanese-American citizens in internment camps during WWII and developed, but did not implement, the Rex 84 contingency plan for mass internment of US citizens in the 1980s.
== About FEMA ==
FEMA is a United States government agency tasked with the effective management of major emergencies within the country, including ensuring the continuity of government during a large-scale disaster including a nuclear war. It provides federal relief to areas afflicted by natural disasters. The precursor agency to FEMA was the Federal Civil Defense Administration established by President Harry S Truman in 1950 with Executive Order 10186.
FEMA was established in 1979 under Executive Order 12127 by President Jimmy Carter. It was established to coordinate the response to any major disaster that has occurred in the United States that overwhelms local and state authorities. In 2002, it was finally codified into law and made a component of the Department of Homeland Security. As well as providing large-scale emergency-management, FEMA is also the largest flood-insurer in the United States, mainly because most private insurance companies do not offer flood insurance.
Proponents of the conspiracy theory argue FEMA's mission is a cover up for its "real" purpose — to assume control of the United States following a major disaster or threat — and that the organization is "the executive arm of the coming police state".
== Variations ==
The theory in general states that once a disaster, or threat of one occurs, martial law will be declared and FEMA's emergency powers will come into operation, and it will effectively become the government. The Constitution will be suspended, and citizens will be moved into camps.: 251
In many versions, "dissidents" or members of the patriot movement will merely be imprisoned. Others argue that they will be sent to these camps to be murdered. Extreme versions state that plans are in place to imprison and kill apolitical American citizens in camps as part of a "population control" plot. In April 2014, Snopes posted a claim that FEMA was marking houses by political affiliation to round people up for these camps. In reality the bright, color coded stickers served varying purposes for newspaper and mail delivery personnel.
Although they do not mention FEMA specifically, the Oath Keepers' list of 10 "Orders We Will Not Obey" includes actions that are feared by many proponents of FEMA conspiracy theories. Proponents often play into racial fear, asserting that FEMA will use "urban gangs" as auxiliaries to ensure order. FEMA conspiracy theories are often woven into larger conspiracy narratives about ushering in a "New World Order", meaning a totalitarian world government.
== History ==
One of the first known references to FEMA concentration camps came from a newsletter issued by the Posse Comitatus organization in 1982, with the warning that "hardcore patriots" were to be detained in them. The prevalence of the conspiracy theory increased in line with the rise of the militia movement in the 1990s. The conspiracy was part of the rhetoric of the now largely disbanded Militia of Montana. The self-styled congressional analyst David Fletcher was their spokesman and brought it up in meetings, even pointing out "United Nations Reserves" that the government was building camps for in the Northern Cascades.
A supposed FEMA camp was featured in Linda Thompson's 1994 film America Under Siege; in reality, the "FEMA camp" was an Amtrak repair facility. She accused the government of using "black helicopters" against patriots to prevent them from interfering with plans to establish a New World Order. Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the conspiracy theory was discussed by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Domestic Terrorism. The theory's inclusion in the plot of the 1998 X-Files movie showed its growing reach. After the film’s release, FEMA spokesperson Morrie Goodman told the Washington Post: people have come to believe that the agency has “all kinds of powers we don’t have, that we can put people in concentration camps and suspend the Constitution.”[1]
Fears of FEMA declined in the early 2000s as foreign terrorists were perceived as the major threat but the late-2000s recession and the election of Barack Obama renewed opposition among conservatives, to the federal government. Obama's election also enabled the theory to reach more mainstream right-wing circles whereas it had previously been confined to the fringes. There was a resurgence in the militia movement, and with it a resurgence of the FEMA camps conspiracy theory and a corresponding boom in the "prepper" economy. Reader emails published by the magazine National Review have also promoted the theory.
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann alluded to the theory while in office, as have other Republican Party politicians. In December 2011 Camille Marino of the animal liberation website Negotiation is Over posted an alert on her website titled "Military Now Recruiting Guards for FEMA Domestic Detainment/Internment Camps" containing the usual warnings about the end of civil liberties and the announcement that the U.S. Army is looking for "a Few Good Totalitarians" to herd dissenters into camps.
In 2015, fears of the FEMA roundup beginning surfaced with the announcement of a domestic military training operation called Jade Helm 15. County and state officials in Texas denounced the fears and the exercise was completed with no one being placed into an internment camp. Also in 2015, additional speculation about the theory was stoked by retired general Wesley Clark when he called for World War II-style internment camps to be revived to combat Muslim extremism. He stated, "If these people are radicalized and they do not support the United States and they're disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine, that's their right. It’s our right and our obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict."
According to the Las Vegas Police Department and witnesses in the weeks leading up to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, gunman Stephen Paddock reportedly espoused right-wing anti-government and conspiratorial views, including FEMA conspiracies. He reportedly told a friend that "sometimes, sacrifices have to be made" in order to encourage the American public to arm themselves.
Conspiracy theorists have used the actual internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in specifically constructed camps as evidence that such a scenario has historic precedent. Proponents have cited a contingency plan (Rex 84) drafted in part by U.S. Marine Colonel Oliver North calling for the suspension of the Constitution and the detainment of citizens in the event of a national crisis. This was aimed at left-wing activists, not the libertarians and right-wingers generally associated with FEMA theories. This has been linked to a 1970 document by Louis Giuffrida (who in 1981 became the director of FEMA) calling for the establishment of martial law in the event of an uprising by African American militants and the internment of millions of African Americans.
Alex Jones has promoted conspiracy theories about FEMA on InfoWars. In 2010, Jones produced and directed Police State 4: The Rise of FEMA, a film he claimed "conclusively proves the existence of a secret network of FEMA camps" and that "The military-industrial complex is transforming our once free nation into a giant prison camp." In 2012, Jones linked to a story titled "List of All FEMA Concentration Camps in America Revealed" from the German UFO conspiracy website Disclose.tv.
In 2015, after Superstorm Sandy, the US Army announced it would begin Jade Helm 15 training. Conspiracists began to spread the theory that dome-shaped roofs paid for by FEMA were connected to Jade Helm and made to detain insurrectionists, while they were really created for people to shelter from the hurricanes.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, an agreement was made that would allow FEMA to provide noncongregate shelters for those who wouldn’t be able to quarantine in their own homes. Many began speculating that this was another iteration of FEMA camps.
== Media attention ==
Popular Mechanics has debunked some of the claims that proponents of the theory make. FOX News personality Glenn Beck did a 2009 interview with James Meigs, editor-in-chief of "Popular Mechanics", during which he debunked the existence of one purported camp. "This video," Meigs said, "actually dates from about 1995. But like so many of these conspiracy theories, it gets re-cut and re-edited and circulated around the Internet." Bloggers at the Skeptic Project have posted detailed lists where they claim to debunk many of the FEMA camp locations elsewhere in the U.S.
Newsweek emailed FEMA to inquire about the FEMA camps rumors. Press Secretary Alexa Lopez replied, "We are currently focusing our efforts on providing assistance to disaster survivors, and the ongoing response and recovery efforts in Louisiana. As to your first question, over the years there have been many myths or rumors surrounding FEMA, and I am glad I have the chance to set the record straight with you. There is absolutely no truth to these rumors—they are nothing more than conspiracy theories."
One internal FEMA memo advised ex-employees: "Most people know us as the agency that responds to natural disasters. Others believe we have a somewhat sinister role. For the latter, it is not realistic to think that we can convince them otherwise and it is advisable not to enter into debate on the subject."
== In popular culture ==
In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Adam Jensen has to visit one such camp.
In The X Files: Fight the Future, FEMA is depicted as an agency involved in a cover-up related to an alien invasion and a sinister government plot
== See also ==
Conspiracy theories about the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season
FBI Index
List of conspiracy theories
== References == | Wikipedia/FEMA_camps_conspiracy_theory |
Love jihad (or Romeo jihad) is an Islamophobic conspiracy theory promoted by right-wing Hindutva activists. The conspiracy theory purports that Muslim men target Hindu women for conversion to Islam by means such as seduction, feigning love, deception, kidnapping, and marriage, as part of a broader demographic "war" by Muslims against India, and an organised international conspiracy, for domination through demographic growth and replacement.
The conspiracy theory relies on disinformation to conduct its hate campaign, and is noted for its similarities to other historic hate campaigns as well as contemporary white nationalist conspiracy theories and Euro-American Islamophobia. It features Orientalist portrayals of Muslims as barbaric and hypersexual, and carries the paternalistic and patriarchal notions that Hindu women are passive and victimized, while "any possibility of women exercising their legitimate right to love and their right to choice is ignored". It has consequently been the cause of vigilante assaults, murders and other violent incidents, including the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.
Created in 2009 as part of a campaign to foster fear and paranoia, the conspiracy theory was disseminated by Hindutva publications, such as the Sanatan Prabhat and the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti website, calling Hindus to protect their women from Muslim men who were simultaneously depicted to be attractive seducers and lecherous rapists. Organisations including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) have since been credited for its proliferation in India and abroad, respectively. The conspiracy theory was noted to have become a significant belief in the state of Uttar Pradesh by 2014 and contributed to the success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) campaign in the state.
The concept was institutionalised in India after the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Right-wing pro-government television media, such as Times Now and Republic TV, and social media disinformation campaigns are generally held responsible for the growth of its popularity. Legislation against the purported conspiracy has been initiated in a number of states ruled by the party and implemented in the state of Uttar Pradesh by the Yogi Adityanath government, where it has been used as a means of state repression on Muslims and crackdown on interfaith marriages.
In Myanmar, the conspiracy theory has been adopted by the 969 Movement as an allegation of Islamisation of Buddhist women and used by the Tatmadaw as justification for military operations against Rohingya civilians. It has extended among the non-Muslim Indian diaspora and led to formation of alliances between Hindutva groups and Western far-right organisations such as the English Defence League. It has also been adopted in part by the clergy of the Catholic Church in Kerala to dissuade interfaith marriage among Christians.
== Background ==
=== Regional historical tensions ===
In a piece picked up by the Chicago Tribune, Foreign Policy correspondent Siddhartha Mahanta reports that the modern Love Jihad conspiracy has roots in the 1947 partition of India. This partition led to the creation of India and Pakistan. The creation of two countries with different majority religions led to large-scale migration, with millions of people moving between the countries and rampant reports of sexual predation and forced conversions of women by men of both faiths. Women on both sides of the conflict were impacted, leading to "recovery operations" by both the Indian and Pakistani governments of these women, with over 20,000 Muslim and 9,000 non-Muslim women being recovered between 1947 and 1956. This tense history caused repeated clashes between the faiths in the decades that followed as well, according to Mahanta, as cultural pressure against interfaith marriage for either side.
As of 2011, Hindus were the leading religious majority in India, at 80%, with Muslims at 14% an increase from 9% from 1951 while the Hindu population of Pakistan has remained at 2% and that of Bangladesh fallen to 8%. In the 1951 census, West Pakistan (now Pakistan) had 1.3% Hindu population, while East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had 22.05%.
=== Marriage traditions and customs ===
India has a long tradition of arranged marriages, wherein the bride and groom do not choose their partners. Through the 2000s and 2010s, India witnessed a rise in love marriages; however, tensions continue around interfaith marriages, along with other traditionally discouraged unions. In 2012, The Hindu reported that illegal intimidation against consenting couples engaging in such discouraged unions, including inter-religious marriage, had surged. That year, Uttar Pradesh saw the proposal of an amendment to remove the requirement to declare religion from the marriage law in hopes of encouraging those who were hiding their interfaith marriage due to social norms to register.
One of the tensions surrounding interfaith marriage relates to concerns of required, even forced, marital conversion. Marriage in Islam is a legal contract with requirements around the religions of the participants. While Muslim women are only permitted within the contract to marry Muslim men, Muslim men may marry "People of the Book", interpreted by most to include Jews and Christians, with the inclusion of Hindus disputed. According to a 2014 article in the Mumbai Mirror, some non-Muslim brides in Muslim-Hindu marriages convert, while other couples choose a civil marriage under the Special Marriage Act of 1954. Marriage between Muslim women and Hindu men (including Sikh, Jaina, and Buddhist) is legal civil marriage under The Special Marriage Act of 1954.
=== Hindu nationalism and right wing politics ===
Love jihad in politics has been closely tied to Hindu nationalism, particularly the more extremist form hindutva associated with BJP Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi. The anti-Islamic stances of many right wing hindutva groups like Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) are usually hostile to inter-religious marriage and religious pluralism, which can sometimes result in mob violence motivated by allegations of love jihad.
== Timeline ==
=== Early origins and beginnings ===
Similar controversies over inter religious marriage were relatively common in India from the 1920s until independence in 1947, when allegations of forced marriage were typically called "abductions". They were more common in religiously diverse areas, including campaigns against both Muslims and Christians, and were tied to fears over religious demographics and political power in the newly emerging Indian nation. Fears of women converting was also a catalyst of the violence against women that occurred during that period. However, allegations of Love Jihad first rose to national awareness in September 2009.
According to the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council, by October 2009 up to 4,500 girls in Kerala had been targeted, whereas Hindu Janajagruti Samiti claimed that 30,000 girls had been converted in Karnataka alone. Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana general secretary Vellapally Natesan said that there had been reports in Narayaneeya communities of "Love Jihad" attempts. Following the controversy's initial flare-up in 2009, it flared again in 2010, 2011 and 2014. On 25 June 2014, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy informed the state legislature that 2,667 young women converted to Islam in the state between 2006 and 2014. However, he stated that there was no evidence for any of them being forced to convert, and that fears of Love Jihad were "baseless." Muslim organizations such as the Popular Front of India and the Campus Front have been accused of promoting this activity. In Kerala, some movies have been accused of promoting Love Jihad, a charge which has been denied by the filmmakers. Bollywood films PK and Bajrangi Bhaijaan were accused of promoting Love jihad by Hindu outfits. The actors and directors denied that their films promoted Love jihad.
Around the same time that the conspiracy theory was beginning to spread, accounts of Love Jihad also began becoming prevalent in Myanmar. Wirathu, the leader of 969 Movement, has said that Muslim men pretend to be Buddhists and then the Buddhist women are lured into Islam in Myanmar. He has urged to "protect our Buddhist women from the Muslim love-jihad" by introducing further legislation. Reports of similar activities also began emerging from the United Kingdom's Sikh diaspora. In 2014, The Sikh Council alleged that it had received reports that girls from British Sikh families were becoming victims of Love Jihad. Furthermore, these reports alleged that these girls were being exploited by their husbands, some of whom afterwards abandoned them in Pakistan. According to the Takht jathedar, he alleged that "The Sikh council has rescued some of the victims (girls) and brought them back to their parents."
=== Congress Party era (2009–2014) ===
The initial formations of the conspiracy theory were solidified when various organisations began joining. Christian groups, such as the Christian Association for Social Action, and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) banded against it, with the VHP establishing the "Hindu Helpline" that it started answered 1,500 calls in three months related to "Love Jihad". The Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN) has reported that the Catholic Church was concerned about this alleged phenomenon. In September, posters of right-wing group Shri Ram Sena warning against "Love Jihad" appeared in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. The group announced in December that it would launch a nationwide "Save our daughters, save India" campaign to combat "Love Jihad". Muslim organizations in Kerala called it a malicious misinformation campaign. Popular Front of India (PFI) committee-member Naseeruddin Elamaram denied that the PFI was involved in any "Love Jihad", stating that people convert to Hinduism and Christianity as well and that religious conversion is not a crime. Members of the Muslim Central Committee of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts responded by claiming that Hindus and Christians have fabricated these claims to undermine Muslims.
In July 2010, the "Love Jihad" controversy resurfaced in the press when Kerala Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan referenced the alleged matrimonial conversion of non-Muslim girls as part of an effort to make Kerala a Muslim majority state. PFI dismissed his statements due to the findings of the Kerala probe, but the president of the BJP Mahila Morcha, the women's wing of the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party, called for an NIA investigation, alleging that the Kerala state probe was closed prematurely due to a tacit understanding with PFI. The Congress Party in Kerala responded strongly to the Chief Minister's comments, which they described as deplorable and dangerous.
In December 2011, the controversy erupted again in Karnataka legislative assembly, when member Mallika Prasad of the Bharatiya Janata Party asserted that the problem was ongoing and unaddressed – with, according to her, 69 of 84 Hindu girls who had gone missing between January and November of that year confessing after their recovery that "they'd been lured by Muslim youths who professed love." According to The Times of India, response was divided, with Deputy Speaker N. Yogish Bhat and House Leader S. Suresh Kumar supporting governmental intervention, while Congress members B. Ramanath Rai and Abhayachandra Jain argued that "the issue was being raised to disrupt communal harmony in the district."
=== Bharatiya Janata Party era (2014–present) ===
During the resurgence of the controversy in 2014, protests turned violent at growing concern, even though, according to Reuters, the concept was considered "an absurd conspiracy theory by mainstream, moderate Indians." Then BJP MP Yogi Adityanath alleged that Love Jihad was an international conspiracy targeting India, announcing on television that the Muslims "can't do what they want by force in India, so they are using the love jihad method here." Conservative Hindu activists cautioned women in Uttar Pradesh to avoid Muslims and not to befriend them. In Uttar Pradesh, the influential committee Akhil Bharitiya Vaishya Ekta Parishad announced their intention to push to restrict the use of cell phones among young women to prevent their being vulnerable to such activities.
Following this announcement, The Times of India reported that the Senior Superintendent of Police in UP, Shalabh Mathur, "said the term 'love jihad' had been coined only to create fear and divide society along communal lines." Muslim leaders referred to the 2014 rhetoric around the alleged conspiracy as a campaign of hate. Feminists voiced concerns that efforts to protect women against the alleged activities would negatively impact women's rights, depriving them of free choice and agency.
In September 2014, BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj claimed that Muslim boys in madrasas are being motivated for Love Jihad with proposals of rewards of "Rs 11 lakh for an 'affair' with a Sikh girl, Rs 10 lakh for a Hindu girl and Rs 7 lakh for a Jain girl." He claimed to know this through reports to him by Muslims and by the experiences of men in his service who had converted for access. Abdul Razzaq Khan, the vice-president of Jamiat Ulama Hind, responded by denying such activities, labeling the comments "part of conspiracy aimed at disturbing the peace of the nation" and demanding action against Maharaj. Uttar Pradesh minister Mohd Azam Khan indicated the statement was "trying to break the country". In January, Vishwa Hindu Parishad's women's wing, Durga Vahini used actor Kareena Kapoor's morphed picture half covered with burqa issue of their magazine, on the theme of Love Jihad. The caption underneath read: "conversion of nationality through religious conversion". In June 2018, Jharkhand High Court granted a divorce in an alleged love jihad case in which the accused lied about his religion and forcing the victim to convert to Islam after marriage.
==== 2017 Hadiya court case ====
In May 2017, the Kerala High Court annulled a marriage of a converted Hindu woman Akhila alias Hadiya to a Muslim man Shafeen Jahan on the grounds that the bride's parents were not present, nor gave consent for the marriage, after allegations by her father of conversion and marriage at the behest of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Hadiya's father had claimed that his daughter had been influenced to marry a Muslim man by some organisations so she no longer remained in her parents' custody. However, Hadiya claimed that she had been following Islam since 2012 and had left her home of her own will. Akhila was married to Shafeen by the time her father's petition was taken up by the court, following which her marriage was annulled.
The decision of the court was challenged by Shafeen in the Supreme Court of India in July 2017. The Supreme Court sought the response from the National Investigating Agency (NIA) and the Kerala government, ordering an NIA probe headed by former SC Judge R. V. Raveendran on 16 August. The NIA had earlier submitted that the woman's conversion and marriage was not "isolated" and it had detected a pattern emerging in the state.
The Supreme Court on 8 March 2018 overturned the annulment of Hadiya's marriage by the Kerala High Court and held that the she had married of her own free will. However, it allowed NIA to continue investigation into the allegations of a terror dimension. The NIA examined 11 interfaith marriages in Kerala and completed its investigation in October 2018, concluding that "the agency has not found any evidence to suggest that in any of these cases either the man or the woman was coerced to convert".
==== 2020 legislation and outcomes ====
Despite drawing severe criticisms, the Syro Malabar Church continued to repeat its stand on "love jihad". According to the church, Christian women are being targeted, recruited to terrorist outfit Islamic State, making them sex slaves and even killed. Detailing this, a circular, issued by Church chief Cardinal Mar George Alencherry, was read out in many parishes at the Sunday mass. In the circular (dated 15 January 2020) that was read out in churches on Sunday, it is stated that Christian women are being targeted under a conspiracy through inter-religious relationships, which often grow as a threat to religious harmony. "Christian women from Kerala are even being recruited to Islamic State through this," the circular read. Further, Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference's (KCBC) Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance, claimed that there were 4,000 instances of "love jihad" between 2005 and 2012.
On 27 September 2020, protests occurred after a young Muslim man attempted to kidnap a 21-year-old Hindu woman near her college campus, and fatally shot her when she resisted. Her family said that he had tried to force her to convert to Islam and marry him.
Many BJP-ruled states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka, then began mulling over laws designed to prevent "forcible conversions" through marriage, commonly referred to as "love jihad" laws. In September 2020, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asked his government to come up with a strategy to prevent "religious conversions in the name of love". On 31 October, he announced that a law to curb "love jihad" would be passed by his government. The law in Uttar Pradesh, which also includes provisions against "unlawful religious conversion," declares a marriage null and void if the sole intention was to "change a girl's religion" and both it and the one in Madhya Pradesh imposed sentences of up to 10 years in prison for those who broke the law. The ordinance came into effect on 28 November 2020 as the Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance. In December 2020, Madhya Pradesh approved an anti-conversion law similar to the Uttar Pradesh one. As of 25 November 2020, Haryana and Karnataka were still in discussion over similar ordinances. In April 2021, the Gujarat Assembly amended the Freedom of Religion Act, 2003, bringing in stringent provisions against forcible conversion through marriage or allurement, with the intention of targeting "love jihad".
The Karnataka state cabinet also approved an anti-conversion ‘love jihad’ bill, making it a law in December 2021. The Congress-led government scrapped the law in June 2023.
While campaigning for the 2021 Kerala Legislative Assembly election and the 2021 Assam Legislative Assembly election, the BJP promised that if it won the elections, it would enact a law that would ban "love jihad" in these states.
== Reliance on tropes ==
The conspiracy theory is noted for its similarities to other historic hate campaigns and instances Euro-American Islamophobia. It features Orientalist portrayals of Muslims as barbaric and hypersexual, and carries the paternalistic and patriarchal notions that Hindu women are passive and victimized, while "any possibility of women exercising their legitimate right to love and their right to choice is ignored". It has consequently been the cause of vigilante assaults, murders and other violent incidents, including the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.
== Official investigations ==
=== India ===
In August 2017, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) stated that it had found a common "mentor" in some love jihad cases, "a woman associated with the radical group Popular Front of India", in August 2017. According to a later article in The Economist, "Repeated police investigations have failed to find evidence of any organised plan of conversion. Reporters have repeatedly exposed claims of 'love jihad' as at best fevered fantasies and at worst, deliberate election-time inventions." According to the same report, the common theme regarding many claims of "love jihad" has been the frenzied objection to an interfaith marriage while "Indian law erects no barriers to marriages between faiths, or against conversion by willing and informed consent. Yet the idea still sticks, even when the supposed 'victims' dismiss it as nonsense."
In 2022, the Observer Research Foundation and Indian government stated that no more than 100-200 Indians had joined Islamic State, a figure so low that one researcher remarked that "academics and experts often ask the question ‘What had prevented Indian Muslims from joining the Islamic State?'."
==== Karnataka ====
In October 2009, the Karnataka government announced its intention to counter "love jihad", which "appeared to be a serious issue". A week after the announcement, the government ordered a probe into the situation by the CID to determine if an organised effort existed to convert these girls and, if so, by whom it was being funded. One woman, whose conversion to Islam came under scrutiny as a result of the probe, was temporarily ordered to the custody of her parents, but eventually was permitted to return to her new husband after she appeared in court, denying pressure to convert. In April 2010, police used the term to characterize the alleged kidnapping, forced conversion and marriage of a 17-year-old college girl in Mysore.
In late 2009, The Karnataka CID (Criminal Investigation Department) reported that although it was continuing to investigate, it had found no evidence that a "love jihad" existed. In late 2009, Director general of police Jacob Punnoose reported that although the investigation would continue, there was no evidence of any organised attempt by any group or individual using men "feigning love" to lure women to convert to Islam. Investigators did indicate that many Hindu girls had converted to Islam of their own will. In early 2010, the State Government reported to the Karnataka High Court that, although many young Hindu women had converted to Islam, there was no organized attempt to convince them to do so. According to The Indian Express, Justice K. T. Sankaran's conclusion that "such incidents under the pretext of love were rampant in certain parts of the state" ran contrary to Central and state government reports. A petition was also put before Sankaran to prevent the use of the terms "love jihad" and "romeo jihad", but Sankaran declined to overrule an earlier decision not to restrain media usage. Subsequently, the High Court stayed further police investigation, both because no organised efforts had been disclosed by police probes and because the investigation was specifically targeted against a single community. In early 2010, the state government reported to the Karnataka High Court that although many young Hindu women had converted to Islam, there was no organized attempt to convince them to do so.
==== Kerala ====
Following the launching of a poster campaign in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, purportedly by the organisation Shri Ram Sena, state police began investigating the presence of that organisation in the area. In late October 2009, police addressed the question of "love jihad" itself, indicating that while they had not located an organisation called "Love Jihad", "there are reasons to suspect 'concentrated attempts' to persuade girls to convert to Islam after they fall in love with Muslim boys".
In November 2009, Director general of police Jacob Punnoose stated there was no organisation whose members lured girls in Kerala by feigning love with the intention of converting. He told the Kerala High Court that three out of 18 reports he received questioned the tendency. However, in absence of solid proof, the investigations were still continuing. In December 2009, Justice K.T. Sankaran, who had refused to accept Punnoose's report, concluded from a case diary that there were indications of forceful conversions and stated it was clear from police reports there was a "concerted effort" to convert women with "blessings of some outfits". The court, while hearing the bail plea of two individuals accused in "love jihad" cases, stated that there had been 3,000-4,000 such conversions in the past four years. The Kerala High Court in December 2009 stayed investigations in the case, granting relief to the two accused, though it criticised the police investigation. The investigation was closed by Justice M. Sasidharan Nambiar following Punnoose's statements that no conclusive evidence could be found for the existence of "love jihad".
On 9 December 2009, Justice K T Sankaran for the Kerala High Court weighed in on the matter while hearing bail for a Muslim youth arrested for allegedly forcibly converting two female students. According to Sankaran, police reports revealed the "blessings of some outfits" for a "concerted" effort for religious conversions, some 3,000 to 4,000 incidences of which had taken place after love affairs within a four-year period. Sankaran "found indications of 'forceful' religious conversions under the garb of 'love'", suggesting that "such 'deceptive' acts" might require legislative intervention to prevent them.
In January 2012, Kerala police declared that "love jihad" was "[a] campaign with no substance", bringing legal proceedings instead against the website hindujagruti.org for "spreading religious hatred and false propaganda." In 2012, after two years of investigation into the alleged "love jihad", Kerala Police declared it as a "campaign with no substance". Subsequently, a case was initiated against the hindujagruti website, where counterfeit posters of Muslim organisations offering money to Muslim youths for luring and trapping women were found.
In 2017, after the Kerala High Court had ruled that a marriage of a Hindu woman to a Muslim man was invalid on the basis of"'love jihad", and an appeal was filed in the Supreme Court of India by the Muslim husband. The court, based on the "unbiased and independent" evidence requested by the court from the NIA, instructed the NIA to investigate all similar cases to establish whether there was any "love jihad". It allowed the NIA to explore all similar suspicious cases to find whether banned organisations, such as SIMI, were preying on vulnerable Hindu women to recruit them as terrorists. The NIA had earlier submitted before the court that the case was not an "isolated" incident and it had detected a pattern emerging in the state, stating that another case involved the same individuals who had previously acted as instigators. In 2018, the NIA concluded its probe, after investigating 11 interfaith marriages in Kerala without finding proof of coercion, and an NIA official concluded that "we didn't find any prosecutable evidence to bring formal charges against these persons under any of the scheduled offences of the NIA", adding that "Conversion is not a crime in Kerala and also helping these men and women convert is also within the ambit of the constitution of the country."
In 2021, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan stated that "no complaints or clear information were received regarding forced conversion", and that, of the data available to the ministry, "none of the figures validate the propaganda that girls are being lured into conversion and terrorist organizations".
==== Uttar Pradesh ====
In September 2014, following the resurgence of national attention, Reuters reported that police in Uttar Pradesh had found no credence in the five or six recent allegations of "love jihad" that had been brought before them, with state police chief A.L. Banerjee stating that, "In most cases we found that a Hindu girl and Muslim boy were in love and had married against their parents' will." The police stated that occasional cases of trickery by dishonest men are not evidence of a broader conspiracy.
That same month, the Allahabad High Court gave the government and election commission of Uttar Pradesh ten days to respond to a petition to restrain the use of the word "love jihad" and to take action against Yogi Adityanath.
=== United Kingdom ===
In 2018, a report by the fundamentalist Sikh activist organisation, Sikh Youth UK, entitled "The Religiously Aggravated Sexual Exploitation of Young Sikh Women Across the UK" (RASE report) made similar allegations of Muslim men targeting Sikh girls for the purposes of conversion. The report was severely criticised in 2019 by academic researchers and by an official UK government report, led by two Sikh academics, for false and misleading information. It noted: "The RASE report lacks solid data, methodological transparency and rigour. It is filled instead with sweeping generalisations and poorly substantiated claims around the nature and scale of abuse of Sikh girls and causal factors driving it. It appealed heavily to historical tensions between Sikhs and Muslims and narratives of honour in a way that seemed designed to whip up fear and hate".
Previously, in 2011, Sikh academic Katy Sian had conducted research into the matter, exploring how "forced conversion narratives" arose within the Sikh diaspora in the United Kingdom and why they became so widespread. Sian, who reports that claims of conversion through courtship on campuses are widespread in the UK, says that rather than relying on actual evidence, the Sikh community primarily rest their beliefs on the word of "a friend of a friend" or personal anecdotes. According to Sian, the narrative is similar to accusations of "white slavery" lodged against the Jewish community and foreigners to the UK and the US, with the former having ties to anti-semitism that mirror the Islamophobia displayed by the modern narrative. Sian expanded on these views in her 2013 book, Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions, and Postcolonial Formations.
In response to a flurry of sensational news stories on the subject, ten Hindu academics in the UK signed an open letter wherein they argued that claims of Hindu and Sikh girls being forcefully converted in the UK were "part of an arsenal of myths propagated by right-wing Hindu supremacist organisations in India". The Muslim Council of Britain issued a press release pointing out there was a lack of evidence of any forced conversions, and suggested it was an underhanded attempt to smear the British Muslim population.
== "Reverse" love jihad ==
In response to the purported conspiracy of love jihad, affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have stated that they have launched a Reverse Love Jihad campaign to marry Hindu men with Muslim women. Cases related to the campaign were reported from various parts of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), where rape and abduction of Muslim women have taken place. The perpetrators of these incidents are alleged to be the members of these affiliates who are being rewarded by the affiliates for their activities. Between 2014 and October 2016, 389 cases of underage girls missing or kidnapped were registered by the police in Kushinagar district, and a similar trend was found in a number of districts in eastern Uttar Pradesh, in areas with high communal tensions.
The term Reverse Love Jihad has also been used by the Bajrang Dal to refer to the Love Jihad conspiracy theory where the purported victim is a Hindu man being "lured" to Islam with the prospects of a job and marriage to a Muslim woman.
The Bhagwa Love Trap conspiracy theory, which alleges that Hindu men lure Muslim women into relationships with the intention of converting them to Hinduism, has been popularized on social media.
== See also ==
The Kerala Story
Hindutva pseudohistory
Anti-Mosque campaign in India
Violence against Muslims in India
White genocide conspiracy theory
Great replacement conspiracy theory
Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Amarasingam, A.; Umar, S.; Desai, S. (2022). "Fight, Die, and If Required Kill": Hindu Nationalism, Misinformation, and Islamophobia in India". Religions. 13 (5): 380. doi:10.3390/rel13050380.
== External links ==
Quotations related to Love jihad conspiracy theory at Wikiquote | Wikipedia/Love_jihad_conspiracy_theory |
There are a number of planetary objects proposed in religion, astrology, ufology and pseudoscience whose existence is not supported by scientific evidence.
== Kolob ==
Kolob is a star or planet described in the Book of Abraham, a sacred text in many traditions of the Latter Day Saint movement. Kolob is also mentioned in a Latter-day Saint hymn. The Book of Abraham refers to Kolob as a "star", however, it also refers to several planets as stars, and Kolob is commonly viewed as a planet by Latter Day Saints today.
Kolob is described as the heavenly body closest to the throne of God. Joseph Smith also claimed it "signified" the first creation.
== Lilith ==
Lilith is a fictitious invisible moon of Earth, supposedly about the same mass as the Earth's Moon, proposed in 1918 by astrologer Walter Gorn Old, who called himself Sepharial. Sepharial applied the name Lilith from medieval Jewish legend, where she is described as the first wife of Adam.
Sepharial claimed that Lilith was the same second moon that scientist Georg Waltemath claimed to have discovered twenty years earlier, but which had never been confirmed. Sepharial also claimed to be the first person in history to observe Waltemath's moon as it crossed the Sun, and rationalized that it was too dark to be otherwise visually detected.
Sepharial's comments ignored the fact that Waltemath's proposed moon had already been discredited by the scientific community at the turn of the century.
There are many readily apparent holes in the arguments supporting Lilith's existence, and its existence is believed only by fringe groups; astrologers now generally use the name for the position of the actual Moon's apogee.
=== In modern astrology ===
In present-day astrology, the name Lilith or Black Moon Lilith is usually given to a point on the horoscope of the actual Moon's apogee. When considered as a point, this Lilith is sometimes defined as the second focus of the ellipse described by the Moon's orbit; the Earth is the first focus, and the apogee lies in the same approximate direction as the focus. It takes 8 years and 10 months for this point to complete a circuit through the zodiac tracking the apsidal precession.
== Planets proposed by L. Ron Hubbard ==
L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, proposed as part of his cosmology a Galactic Confederacy which consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets including Earth, which was then known as "Teegeeack".
One planet in the Scientology doctrine is known as Helatrobus.
== Ummo ==
Ummo ([ˈumo]) is a hypothetical planet believed to be located in the Constellation Virgo. Ummo and its civilisation are described in a decades-long series of claims that aliens from the planet Ummo were communicating with people on the Earth. Most Ummo information was in the form of detailed documents and letters sent to various esoteric groups or UFO enthusiasts. The Ummo affair was subject to much mainstream attention in France and Spain during the 1960s and a degree of interest remains regarding the subject. Ummoism is the term used to define different groups interested in the study of the ideas and concepts presented in the Ummo letters). The culprit (or culprits) is unknown, but José Luis Jordán Peña has claimed responsibility for writing the letters and instigating Ummoism, leading many to think that Ummo could be an elaborate hoax. However, twenty years ago, there were still a few small groups of devotees, such as "a strange Bolivian cult called the Daughters of Ummo".
Jacques Vallée has said that the author(s) of the Ummo documents might be a real-world analogue of the fictional creators of Borges' "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". Historian Mike Dash writes that Ummoism began on 6 February 1966, in Madrid. On that day, Jordán Peña claimed to have had a close encounter of the first kind when he saw "an enormous circular object with three legs and, on its underside, a curious symbol: three vertical lines joined by a horizontal bar. The two exterior lines curved outward at the edges, which made the pictogram resemble the alchemical sign for the planet Uranus." (Dash, 299)
Peña's report generated a fair amount of excitement, but it was only the beginning. Not long afterwards, a Madrid author of a UFO book received several photographs in an anonymous mailing. The photos were of a craft similar to the one reported by Peña, and bearing the same symbol. Within a few weeks, "a leading Spanish contactee named Fernando Sesma Manzano became involved when he began receiving lengthy, typewritten documents which purported to come from a spacefaring race called the Ummites." (Dash, 299)
Since 1991, the well known French researcher Jean-Pierre Petit has claimed to have detected signs of superior intelligence in some of the Ummite writings he says he has received. He also claims that the scientific subjects addressed in the ummite letters are totally innovative and have directly inspired him in his research in cosmology and magnetohydrodynamics.
On the basis of letters, it is difficult to speak of an Ummite language. All we have, apart from a few complete sentences, is a lexicon, a set of vocables, the vast majority of which are given to us in isolation. Antonio Ribera mentions 403 words ummites in a 1978 compilation and Jean Pollion, in Ummo, de vrais extraterrestres (2002), lists over a thousand words considering that every doubling of a letter in a word is significant.
Two theories have been formulated by analysts of Ummite letters:
the first, defended by Jean Pollion pseudonyme, considers that each letter (sound or phoneme) in words transcribed in typewritten form is signifying, and he has called these sounds "soncepts". He considers this to be an "ideophonemic" language: "By analogy with ideographic languages, which proceed by assembling ideas corresponding to written and pronounceable signs, I have chosen to attribute to this language the "ideophonemic" character. To date, I have counted 17 "soncepts" by associative combinations of these phonemes, almost all of which are relational."
The second considers that differences in spelling (especially the doubling of letters) are of little significance, and that they are due to differences in the understanding of foreign sounds by the typist(s), or to difficulties in alphabetic transcription. They consider that language is made up of word-objects and not of "soncepts."
Currently, more than 1300 pages of those letters have been registered, but it is possible that many other letters exist. In a 1988 letter, reference is made to the existence of 3850 pages, copies of which have been sent to several individuals, representing perhaps up to 160,000 pages of total Ummo documents. The true identity of the authors of those reports remains unknown.
Dash notes that "few ufologists outside Spain took Ummoism seriously—the photographic evidence was highly suspect, and, while the Ummite letters were more sophisticated than most contactee communication, there was nothing in them that could not have originated on Earth." Still, Dash allows that, whatever their origins, "considerable effort had gone into the supposed hoax." (Dash, 299)
Many scientific subjects are described in detail in the letters, including network theory (or graph theory), astrophysics, cosmology, the unified field theory, biology, and evolution. Some of this information is thought to be dubious pseudoscience, but much of it is scientifically accurate. However, Jerome Clark (Clark, 1993) notes that Jacques Vallée argued that the scientific content of the Ummo letters was knowledgeable but unremarkable, and compared the scientific references to a well-researched science fiction novel—plausible in the 1960s, but dated by the standards of the 1990s.
The controversy over an "error" in the distance from Wolf 424 arose from the first letter, referenced D21 (May 1966), which states: "The first distance is the one used by terrestrial astronomers for their calculations (disdaining the curvatures of light as it passes through fields of high gravitational intensity), such a distance is "constant" for two bodies fixed in space. The second distance is a function of time, measured in an N-dimensional space with a certain periodicity. Its measurement is very important as it relates to our galactic travels. DISTANCE FROM IUMMA TO THE SUN. The apparent distance, i.e. that which a coherent beam of waves would follow in three-dimensional space, on 4 January 1955, was 14.437 light-years.
The real distance (straight distance in decadimensional space) on the same date, according to our measurements, was 3.685 light-years". Further on, after giving some characteristics, the author adds "The result is that it is impossible, even with the most careful axis translation, to identify the same star coded by us with another catalogued by Earth astronomers. We believe, however, that our IUMMA may still be the star you've registered as WOLF 424, as its coordinates are similar to those we've given you."
Thus, ill-informed or ill-intentioned critics have amputated the original writings, arguing that the author of the letters relied on an erroneous measurement, this distance coinciding with that measured by Yerkes' laboratory in 1938 (3.6 to 3.8 al) for Wolf 424, although Yerkes corrected it in 1952).
== Planets proposed by Zecharia Sitchin ==
The work of Zecharia Sitchin has garnered much attention among ufologists, ancient astronaut theorists and conspiracy theorists. He claimed to have uncovered, through his retranslations of Sumerian texts, evidence that the human race was visited/created by a group of extraterrestrials from a distant planet in the Solar System. Part of his theory lay in an astronomical interpretation of the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, in which he replaced the names of gods with hypothetical planets. However, since the principal evidence for Sitchin's claims lay in his own personally derived etymologies and not on any scholarly agreed interpretations, academics consider it pseudoscience and pseudohistory, if they know it at all.
Sitchin's theory proposes the planets Tiamat and Nibiru. Tiamat supposedly existed between Mars and Jupiter. The planet's orbit was disrupted by the arrival of a large planet or very small star (less than twenty times the size of Jupiter) which passed through the planetary system between 65 million and four billion years ago. The new orbits caused Tiamat to collide with one of the moons of Nibiru. The debris from this collision are thought by the theory's proponents to have variously formed the asteroid belt and the current form of planet Earth.
Sitchin claims that the Babylonians associated Nibiru with the god Marduk; the word is Akkadian and the meaning is uncertain. Sitchin hypothesized it as a planet in a highly elliptic orbit around the Sun, with a perihelion passage some 3,600 years ago and assumed orbital period of about 3,450 years; he also claimed it was the home of a technologically advanced human-like alien race, the Anunnaki, who apparently visited Earth in search of gold. These beings eventually created humanity by genetically crossing themselves with extant primates, and thus became the first gods.
Beginning in 1995, websites such as ZetaTalk have claimed that Nibiru or "Planet X" is a brown dwarf currently within our planetary system, soon to pass relatively close to Earth. Sitchin disagreed it is a star, with the timing and parameters of passage.
Sitchin also postulated that Pluto began life as Gaga, a satellite of Saturn which, due to perturbation caused by Nibiru's passing, was flung into orbit beyond Neptune.
== Serpo ==
Project Serpo is an alleged top-secret exchange program between the United States government and an alien planet called Serpo in the Zeta Reticuli star system. Details of the alleged exchange program have appeared in several UFO conspiracy stories, including one incident in 1983—in which a man identifying himself as United States Air Force Sergeant Richard C. Doty contacted investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe claiming to be able to supply her Air Force records of the exchange for her HBO documentary The ET Factor, only to pull out without providing any evidence to substantiate his story—and one incident in 2005 when a series of emails were sent to a UFO discussion group run by Victor Martinez claiming that the project was real. Some variations on the conspiracy story state that the name Serpo is the nickname of the extrasolar planet. Other versions state that it is a mispronunciation of either Serponia or Seinu by authorities involved in the project.
The first mention of a 'Project Serpo' was in a UFO email list maintained by enthusiast Victor Martinez. Various versions of the conspiracy theory circulated and were later detailed on a website. According to the most common version of the story, an alien survived a crash near Roswell in the later 1940s (see Roswell UFO incident). This alien was detained but treated well by American military forces, contacted its home planet and eventually repatriated. The story continues by claiming that this led to the establishment of some sort of relationship between the American government and the people of its home world, said to be a planet of the binary star system Zeta Reticuli.
Zeta Reticuli has a history in ufology (including the Betty and Barney Hill abduction and the Bob Lazar story), having been claimed as the home system of an alien race called the Greys.
The story finally claims that twelve American military personnel visited the planet between 1965 and 1978 and that all of the party have since died, from "after effects of high radiation levels from the two suns". Another version of the story claims that "Eight (8) Team Members returned on the seven (7) month trek home. Team Member #308 (Team Pilot #2) died of a pulmonary embolism en route to SERPO on the 9-month journey; 11 arrived safely. One (1) died on the planet – and both of their bodies were returned to Earth – while two (2) others decided to remain on the ALIEN homeworld of SERPO."
One criticism of Project Serpo stems from the lack of veracity of one of its alleged witnesses, Sergeant Richard Doty. Doty has been involved in other alleged UFO-related activities (see Majestic 12 and Paul Bennewitz), and thus is a discredited source (or a purposeful provider of disinformation). Additionally, there is no physical evidence supporting the project's existence. According to Tim Swartz of Mysteries Magazine, Doty, who promised evidence to Moulton Howe before backing out, has been involved in circulating several other UFO conspiracy stories. Swartz also expressed that the details of Project Serpo have varied considerably with different accounts. It has been alleged that the entire series of posts were designed to be viral marketing for a new book by Doty.
Bill Ryan, a chief proponent of publicizing the Project Serpo claims, announced on 5 March 2007, that he was stepping down from his role as webmaster for the Serpo material. Ryan nevertheless maintains his belief that an extraterrestrial exchange program did occur, although he states that the Serpo releases definitely contained disinformation.
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References ==
Clark, Jerome, Unexplained! 347 Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena; Detroit, Visible Ink Press; 1993, ISBN 0-8103-9436-7
Mike Dash, Borderlands: The Ultimate Exploration of the Unknown, ISBN 0-440-23656-8 | Wikipedia/Planetary_objects_proposed_in_religion,_astrology,_ufology_and_pseudoscience |
The Black Knight satellite conspiracy theory claims that a spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin is in near-polar orbit of the Earth, and that NASA is covering up its existence and origin. This conspiracy theory combines several unrelated stories into one narrative.
A photo taken during the STS-88 mission claimed by some to show the Black Knight satellite is catalogued by NASA as a photo of space debris, and space journalist James Oberg considers it as probable debris of a thermal blanket confirmed as lost during the mission.
== History ==
According to some UFO conspiracists, the Black Knight is an artificial satellite of extraterrestrial origin that has orbited Earth for approximately 13,000 years; the "satellite" story is most likely a conflation of several disconnected stories about various objects and their interpretations, all of them well documented independently and none using the term Black Knight upon their first publication. According to senior education support officer Martina Redpath of Armagh Planetarium in Northern Ireland:
Black Knight is a jumble of completely unrelated stories; reports of unusual science observations, authors promoting fringe ideas, classified spy satellites and people over-interpreting photos. These ingredients have been chopped up, stirred together and stewed on the internet to one rambling and inconsistent dollop of myth.
The origin of the Black Knight legend is often "retrospectively dated" back to natural extraterrestrial repeating sources supposedly heard during the 1899 radio experiments of Nikola Tesla and long delayed echoes first heard by amateur radio operator Jørgen Hals in Oslo, Norway, in 1928. Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast attributes Tesla's 1899 radio signals to pulsars, which were not identified until 1968.
In 1954, UFO researcher Donald Keyhoe told newspapers that the United States Air Force had reported that two satellites orbiting Earth had been detected. At that time, no country had the technology to launch a satellite. Skeptics have noted that Keyhoe had been promoting a UFO book at the time, and the news stories were likely written "tongue-in-cheek" and not intended to be taken seriously.
A British rocket called the Black Knight rocket was used in conjunction with the Blue Streak missile program between 1958 and 1965, to test re-entry vehicles. A "Black Knight satellite launcher" project announced in 1964 was considered a priority by the Ministry of Aviation. The program never put anything into orbit, and it is unrelated to the Black Knight satellite legend.
In February 1960, Time reported that the U.S. Navy had detected a dark object thought to be a Soviet spy satellite in orbit. A follow-up article confirmed that the object was "the remains of an Air Force Discoverer 8 satellite that had gone astray."
In 1963, astronaut Gordon Cooper supposedly reported a UFO sighting during his 15th orbit in Mercury 9 that was confirmed by tracking stations, but there is no evidence that this happened. Neither NASA's mission transcripts nor Cooper's personal copies show any such report being made during the orbit.
In 1973, Scottish author Duncan Lunan analysed the long delayed radio echoes received by Hals and others and speculated that they could possibly originate from a 13,000 year old alien probe located in an orbit around the Earth's Moon. He suggested that the probe may have originated from a planet located in the planetary system of star Epsilon Boötis. Lunan later retracted his conclusions, saying that he had made "outright errors" and that his methods had been "unscientific".
Space debris photographed in 1998 during the STS-88 mission has been widely claimed to be the Black Knight satellite. Space journalist James Oberg considers it probable that the photographs are of a thermal blanket that was confirmed as lost during an EVA by Jerry L. Ross and James H. Newman.
== References == | Wikipedia/Black_Knight_satellite_conspiracy_theory |
"Eurabia" (portmanteau of Europe and Arabia) is a far-right Islamophobic conspiracy theory that posits that globalist entities, led by French and Arab powers, aim to Islamize and Arabize Europe, thereby weakening its existing culture and undermining its previous alliances with the United States and Israel.
The theory was developed by Bat Ye'or (the pen name of Gisèle Littman) in the early 2000s and it is described in her 2005 book titled Eurabia: The Euro‐Arab Axis. Benjamin Lee of the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats at the University of Lancaster described her work as arguing that Europe "has surrendered to Islam and is in a state of submission (described as dhimmitude) in which Europe is forced to deny its own culture, stand silently by in the face of Muslim atrocities, accept Muslim immigration, and pay tribute through various types of economic assistance." According to the theory, the blame rests with a range of groups including communists, fascists, the media, universities, mosques and Islamic cultural centres, European bureaucrats, and the Euro-Arab Dialogue.
The term has gained some public interest and it has also been used and discussed by activists across a wide range of the political spectrum, including right-wing activists, self-described "conservatives" and counter-jihad and other anti-Islamism activists. Bat Ye'or's "mother conspiracy theory" has been used as the basis for other subtheories. The narrative grew important among people who expressed anti-Islamist sentiments and it was also used by members and supporters of movements like Stop Islamisation of Europe. It gained renewed interest after the use of the term by 2011 Norway attacker, Anders Behring Breivik. Ye'or's thesis has come under criticism by scholars, which intensified after Breivik's crime. The conspiracy has been described as having a resemblance to the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Eurabia has also been discussed by believers in classical anti-Europeanism, a strong influence on the culture of the United States as well as by believers in the notion of American exceptionalism, which sometimes sees Europe on the decline or as a rising rival power, or, as is the case here, both.
== Basic narrative ==
In Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Bat Ye'or says that Eurabia is the result of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, based on an allegedly French-led European policy intended to increase European power against the United States by aligning its interests with those of the Arab countries. During the 1973 oil crisis, the European Economic Community (predecessor of the European Union), had entered into the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) with the Arab League. Ye'or says it was a primary cause of alleged European hostility to Israel, referring to joint Euro-Arab foreign policies that she characterises as anti-American and anti-Zionist. Ye'or purported a close connection of a Eurabia conspiracy and used the term "dhimmitude", denoting alleged "western subjection to Islam". The term itself is based on a newsletter published in the 1970s by the Comité européen de coordination des associations d'amitié avec le monde arabe, a Euro-Arab friendship committee.
Bat Ye'or's Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis was the first print publication in the Eurabia genre, which has since grown to a number of titles, including Melanie Phillips's Londonistan, Oriana Fallaci's The Force of Reason, and Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept.
The term is often used by the writers Oriana Fallaci, Mark Steyn and several web sites, many of them affiliated with the counterjihad movement. Defeating Eurabia by Fjordman (the pen name of Peder Are Nøstvold Jensen) earned him a high standing among far-right extremists.
An important part of the narrative is the idea of a demographic threat, the fear that, at some time in the future, Islam will take over Europe. or as Bernard Lewis put it, "Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century." Walter Laqueur's The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for An Old Continent is quoted often among the Eurabia literature.
== Impact ==
=== Post-9/11 significance ===
Bat Ye'or first used the term "Eurabia" in 2002 and again in another 2005 book. The conservative historian Niall Ferguson referred to the concept, which he took as the potential future Islamisation of Europe based on demographic facts and ideational lack of the continent.
=== 2010s Europe ===
The idea of a Eurabian conspiracy has become a basic theme in the European extremist and populist right and expresses as well a significant strategy change. José Pedro Zúquete writes that
the threat that the Crescent will rise over the continent and the spectre of a Muslim Europe have become basic ideological features and themes of the European extreme right
Muslim minority populations and Muslim immigration gained new political significance. This has led to the adoption of political positions that were previously considered fringe or third rail on either side. The main anti-Islamic theme has also penetrated into mainstream European politics, for instance in the case of Dutch populist Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders:
This government is enthusiastically co-operating with the Islamisation of the Netherlands. In all of Europe the elite opens the floodgates wide. In only a little while, one in five people in the European Union will be Muslim. Good news for this multiculti-government that views bowing to the horrors of Allah as its most important task. Good news for the CDA: C-D-A, in the meanwhile stands for Christians Serve Allah (Christenen Dienen Allah).
== Issues ==
The Eurabia concept is an Islamophobic conspiracy theory. Eurabia shortcuts the complex interaction between the US, France, Israel, the Arabic and Muslim countries on an "us against them" basis. The Eurabia theories are dismissed as Islamophobic, extremist and conspiracy theories in the academic community. At first academics showed little interest in the Eurabia theories due to their lack of factual basis. The theme was treated in studies of rightist extremism and Middle East politics. This changed after the 2011 Norway attacks, which resulted in the publication of several works specifically treating the Eurabia conspiracy theories.
Janne Haaland Matláry went as far as to say that "it is poor use of time to analyse something so primitive".
=== Demography ===
The Pew Research Center said in 2011 that "the data that we have isn't pointing in the direction of 'Eurabia' at all", and predicts that the percentage of Muslims is estimated to rise to 8% in 2030. In 2007, academics who analysed the demographics dismissed the predictions that the EU would have Muslim majorities.
Whilst it is reasonable to assume that the overall Muslim population in Europe will increase, and Muslim citizens have and will have a significant imprint on European life, its significance can be overstated. Justin Vaïsse seeks to discredit what he calls, "four myths of the alarmist school", using Muslims in France as an example. Specifically he has written that the Muslim population growth rate was lower than that predicted by Eurabia, partly because the fertility rate of immigrants declines with integration. He further points out that Muslims are not a monolithic or cohesive group, and that many Muslims do seek to integrate politically and socially. Finally, he wrote that despite their numbers, Muslims have had little influence on French foreign policy.
Furthermore, leading European Muslims are rather outspoken against religious fundamentalism and are far from acknowledging Arab countries as a role model at all.
== Spread of conspiracies and further influences ==
Examples of proponents' use:
=== Europe ===
==== Germany ====
In 2010, German politician Thilo Sarrazin released Germany Abolishes Itself. The book contends that with continued Islamic immigration, Germany will become a majority Muslim nation. Journalist Simon Kuper has argued that, with over 1 million copies sold, Sarrazin had done more to publicize the concept of Eurabia than anybody else in Europe.
In political campaigning for the 2019 European Parliament election, Germany's far-right party AfD used Jean-Léon Gérôme's 1886 painting The Slave Market with the slogan "Europeans vote AfD!" and "So Europe doesn't become Eurabia!". Deutsche Welle reported that the reproduction of the painting suggestively depicted dark-skinned men with beards and foreign-dress "inspecting the teeth of a nude white woman".
==== Italy ====
In 2004, journalist Oriana Fallaci claimed that Muslim immigration and high fertility was part of the conspiracy theory. In 2005, Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal that "Europe is no longer Europe", adding "it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam".
In 2011, Francesco Speroni, a sitting MEP for Lega Nord, stated that he shared the same view as Anders Behring Breivik's idea "that we are going towards Eurabia". In the aftermath of the shooting, Speroni confirmed his agreement with Breivik on the conspiracy theory in an interview with Radio 24.
In 2018, Giulio Meotti used the theory in relation to the demographics of Europe, writing that "Europe is over. Its future will be a mix of Eurabia and a geriatric ward."
In May 2019, ahead of the European elections, Lega Nord leader for Sarzana claimed that both the European People's Party and the Party of European Socialists were attempting to bring about Eurabia. The day before the vote, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini endorsed the theory as a genuine threat. He insisted that a state of Eurabia had already occurred in Sweden, a claim which the Swedish embassy promptly denied with an official statement. Invoking the memory of Oriana Fallaci, he released an anti-migrant speech on Twitter, accompanied by the message "No to Eurabia".
==== Netherlands ====
In 2008, journalist Arthur van Amerongen described Molenbeek as "Brussels: Eurabia". Despite alleging that writer Wim van Rooy had already coined the phrase, Amerongen faced severe peer and media criticism for endorsing the conspiracy theory. After the November 2015 Paris attacks and discovery of a Brussels ISIL terror cell, photojournalist Teun Voeten agreed with Amerongen's description, calling the municipality an "ethnic and religious enclave".
Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders, who serves in the Dutch House of Representatives, has openly stated that "if we do not stop Islamification now, Eurabia and Netherabia will just be a matter of time." A supporter of the conspiracy theory, Wilders believes Muslim immigration to Europe is being driven by an agreement between the European Union and Islamic countries. He has delivered speeches in the Dutch parliament about Eurabia.
==== Norway ====
In 2008, Peder Are Nøstvold Jensen, writing under his pseudonym Fjordman, published Defeating Eurabia. The book contends that one in three babies born in France are from a Muslim-background, and that there are hundreds of "Muslim ghettos" following Sharia law in the country, which Fjordman believes will either be overrun or face an impending civil war.
2083: A European Declaration of Independence, the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, includes a lengthy discussion of and support for the "Eurabia" theory. It also contains several articles on the Eurabia theme by Bat Ye'or and Fjordman. As a result, the theory received widespread mainstream media attention following the attacks. In the verdict against Breivik, the court said that "many people share Breivik's conspiracy theory, including the Eurabia theory. The court finds that very few people, however, share Breivik's idea that the alleged "Islamization" should be fought with terror."
Breivik has later stated that he previously had exploited "counterjihad" rhetoric in order to protect "ethno-nationalists", thereby instead launching a media drive against what he deemed "anti-nationalist counterjihad"-supporters.
==== United Kingdom ====
David Pryce-Jones (2008). Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews. New York: Encounter Books. ISBN 978-1-594032-20-2. Retrieved 8 June 2012.
Theodore Dalrymple (2011). The New Vichy Syndrome. Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism. New York: Encounter Books. ISBN 978-1-59403-372-8. Retrieved 8 June 2012. The premises common to these theories are that a rapid demographic transition in Europe has been induced by "European politicians and civil servants", and will lead to a Muslim majority which will have an unchanging, hostile attitude toward their host nations. Other premises, such as acquiring the compliance of or control over bureaucracies, intelligentsias and European political leaders are frequent.
=== North America ===
==== Canada ====
Author Mark Steyn, described as a "champion of 'Eurabia' myth" by Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, has predicted an emerging Eurabia region, captured by the religion of Islam and hostile to U.S. interests. Steyn's promotion of the conspiracy theory centres on European demographics, where he believes a culturally asserted Muslim mass will become the majority population and demand the assimilation of white Europeans.
==== United States ====
In the United States, the theories have found strong proponents in the Islamophobia movement, among them the president of Stop Islamization of America, Robert Spencer and political commentator Daniel Pipes.
In May 2006, Fox News host John Gibson called for white Americans to have more babies, referencing a decline in the "native population" of Europe as an apparent demographic warning for the U.S. regarding Hispanic birthrates. In what Media Matters reported as fearmongering, he claimed that Eurabia was occurring in Europe.
In his 2011–2012 run for the Republican presidential nomination, senator Rick Santorum warned that Europe was "creating an opportunity for the creation of Eurabia", and that the continent was "losing, because they are not having children." Classicist Bruce Thornton is also a strong advocate for the theory.
A 2007 film outline by Steve Bannon, who would later become the chief strategist for President Donald Trump and a member of the U.S. National Security Council, proposed that Muslims were trying to turn the United States into the "Islamic States of America".
== Criticism ==
The Economist rejected the concept of Eurabia as "scaremongering". Simon Kuper in the Financial Times described Ye'or's book as "little-read but influential", and akin to "Protocols of the Elders of Zion in reverse", adding that "though ludicrous, Eurabia became the spiritual mother of a genre".
David Aaronovitch acknowledges that the threat of "jihadist terror" may be real, but that there is no threat of Eurabia. Aaronovitch concludes that those who study conspiracy theories will recognize Eurabia to be a theory that adds the "Sad Dupes thesis to the Enemy Within idea".
Conservative US military analyst Ralph Peters has criticized the Eurabia narrative on the grounds that it is unlikely to happen as posited, citing the historical precedent of genocides frequently occurring in Europe, such as in the Balkans during the 1990s, and the Holocaust during World War II. Peters stated that if Muslims "taking over" Europe were imminent, Europeans would either forcibly deport their Muslims at best or engage in a genocide of them at worst, possibly leading to a U.S. intervention on behalf of persecuted Muslims.
In his 2007 book Wars of Blood and Faith, Peters states that far from being about to take over Europe through demographic change, "Europe's Muslims are living on borrowed time" and that in the event of a major terrorist attack in Europe, thanks to the "ineradicable viciousness" of Europeans and what he perceives as a historical tendency to over-react to real or perceived threats, European Muslims "will be lucky if they're only deported".
According to Marján and Sapir, the very idea of "Eurabia" is "based on an extremist conspiracy theory, according to which Europe and the Arab states would join forces to make life impossible for Israel and Islamize the old continent."
Writing in Race & Class in 2006, author and freelance journalist Matt Carr argued that Eurabia had moved from "an outlandish conspiracy theory" to a "dangerous Islamophobic fantasy". Carr states,
In order to accept Ye'or's ridiculous thesis, it is necessary to believe not only in the existence of a concerted Islamic plot to subjugate Europe, involving all Arab governments, whether 'Islamic' or not, but also to credit a secret and unelected parliamentary body with the astounding ability to transform all Europe's major political, economic and cultural institutions into subservient instruments of 'jihad' without any of the continent's press or elected institutions being aware of it. Nowhere in this ideologically driven interpretation of European-Arab relations does Ye'or come close to proving the 'secret history' that she professes to reveal.
The Eurabia conspiracy theory has many similarities to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Arun Kundnani, writing for the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, notes that "Eurabia" fulfills the counter-jihad movement's "structural need" for a conspiracy theory, and compares "Eurabia" to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, while Carr compares it to the Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory.
Doug Saunders argues that pro-Al-Qaeda writers, and those who promote the Eurabia theory as truth, have a common extremism and world view, where "there is one creature called 'the Muslim' and another called 'the Westerner'". He proposes that there is no such distinction and that Muslims can become secular in the Western world.
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== External links == | Wikipedia/Eurabia_conspiracy_theory |
The SARS conspiracy theory began to emerge during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in China in the spring of 2003, when Sergei Kolesnikov, a Russian scientist and a member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, first publicized his claim that the SARS coronavirus is a synthesis of measles and mumps. According to Kolesnikov, this combination cannot be formed in the natural world and thus the SARS virus must have been produced under laboratory conditions. Another Russian scientist, Nikolai Filatov, head of Moscow's epidemiological services, had earlier commented that the SARS virus was probably man-made.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that the SARS virus crossed over to humans from Asian palm civets ("civet cats"), a type of animal that is often killed and eaten in Guangdong, where SARS was first discovered.
Tong Zeng, an activist with no medical background, authored the book The Last Defense Line: Concerns About the Loss of Chinese Genes, published in 2003. In the book, Zeng suggested researchers from the United States may have created SARS as an anti-Chinese bioweapon after taking blood samples in China for a longevity study in the 1990s. The book's hypothesis was a front-page report in the Guangzhou newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily.
== See also ==
Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic
== References ==
== External links ==
ParaPundit: Conspiracy theories in China
San Francisco Chronicle's report
SARS Crisis: Don't Rule Out Linkages To China's Biowarfare Article by Richard D. Fisher Jr. for The Jamestown Foundation.
People's Daily's report on Tong Zeng's book (simplified Chinese)
Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao reports the conspiracy theory and Hou's assertion | Wikipedia/SARS_conspiracy_theory |
Apitherapy is a branch of alternative medicine that uses honey bee products, including honey, pollen, propolis, royal jelly and bee venom. There has been no scientific or clinical evidence for the efficacy or safety of apitherapy treatments. Bee venom can cause minor or major reactions, including allergic responses, anaphylaxis or death.
== History ==
References to possible medical properties of bee products can be found in Chinese, Korean, Russian, Egyptian, and Greek traditional medicine practices. Apitherapy has been practiced since the times of Hippocrates and Galen. Modern use of bee venom appears to have originated with Austrian physician, Philipp Terč, and his 1888 article "About a Peculiar Connection Between the Bee Stings and Rheumatism", but his claims were never tested in proper clinical trials. More recent alternative medicine practice is attributed to the Hungarian physician Bodog F. Beck who coined the term "bee venom therapy" in 1935, and to beekeeper Charles Mraz (1905–1999) in the latter half of the twentieth century. In 1957, the USSR Ministry of Health sanctioned use of bee venom to treat certain ailments by approval of Nikolay Artemov's "Instruction for Bee Sting Venom Apitherapy".
Humans have historically used bee products in various ways: beeswax was used in casting metals and making incendiary weapons, honey was used for food and religious offerings, propolis was used as an adhesive, and pollen was used for agricultural work such as plant breeding. Much later, there was an attempt to use bee venom clinically via injection by J. Langer at the University of Prague in the late 1890s and 1930, a firm in south Germany named Mack produced bee venom solution commercially. Apitherapy is used in traditional medicine in countries in Europe, Asia, and South America including China, Korea, and Russia.
== Alternative medicine ==
Apitherapy is promoted as alternative medicine for several uses, but its health claims are not supported by scientific evidence. Bee venom or other honeybee products are ineffective for the treatment or prevention of cancer. Evidence for using honey in wound treatment is of such low quality that firm conclusions cannot be drawn.
== Risks ==
Adverse reactions to bee venom therapy are frequent. Frequent exposure to the venom can also lead to arthropathy. In sensitized persons, venom compounds can act as allergens, causing a spectrum of allergic reactions that can range from mild, local swelling to severe systemic reactions, anaphylactic shock, or even death.
In March 2018, it was reported that a 55-year-old woman died after receiving "live bee acupuncture", suffering a severe anaphylactic episode which the apitherapy practitioner did not respond to by administering adrenaline. While stabilized by ambulance personnel on the way to the hospital, she died a few weeks later from complications resulting in multiple organ failure.
Live bee acupuncture therapy is "unsafe and unadvisable", according to researchers who studied the case.
== See also ==
List of ineffective cancer treatments
Melittin
== References == | Wikipedia/Apitherapy |
Alternative cancer treatment describes any cancer treatment or practice that is not part of the conventional standard of cancer care. These include special diets and exercises, chemicals, herbs, devices, and manual procedures. Most alternative cancer treatments do not have high-quality evidence supporting their use and many have been described as fundamentally pseudoscientific. Concerns have been raised about the safety of some purported treatments, and some have been found unsafe in clinical trials. Despite this, many untested and disproven treatments are used around the world.
Alternative cancer treatments are typically contrasted with experimental cancer treatments – science-based treatment methods – and complementary treatments, which are non-invasive practices used in combination with conventional treatment. All approved chemotherapy medications were considered experimental treatments before completing safety and efficacy testing.
Since the late 19th century, medical researchers have established modern cancer care through the development of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, targeted therapies, and refined surgical techniques. As of 2019, only 32.9% of cancer patients in the United States died within five years of their diagnosis. Despite their effectiveness, many conventional treatments are accompanied by a wide range of side effects, including pain, fatigue, and nausea. Some side effects can even be life-threatening. Many supporters of alternative treatments claim increased effectiveness and decreased side effects when compared to conventional treatments. However, one retrospective cohort study showed that patients using alternative treatments instead of conventional treatments were 2.5 times more likely to die within five years.
Most alternative cancer treatments have not been tested in proper clinical trials. Among studies that have been published, the quality is often poor. A 2006 review of 196 clinical trials that studied unconventional cancer treatments found a lack of early-phase testing, little rationale for dosing regimens, and poor statistical analyses. These treatments have appeared and vanished throughout history.
== Terminology ==
Complementary and alternative cancer treatments are often grouped, in part because of the adoption of the phrase complementary and alternative medicine by the United States Congress. The World Health Organization uses the phrase traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine (TCIM) to describe a similar set of treatments.
Complementary treatments are used in conjunction with proven mainstream treatments. They tend to be pleasant for the patient, not involve substances with any pharmacological effects, inexpensive, and intended to treat side effects rather than to kill cancer cells. Medical massage and self-hypnosis to treat pain are examples of complementary treatments.
About half the practitioners who dispense complementary treatments are physicians, although they tend to be generalists rather than oncologists. As many as 60% of American physicians have referred their patients to a complementary practitioner for some purpose. While conventional physicians should always be kept aware of any complementary treatments used by a patient, many physicians in the United Kingdom are at least tolerant of their use, and some might recommend them.
Alternative treatments, by contrast, are used in place of mainstream treatments. The most popular alternative cancer therapies include restrictive diets, mind-body interventions, bioelectromagnetics, nutritional supplements, and herbs. The popularity and prevalence of different treatments varies widely by region. Cancer Research UK warns that alternative treatments may interact with conventional treatment, may increase the side effects of medication, and can give people false hope.
== Prevalence ==
Survey data about how many cancer patients use alternative or complementary therapies vary from nation to nation as well as from region to region. Reliance on alternative therapies is common in developing countries because people cannot afford effective medical treatment. For example, in Latin America, most cancer patients have used natural products, nutritional supplements, and spiritual practices (such as praying) in addition to, or instead of, medical care. In Africa, where millions of people do not have financial or geographical access to an oncologist, many Africans with cancer rely on traditional African medicine, which uses divination, spiritualism, and herbal medicine. About 40% of African cancer patients take herbal preparations. Three-quarters of Chinese people with cancer use some form of Traditional Chinese medicine, especially Chinese herbal preparations. About a third of people with cancer in India use Ayurveda or other elements of AYUSH.
A 2000 study published by the European Journal of Cancer evaluated a sample of 1023 women from a British cancer registry who had breast cancer and found that 22.4% had consulted with a practitioner of complementary therapies in the previous twelve months. The study concluded that the patients had spent many thousands of pounds on such measures and that use "of practitioners of complementary therapies following diagnosis is a significant and possibly growing phenomenon".
In Australia, one study reported that 46% of children with cancer have been treated with at least one non-traditional therapy. Further, 40% of those of any age receiving palliative care had tried at least one such therapy. Some of the most popular alternative cancer treatments were found to be dietary therapies, antioxidants, high dose vitamins, and herbal therapies.
In the United States, nearly all adults who use non-conventional medical therapies do so in addition to conventional medical treatment, rather than as an alternative to it. Use of unconventional cancer treatments in the United States has been influenced by the U.S. federal government's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), initially known as the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM), which was established in 1992 as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) adjunct by the U.S. Congress. More specifically, the NIC's Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine sponsors over $105 million a year in grants for pseudoscientific cancer research. Over thirty American medical schools have offered general courses in alternative medicine, including the Georgetown, Columbia, and Harvard university systems, among others.
== People who choose alternative treatments ==
People drawn to alternative treatments tend to believe that evidence-based medicine is invasive or ineffective, while still hoping that their health could be improved. They are loyal to their alternative healthcare providers and believe that "treatment should concentrate on the whole person". Among people who (correctly or incorrectly) believe their condition is untreatable, "desperation drives them into the hands of anyone with a promise and a smile." Con artists have long exploited patients' perceived lack of options to extract payments for ineffectual and even harmful treatments.
No evidence suggests that the use of alternative treatments improves survival. In 2017, one retrospective, observational study suggested that people who chose alternative medicine instead of conventional treatments were more than twice as likely to die within five years of diagnosis. Breast cancer patients choosing alternative medicine were 5.68 times more likely to die within five years of diagnosis.
Although they are more likely to die than non-users, some users of alternative treatments feel a greater sense of control over their destinies and report less anxiety and depression. They are more likely to engage in benefit finding, which is the psychological process of adapting to a traumatic situation and deciding that the trauma was valuable, usually because of perceived personal and spiritual growth during the crisis.
In a survey of American cancer patients, baby boomers were more likely to support complementary and alternative treatments than people from an older generation. White, female, college-educated patients who had been diagnosed more than a year ago were more likely than others to report a favorable impression of at least some complementary and alternative benefits.
== Unproven and disproven treatments ==
Many therapies without evidence have been promoted to treat or prevent cancer in humans. In many cases, evidence suggests that the treatments do not work. Unlike accepted cancer treatments, unproven and disproven treatments are generally ignored or avoided by the medical community.
Despite this, many of these therapies have continued to be promoted as effective, particularly by promoters of alternative medicine. Scientists consider this practice quackery, and some of those engaged in it have been investigated and prosecuted by public health regulators such as the US Federal Trade Commission, the Mexican Secretariat of Health and the Canadian Competition Bureau. In the United Kingdom, the Cancer Act makes the unauthorized promotion of cancer treatments a criminal offense.
In 2008, the United States Federal Trade Commission acted against some companies that made unsupported claims that their products, some of which included highly toxic chemicals, could cure cancer. Targets included Omega Supply, Native Essence Herb Company, Daniel Chapter One, Gemtronics, Inc., Herbs for Cancer, Nu-Gen Nutrition, Inc., Westberry Enterprises, Inc., Jim Clark's All Natural Cancer Therapy, Bioque Technologies, Cleansing Time Pro, and Premium-essiac-tea-4less.
== Areas of research ==
=== Specific methods ===
Curcumin is a component of turmeric. It is under preliminary research for therapeutic potential, but according to Cancer Research UK no reputable organization supports claims that it can "cure" cancer.
Psilocybin is a psychedelic compound found in more than 100 mushroom species. Three small trials have demonstrated decreased cancer-related psychiatric distress, including anxiety and depression with its use.
HuaChanSu, traditional Chinese medicine derived from the parotoid gland secretion of toads of the genus Bufo.
Medical cannabis (for "appetite stimulation" and "pain")
Selenium
=== Pain relief ===
Most studies of complementary and alternative medicine in the treatment of cancer pain are of low quality in terms of scientific evidence. Studies of massage therapy have produced mixed results, but overall show some temporary benefit for reducing pain, anxiety, and depression and a very low risk of harm, unless the patient is at risk for bleeding disorders. There is weak evidence for a modest benefit from hypnosis, supportive psychotherapy and cognitive therapy. Results about Reiki and touch therapy were inconclusive. The most studied such treatment, acupuncture, has demonstrated no benefit as an adjunct analgesic in cancer pain. The evidence for music therapy is equivocal, and some herbal interventions such as PC-SPES, mistletoe, and saw palmetto are known to be toxic to some cancer patients. The most promising evidence, though still weak, is for mind–body interventions such as biofeedback and relaxation techniques.
== Examples of complementary therapy ==
As stated in the scientific literature, the measures listed below are defined as 'complementary' because they are applied in conjunction with mainstream anti-cancer measures such as chemotherapy, in contrast to the ineffective therapies viewed as 'alternative' since they are offered as substitutes for mainstream measures.
Acupuncture may help with nausea but does not treat the disease. A 2015 Cochrane review found unclear usefulness for cancer pain, though other reviews have found tentative evidence of benefit. It is of unclear effect in hot flashes in people with breast cancer.
The effects of aromatherapy are unclear, with no peer-reviewed research in regards to cancer treatment.
Psychotherapy may reduce anxiety and improve quality of life as well as allow for improving patient moods.
Massage therapy may temporarily reduce pain.
There is no evidence that cannabis has a beneficial effect in preventing or treating cancer in humans.
Hypnosis and meditation may improve the quality of life of cancer patients.
Music therapy eases cancer-related symptoms by helping with mood disturbances.
== Alternative theories of cancer ==
Some alternative cancer treatments are based on unproven or disproven theories of how cancer begins or is sustained in the body. Some common concepts are:
=== Mind-body connection ===
This idea says that cancer progression is related to a person's mental and emotional state. Treatments based on this idea are mind–body interventions. Proponents say that cancer forms because the person is unhappy or stressed, or that a positive attitude can cure cancer after it has formed. A typical claim is that stress, anger, fear, or sadness depresses the immune system, whereas love, forgiveness, confidence, and happiness cause the immune system to improve, and that this improved immune system will destroy the cancer. This belief that generally boosting the immune system's activity will kill the cancer cells is not supported by any scientific research. In fact, many cancers require the support of an active immune system (especially through inflammation) to establish the tumor microenvironment necessary for a tumor to grow.
=== Toxin theory of cancer ===
In this idea, the body's metabolic processes are overwhelmed by normal byproducts. These byproducts, called "toxins", are said to build up in the cells and cause cancer and other diseases through a process sometimes called autointoxication or autotoxemia. Treatments following this approach are usually aimed at detoxification or body cleansing, such as enemas.
=== Low activity by the immune system ===
This claim asserts that if only the body's immune system were strong enough, it would kill the "invading" or "foreign" cancer. Unfortunately, most cancer cells retain normal cell characteristics, making them appear to the immune system to be a normal part of the body. Cancerous tumors also actively induce immune tolerance, which prevents the immune system from attacking them.
=== Epigenetic disregulation ===
This claim uses research into the mechanism of epigenetics to understand how mutations in the epigenetic machinery of cells will alter histone acetylation patterns to create cancer epigenetics. DNA damage appears to be the primary underlying cause of cancer. If DNA repair is deficient, DNA damage tends to accumulate. Such excess DNA damage can increase mutational errors during DNA replication due to error-prone translesion synthesis. Excess DNA damage can also increase epigenetic alterations due to errors during DNA repair. Such mutations and epigenetic alterations can give rise to cancer.
== See also ==
Diet and cancer
Clinical trial
Placebo effect
Pseudoscience
List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
The Truth About Cancer
== References ==
== External links ==
Cure-ious? Ask. If you or someone you care about has cancer, the last thing you need is a scam from the US Federal Trade Commission
187 Cancer Cure Frauds from the US Food and Drug Administration
Herbs, Botanicals & Other Products from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center | Wikipedia/Alternative_cancer_treatments |
Die Glocke (German: [diː ˈɡlɔkə], 'The Bell') was a purported top-secret scientific technological device, wonder weapon, or Wunderwaffe developed in the 1940s in Nazi Germany. Rumors of this device have persisted for decades after WW2 and were used as a plot trope in the fiction novel Lightning by Dean Koontz (1988). First fully described by Polish journalist and author Igor Witkowski in Prawda o Wunderwaffe (2000), it was later popularized by military journalist and author Nick Cook, who associated it with Nazi occultism, antigravity, and free energy suppression research. Mainstream reviewers have criticized claims about Die Glocke as being pseudoscientific, recycled rumors, and a hoax. Die Glocke and other alleged Nazi "miracle weapons" have been dramatized in video games, television shows, and novels.
== History ==
In his 2001 book The Hunt for Zero Point, author Nick Cook identified claims about Die Glocke as having originated in the 2000 Polish book Prawda o Wunderwaffe ("The Truth About The Wonder Weapon") by Igor Witkowski. Cook described Witkowski's claims of a device called "The Bell" engineered by Nazi scientists that was "a glowing, rotating contraption" rumored to have "some kind of antigravitational effect", be a "time machine", or part of an "SS antigravity program" for a flying saucer.
According to Cook, Die Glocke was bell-shaped, about 4 metres (12 ft) high and 3 metres (9 ft) in diameter, and incorporated "two high-speed, counter-rotating cylinders filled with a purplish, liquid metallic-looking substance that was supposed to be highly radioactive, code-named 'Xerum 525.'" Cook recounts claims that "scientists and technicians who worked on the bell and who did not die of its effects were wiped out by the SS at the close of the war, and the device was moved to an unknown location". Cook proposed that SS official Hans Kammler later secretly traded this technology to the U.S. military in exchange for his freedom. Witkowski suggested that a concrete ring called "The Henge" near the Wenceslaus mine built in 1943 or 1944 and vaguely resembling Stonehenge was used to tether the Bell during tests. According to writer Jason Colavito, the structure is merely the remains of an ordinary industrial cooling tower.
Witkowski's book was translated to English in 2003. He claimed to have discovered evidence of Die Glocke in a review of WWII-era documents that were declassified by the Polish government, which led him to additional research via archives and interviews. The first document, allegedly supplied to Witkowski by an unnamed Polish government official, was an affidavit from the war crimes trial for General Jakob Sporrenberg, who supposedly confessed to ordering the murder of about 60 persons who had knowledge of the secretive project. Kurt Debus, Wernher von Braun and Walther Gerlach were also allegedly implicated in Die Glocke research. Witkowski claims Die Glocke was organized under a division of the Waffen-SS, and operated mainly at facilities in Lower Silesia. Die Glocke was conceived in early 1942, and active experimentation began in mid-1944.
Prisoners from the Gross-Rosen concentration camp were supposedly exposed to radiation from Die Glocke, resulting in many deaths and health problems. Survivors of the camp are alleged to have reported witnessing tests of Die Glocke, reporting a bright bluish light from the object.
Witkowski postulated Xerum 525 was likely an irradiated form of mercury used in the creation of a form of plasma that was intended as a weapon and/or propulsion system, and which may have been capable of distorting spacetime.
== Reception ==
Cook's publication introduced the topic in English without critically discussing the subject. More recently, historian Eric Kurlander has discussed the topic in his 2017 book on Nazi esotericism Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich. According to reviewer Julian Strube, Kurlander "cites from the reservoir of post-war conspiracy theories" and "heavily relies on sensationalist accounts...mixing up contemporary sources with post-war sensationalist literature, half-truths, and fictitious accounts".
According to Salon reviewer Kurt Kleiner, Cook's decade as an editor at Jane's Defence Weekly "is enough to make you take a second look" at Die Glocke theories. Kleiner further notes that anti-gravity per se "can't be completely dismissed" given that it's been the subject of serious research over the years, and also agrees that researchers in Nazi Germany were working on highly advanced technology during the 1940s. Nonetheless, Kleier concludes: "It's a story that strains credulity. But unless we're after cheap laughs, our hope when we pick up a book like this is that the author will, against the odds, build a careful, reasonable and convincing case. Cook isn't that author". Kleiner criticized Cook's work as "ferreting out minor inconsistencies and odd, ambiguous details which he tries to puff up into proof", characterized the process of evaluating Cook's claims as "untangling science from pseudo-science", and concluded that "what is instructive about the book is the insight we get into how conspiracy theories seduce otherwise reasonable people".
Skeptical author Robert Sheaffer criticized Cook's book as "a classic example of how to spin an exciting yarn based on almost nothing. He visits places where it is rumored that secret UFO and antigravity research is going on...and writes about what he feels and imagines, although he discovers nothing more tangible than unsubstantiated rumors". Sheaffer notes that claims about Die Glocke are circulated by UFOlogists and conspiracy-oriented authors such as Jim Marrs, Joseph P. Farrell, and antigravity proponent John Dering.
Jason Colavito wrote that Witkowski's claims were "recycled reflection" of 1960s rumors of Nazi occult science, like those published in Morning of the Magicians, and describes Die Glocke as "a device few outside of fringe culture think actually existed. In short, it looks to be a hoax, or at least a wild exaggeration". Author Brian Dunning states that Morning of the Magicians helped promote belief in Die Glocke and Nazi occultism, and its absence in the historical record make it "increasingly unlikely that anything like it actually existed". According to Dunning, "all we have in the way of evidence is a third-hand anecdotal account of something that's desperately implausible, backed up by neither evidence nor even a corroborating account".
Author and historian Robert F. Dorr characterizes Die Glocke as among "the most imaginative of the conspiracy theories" that arose in post-World War II years, and typical of the fantasies of magical German weapons often popularized in pulp magazines such as the National Police Gazette.
Some theories circulating on Internet conspiracy sites claim that Die Glocke is located in a Nazi gold train that is buried in a tunnel beneath a mountain in Poland. Duncan Roads, editor of Nexus, has pointed out that the "Nazis on the Moon trope" is linked to wild speculations about Nazi anti-gravitational technology, such as Witkowski's Die Glocke.
Journalist Patrick J. Kiger wrote that German propaganda of fictional Wunderwaffen combined with the secrecy surrounding actual advanced technology such as the V-2 rocket captured at war's end by the U.S. military helped spawn "sensational book-length exposes, web sites, and legions of enthusiasts who revel in rumors of science fiction-like weapons supposedly invented by Hitler’s scientists". According to Kiger, Die Glocke is a popular example of such legends and speculation, citing former aerospace scientist David Myhra's contention that if antigravity devices actually existed, the Germans, desperate to stop the Allies' advance, would have used them.
== See also ==
Kecksburg UFO incident
Nazi UFOs
Project Riese
Gross-Rosen concentration camp
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Cook, Nick (2001). The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology. Century. ISBN 978-0-09-941498-8.
Witkowski, Igor (2003). The Truth about the Wunderwaffe. Bruce Wenham (trans). Books International Militaria. ISBN 83-88259-16-4.
== External links ==
The Nazi Bell - A Detailed Field Investigation to the Flytrap/Henge that Allegedly Held the Bell.
Die Glocke - Hitler's Anti-Gravity Machine?, by Mark Felton | Wikipedia/Die_Glocke_(conspiracy_theory) |
The shadow government, also referred to as cryptocracy, secret government, or invisible government, is a family of theories based on the notion that real and actual political power resides not only with publicly elected representatives but with private individuals who are exercising power behind the scenes, beyond the scrutiny of democratic institutions. According to this belief, the official elected government is subservient to the shadow government, which is the true executive power.
Some of the groups proposed by these theories as constituting the shadow government include central banks, Freemasons, communists, Nazis, the Rothschilds, intelligence agencies, think tanks, organized Jewry, the Vatican, Jesuits, or Catholics in general, as well as secret societies, moneyed interests, extraterrestrials, Satanists, and globalist elites and supranational organizations who seek to manipulate policy in their own interest or in order to serve a larger agenda that is hidden from the general public.
== History ==
Literature on the subject postulates the existence of a secret government which is the true power behind the apparent government. Examples of such literature include works by Dan Smoot, William Guy Carr, Jim Marrs, Carroll Quigley, Gary Allen, Alex Jones, Des Griffin, G. Edward Griffin, David Icke, and Michael A. Hoffman II. Some of these authors believe members of the secret government may represent or be agents for groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations, United Nations, the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Tavistock Institute, the Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome, the Bilderberg Group, the World Health Organization, George Soros, and the Koch Brothers, in co-operation with international banks and financial institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the Bank for International Settlements.
Milton William Cooper claimed that the shadow government was in cooperation with extraterrestrial aliens. His 1991 book Behold a Pale Horse, influential among "UFO and militia circles", describes "the doings of the secret world government" and "a variety of other covert activities associated with the Illuminati's declaration of war upon the people of America". Cooper claimed to have seen secret documents while in the Navy describing governmental dealings with aliens. Cooper linked the Illuminati with his beliefs that extraterrestrials were secretly involved with the US government, but later retracted these claims. He accused Dwight D. Eisenhower of negotiating a treaty with extraterrestrials in 1954, then establishing an inner circle of Illuminati to manage relations with them and keep their presence a secret from the general public. Cooper believed that aliens "manipulated and/or ruled the human race through various secret societies, religions, magic, witchcraft, and the occult", and that even the Illuminati were unknowingly being manipulated by them. Also popularizing the idea was the hit US television show, The X-Files, in the series' story arc, Mythology of The X-Files.
During the American Revolution, Committees of Safety were different local committees of Patriots that formed a shadow government to take control of the Thirteen Colonies away from British royal officials.
== See also ==
Deep state
Fifth column
New World Order (conspiracy theory)
Power behind the throne
Puppet regime
Shadow cabinet
Smoke-filled room
Succession crisis
== References == | Wikipedia/Shadow_government_(conspiracy_theory) |
Love jihad (or Romeo jihad) is an Islamophobic conspiracy theory promoted by right-wing Hindutva activists. The conspiracy theory purports that Muslim men target Hindu women for conversion to Islam by means such as seduction, feigning love, deception, kidnapping, and marriage, as part of a broader demographic "war" by Muslims against India, and an organised international conspiracy, for domination through demographic growth and replacement.
The conspiracy theory relies on disinformation to conduct its hate campaign, and is noted for its similarities to other historic hate campaigns as well as contemporary white nationalist conspiracy theories and Euro-American Islamophobia. It features Orientalist portrayals of Muslims as barbaric and hypersexual, and carries the paternalistic and patriarchal notions that Hindu women are passive and victimized, while "any possibility of women exercising their legitimate right to love and their right to choice is ignored". It has consequently been the cause of vigilante assaults, murders and other violent incidents, including the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.
Created in 2009 as part of a campaign to foster fear and paranoia, the conspiracy theory was disseminated by Hindutva publications, such as the Sanatan Prabhat and the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti website, calling Hindus to protect their women from Muslim men who were simultaneously depicted to be attractive seducers and lecherous rapists. Organisations including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) have since been credited for its proliferation in India and abroad, respectively. The conspiracy theory was noted to have become a significant belief in the state of Uttar Pradesh by 2014 and contributed to the success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) campaign in the state.
The concept was institutionalised in India after the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Right-wing pro-government television media, such as Times Now and Republic TV, and social media disinformation campaigns are generally held responsible for the growth of its popularity. Legislation against the purported conspiracy has been initiated in a number of states ruled by the party and implemented in the state of Uttar Pradesh by the Yogi Adityanath government, where it has been used as a means of state repression on Muslims and crackdown on interfaith marriages.
In Myanmar, the conspiracy theory has been adopted by the 969 Movement as an allegation of Islamisation of Buddhist women and used by the Tatmadaw as justification for military operations against Rohingya civilians. It has extended among the non-Muslim Indian diaspora and led to formation of alliances between Hindutva groups and Western far-right organisations such as the English Defence League. It has also been adopted in part by the clergy of the Catholic Church in Kerala to dissuade interfaith marriage among Christians.
== Background ==
=== Regional historical tensions ===
In a piece picked up by the Chicago Tribune, Foreign Policy correspondent Siddhartha Mahanta reports that the modern Love Jihad conspiracy has roots in the 1947 partition of India. This partition led to the creation of India and Pakistan. The creation of two countries with different majority religions led to large-scale migration, with millions of people moving between the countries and rampant reports of sexual predation and forced conversions of women by men of both faiths. Women on both sides of the conflict were impacted, leading to "recovery operations" by both the Indian and Pakistani governments of these women, with over 20,000 Muslim and 9,000 non-Muslim women being recovered between 1947 and 1956. This tense history caused repeated clashes between the faiths in the decades that followed as well, according to Mahanta, as cultural pressure against interfaith marriage for either side.
As of 2011, Hindus were the leading religious majority in India, at 80%, with Muslims at 14% an increase from 9% from 1951 while the Hindu population of Pakistan has remained at 2% and that of Bangladesh fallen to 8%. In the 1951 census, West Pakistan (now Pakistan) had 1.3% Hindu population, while East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had 22.05%.
=== Marriage traditions and customs ===
India has a long tradition of arranged marriages, wherein the bride and groom do not choose their partners. Through the 2000s and 2010s, India witnessed a rise in love marriages; however, tensions continue around interfaith marriages, along with other traditionally discouraged unions. In 2012, The Hindu reported that illegal intimidation against consenting couples engaging in such discouraged unions, including inter-religious marriage, had surged. That year, Uttar Pradesh saw the proposal of an amendment to remove the requirement to declare religion from the marriage law in hopes of encouraging those who were hiding their interfaith marriage due to social norms to register.
One of the tensions surrounding interfaith marriage relates to concerns of required, even forced, marital conversion. Marriage in Islam is a legal contract with requirements around the religions of the participants. While Muslim women are only permitted within the contract to marry Muslim men, Muslim men may marry "People of the Book", interpreted by most to include Jews and Christians, with the inclusion of Hindus disputed. According to a 2014 article in the Mumbai Mirror, some non-Muslim brides in Muslim-Hindu marriages convert, while other couples choose a civil marriage under the Special Marriage Act of 1954. Marriage between Muslim women and Hindu men (including Sikh, Jaina, and Buddhist) is legal civil marriage under The Special Marriage Act of 1954.
=== Hindu nationalism and right wing politics ===
Love jihad in politics has been closely tied to Hindu nationalism, particularly the more extremist form hindutva associated with BJP Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi. The anti-Islamic stances of many right wing hindutva groups like Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) are usually hostile to inter-religious marriage and religious pluralism, which can sometimes result in mob violence motivated by allegations of love jihad.
== Timeline ==
=== Early origins and beginnings ===
Similar controversies over inter religious marriage were relatively common in India from the 1920s until independence in 1947, when allegations of forced marriage were typically called "abductions". They were more common in religiously diverse areas, including campaigns against both Muslims and Christians, and were tied to fears over religious demographics and political power in the newly emerging Indian nation. Fears of women converting was also a catalyst of the violence against women that occurred during that period. However, allegations of Love Jihad first rose to national awareness in September 2009.
According to the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council, by October 2009 up to 4,500 girls in Kerala had been targeted, whereas Hindu Janajagruti Samiti claimed that 30,000 girls had been converted in Karnataka alone. Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana general secretary Vellapally Natesan said that there had been reports in Narayaneeya communities of "Love Jihad" attempts. Following the controversy's initial flare-up in 2009, it flared again in 2010, 2011 and 2014. On 25 June 2014, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy informed the state legislature that 2,667 young women converted to Islam in the state between 2006 and 2014. However, he stated that there was no evidence for any of them being forced to convert, and that fears of Love Jihad were "baseless." Muslim organizations such as the Popular Front of India and the Campus Front have been accused of promoting this activity. In Kerala, some movies have been accused of promoting Love Jihad, a charge which has been denied by the filmmakers. Bollywood films PK and Bajrangi Bhaijaan were accused of promoting Love jihad by Hindu outfits. The actors and directors denied that their films promoted Love jihad.
Around the same time that the conspiracy theory was beginning to spread, accounts of Love Jihad also began becoming prevalent in Myanmar. Wirathu, the leader of 969 Movement, has said that Muslim men pretend to be Buddhists and then the Buddhist women are lured into Islam in Myanmar. He has urged to "protect our Buddhist women from the Muslim love-jihad" by introducing further legislation. Reports of similar activities also began emerging from the United Kingdom's Sikh diaspora. In 2014, The Sikh Council alleged that it had received reports that girls from British Sikh families were becoming victims of Love Jihad. Furthermore, these reports alleged that these girls were being exploited by their husbands, some of whom afterwards abandoned them in Pakistan. According to the Takht jathedar, he alleged that "The Sikh council has rescued some of the victims (girls) and brought them back to their parents."
=== Congress Party era (2009–2014) ===
The initial formations of the conspiracy theory were solidified when various organisations began joining. Christian groups, such as the Christian Association for Social Action, and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) banded against it, with the VHP establishing the "Hindu Helpline" that it started answered 1,500 calls in three months related to "Love Jihad". The Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN) has reported that the Catholic Church was concerned about this alleged phenomenon. In September, posters of right-wing group Shri Ram Sena warning against "Love Jihad" appeared in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. The group announced in December that it would launch a nationwide "Save our daughters, save India" campaign to combat "Love Jihad". Muslim organizations in Kerala called it a malicious misinformation campaign. Popular Front of India (PFI) committee-member Naseeruddin Elamaram denied that the PFI was involved in any "Love Jihad", stating that people convert to Hinduism and Christianity as well and that religious conversion is not a crime. Members of the Muslim Central Committee of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts responded by claiming that Hindus and Christians have fabricated these claims to undermine Muslims.
In July 2010, the "Love Jihad" controversy resurfaced in the press when Kerala Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan referenced the alleged matrimonial conversion of non-Muslim girls as part of an effort to make Kerala a Muslim majority state. PFI dismissed his statements due to the findings of the Kerala probe, but the president of the BJP Mahila Morcha, the women's wing of the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party, called for an NIA investigation, alleging that the Kerala state probe was closed prematurely due to a tacit understanding with PFI. The Congress Party in Kerala responded strongly to the Chief Minister's comments, which they described as deplorable and dangerous.
In December 2011, the controversy erupted again in Karnataka legislative assembly, when member Mallika Prasad of the Bharatiya Janata Party asserted that the problem was ongoing and unaddressed – with, according to her, 69 of 84 Hindu girls who had gone missing between January and November of that year confessing after their recovery that "they'd been lured by Muslim youths who professed love." According to The Times of India, response was divided, with Deputy Speaker N. Yogish Bhat and House Leader S. Suresh Kumar supporting governmental intervention, while Congress members B. Ramanath Rai and Abhayachandra Jain argued that "the issue was being raised to disrupt communal harmony in the district."
=== Bharatiya Janata Party era (2014–present) ===
During the resurgence of the controversy in 2014, protests turned violent at growing concern, even though, according to Reuters, the concept was considered "an absurd conspiracy theory by mainstream, moderate Indians." Then BJP MP Yogi Adityanath alleged that Love Jihad was an international conspiracy targeting India, announcing on television that the Muslims "can't do what they want by force in India, so they are using the love jihad method here." Conservative Hindu activists cautioned women in Uttar Pradesh to avoid Muslims and not to befriend them. In Uttar Pradesh, the influential committee Akhil Bharitiya Vaishya Ekta Parishad announced their intention to push to restrict the use of cell phones among young women to prevent their being vulnerable to such activities.
Following this announcement, The Times of India reported that the Senior Superintendent of Police in UP, Shalabh Mathur, "said the term 'love jihad' had been coined only to create fear and divide society along communal lines." Muslim leaders referred to the 2014 rhetoric around the alleged conspiracy as a campaign of hate. Feminists voiced concerns that efforts to protect women against the alleged activities would negatively impact women's rights, depriving them of free choice and agency.
In September 2014, BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj claimed that Muslim boys in madrasas are being motivated for Love Jihad with proposals of rewards of "Rs 11 lakh for an 'affair' with a Sikh girl, Rs 10 lakh for a Hindu girl and Rs 7 lakh for a Jain girl." He claimed to know this through reports to him by Muslims and by the experiences of men in his service who had converted for access. Abdul Razzaq Khan, the vice-president of Jamiat Ulama Hind, responded by denying such activities, labeling the comments "part of conspiracy aimed at disturbing the peace of the nation" and demanding action against Maharaj. Uttar Pradesh minister Mohd Azam Khan indicated the statement was "trying to break the country". In January, Vishwa Hindu Parishad's women's wing, Durga Vahini used actor Kareena Kapoor's morphed picture half covered with burqa issue of their magazine, on the theme of Love Jihad. The caption underneath read: "conversion of nationality through religious conversion". In June 2018, Jharkhand High Court granted a divorce in an alleged love jihad case in which the accused lied about his religion and forcing the victim to convert to Islam after marriage.
==== 2017 Hadiya court case ====
In May 2017, the Kerala High Court annulled a marriage of a converted Hindu woman Akhila alias Hadiya to a Muslim man Shafeen Jahan on the grounds that the bride's parents were not present, nor gave consent for the marriage, after allegations by her father of conversion and marriage at the behest of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Hadiya's father had claimed that his daughter had been influenced to marry a Muslim man by some organisations so she no longer remained in her parents' custody. However, Hadiya claimed that she had been following Islam since 2012 and had left her home of her own will. Akhila was married to Shafeen by the time her father's petition was taken up by the court, following which her marriage was annulled.
The decision of the court was challenged by Shafeen in the Supreme Court of India in July 2017. The Supreme Court sought the response from the National Investigating Agency (NIA) and the Kerala government, ordering an NIA probe headed by former SC Judge R. V. Raveendran on 16 August. The NIA had earlier submitted that the woman's conversion and marriage was not "isolated" and it had detected a pattern emerging in the state.
The Supreme Court on 8 March 2018 overturned the annulment of Hadiya's marriage by the Kerala High Court and held that the she had married of her own free will. However, it allowed NIA to continue investigation into the allegations of a terror dimension. The NIA examined 11 interfaith marriages in Kerala and completed its investigation in October 2018, concluding that "the agency has not found any evidence to suggest that in any of these cases either the man or the woman was coerced to convert".
==== 2020 legislation and outcomes ====
Despite drawing severe criticisms, the Syro Malabar Church continued to repeat its stand on "love jihad". According to the church, Christian women are being targeted, recruited to terrorist outfit Islamic State, making them sex slaves and even killed. Detailing this, a circular, issued by Church chief Cardinal Mar George Alencherry, was read out in many parishes at the Sunday mass. In the circular (dated 15 January 2020) that was read out in churches on Sunday, it is stated that Christian women are being targeted under a conspiracy through inter-religious relationships, which often grow as a threat to religious harmony. "Christian women from Kerala are even being recruited to Islamic State through this," the circular read. Further, Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference's (KCBC) Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance, claimed that there were 4,000 instances of "love jihad" between 2005 and 2012.
On 27 September 2020, protests occurred after a young Muslim man attempted to kidnap a 21-year-old Hindu woman near her college campus, and fatally shot her when she resisted. Her family said that he had tried to force her to convert to Islam and marry him.
Many BJP-ruled states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka, then began mulling over laws designed to prevent "forcible conversions" through marriage, commonly referred to as "love jihad" laws. In September 2020, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asked his government to come up with a strategy to prevent "religious conversions in the name of love". On 31 October, he announced that a law to curb "love jihad" would be passed by his government. The law in Uttar Pradesh, which also includes provisions against "unlawful religious conversion," declares a marriage null and void if the sole intention was to "change a girl's religion" and both it and the one in Madhya Pradesh imposed sentences of up to 10 years in prison for those who broke the law. The ordinance came into effect on 28 November 2020 as the Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance. In December 2020, Madhya Pradesh approved an anti-conversion law similar to the Uttar Pradesh one. As of 25 November 2020, Haryana and Karnataka were still in discussion over similar ordinances. In April 2021, the Gujarat Assembly amended the Freedom of Religion Act, 2003, bringing in stringent provisions against forcible conversion through marriage or allurement, with the intention of targeting "love jihad".
The Karnataka state cabinet also approved an anti-conversion ‘love jihad’ bill, making it a law in December 2021. The Congress-led government scrapped the law in June 2023.
While campaigning for the 2021 Kerala Legislative Assembly election and the 2021 Assam Legislative Assembly election, the BJP promised that if it won the elections, it would enact a law that would ban "love jihad" in these states.
== Reliance on tropes ==
The conspiracy theory is noted for its similarities to other historic hate campaigns and instances Euro-American Islamophobia. It features Orientalist portrayals of Muslims as barbaric and hypersexual, and carries the paternalistic and patriarchal notions that Hindu women are passive and victimized, while "any possibility of women exercising their legitimate right to love and their right to choice is ignored". It has consequently been the cause of vigilante assaults, murders and other violent incidents, including the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.
== Official investigations ==
=== India ===
In August 2017, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) stated that it had found a common "mentor" in some love jihad cases, "a woman associated with the radical group Popular Front of India", in August 2017. According to a later article in The Economist, "Repeated police investigations have failed to find evidence of any organised plan of conversion. Reporters have repeatedly exposed claims of 'love jihad' as at best fevered fantasies and at worst, deliberate election-time inventions." According to the same report, the common theme regarding many claims of "love jihad" has been the frenzied objection to an interfaith marriage while "Indian law erects no barriers to marriages between faiths, or against conversion by willing and informed consent. Yet the idea still sticks, even when the supposed 'victims' dismiss it as nonsense."
In 2022, the Observer Research Foundation and Indian government stated that no more than 100-200 Indians had joined Islamic State, a figure so low that one researcher remarked that "academics and experts often ask the question ‘What had prevented Indian Muslims from joining the Islamic State?'."
==== Karnataka ====
In October 2009, the Karnataka government announced its intention to counter "love jihad", which "appeared to be a serious issue". A week after the announcement, the government ordered a probe into the situation by the CID to determine if an organised effort existed to convert these girls and, if so, by whom it was being funded. One woman, whose conversion to Islam came under scrutiny as a result of the probe, was temporarily ordered to the custody of her parents, but eventually was permitted to return to her new husband after she appeared in court, denying pressure to convert. In April 2010, police used the term to characterize the alleged kidnapping, forced conversion and marriage of a 17-year-old college girl in Mysore.
In late 2009, The Karnataka CID (Criminal Investigation Department) reported that although it was continuing to investigate, it had found no evidence that a "love jihad" existed. In late 2009, Director general of police Jacob Punnoose reported that although the investigation would continue, there was no evidence of any organised attempt by any group or individual using men "feigning love" to lure women to convert to Islam. Investigators did indicate that many Hindu girls had converted to Islam of their own will. In early 2010, the State Government reported to the Karnataka High Court that, although many young Hindu women had converted to Islam, there was no organized attempt to convince them to do so. According to The Indian Express, Justice K. T. Sankaran's conclusion that "such incidents under the pretext of love were rampant in certain parts of the state" ran contrary to Central and state government reports. A petition was also put before Sankaran to prevent the use of the terms "love jihad" and "romeo jihad", but Sankaran declined to overrule an earlier decision not to restrain media usage. Subsequently, the High Court stayed further police investigation, both because no organised efforts had been disclosed by police probes and because the investigation was specifically targeted against a single community. In early 2010, the state government reported to the Karnataka High Court that although many young Hindu women had converted to Islam, there was no organized attempt to convince them to do so.
==== Kerala ====
Following the launching of a poster campaign in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, purportedly by the organisation Shri Ram Sena, state police began investigating the presence of that organisation in the area. In late October 2009, police addressed the question of "love jihad" itself, indicating that while they had not located an organisation called "Love Jihad", "there are reasons to suspect 'concentrated attempts' to persuade girls to convert to Islam after they fall in love with Muslim boys".
In November 2009, Director general of police Jacob Punnoose stated there was no organisation whose members lured girls in Kerala by feigning love with the intention of converting. He told the Kerala High Court that three out of 18 reports he received questioned the tendency. However, in absence of solid proof, the investigations were still continuing. In December 2009, Justice K.T. Sankaran, who had refused to accept Punnoose's report, concluded from a case diary that there were indications of forceful conversions and stated it was clear from police reports there was a "concerted effort" to convert women with "blessings of some outfits". The court, while hearing the bail plea of two individuals accused in "love jihad" cases, stated that there had been 3,000-4,000 such conversions in the past four years. The Kerala High Court in December 2009 stayed investigations in the case, granting relief to the two accused, though it criticised the police investigation. The investigation was closed by Justice M. Sasidharan Nambiar following Punnoose's statements that no conclusive evidence could be found for the existence of "love jihad".
On 9 December 2009, Justice K T Sankaran for the Kerala High Court weighed in on the matter while hearing bail for a Muslim youth arrested for allegedly forcibly converting two female students. According to Sankaran, police reports revealed the "blessings of some outfits" for a "concerted" effort for religious conversions, some 3,000 to 4,000 incidences of which had taken place after love affairs within a four-year period. Sankaran "found indications of 'forceful' religious conversions under the garb of 'love'", suggesting that "such 'deceptive' acts" might require legislative intervention to prevent them.
In January 2012, Kerala police declared that "love jihad" was "[a] campaign with no substance", bringing legal proceedings instead against the website hindujagruti.org for "spreading religious hatred and false propaganda." In 2012, after two years of investigation into the alleged "love jihad", Kerala Police declared it as a "campaign with no substance". Subsequently, a case was initiated against the hindujagruti website, where counterfeit posters of Muslim organisations offering money to Muslim youths for luring and trapping women were found.
In 2017, after the Kerala High Court had ruled that a marriage of a Hindu woman to a Muslim man was invalid on the basis of"'love jihad", and an appeal was filed in the Supreme Court of India by the Muslim husband. The court, based on the "unbiased and independent" evidence requested by the court from the NIA, instructed the NIA to investigate all similar cases to establish whether there was any "love jihad". It allowed the NIA to explore all similar suspicious cases to find whether banned organisations, such as SIMI, were preying on vulnerable Hindu women to recruit them as terrorists. The NIA had earlier submitted before the court that the case was not an "isolated" incident and it had detected a pattern emerging in the state, stating that another case involved the same individuals who had previously acted as instigators. In 2018, the NIA concluded its probe, after investigating 11 interfaith marriages in Kerala without finding proof of coercion, and an NIA official concluded that "we didn't find any prosecutable evidence to bring formal charges against these persons under any of the scheduled offences of the NIA", adding that "Conversion is not a crime in Kerala and also helping these men and women convert is also within the ambit of the constitution of the country."
In 2021, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan stated that "no complaints or clear information were received regarding forced conversion", and that, of the data available to the ministry, "none of the figures validate the propaganda that girls are being lured into conversion and terrorist organizations".
==== Uttar Pradesh ====
In September 2014, following the resurgence of national attention, Reuters reported that police in Uttar Pradesh had found no credence in the five or six recent allegations of "love jihad" that had been brought before them, with state police chief A.L. Banerjee stating that, "In most cases we found that a Hindu girl and Muslim boy were in love and had married against their parents' will." The police stated that occasional cases of trickery by dishonest men are not evidence of a broader conspiracy.
That same month, the Allahabad High Court gave the government and election commission of Uttar Pradesh ten days to respond to a petition to restrain the use of the word "love jihad" and to take action against Yogi Adityanath.
=== United Kingdom ===
In 2018, a report by the fundamentalist Sikh activist organisation, Sikh Youth UK, entitled "The Religiously Aggravated Sexual Exploitation of Young Sikh Women Across the UK" (RASE report) made similar allegations of Muslim men targeting Sikh girls for the purposes of conversion. The report was severely criticised in 2019 by academic researchers and by an official UK government report, led by two Sikh academics, for false and misleading information. It noted: "The RASE report lacks solid data, methodological transparency and rigour. It is filled instead with sweeping generalisations and poorly substantiated claims around the nature and scale of abuse of Sikh girls and causal factors driving it. It appealed heavily to historical tensions between Sikhs and Muslims and narratives of honour in a way that seemed designed to whip up fear and hate".
Previously, in 2011, Sikh academic Katy Sian had conducted research into the matter, exploring how "forced conversion narratives" arose within the Sikh diaspora in the United Kingdom and why they became so widespread. Sian, who reports that claims of conversion through courtship on campuses are widespread in the UK, says that rather than relying on actual evidence, the Sikh community primarily rest their beliefs on the word of "a friend of a friend" or personal anecdotes. According to Sian, the narrative is similar to accusations of "white slavery" lodged against the Jewish community and foreigners to the UK and the US, with the former having ties to anti-semitism that mirror the Islamophobia displayed by the modern narrative. Sian expanded on these views in her 2013 book, Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions, and Postcolonial Formations.
In response to a flurry of sensational news stories on the subject, ten Hindu academics in the UK signed an open letter wherein they argued that claims of Hindu and Sikh girls being forcefully converted in the UK were "part of an arsenal of myths propagated by right-wing Hindu supremacist organisations in India". The Muslim Council of Britain issued a press release pointing out there was a lack of evidence of any forced conversions, and suggested it was an underhanded attempt to smear the British Muslim population.
== "Reverse" love jihad ==
In response to the purported conspiracy of love jihad, affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have stated that they have launched a Reverse Love Jihad campaign to marry Hindu men with Muslim women. Cases related to the campaign were reported from various parts of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), where rape and abduction of Muslim women have taken place. The perpetrators of these incidents are alleged to be the members of these affiliates who are being rewarded by the affiliates for their activities. Between 2014 and October 2016, 389 cases of underage girls missing or kidnapped were registered by the police in Kushinagar district, and a similar trend was found in a number of districts in eastern Uttar Pradesh, in areas with high communal tensions.
The term Reverse Love Jihad has also been used by the Bajrang Dal to refer to the Love Jihad conspiracy theory where the purported victim is a Hindu man being "lured" to Islam with the prospects of a job and marriage to a Muslim woman.
The Bhagwa Love Trap conspiracy theory, which alleges that Hindu men lure Muslim women into relationships with the intention of converting them to Hinduism, has been popularized on social media.
== See also ==
The Kerala Story
Hindutva pseudohistory
Anti-Mosque campaign in India
Violence against Muslims in India
White genocide conspiracy theory
Great replacement conspiracy theory
Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Amarasingam, A.; Umar, S.; Desai, S. (2022). "Fight, Die, and If Required Kill": Hindu Nationalism, Misinformation, and Islamophobia in India". Religions. 13 (5): 380. doi:10.3390/rel13050380.
== External links ==
Quotations related to Love jihad conspiracy theory at Wikiquote | Wikipedia/Bhagwa_Love_Trap_conspiracy_theory |
Chiropractors use their version of spinal manipulation (known as chiropractic adjustment) as their primary treatment method, with non-chiropractic use of spinal manipulation gaining more study and attention in mainstream medicine in the 1980s. There is no evidence that chiropractic spinal adjustments are effective for any medical condition, with the possible exception of treatment for lower back pain. The safety of manipulation, particularly on the cervical spine, has been debated. Adverse results, including strokes and deaths, are rare.
There are about 200 plus chiropractic techniques, most of which are variations of spinal manipulation, but there is a significant amount of overlap between them, and many techniques involve slight changes of other techniques.
According to the American Chiropractic Association the most frequently used techniques by chiropractors are Diversified technique 95.9%, Extremity manipulating/adjusting 95.5%, Activator Methods 62.8%, Gonstead technique 58.5%, Cox Flexion/Distraction 58.0%, Thompson 55.9%, Sacro Occipital Technique [SOT] 41.3%, Applied Kinesiology 43.2%, NIMMO/Receptor Tonus 40.0%, Cranial 37.3%, Manipulative/Adjustive Instruments 34.5%, Palmer upper cervical [HIO] 28.8%, Logan Basic 28.7%, Meric 19.9%, and Pierce-Stillwagon 17.1%.
== Techniques ==
=== Manual and manipulative therapy ===
In the late 19th century in North America, therapies including osteopathy and chiropractic became popular. Spinal manipulation gained mainstream recognition during the 1980s.
In this system, hands are used to manipulate, massage or otherwise influence the spine and related tissues. It is the most common and primary intervention used in chiropractic care.
=== Diversified technique ===
Diversified technique is a non-proprietary and eclectic approach to spinal manipulation that is commonly used by chiropractors. The technique, as it is applied today, is largely attributed to the work of Joe Janse Diversified is the most common spine manipulation technique used by chiropractors, with approximately 96% of chiropractors using it for approximately 70% of their patients. Diversified is also the technique most preferred for use during future practice by chiropractic students. Diversified is the only spine manipulation technique taught in Canadian chiropractic programs. Like many chiropractic and osteopathic manipulative techniques, Diversified is characterized by a high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust. It is considered the most generic chiropractic manipulative technique and is differentiated from other techniques in that its objective is to restore proper movement and alignment of spine and joint dysfunction.
=== Atlas orthogonal technique ===
Atlas Orthogonal Technique is an upper cervical chiropractic treatment technique created by Frederick M. Vogel and Roy W. Sweat in 1979. It is a non-invasive technique that uses a percussion "Atlas Orthogonal instrument" in attempts to change ("adjust") the position of the atlas. Using angles measured from specific X-rays, claims are made that vertebral subluxations are found and must be corrected. It is based on the teachings of B. J. Palmer, who advocated the Hole-In-One version of spinal adjustment. It is primarily used by straight chiropractors, as it is focused on the correct alignment of the atlas to allow for minimal obstruction for the nerves channeled through the atlas and down the spinal cord. Referring to the origins of upper cervical techniques, Dan Murphy, DC, DABCO, wrote: "Over the past 100 years, the practice of chiropractic has branched into dozens of specialty techniques. However, historically, for a third of this time, from the 1930s into the 1960s, the predominant practice of chiropractic involved primarily the upper cervical spine."
=== Extremity manipulating/adjusting ===
=== Activator methods ===
The Activator Method Chiropractic Technique (AMCT) is a chiropractic treatment method and device created by Arlan Fuhr as an alternative to manual manipulation of the spine or extremity joints. The device is categorized as a mechanical force manual assisted (MFMA) instrument, which is generally regarded as a softer chiropractic treatment technique.
The activator is a small handheld spring-loaded instrument that delivers a small impulse to the spine. It was found to give off no more than 0.3 J of kinetic energy in a 3-millisecond pulse. The aim is to produce enough force to move the vertebrae but not enough to cause injury.
The AMCT involves having the patient lie in a prone position and comparing the functional leg lengths. Often one leg will seem to be shorter than the other. The chiropractor then carries out a series of muscle tests, such as having the patient move their arms in a certain position to activate the muscles attached to specific vertebrae. If the leg lengths are not the same, that is taken as a sign that the problem is located at that vertebra. The chiropractor treats problems found in this way, moving progressively along the spine in the direction from the feet towards the head.
Although prone "functional leg length" is a widely used chiropractic tool, it is not a recognized anthropometric technique, since legs are often of unequal length, and measurements in the prone position are not entirely valid estimates of standing X-ray differences. Measurements in the standing position are far more reliable. Another confounding factor is that simply moving the two legs held together and leaning them imperceptibly to one side or the other produces different results. Fuhr claims that properly trained doctors show good interexaminer reliability.
In 2003, the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners found that 69.9% of chiropractors used the technique, and 23.9% of patients received it. The majority of U.S. chiropractic schools and some schools in other countries teach the AMCT method, and an estimated 45,000 chiropractors worldwide use AMCT or some part of the technique.
There have been many studies of AMCT, including case reports, clinical studies, and controlled trials, but there are still unanswered questions. A few low-quality studies have suggested that the activator may be as effective as manual adjustment in the treatment of back pain. A single high-quality study has suggested that activator-assisted manipulation directed by leg-length testing was significantly inferior to manual spinal manipulation guided by palpation and was more similar to the use of paracetamol for the treatment of low back pain.
=== Graston technique ===
Graston Technique (GT) is a trademarked therapeutic method for diagnosing and treating disorders of the skeletal muscles and related connective tissue. The method was started by David Graston and employs a collection of six stainless steel instruments of particular shape and size, which are used by practitioners to rub patients' muscles in order to detect and resolve adhesions in the muscles and tendons. Practitioners must be licensed by the parent corporation (Graston Technique, LLC.) in order to use the Graston Technique trademark or the patented instruments.
Several examples of Graston treatment have been used in contact sports where scars and contusions are common. However, the Graston Technique has not been rigorously scientifically tested and its evidence basis and assumptions are considered questionable at best. There are no high quality clinical trials that validate the efficacy of the Graston Techniques.
=== Koren Specific Technique ===
Koren specific technique (KST) is a technique developed by Tedd Koren around 2004. While the technique is associated with chiropractic techniques, Koren has variously described it as an "analysis protocol" or "healthcare protocol". KST may use their hands, or they may use an electric device known as an "ArthroStim" for assessment and adjustments. KST can use different postures. The insurers Aetna, NHS Leeds West CCG, North Dakota Department of Human Services, and The Ohio State University cover other chiropractic techniques but exclude KST from coverage because they consider it to be "experimental and investigational." Aetna's policy states there is a lack of efficacy regarding this method.
=== Gonstead technique ===
The Gonstead technique is a chiropractic method developed by Clarence Gonstead in 1923. The technique focuses on hands-on adjustment and is claimed to expand "standard diversified technique" by removing rotation from the adjusting thrust and implementing additional instrumentation including X-rays, Gonstead Radiographic Parallel, a measuring device to undertake specific biomechanical analysis of the X-ray, and the development of Nervo-Scope, a device said to detect the level of neurophysiologic activity due to the existence of vertebral subluxation based on changes in skin temperature. Heat detector devices are unreliable and lack scientific evidence. The technique gained popularity in the 1960s. About 28.9% of patients have been treated with the Gonstead technique.
=== Torque release technique ===
=== Trigenics Technique ===
Trigenics is a neurological-based manual or instrument-assisted assessment and treatment system developed and patented by Allan Oolo Austin. The technique is relatively infrequently used by chiropractors compared to other chiropractic techniques such as Diversified, trigger point therapy and Activator.
== Effectiveness ==
=== Neuromusculoskeletal disorders ===
Treatment is usually for neck or low back pain and related disorders.
For acute low back pain, low quality evidence has suggested no difference between real and sham spine manipulation, and moderate quality evidence has suggested no difference between spine manipulation and other commonly used treatments, such as medication and physical therapy.
National guidelines vary; some recommend the therapy for those who do not improve with other treatment. It may be effective for lumbar disc herniation with radiculopathy, as effective as mobilization for neck pain, some forms of headache, and some extremity joint conditions. A 2011 Cochrane review found strong evidence that suggests there is no clinically meaningful difference between spinal manipulation therapy and other treatments for reducing pain and improving function for chronic low back pain. A 2008 review found that with the possible exception of lower back pain, chiropractic manipulation is not effective for any medical condition.
=== Non-musculoskeletal disorders ===
The use of spinal manipulation for non-musculoskeletal conditions is controversial. It is not effective for asthma, headache, hypertension, or dysmenorrhea. There is no scientific data that supports the use of spinal manipulation for idiopathic adolescent scoliosis.
=== Cost-effectiveness ===
Spinal manipulation is generally regarded as a cost-effective treatment of musculoskeletal conditions when used alone or in combination with other treatment approaches. Evidence supports the cost-effectiveness of using spinal manipulation for the treatment of sub-acute or chronic low back pain, whereas the results for acute low back pain were inconsistent.
== Safety ==
All treatments need a thorough medical history, diagnosis, and plan of management. Chiropractors must rule out contraindications to any treatments, including adverse events.
Relative contraindications, such as osteoporosis are conditions where increased risk is acceptable in some situations and where mobilization and soft-tissue techniques may be treatments of choice. Most contraindications apply to the manipulation of the affected region.
While safety has been debated, and serious injuries and deaths can occur and may be under-reported, these are generally rare and spinal manipulation is relatively safe when employed skillfully and appropriately.
Adverse events are believed to be under-reported and appear to be more common following high velocity/low amplitude manipulation than mobilization.
Mild, frequent and temporary adverse events occur in spinal manipulation which include temporary increase in pain, tenderness and stiffness. These effects generally are reduced within 24–48 hours Serious injuries and fatal consequences, especially from spinal manipulation in the upper cervical region, can occur, but are regarded as rare when spinal manipulation is employed skillfully and appropriately.
Weak to moderately strong evidence supports causation (as opposed to statistical association) between cervical manipulative therapy and vertebrobasilar artery stroke. A 2012 review found that there is not enough evidence to support a strong association or no association between cervical manipulation and stroke. A 2008 review found chiropractic spinal manipulation is more commonly associated with serious adverse effects than other professionals following manipulation and concluded that the risk of death from manipulations to the neck outweighs the benefits.
== References == | Wikipedia/Chiropractic_treatment_techniques |
The "Kosher tax" (or "Jewish tax") is the idea that food companies and unwitting consumers are forced to pay money to support Judaism or Zionist causes and Israel through the costs of kosher certification. The claim is a conspiracy theory, antisemitic canard, or urban legend.
Common refutations include that consumers who prefer kosher foods include not only Jews but also Muslims, Seventh-day Adventists, and others, food companies actively seek kosher certification to increase market share and profitability; the fees collected support the certifying organizations themselves and that extra business generated by the voluntary certification process more than makes up for the cost of supervision and so the certification does not necessarily increase the price of products and may, in fact, result in per item cost savings.
== Claims ==
The kosher tax conspiracy theory claims that the kosher certification of products (typically food) is an extra tax collected from unwitting consumers for the benefit of Jewish organizations. It is mainly spread by antisemitic, white supremacist, and other extremist organizations, and is considered a canard or urban legend. Similar claims are made that this "Kosher tax" (or "Jewish tax") is "extorted" from food companies wishing to avoid a boycott, and used to support Zionist causes or the state of Israel.
University of Pittsburgh professor of sociology Kathleen M. Blee reported that some racist groups encourage consumers to avoid this "Jewish tax" by boycotting kosher products.
=== Canada ===
The 2000 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents by the B'nai Brith Canada reported citizens being encouraged to request a refund from the government on their income taxes.
In 1997 the Canada Revenue Agency issued a news release noting the existence of flyers recommending that consumers claim a deduction on their taxes "because they supposedly contributed to a Jewish religious organization when they purchased these groceries." In it Jane Stewart, then Minister of National Revenue stated, "The intent and message in this literature is deeply offensive to the Jewish community and, indeed, to all Canadians. The so-called 'deduction' described in these flyers does not exist and I urge all taxpayers to ignore this misleading advice".
During the 2014 Quebec provincial election campaign, Parti Québécois (PQ) candidate and academic Louise Mailloux defended the PQ government's proposed Quebec Charter of Values by asserting that kosher and halal certification was a religious tax used to fund religious wars and enrich religious leaders. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs called on the PQ to debunk the "urban legend of the kosher tax" but PQ leader and Premier of Quebec Pauline Marois defended her candidate's comments saying of Mailloux, "Her writings are eloquent, I respect her point of view."
== Refutation ==
Although companies may apply for kosher certification, the cost of the certification is typically minuscule, and is more than offset by the advantages of being certified. In 1975 the cost per item for obtaining kosher certification was reported by The New York Times to be 6.5 millionths of a cent ($0.000000065) for a General Foods frozen-food item.
Certification leads to increased revenues by opening up additional markets to Jews who keep kosher, Muslims who keep halal, Seventh-day Adventists, vegetarians, and the lactose intolerant who wish to avoid dairy products (products that are reliably certified as pareve meet this criterion).
Quebec's Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Reasonable Accommodation refuted what it described as "[t]he most fanciful information is circulating among Quebeckers” about the so-called kosher tax in its 2008 report and stated that there was no evidence of price inflation as a result of kosher certification and that rabbis made little money from granting certification.
According to Berel Wein, "The cost of kashrut certification is always viewed as an advertising expense and not as a manufacturing expense." Dispellers of the "kosher tax" legend argue that if it were not profitable to obtain such certification, then food producers would not engage in the certification process, and that the increased sales resulting from kosher certification actually lower the overall cost per item. Avi Shafran adds that "[i]f the kosher item in fact proves more expensive, [the consumer] can simply opt for one that hasn’t been supervised by a rabbi..."
Obtaining certification that an item is kosher is a voluntary business decision made by companies desiring additional sales from consumers (both Jewish and non-Jewish) who look for kosher certification when shopping. According to Snopes, the fees charged for kosher certification are used to support the operation of the certifying bodies themselves, and not "some special Jewish fund used to advance Zionist causes".
== See also ==
Halal conspiracy theories
== References ==
=== Works cited ===
== Further reading ==
"Dispelling a rumor – there is no kosher tax or Jewish tax", Boycott Watch, December 22, 2003. Retrieved November 3, 2013. | Wikipedia/Kosher_tax_conspiracy_theory |
On May 9, 1978, Aldo Moro, a Christian Democracy (DC) statesman who advocated for a Historic Compromise with the Italian Communist Party, (PCI), was murdered after 55 days of captivity by the Red Brigades (BR), a far-left terrorist organization. Although the courts established that the BR had acted alone, conspiracy theories related to the Moro case persist. Much of the conspiracy theories allege additional involvement, from the Italian government itself, its secret services being involved with the BR, and the Propaganda Due (P2) to the CIA and Henry Kissinger, and Mossad and the KGB.
Because there remains several unclear aspects and it is widely acknowledged, including by the judges themselves, that there were failures on the part of the police, conspiracy theories are widely popular despite five trials in Rome's Court of Assizes that ended with many life sentences and two parliamentary commissions, among others inquiries. Conspiracy theorists hold that Moro, a progressive who wanted the PCI to be part of government, was ultimately sacrificed due to Cold War politics, that both sides welcomed his kidnapping, and that, by refusing to negotiate, they led to his death. The judges investigating the Moro affair dismissed these conspiracy theories, arguing that there is no evidence to support those interpretations of the Moro murder case, and while acknowledging that Moro had powerful political enemies, they insisted that conspiracy theorists had made too many assumptions. At the same time the judicial truth has changed several times and the last parliamentary commission, that concluded its works in 2018, established that the sentences were based mainly on the confession of Valerio Moretti and that the elements in open contradiction with his version, like where the cars were left after the kidnapping were downplayed.
Twenty years after Moro's death, such conspiracy theories remained popular. Few Italians believed in the official version of the Moro affair, namely that only the Red Brigades bore responsibility for Moro's murder and that the Italian government did its best to save Moro. In August 2020, about sixty individuals from the world of historical research and political inquiry signed a document denouncing the growing weight that the conspiratorial view on the kidnapping and killing of Moro has in public discourse.
== Alleged involvement of the P2, Gladio, and the Italian intelligence services ==
Several authorities have suggested that P2 was involved in the kidnapping of Moro, and that the actions of the P2 were already known before Moro's death, and before the public revelation of the P2's existence in March 1981. The name of Andreotti has been repeatedly associated with numerous members of the P2, notably with the Italian mafia banker Michele Sindona and its founder Licio Gelli, with whom he was well acquainted. The P2 was a secret Masonic lodge involved in numerous financial and political scandals in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s and that featured as its members entrepreneurs, journalists, numerous high exponents of right-wing parties, the Italian police and military forces. Among others, they included future prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the Carabinieri general Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa (who made an admission request whose result is unknown), Vito Miceli (chief of SIOS), Sindona, and Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia, the pretender to the throne of Italy. Many high-ranking secret services members were also members of the P2, as were members of the committee that had to coordinate the searches for Moro. Another theory supposes that the BR had been infiltrated by the CIA or by the Operation Gladio, a paramilitary clandestine network headed by NATO whose main task was to oppose Soviet influence in Western Europe, including the rise of the PCI and their road to government.
All documents related to the P2 were published on 7 May 1981. The P2 was dissolved in 1982, with a law that also made the establishment of secret lodges with similar purposes illegal in Italy. Gelli, who since 2005 was no longer put on house arrest, said that the P2 was acquitted in the three levels of trial of the charges of conspiracy against the state, and Italian Freemasons cite the Strasbourg Court, which in 2001 condemned the Italian government for having violated the right of association guaranteed by the Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights with a law that required some public officials to declare their membership of a lodge. Most historians agree that the role of this deviant Freemasonry has not been completely clarified.
During the days of Moro's imprisonment, journalist Carmine Pecorelli wrote in his magazine Osservatorio politico an article entitled "Vergogna, buffoni!" ("Shame on you, clowns!"). In it, he wrote that Andreotti had met dalla Chiesa, who told him that he knew the location where Moro was kept but did not obtain the authorization to proceed to free him due to, in Pecorelli's words, a certain "Christ's lodge in Paradise", which analysts immediately identified with the P2. The likely allusion to the P2 became clear after the discovery of a list of the lodge members on 17 March 1981. Members of the lodge occupied important institutional positions and included Giuseppe Santovito, who was director of SISMI (Italy's military intelligence agency); prefect Walter Pelosi, who was director of CESIS; general Giulio Grassini of SISDE; admiral Antonino Geraci, who was the commander of SIOS; Federico Umberto D'Amato, who was director of the Office of Reserved Affairs of the Ministry of the Interiors; generals Raffaele Giudice and Donato Lo Prete, who were respectively commander and chief-of-staff of the Guardia di Finanza; and the Carabinieri general Giuseppe Siracusano, who was responsible for road blocks in the capital during the investigations of the Moro affair.
According to Vincenzo Cappelletti (a professor who took part in the crisis committees), Franco Ferracuti, who was later discovered to be a P2 member and declared that Moro was suffering of the Stockholm syndrome towards his kidnappers, was close to the lodge during the kidnapping days, having been introduced by Grassini. Gelli declared that the presence of numerous P2 members in the committees was casual, since numerous personalities were members at the time, and this was simply a statistic reflected by the composition of the committees. According to Gelli, some members of the committees did not know that some of their colleagues were also part of the P2.
On 16 March 1978, the day of Moro's kidnapping, the most important members of the P2 met in the Hotel Excelsior in Rome, which was a few hundred meters from the U.S. Embassy in Rome. While exiting the hotel, Gelli declared "the most difficult part is done". It was supposed that his words referred to the abduction of Moro. Another debated case was regarding the presence of Camillo Guglielmi, a colonel of SISMI's 7th Division that controlled Operation Gladio and who was nicknamed "Papà", in via Stresa near the location of the ambush, and in those exact minutes when the BR kidnapped Moro. His presence was kept secret and was only disclosed in 1990 during the investigation of the Italian Parliament's commission on state massacres (the stragi di Stato as part of the strategy of tension in Italy). Guglielmi admitted that he was in via Stresa but only because he had been invited to lunch by a colleague. According to several sources, the colleague confirmed that Guglielmi came to his house but had not been invited. Furthermore, Italians normally have lunch at around 12:30 and Guglielmi's presence at around 09:00 would not be justified. Other sources list Guglielmi as a true member of Gladio; he always firmly denied this accusation. His direct superior, the general Pietro Musumeci, was a member of the P2 and was condemned for sidetracking the investigations on the 1980 Bologna station bombing.
The discovery of the BR refuge in via Gradoli saw the participation of members of both P2 and the police forces of Italy. Lucia Mokbel, an informer of SISDE, had communicated that she had heard Morse code messages coming from the flat next to her. It turned out that those noises interpreted as Morse were in fact coming from the electric typewriter used by the terrorists to type their demand letters. She informed the police commissar Elio Coppa, who was enlisted in the P2. When police agents went to the flat and knocked on the door, they did not attempt to enter it and left the place. SISDE had been also informed that a lock-up garage in via Gradoli had an antenna, allegedly used by the terrorist to communicate with the area of Lago della Duchessa. Grassini, the head of SISDE and member of the P2, did not take any investigative measures.
Investigations made by DIGOS discovered that several machines used by the terrorists to print their communications from one year before the kidnapping of Moro, which was financed by Mario Moretti, had been previously owned by the Italian state. These included a printer owned by the Raggruppamento Unità Speciali dell'Esercito. Despite its relatively young age and its high value, it had been sold out as scrap. A photocopier was previously owned by the Italy's Ministry of Transportation, and was acquired in 1969 and later sold to Enrico Triaca, a member of the BR.
The apartment in via Gradoli, which had been rented by Moretti under the pseudonym of Mario Borghi since 1978, and its building housed several apartments owned by SISDE men and one inhabited by a police confidant. During the days of the kidnapping, the palace was inspected by Carabinieri under the colonel Antonio Varisco, with the exclusion of Moretti's apartment; the official justification was that the Carabinieri were not authorized to enter the apartments if no one was inside. Luciana Bozzi, the owner of the apartment, was later discovered to be a friend of Giuliana Conforto, whose father was named in the Mitrokhin list of the KGB. Valerio Morucci and Adriana Faranda were eventually arrested in her flat. Pecorelli wrote a postcard to Moretti in 1977 from Ascoli Piceno (Moretti was born in the province of Ascoli), addressing it to one "Borghi at via Gradoli", with the message "Greetings, brrrr".
In June 2008, the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, best known as "Carlos the Jackal", spoke in an interview released to the Italian press agency ANSA declaring that several men of the SISMI, led by the colonel Stefano Giovannone (who was considered near to Moro), negotiated at the airport in Beirut for his liberation during the night of 8 to 9 May 1978; the agreement would have endorsed the liberation of several imprisoned members of the BR to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the territory of an Arabic country. According to Ramírez Sánchez, the agreement, which found the opposition of the SISMI leading figures, failed because news about it leaked to other Western secret services who, in turn, informed SISMI. Moro was killed the following day. Ramírez Sánchez stated that the officers involved in the attempt were all expelled from the services, being forced to resign or to go into compulsory retirement on a pension.
== Involvement of foreign powers ==
Into the 21st century, the Moro affair continued to be a focus of Italian politics. In 2003, Philip Willan wrote for The Guardian: "Both Moscow and Washington opposed Moro's policy as dangerously destabilising for the postwar European order which the great powers sanction at the Yalta conference in 1945. Suspicion continues to this day that the CIA or KGB, possibly both, may have played a role in his violent removal from the political scene. At the very least, they did nothing to secure his release."
Conspiracy theories related to the involvement of foreign powers implicate the CIA, Mossad, and the KGB, including within the BR. Declassified documents showed that foreign powers, such as Britain, were concerned about the PCI being part of the Italian government and discussed the possibility of a coup to remove the PCI, which they feared would win the 1976 Italian general election. Although there was no coup, the fact that Moro died two years later fuelled conspiracy theories. In 2005, Giovanni Galloni, the former national vice-secretary of the DC, said that, during a discussion with Moro about the difficulty to find the BR's bases, Moro told him that he knew of the presence of United States and Israeli intelligence agents infiltrated within the BR. The information obtained was not given to the Italian investigators. He also declared that the reason of the assassination of Pecorelli was the same information, perhaps coming from the United States. During an interview in front of the Italian Parliament's commission on terrorism, Galloni also stated that during his trip to the United States in 1976 he had been told that a government like that envisaged by Moro, which would have included the PCI, would be opposed at any cost by the Republican Party in the United States.
According to Moro's widow and his collaborators, Moro's trip to the United States as foreign minister in 1974 and his meeting with Kissinger upset him so much that he thought of leaving politics. According to some collaborators of Moro, he was "very shaken by the meeting he had with the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. So much so that the following day in the Church of St. Patrick he felt ill and said he wanted to interrupt for a long time political activity." In general, the Historic Compromise of Moro with the PCI was not well seen by both the United States and the Soviet Union. During the 1983 trial against the BR, Moro's widow declared that her husband was unpopular in the United States due to the Historic Compromise, and that he had been repeatedly warned by American politicians to stop disrupting the political situation which had been established in the Yalta Conference, in reference to the possible executive role of the PCI. According to her, Kissinger was one of the American personalities who menaced Moro in 1974 and 1976. She said that the words to Moro that he repeated to her were that "you have to put an end to your political plan of mustering all the forces in your country to collaborate directly. Here, or you stop doing this thing, or you will be badly punished." Kissinger denied these accusations, and it was argued it was an issue of communication and language.
Flamigni suggested the involvement of the Operation Gladio network directed by NATO. He asserted that Gladio had manipulated Moretti as a way to take over the Red Brigades to effect a strategy of tension aimed at creating popular demand for a new, right-wing law-and-order regime. In the updated edition of his book Un affare di Stato. Il delitto Moro e la fine della Prima repubblica (A State Affair: The Moro Murder and the End of the First Republic), the journalist Andrea Colombo wrote that "the Moro kidnapping hides inscrutable plots involving practically all the actors involved in the Italian and world theatre: the CIA, the Stasi, the Czechoslovakian secret services, Mossad, the P2, the diverted Italian [secret] services, Gladio, the Vatican IOR, a mysterious super-secret service known as the 'ring', the Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, the Magliana gang, and the Palestinians." Writing for Il Sussidiario in 2014, the journalist Luciano Garibaldi cited Alberto Franceschini and Renzo Martinelli's 2003 film titled Five Moons Square, and concluded: "Reasonings that confirm Martinelli's hypothesis. Moro's kidnappers were manipulated unknowingly, but someone knew everything. Not for nothing, the numbers of the Moro case are as follows: 23 sentences, 127 convictions, 27 life sentences. But there is no longer anyone in jail. All free. Evidently, the CIA or the KGB (or both) have respected the pacts." The lawyer Giannino Guiso, a confidant of Bettino Craxi and defender of the historical leaders of the BR, declared that "the terrorists already convicted or awaiting conviction have done everything to save the life of Aldo Moro". The essence of his reasoning is that something prevented them from reaching an agreement. Guiso asked: "Could the CIA have played a decisive role?" He also stated: "Moro was not saved because he did not want to be saved. The BR went so far as to kill the president of the DC because they were forced to do so. So someone (internal or external) forced them to behave that way." The historian Agostini Giovagnoli commented: "The responsibility for Moro's death lies with those who killed him, his companions and their supporters, as well as their national and international occult instigators."
Franceschini, one of the founders of the BR, mentioned the possibility that the Red Brigades had been infiltrated by Israeli agents as early as 1974. He reported a confidence told to him by co-founder Renato Curcio, according to whom Moretti would be an infiltrated agent. Curcio always denied this reconstruction. Moretti took the reins of the Red Brigades after Franceschini and Curcio were arrested in the mid-1970s, introducing a far stronger militarization of the organization's activities. Prior to 1974, the BR had limited themselves to demonstrative acts that did not involve violence. In the Italian RAI TV programme La notte della Repubblica, Moretti denied these accusations, saying that he had never seen an Israeli in his life and that it was wrong to think that the change of the BR's strategy depended from the arrest of some militants. He also added: "The hypothesis that the Red Brigades have been manipulated by anyone is a thesis dear to the conspiracy, which would divide the BR into good and bad." In a 2012 interview with Ulisse Spinnato Vega of Agenzia Clorofilla, Franceschini and Curcio remembered Pecorelli. Franceschini stated: "Pecorelli, before dying, said that both the United States and the Soviet Union wanted Moro's death." Observers question why Moretti would suffer forty years of prison if the BR were infiltrated by the secret services. Brigate Rosse: un diario politico (Red Brigades: A Political Diary), edited by the researcher Silvia De Bernardinis, takes a critical and self-critical account of the group's history by some leaders and militants, and reiterates that there were only the Red Brigades behind the group, as did Marco Bellocchio's 2020 Exterior Night drama film about Moro's kidnapping and death.
In January 2008, La Repubblica published documents obtained from Britain's National Archives, in which Foreign Office planners wrote in May 1976 that "a clean surgical coup" to remove the PCI from power "would be attractive in many ways" but concluded that the idea was not realistic since it could lead to what they described as a "prolonged and bloody" resistance by communists in Italy and a potential civil war that could have included an intervention by the Soviet Union. Guy Millard, the British ambassador to Rome, wrote in a memo quoted by La Repubblica that "(Berlinguer's) entry into government would create a serious problem for Nato and the European Community and could turn out to be an event with catastrophic consequences". A Foreign Office memo in April 1976 had listed options for tackling the PCI ascendancy, which ranged from financing rival parties to "subversive or military intervention against the Italian Communist party". While officials said that "in the right circumstances" they could encourage the Italian government to repress the PCI and suggested "it might be worth" arranging pretexts for this, they also advised they could "orchestrate a campaign" against Berlinguer and the PCI, recommending "increased action in the propaganda field, both overt and covert, to undermine the credibility of the PCI". Fears receded as the PCI did not become the largest party. Heulyn Dunlop, an official of the Information Research Department's Special Editorial Unit, which was a secret department, seconded to Rome for the campaign to disseminate disinformation against the PCI, identified the key development as "a largely spontaneous and effective campaign" by the Italian press, which alerted Italians "to the dangers of voting the PCI into power". Il golpe inglese. Da Matteotti a Moro: le prove della guerra segreta per il controllo del petrolio e dell'Italia (The English Coup: From Matteotti to Moro. Evidence of the Secret War for the Control of Oil and Italy), a 2011 book by Mario Cereghino and Giovanni Fasanella, who had access to declassified documents, showed that, apart from his accommodation to the PCI, Britain was also opposed to Moro for his pro-Arab policies.
== False Communication No. 7 and discovery of the base of via Gradoli ==
Another controversial event occurred on 18 April 1978 when a false BR's Communication No. 7 announced the death of Moro and that he had been on the bottom of Lago della Duchessa, a very small mountain lake in the province of Rieti (north of Rome). In response, the Italian police looked in vain for Moro under the iced surface of the lake. The authors of the false communication included Antonio Chichiarelli, a notorious forger from Rome who was connected to the Banda della Magliana gang of the city. Chichiarelli later issued further false communications from the Red Brigades. He was killed in uncertain circumstances in September 1984 when his connection with the false communiqué had been yet entirely clarified.
Chichiarelli spoke of the communication to several people, including Luciano Dal Bello, a confidant of the Carabinieri and of SISDE. Del Bello reported the facts but no investigation on Chichiarelli followed. On the same day, the police force found an apartment used as a base by the Red Brigades in Rome on via Gradoli 96. The discovery was allegedly due to a water leak, for which a neighbour had called the firemen. The leak was caused by a tap left open in the apartment's shower in an unusual fashion, i.e. with water directed against the wall. The base was normally used by Moretti but the Italian media reported the discovery immediately and he avoided returning there. The palace had been inspected by Carabinieri under Varisco, with the exclusion of Moretti's apartment; the official justification was that the Carabinieri were not authorized to enter the apartments if no one was inside. Bozzi was later discovered to be a friend of Conforto, in whose apartments Morucci and Faranda were later arrested. Elio Coppa, the commissar who had led Rome's police forces in the inspection of the building on via Gradoli, was eventually promoted to vice-director of SISDE; he later turned out to be a member of the P2. Mokbel was the neighbor whose call had led to the inspection; she was officially a university student of Egyptian descent and was later identified as a confidant of SISDE, or of the police. Furthermore, the report of the inspection, which was presented at the trial on the Moro affair, was written on a type of paper distributed to the Italian police only in 1981, three years after the events.
Before and after 1978, numerous apartments in the street had been used by Italian secret agents, including a Carabinieri Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza enrolled by SISMI who resided in the building facing that of Moretti and who was from the same birthplace. In the street, there were also firms used by SISMI for its affairs. Moretti's apartment itself had been under observation by UCIGOS for several years previously as it had been frequented also by members of the far-left organizations Potere Operaio and Autonomia Operaia. Later, it was revealed that the DC parliament member Benito Cazora, during the contact he had with the 'Ndrangheta (the Calabrian mafia) in the attempt to find Moro's prison, had been warned that the area of via Gradoli was a "hot zone". Cazora received in the formation while stopping in his car at a crossroad between via Cassia and via Gradoli. Cazora had reported this warning to the DC and to the police.
On 20 April 1978, the Red Brigades issued the true Communication No. 7; they attached a photo of Moro holding a copy of La Repubblica, dated 19 April, showing that he was still alive. Pecorelli, who had likely knowledge of the presence of Moretti in via Gradoli, was one of the few journalists to immediately deny the authenticity of Communication No. 7, whereas most authorities had considered it true. Some thirty years after the events, Pieczenik declared in an interview that the decision to issue the false communication was taken during a meeting of the crisis committee, present at which were Francesco Cossiga, members of the Italian intelligence agencies, and Ferracuti. The alleged goal was to prepare the Italian and European audience for the likely death of Moro in the kidnapping. He stated that it would be ignored if the communication had been actually issued. Many years before its public revelation in 1990, it was also supposed that Moro had told his kidnappers of the existence of Operation Gladio. From this point of view, the false Communication No. 7 was a code message from sectors of the Italian secret agencies that Moro should not return alive from his imprisonment.
== Alleged séance ==
Also connected to via Gradoli is an event which involved Romano Prodi, Mario Baldassarri, and Alberto Clò. During an alleged séance in which they participated on 2 April 1978, after asking the soul of Giorgio La Pira about the location of Moro, a Ouija table they were using registered the words Viterbo, Bolsena, and Gradoli, three towns north of Rome. The information was trusted and a police group made an armed blitz in the town of Gradoli, 80 km from Rome, on the following day, 6 April, although Moro was not found. The supernatural element was generally not overlooked during the investigations. For example, the Italian government had engaged a diviner, hoping that he would find Moro's location. The police made another fruitless blitz in Viterbo after an abbess declared that, during a vision, she had seen him there.
Prodi spoke to the Italian Parliament's commission about the case in 1981. In the notes of the Italian Parliament's commission on terrorism, the séance is described as a fake, used to hide the true source of the information. In 1997, Andreotti declared that the information came from the Bologna section of Autonomia Operaia, a far-left organization with some ties with the BR, and that Cossiga also knew the true source. The judge Ferdinando Imposimato considered Andreotti's theory as possible but accused him of having kept information that could have been valuable in a trial about Moro's murder.
Moro's widow later declared that she had repeatedly informed the police that a via Gradoli existed in Rome; the investigators did not consider it — some replied to her that the street did not appear in Rome's maps. This is confirmed by other Moro relatives but strongly denied by Cossiga. In the 1990s, the séance matter was reopened by the Italian Parliament's commission on terrorism. While Prodi (then prime minister) declared that he had no time for an interview, both Baldassarri (then senator and vice-minister in two Silvio Berlusconi's cabinets) and Clò (minister of industry in Lamberto Dini's cabinet and owner of the house where the séance was performed) responded to the call; they confirmed the circumstances of the séance, and that Gradoli had appeared in several sessions, even if the participants had changed.
== Involvement of organized crime ==
In the years following Moro's murder, there have been numerous references to the presence of Calabrian 'Ndrangheta at via Fani. In an intercepted phone call between Sereno Freato, then Moro's personal secretary, and Benito Cazora, a DC parliament member who had been given the task to keep contacts with the Calabrian gangs, Freato asked for news about the prison of Moro. The 'Ndrangheta was in possession of several photos of the events in via Fani, some of which allegedly portrayed a "man known by them". According to what was reported by Cazora in 1991, some members of the 'Ndrangheta, who had been expelled from Calabria, had offered their assistance to the DC to discover the location of Moro, in exchange for the possibility to return to their homeland. This collaboration never materialized.
According to Tommaso Buscetta, a Sicilian Mafia pentito, several Italian state organizations tried to obtain information about Moro's location from the Mafia but later Giuseppe Calò asked boss Stefano Bontade to stop the search, since the highest members of the DC party no longer desired the liberation of their fellow politician. The decision to abandon the search was taken between 9 and 10 April after Moro had revealed to his captors a series of very compromising information about the CIA and Andreotti. Other sources report that the Sicilian Mafia changed its mind due to Moro's will to let the PCI enter the government.
In a deposition made at trial Raffaele Cutolo, then leader of the Camorra (Neapolitan mafia), declared that the Banda della Magliana asked him if he was interested in the liberation of Moro. Cutolo contacted the Italian secret service who replied to him to stay away from the matter, because had vetoed the intermediation for the salvation of the then president of the DC. Morucci dismissed this; he said that the Camorra's militants were apparently "normal people in suits", completely alien environment of the underworld and therefore difficult to identify from the Banda della Magliana. Morucci concluded: "We weren't a gang ... we didn't meet under the street lights ... we didn't do we trade strange ... I don't see how the Banda della Magliana or anyone could identify the Red Brigades."
On 15 October 1993, 'Ndrangheta pentito Saverio Morabito discussed the 'Ndrangheta relations with other criminal organizations. He said that Antonio Nirta, another Calabrian gangster who had been infiltrated in the Red Brigades, took part in the via Fani assault. Sergio Flamigni, a former PCI member of Parliament and member of the Italian Parliament's commission on the Moro affair who questioned the official version, wrote that when he learnt about Morabito's words, he remembered about the testimony of Cazora, who had declared that he had been approached by a Calabrian asking him about photos shot in via Fani.
According to the 'Ndrangheta pentito Francesco Fonti, his boss Sebastiano Romeo was involved in attempts to locate the place where Moro was held. Romeo had been asked by unnamed national and Calabrian members of the DC, such as Riccardo Misasi and Vito Napoli, to help out. With the help of SISMI and the Banda della Magliana, Fonti was able to locate the house where Moro was kept. When he reported back, Romeo said that he had done a good job but that important politicians in Rome had changed their minds. Morabito's revelations were not considered supported by adequate evidence.
== Role of Carmine Pecorelli ==
Pecorelli, who apparently had several informers in the Italian secret services, spoke repeatedly about the kidnapping of Moro in his magazine Osservatorio politico, which he founded in 1968 to tell "the background of that system of power that was stuck in the ganglia of Italy with limited sovereignty". Before the events of via Fani, Pecorelli had already written about the possibility that Moro would be blocked in his attempt to admit the PCI into the government. On 15 March 1978, one day before Moro was abducted, Osservatorio politico published an article written by Pecorelli, who cited the anniversary of the killing of Julius Caesar in relation with the upcoming formation of Andreotti's cabinet, and mentioned a possible new Marcus Junius Brutus, who was a member of his family and one of the assassins of Julius Caesar.
The judges in Rome suspected that, before his assassination, Pecorelli was about to publish in full form many other documents from Moro, what became known as the Moro Memorial (memoriale Moro) and that he attempted to find, and which in his view would have implicated Andreotti. According to the judge Francesco Monastero, the chief investigator of Chichiarelli's crimes, said: "The motive for the Pecorelli murder must be sought in the context of the Moro crime and, more precisely, in the context of the false BR communiqués." Critics argue that Moro could be saved. Although the Perugia magistrates wrote that "there [is] no supporting evidence", they argue that this evidence emerges from the articles by Pecorelli, the documents of the Moro affair's parliamentary commission, and from the documents of the trial on the Pecorelli murder.
Articles written during the Moro's imprisonment show that he already knew of the existence of a memorial (the documents written by Moro in his detention) and of some of the unpublished letters. Pecorelli stated that there were two groups within the Red Brigades, one favourable to the negotiations, and one who wanted to kill Moro in any case. He hinted that the group that had captured Moro in via Fani was not the same that was detaining him, and which had planned the whole move. He wrote that the authors of the via Fani attack were "professionals trained in top-level war schools. The killers sent to assault the president's car, instead, could be only unskilled workers recruited on the road." When the terrorist base in via Gradoli was discovered, Pecorelli stressed how in the apartment, different from what could be expected, all the proofs of the BR's presence were clearly displayed. Regarding the kidnapping, he wrote that Moro's opening to the PCI was not welcomed by the United States, as it would change the political balance of southern Europe, and by the Soviet Union, since this would prove that communists could reach power democratically, and without being a direct offshoot of any Communist party.
In an article written the same day of his assassination, Pecorelly hinted to the role of opera composer Igor Markevitch in the kidnapping. On 20 March 1979, Pecorelli was murdered in front of his house. In 1992, Buscetta revealed that the journalist had been eliminated as "a favour to Andreotti", who was preoccupied about some information about Moro's kidnapping in the possession of Pecorelli. The latter had allegedly received from general dalla Chiesa (they were both affiliated or near to P2) a copy of a letter by Moro that contained dangerous accusations against Andreotti; the journalist had hinted about them in some previous articles. The unabridged letters were published only in 1991 when, together with others, it was discovered during renovation works in via Nevoso; only a resume of them, the Memoriale Moro, had been previously issued. The fact that Moro's letters were circulating before 1991 is proven by a speech held by Craxi, the then PSI leader, in which he mentioned a letter that had not been officially published at the time. The fact was considered a subtle menace against Andreotti in the war for the supreme political power waged between the PSI and the DC at the time.
In 1993, historian Giuseppe Tamburrano expressed doubts about what was said by the Mafia pentiti because, comparing the two memorials (the amputee of 1978 and the complete of 1990), he said that Moro's allegations addressed to Andreotti were the same, so Andreotti had no interest to order the murder of Pecorelli, who could not threaten him to publish things already known and publicly available. Andreotti underwent a trial for his role in the assassination of Pecorelli. He was acquitted in the first instance trial (1999), convicted in the second (2002), and finally acquitted by Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation (2003).
== Role of Steve Pieczenik ==
Steve Pieczenik was an American negotiatior and expert in terrorism who was sent by the State Department at the request of Cossiga and remained in Italy for three weeks during Moro's detention. He later collaborated with Tom Clancy as a novel and cinematic writer. His presence in Italy as a member of one of the crisis committees was revealed only in the early 1990s. Pieczenik had written a relation in which he spoke about the possible effects of Moro's abduction, the possibility that the Red Brigades had been infiltrated by Italian agents, and also gave advice about how to find the terrorists. Eventually, Pieczenik declared that this relation was false, since the ideas included were similar to those of Ferracuti, the P2-affiliated criminologist and member of the secret committee. Pieczenik also stated that he did not release any written document. According to what was revealed by Cossiga and by Pieczenik himself, his initial idea was to show the will to negotiate, with the goal of gaining time and in the hope that the terrorists would make some error from which they could be detected. During later interviews, Pieczenik declared that there were numerous leaks about the discussions made at the committee. He said:
I found myself in a room with numerous generals and politicians, all people who knew [Moro] well, and... Well, I felt that no one of them liked Moro or appreciated him as a person, including Cossiga. It was clear that I was not speaking with his allies. ... After a while I recognized that what happened in the meeting room was leaking outside. I knew it because there were people who – including the BR themselves – were releasing declarations which could stem only from within our group. ... I thus decided to reduce the number of participants, but the leakage continued to grow, so that at the end there were only two. I and Cossiga. But the leakage did not stop.
Pieczenik declared that, once returned to the United States, he met an alleged Argentinian secret agent who knew everything that had happened at the Italian crisis committee. Pieczenik explained the leak to Argentina with the presence in the committee of numerous members of the P2 lodge, which had strong ties with the South American country; Gelli, the P2's founder, had lived for a period there. In a later interview to French journalist Emmanuel Amara, Pieczenik declared:
I soon understood the true intentions of the actors in the game: the [Italian] right wanted the death of Moro, the Red Brigades wanted him alive, while the Communist Party, due to its hardline political position, was not going to negotiate. Francesco Cossiga, from his side, wanted him alive and well, but numerous forces in the country had radically different programs ... . We had to pay attention to both the left and the right: it was necessary to avoid that the Communists entered the government and, at the same time, suppress any harmful capability of the reactionary and anti-democratic right forces. At the same time it was desirable that Moro's family did not start a parallel negotiation, averting the risk that he could be released too soon. But I recognized that, pushing my strategy to its extreme consequences, I perhaps would have to sacrify the hostage for the stability of Italy.
At his arrival in Italy, Pieczenik had been informed by Cossiga and the Vatican City intelligence services that there had been a coup attempt in Italy in previous months, led by right-winged personalities of the intelligence services and othe P2. Pieczenik did not specify which coup he was referring to. Known coup attempts in Italy include the Piano Solo (1964), the Golpe Borghese (1970), the Rosa dei Venti (early 1970s), and Edgardo Sogno's White Golpe of 1974. In a 1981 interview to L'Espresso, the former general Gianadelio Maletti mentioned two further coup attempts in August and September 1974; they preceded Moro's capture by several years. Pieczenik was astonished by the presence of so many fascists in the Italian intelligence services. The Red Brigades had infiltrated the Italian institutions, and obtained information from the children of politicians who were members of left-wing and far-left organizations. With the help of the Vatican intelligence, which he considered superior to the Italian one, he investigated such infiltrations but no measures were taken.
Pieczenik declared that he participated in the decision to issue the false Communication No. 7, stating that he pushed the BR to kill Moro in order to delegitimize them, once it was clear that the Italian politicians were not interested in his liberation. According to Pieczenik, the United States did not have a clear image of the situation in Italy, especially for the left-wing and right-wing terrorist groups; he also said that he received no help from the CIA or the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Pieczenik explained his premature return to the United States with the desire to avoid the accusations of American pressure behind the now likely death of Moro. Previously, he had instead declared that he had left in order to deprive the decisions taken by the Italian institutions, which he considered inefficient and corrupted, of any American legitimization.
On 18 March 1998, Corriere della Sera reported: "Giovanni Pellegrino, president of the Massacre Commission, has no doubts: 'Pieczenik's statements are very harsh and deserve careful verification.'" According to Pieczenik, a lot of confidential information that could only be known to men attending the crisis committee's core group leaked out, including the BR. Without accusing anyone, he suspected everyone. He said: "The person responsible could have been the then Interior Minister Francesco Cossiga or Giulio Andreotti or even Bettino Craxi." For Pieczenik, one exception was Berlinguer, about whom he said: "The secretary of the PCI was the only one who had sincerely tried to save Aldo Moro's life." He also accused the Italian secret services, saying: "At the time Cossiga had just replaced the heads of SISDE and SISMI. The suspicion of P2's role came later. When a self-styled adviser from the Argentine embassy in Washington approached me proposing to work for the government of Buenos Aires and spoke to me in detail about some facts of the Moro case that had only been discussed in the Roman rooms of Cossiga." During a 2006 interview, Pieczenik said:
I immediately understood what the will of the actors in the field were: the right wanted Aldo Moro dead, the Red Brigades wanted him alive, while the Communist Party, given its position of political firmness, did not wish to negotiate. Francesco Cossiga, for his part, wanted him safe and sound, but many forces within the country had clearly different programs, which created a disturbance, a very strong interference in the decisions taken at the highest levels. ... It was necessary to prevent Berlinguer's communists from entering the government and, at the same time, put an end to the ability to harm the reactionary and anti-democratic forces of the right. At the same time it was desirable that the Moro family not start a parallel negotiation, avoiding the risk of Moro being released before it was due. But I realized that, taking my strategy to its extreme consequences, i.e. keeping Moro alive as long as possible, this time perhaps I would have had to sacrifice the hostage for the stability of Italy ... I am sorry for the death of Aldo Moro; I apologize to his family and I feel sorry for him, I think we would have gotten along well, but we had to exploit the Red Brigades to get him killed.
About his time in Italy and the Moro case, Peczenik recalled: "The order was not to have the hostage released, but to help them in the negotiations relating to Aldo Moro and stabilize Italy." He added: "In a situation where the country is totally destabilized and is falling apart, when there are attacks, prosecutors, and judges killed, there can be no negotiations with terrorist organizations... If you give in, the whole system will fall apart." He also said: "The decision to have Moro killed was not taken lightly. Cossiga held steady and thus we arrived at a solution. With his death we prevented Berlinguer from reaching power and avoiding the destabilization of Italy and Europe." In 2008, Abbiamo ucciso Aldo Moro. Dopo 30 anni un protagonista esce dall'ombra (We Killed Aldo Moro: After 30 Years a Protagonist Emerges from the Shadows), which has been described as a confession book, was published in Italy by Cooper. In it, Amara quoted Peczenik as saying:
I implemented the strategic manipulation that led to the death of Aldo Moro in order to stabilize the situation in Italy. The members of the Red Brigades could have tried to influence me by saying that I satisfied their requests. But my strategy was that it didn't work that way, that I decided they had to kill him at their expense. I expected them to realize the mistake they were making and free Moro, which would have derailed my plan. Until the end I was afraid they would free Moro. And that was going to be a big win for them.
Due to this admission, which Peczenik reiterated in another 2013 interview that was acquired by the public's prosecution office, Imposimato, one of the Moro case's judges, wrote an investigative book titled I 55 giorni che hanno cambiato l'Italia. Perché Aldo Moro doveva morire? La storia vera (The 55 Days that Changed Italy: Why Aldo Moro Had to Die? The True Story), and Luigi Ciampoli of Rome's public prosecutur's office, who said in 2014, referring to Peczenik, that "Cossiga's consultant must be investigated for complicity in the murder of Aldo Moro", accused him of accessory murder. Ciampoli, who conducted the investigation after the revelations of Pieczenik and a certain Enrico Rossi, said that there are "serious indications of his participation in the murder" of Moro. This depends on understanding what is meant by accessory (concorso), a legal concept widely used by the Italian judiciary but fiercely contested by magistrates throughout Europe. There is also a difference in accessory murder together with the members of the Red Brigades, and accessory murder with Cossiga and Ugo Pecchioli because, while the result does not change, the political and criminal responsibilities do.
== Alleged presence of a marksman ==
In the course of Moro's capture, the terrorists fired 93 bullets. These killed all the five members of the escort but left Moro with only a light wound in his thigh. Despite this apparent precision, members of the BR, such as Morucci, declared that they had only a rough shooting training, obtained by firing their weapons in grottoes at night. The position of the bodyguards (two sitting in the front seats of Moro's car, and three in the following one), who were separated from him, likely made it easier for the ambush squad to direct their fire against them and avoid hitting Moro. Several writers and observers suggested that the ambushers of via Fani included a marksman.
The Italian news magazine L'Espresso argued that he could have been a member of the Italian intelligence service and identify him as Giustino De Vuono, a marksman once part of the French Foreign Legion; according to their reconstruction, the 49 bullets found in the bodies of the bodyguards would come from his weapon. A witness reporting on 19 April 1978 at Rome's Prefecture declared that he had recognized De Vuono driving a green Austin Mini or Autobianchi A112 on the location of the attack. De Vuono, who was affiliated with the 'Ndrangheta, on that day was not in his usual residence in southern Paraguay, which at the time was under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. Several members of the Red Brigades declared that their weapons were acquired from the Calabrian gangland, amongst others; furthermore, it has been proved that members of the DC got in touch with Calabrian gangsters to obtain a help in the liberation of Moro.
The identity of the alleged marksman has also been associated to the Red Army Faction. Another witness of the events in via Fani declared that some thirty minutes before the ambush, a foreigner with German accent had addressed him, ordering to go away from the area. Since some of the ammunition used for the assault had been treated with a special preserving paint, which was also found in some secret depots related to the Gladio undercover organization, it has been suggested that these would come from some Italian military or paramilitary corps.
== Theory of the alternative kidnapping ==
Journalist Rita Di Giovacchino suggested that Moro was not in via Fani during the assault but had been taken prisoner by another organization, and that the Red Brigades acted only as front men. This would explain their reticence and the incongruity of their declarations about the whole kidnapping, from the ambush to the presence of sand on Moro's body. According to her, this would also explain the prophetic remark pronounced by Sereno Freato, the first secretary of Moro, when Pecorelli was also found dead. Freato had said: "Investigate the instigators of Pecorelli's murder, and you will find the instigators of Moro's murder." She thus listed as part of the same plot the deaths of Pecorelli, Chichiarelli (who would have been punished for his blackmailing attempts), and Varisco. Allegedly killed by the Red Brigades in 1979, although in circumstances never clear, Varisco had been at the helm of the investigation on the BR base in via Gradoli; he was also a friend of dalla Chiesa, who was also murdered for never completely understood reasons, as well as of Pecorelli. According to Di Giovacchino, the use made by the BR of printing machines once owned by the Italian intelligence, showed that the latter were likely the organization behind all these bloody acts.
Moretti declared that he was studying Moro's daily moves since 1976. Every morning, Moro went with his grandson to a church near his house, after which he had a short walk with only one member of the escort. This looked like a more favourable moment to kidnap him, since most of the bodyguards were not present, but he was not chosen by the terrorists. On the morning of his abduction, Moro did not bring his grandson with him. After the ambush in via Fani, the terrorists took only the most interesting for them of the five bags that Moro carried with him. Those containing his medicines and his reserved documents. Furthermore, the necessity of inflicting a coup de grâce to any of the bodyguards is in contrast with a hurried attack typical of such acts, and is motivated only by the necessity to eliminate any possible witness that would reveal that Moro was not there. In a letter to his wife, Moro wrote during captivity he asked her to take care of his bags. Since Moro was aware that if his bags had been found in the assault's location, they had been taken by the investigators. Additionally, the absence from his letter of any word about the victims of via Fani has been taken as an element in favour of the theory that Moro was captured while in his Gladio escort and not in via Fani, and so did not know anything about their assassination.
== Doubts about the via Fani assault ==
Numerous unanswered questions surround Moro's kidnapping in via Fani. Eleonora Chiavarelli, Moro's widow, mentioned that in Moro's letters, which were delivered by the terrorists, there was no mention of the killing of his bodyguards. Given the character of Moro, she and others considered it improbable that he did not write a single word about these victims. On 1 October 1993, during the fourth trial on the Moro affair, ballistic experts released a report that disputed the version of Morucci. According to their new report, a second member of the ambush squad fired towards the Fiat 132. According to the ballistic report by Antonio Ugolini cited in the Acts of Moro's fourth trial (Processo Moro Quater), "in via Fani, on the morning of 16 March [1978], at least seven weapons fired. The shots came from both the sides of the street and not only from the left, as stated by the terrorist Valerio Morucci in a memorial." The number of the participants in the ambush (the terrorists initially spoke of nine, later of eleven people) is considered small by other terrorists, such as Franceschini. He declared: "For the capture of Mario Sossi, in 1974, we were twelve. I think that managing a kidnapping such as that of via Fani with 11 is quite risky." Alessandro Marini, an engineer who passed by via Fani the day of the assault, declared that two people on a Honda motorbike shot at him with a firearm. The motorbike preceded Moretti's car. Members of the Red Brigades always denied the presence of the Honda and did not explain the origin of the shooting against Marini.
The confession of a mysterious terminally ill former BR member in Five Moons Square would have anticipated some events that occurred a few years after the release of the 2003 film, namely the 2009 discovery of a letter, which was brought to light by a former police inspector. The letter, which was published by La Stampa in October 2009, references the mysterious men on board a Honda motorbike, who were linked to the secret services, and that allegedly shot against a witness to keep him away and protected the Red Brigades during and after the via Fani ambush. The sender claimed to have been a former secret agent involved in the Moro case in the service of Guglielmi. The presence of Guglielmi himself, which was declared as random, was in fact ascertained in the vicinity of the ambush in via Fani as early as 1991. Martinelli, the director of Five Moons Square, stated that the man could hardly have been influenced by his film and that, in his opinion, it was a truly possible lead.
An unexplained element is how the terrorists could have planned an ambush in via Fani, since Moro's escort changed their routes daily. The terrorists for the occasion had taken measures, such as cutting the tyres of the van of a florist who worked in via Fani, in order to remove a dangerous witness during the ambush, which can be explained only by their having precise knowledge of Moro's route that morning. SIP, Italy's national telephone company that would become Telecom Italia, was exceedingly inefficient on numerous occasions linked to Moro's detention. In particular, after the assault in via Fani, all the phone communications in the area were inoperative. Other examples included when, on 14 April 1978, journalists of Rome's newspaper Il Messaggero were waiting for a phone call from the terrorists. The six phone lines in the newspaper's office had been connected to police central; when the call arrived, DIGOS reported that all of them had been cut, with the result that the caller could not be identified. On 15 March 1978, the day before the capture of Moro, SIP had been alerted. After Moro had been kidnapped, an inspection of the telephone lines in the area of via Fani showed that they were all out of order. This prevented any possible witness contact with the police before the ambush. The commander of DIGOS during the kidnapping days described SIP as "totally un-cooperative", and stated that "in no occasion did they find the origin of the kidnappers' calls". He added that Michele Principe, then general director of STET – Società Finanziaria Telefonica, the company that owned SIP, was a member of the P2.
== Other suspicions and controversies ==
Despite several trials, numerous parliamentary commissions of inquiry, collateral judicial inquiries, and hundreds of books, controversies about the Moro affair remain into the 21st century. Chichiarelli, the author of the false Communication No. 7, was related to the Banda della Magliana. Aside from its purely criminal activities, this large gang in Rome was related to Sicilian Mafia and has been involved in numerous political and terrorist scandals since the 1970s. Judiciary acts proved that members of the gang had a role in the assassination of Pecorelli and in the case of Roberto Calvi, both of which saw the incrimination of Andreotti, in the financial affairs of the Vatican City including the kidnapping of Emanuela Orlandi, and in the sidetracking of the investigations on massacres, such as the Bologna massacre in 1980. Imposimato showed that the Banda della Magliana had strong ties with SISMI, and that the latter inspired the farce of the communication and of the Lago della Duchessa. The via Montalcini apartment, in which Moro was allegedly detained by the Red Brigades, was located in the Magliana quarter of southern Rome and a member of the gang owned the building facing that apartment. A document from the Antimafia Commission said that the via Fani assault was not a solitary action by the Red Brigades, and that organized crime in Italy, such as the Banda della Magliana and 'Ndrangheta, helped them; it also investigated the allegations that it was Giustino De Vuono, who left Italy to become a member of the French Foreign Legion, the one to kill Moro. In an initial reconstruction, there were only four killers. Later in the 2000s, after six trials, it was thought that at least twenty people were involved in the entire operation.
Members of Moro's escort, who were not in service on the day of the kidnapping, declared in September 1978 that Moro was a habitual person, and that every day he got out from his house exactly at 09:00; according to journalist Simona Zecchi, author of La criminalità servente nel caso Moro (Crime Serving in the Moro Case), the foreman leader Rocco Gentiluomo was warned not to take service on 16 March by a 'Ndrangheta boss. Moro's widow denied this circumstance during her interview in front of the investigative judges on 23 September 1978. Additionally, that Moro was suffering from Stockholm syndrome was questioned by the two reports of the Italian Parliament's inquiry about the Moro affair. According to this view, Moro was at the height of his faculties, he was very recognizable, and at some point it was him who was leading the negotiation for his own liberation and salvation. This position was supported by Leonardo Sciascia, who discussed it in the minority report he signed as a member of the first parliamentary commission and in his book L'affaire Moro. The BR members stated that they chose Moro over Andreotti due to the latter's being too protected. This was denied by Andreotti, who during those years always went every morning to mass alone and on foot. Cossiga declared that Moro's confessor, Don Antonio Mennini (later papal nuncio to Great Britain), was allowed to enter in the cell just before his execution. In 2015, Don Mennini denied this reconstruction. Another controversy is related to the Vatican's attempt to save Moro. According to Mennini, Pope Paul VI had saved £10 billion to pay a ransom in order to save Moro. This is corroborated by the general Antonio Cornacchia, who discussed the pope's attempt to save Moro by paying a ransom; this was blocked after a call by what Cornacchia described as a member of the Christ in Paradise lodge, prompting him to recall years later that "presumably the U-turn came from the Vatican itself, which prohibited the Pope from saving Moro".
Twenty years after Moro's death, The Independent and The New York Times reported on the popularity of such conspiracy theories, and that few Italians believe in the official version of the Moro affair, namely that only the BR bore responsibility for Moro's murder and that the Italian government did its best to save Moro. Alessandra Stanley wrote: "The only prominent dissenters are Mr. Andreotti and his closest aides, some former Red Brigades terrorists who still resist the notion that they were unwittingly manipulated by sinister right-wing forces, and an American scholar, Richard Drake, who wrote a 1995 book that concluded that there was no conspiracy. Mr. Drake's book was widely disparaged in Italy." Marco Baliani, who had a one-man show about the Moro case, said: "It has been 20 years, and still the deeper truth has not come out. How can we found a new republic if we cannot tell the truth to ourselves?" Many books have been written that question the Moro trials since the 1980s. They continued to be published well into the 2020s, one example being Aldo Moro. Una verità compromessa (Aldo Moro: A Compromised Truth). In the words of the journalist Luca Villoresi, the Moro affair "has produced nothing but lies and false leads. I don't think it is possible any more to find out what really happened. Certainly, there are people who know the truth, but we will never know if they are telling us the truth."
In 2013, Imposimato, one of the judges of the Moro case, said that Moro was murdered by the Red Brigades with the complicity of Andreotti, Cossiga, and Nicola Lettieri. He added that if some documents had not been hidden from him, he would have indicted them for complicity in association in the Moro case, including for the Piazza Fontana bombing (by far-right Ordine Nuovo) and the via D'Amelio bombing (by the Sicilian Mafia). Rome's public prosecutor office had opened an investigation file relating to the statements of two bomb squad members, Vitantonio Raso and Giovanni Circhetta, who were never questioned and said that they arrived to the location two hours before the call from the Red Brigades. Imposimato, by now honorary president of Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation, singled out Andreotti (who died in May 2013) and Cossiga (who died in 2010) when he told Affaritaliani: "The role [of the Italian political class] was one of absolute subordination to this foreign hegemony. In Italy the orders that came in from abroad were obeyed." Writing in La Repubblica, Miguel Gotor condemned the "intellectual and civil sloth" that had led to the lingering mystery over the murder. He said that while a new judicial investigation was welcome, it risked being "the belated and rotten fruit of a sick country". He added: "Certainly, this new move by the magistrature could prove useful because it will gather together new documents and testimony, but we will be forgiven for doubting that it will be able to give qualitatively more justice than has hitherto been the case."
In 2014, the first edition of Aldo Moro: Il Partito Democratico vuole la verità (Aldo Moro: The Democratic Party Wants the Truth), was published. Gero Grassi, a former DC member and by then a member of the Democratic Party, which was founded in 2007 as a merger of the PCI's legal successor parties and the DC's left wings, was a member of the Commission of Inquiry into the Moro Case and author of the parliamentary volume. He said that the reports of the Moro Commission, which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic, overturned the judicial and historical truth. According to this reconstruction, the via Fani attack saw at least 20 people engaged in the scene of the crime rather than the maximum of 9 people claimed by the Red Brigades, among the other cited inconsistencies. In November 2014, Rome's public prosecutor wrote that it was certain that in via Fani, apart from the Red Brigades, there were also elements of the Italian state's deviated secret services, men of Rome's mafia like the Banda della Magliana, and men of the European secret services.
In August 2020, about sixty individuals from the world of historical research and political inquiry signed a document denouncing the growing weight that the conspiratorial view on the kidnapping and killing of the Moro has in public discourse. Historian Marco Clementi, who was one of the signatories, stated that this stance forces everyone "to measure themselves against the principle of reality". Paolo Persichetti, a writer and former Red Brigades member who signed the document, commented: "The trigger [for signing the document] was yet another fake that brought together the events related to the Bologna massacre of August 1980, which according to the sentences of the judiciary have a right-wing matrix, in any case opposite in motive, objectives, and operational practices to the making of groups of the armed revolutionary left and of the Red Brigades, genetically anti-stragista [e.g. they did not engage in massacres like that of 1980]."
In January 2022, a note claiming responsibility for the abduction of Moro was auctioned despite widespread condemnation.
== See also ==
John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Drake, Richard (1995). The Aldo Moro Murder Case. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-6740-1481-7. Retrieved 6 September 2023 – via Google Books.
Drake, Richard (November 1998). "Mythmaking & the Aldo Moro case". The New Criterion. Vol. 17, no. 3. p. 76. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
Drake, Richard (2001). "Why the Moro Trials Have Not Settled the Moro Murder Case: A Problem in Political and Intellectual History". The Journal of Modern History. 73 (2): 359–378. doi:10.1086/321029. ISSN 0022-2801. JSTOR 10.1086/321029. S2CID 144245156.
== Further reading ==
Bartali, Roberto (2004). "Rilettura critica della storia delle BR e del rapimento di Aldo Moro". 'Per il Comunismo, Brigate Rosse'. Analisi storica di un fenomeno italiano (in Italian). Retrieved 20 October 2023 – via Robertobartali.it.
Gilliom, Katherine Greenburg (2016). Searching for Truth: Constructing a Collective Memory of Aldo Moro in Italian Cinema (dissertation). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved 21 September 2023. | Wikipedia/Conspiracy_theories_about_the_kidnapping_and_murder_of_Aldo_Moro |
Hyperbaric medicine is medical treatment in which an increase in barometric pressure of typically air or oxygen is used. The immediate effects include reducing the size of gas emboli and raising the partial pressures of the gases present. Initial uses were in decompression sickness, and it also effective in certain cases of gas gangrene and carbon monoxide poisoning. There are potential hazards. Injury can occur at pressures as low as 2 psig (13.8 kPa) if a person is rapidly decompressed. If oxygen is used in the hyperbaric therapy, this can increase the fire hazard.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), is the medical use of greater than 99% oxygen at an ambient pressure higher than atmospheric pressure, and therapeutic recompression. The equipment required consists of a pressure vessel for human occupancy (hyperbaric chamber), which may be of rigid or flexible construction, and a means of a controlled atmosphere supply. Treatment gas may be the ambient chamber gas, or delivered via a built-in breathing system. Operation is performed to a predetermined schedule by personnel who may adjust the schedule as required.
Hyperbaric air (HBA), consists of compressed atmospheric air (79% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and minor gases) and is used for acute mountain sickness. This is created by placing the person in a portable hyperbaric air chamber and inflating that chamber up to 7.35 psi gauge (1.5 atmospheres absolute) using a foot-operated or electric air pump.
Chambers used in the US made for hyperbaric medicine fall under the jurisdiction of the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA requires hyperbaric chambers to comply with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers PVHO Codes and the National Fire Protection Association Standard 99, Health Care Facilities Code. Similar conditions apply in most other countries.
Other uses include arterial gas embolism caused by pulmonary barotrauma of ascent. In emergencies divers may sometimes be treated by in-water recompression (when a chamber is not available) if suitable diving equipment (to reasonably secure the airway) is available.
== Scope ==
Hyperbaric medicine includes hyperbaric oxygen treatment, which is the medical use of oxygen at greater than atmospheric pressure to increase the availability of oxygen in the body; and therapeutic recompression, which involves increasing the ambient pressure on a person, usually a diver, to treat decompression sickness or an air embolism by reducing the volume and more rapidly eliminating bubbles that have formed within the body.
== Medical uses ==
The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS) lists 15 supported uses as of 2025:
Air or gas embolism;
Carbon monoxide poisoning including that complicated by cyanide poisoning;
Clostridal myositis and myonecrosis (gas gangrene);
Crush injury, compartment syndrome, and other acute traumatic ischemias;
Decompression sickness;
Central retinal artery occlusion and enhancement of healing in selected problem wounds due to insufficient arterial blood flow, including the diabetic foot;
Exceptional blood loss (anemia);
Intracranial abscess;
Necrotizing soft tissue infections (necrotizing fasciitis);
Osteomyelitis (refractory);
Delayed radiation injury (soft tissue and bony necrosis);
Skin grafts and flaps (compromised);
Thermal burns (early);
Idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss;
Avascular necrosis
These uses are similar to those approved by the US FDA as of 2021.
Mucormycosis, especially rhinocerebral disease in the setting of diabetes mellitus may be supported.
There is insufficient evidence for use in autism, cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer's, asthma, Bell's palsy, cerebral palsy, depression, heart disease, migraines, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, spinal cord injury, sports injuries, or stroke. Furthermore, potential side effects pose an unjustified risk in such cases. A Cochrane review in 2016 of autism spectrum found no links to improvements in social abilities or cognitive function. There are also ethical issues with further trials, as the eardrum can be damaged during hyperbaric therapy. Despite the lack of evidence, in 2015, the number of people utilizing this therapy has continued to rise. There is also insufficient evidence to support its use in acute traumatic or surgical wounds.
=== Hearing ===
There is limited evidence for sudden sensorineural hearing loss within two weeks of onset. It might improve tinnitus presenting in the same time frame.
=== Chronic ulcers ===
HBOT in diabetic foot ulcers increased the rate of early ulcer healing but does not appear to provide any benefit in wound healing at long-term follow-up. In particular, there was no difference in major amputation rate. For venous, arterial and pressure ulcers, no evidence was apparent that HBOT provides a long-term improvement over standard treatment.
=== Radiation injury ===
There is some evidence that HBOT is effective for late radiation tissue injury of bone and soft tissues of the head and neck. Some people with radiation injuries of the head, neck or bowel show an improvement in quality of life. Importantly, no such effect has been found in neurological tissues. The use of HBOT may be justified to selected patients and tissues, but further research is required to establish the best people to treat and timing of any HBO therapy.
=== Neuro-rehabilitation ===
As of 2012, there was insufficient evidence to support use in traumatic brain injuries. In acute stroke, HBOT does not show benefit.
HBOT in multiple sclerosis has not shown benefit and routine use is not recommended.
A 2007 review in cerebral palsy found no difference compared to the control group. Neuropsychological tests also showed no difference between HBOT and room air and based on caregiver report, those who received room air had significantly better mobility and social functioning. Children experienced seizures and the need for tympanostomy tubes to equalize ear pressure, though the rates was not clear.
=== Cancer ===
In alternative medicine, hyperbaric medicine has been promoted for cancer. However, a 2011 study by the American Cancer Society reported no evidence it is effective for this purpose. A 2012 review article found "there is no evidence indicating that HBO neither acts as a stimulator of tumor growth nor as an enhancer of recurrence. On the other hand, there is evidence that implies that HBO might have tumor-inhibitory effects in certain cancer subtypes, and we thus strongly believe that we need to expand our knowledge on the effect and the mechanisms behind tumor oxygenation."
=== Migraines ===
Low-quality evidence suggests it may reduce pain in an ongoing migraine headache. It is not known which people would benefit from this treatment, and there is no evidence that it prevents future migraines.
== Side effects ==
Oxygen toxicity is a limitation on both maximum partial pressure of oxygen, and on length of each treatment.
HBOT can accelerate the development of cataracts over multiple repetitive treatments, and can cause temporary relative myopia over the shorter term.
A 2023 review found that negative outcomes (predominantly mild barotrauma (air pressure effect on ear or lung) that could be resolved spontaneously) were experienced by 24% of patients, but they were not prevented from completing the treatment regimen, and no serious side effects, complications or deaths were reported.
=== Complications ===
There are risks associated with HBOT, similar to some diving disorders. Pressure changes can cause a "squeeze" or barotrauma in the tissues surrounding trapped air inside the body, such as the lungs, behind the eardrum, inside paranasal sinuses, or trapped underneath dental fillings. Breathing high-pressure oxygen may cause oxygen toxicity. Temporarily blurred vision can be caused by swelling of the lens, which usually resolves in two to four weeks.
There are reports that cataracts may progress following HBOT, and rarely, may develop de novo, but this may be unrecognized and under reported. The cause is not fully explained, but evidence suggests that lifetime exposure of the lens to high partial pressure oxygen may be a major factor. Oxidative damage to lens proteins is thought to be responsible. This may be an end-stage of the relatively well documented myopic shift detected in most hyperbaric patients after a course of multiple treatments.
=== Ears ===
People have ear discomfort as a pressure difference develops between their middle ear and the chamber atmosphere. This can be relieved by ear clearing using the Valsalva maneuver or other techniques. Continued increase of pressure without equalizing may cause ear drums to rupture, resulting in severe pain. As the pressure in the chamber increases further, the air may become warm.
To reduce the pressure, a valve is opened to allow air out of the chamber. As the pressure falls, the patient's ears may "squeak" as the pressure inside the ear equalizes with the chamber. The temperature in the chamber will fall. The speed of pressurization and de-pressurization can be adjusted to each patient's needs.
=== Contraindications ===
The toxicology of the treatment has been reviewed by Ustundag et al. and its risk management is discussed by Christian R. Mortensen, in light of the fact that most hyperbaric facilities are managed by departments of anaesthesiology and some of their patients are critically ill.
An absolute contraindication to hyperbaric oxygen therapy is untreated pneumothorax. The reason is concern that it can progress to tension pneumothorax, especially during the decompression phase of therapy, although treatment on oxygen-based tables may avoid that progression. The COPD patient with a large bleb represents a relative contraindication for similar reasons. Also, the treatment may raise the issue of occupational health and safety (OHS), for chamber inside attendants, who should not be compressed if they are unable to equalise ears and sinuses.
Extra care may be required in people with:
Cardiovascular disease
COPD with air trapping – can lead to pneumothorax during treatment.
Upper respiratory infections – These conditions can make it difficult for the patient to equalise their ears or sinuses, which can result in what is termed ear or sinus squeeze.
High fevers – In most cases the fever should be lowered before HBO treatment begins. Fevers may predispose to convulsions.
Emphysema with CO2 retention – This condition can lead to pneumothorax during HBO treatment due to rupture of an emphysematous bulla during decompression. This risk can be evaluated by x-ray.
History of thoracic (chest) surgery – This is rarely a problem and usually not considered a contraindication. However, there is concern that air may be trapped in lesions that were created by surgical scarring. These conditions need to be evaluated prior to considering HBO therapy.
Malignant disease: Cancers thrive in blood-rich environments but may be suppressed by high oxygen levels. HBO treatment of individuals who have cancer presents a problem, since HBO both increases blood flow via angiogenesis and also raises oxygen levels. Taking an anti-angiogenic supplement may provide a solution. A study by Feldemier, et al. and NIH funded study on Stem Cells by Thom, et al., indicate that HBO is actually beneficial in producing stem/progenitor cells and the malignant process is not accelerated.
Middle ear barotrauma may occur in children and adults in a hyperbaric environment because of the necessity to equalise pressure in the ears.
Pregnancy is not a relative contraindication to hyperbaric oxygen treatments, although it may be for underwater diving. In cases where a pregnant woman has carbon monoxide poisoning there is evidence that lower pressure (2.0 ATA) HBOT treatments are not harmful to the fetus, and that the risk involved is outweighed by the greater risk of the untreated effects of CO on the fetus (neurologic abnormalities or death.) In pregnant patients, HBO therapy has been shown to be safe for the fetus when given at appropriate levels and "doses" (durations). In fact, pregnancy lowers the threshold for HBO treatment of carbon monoxide-exposed patients. This is due to the high affinity of fetal hemoglobin for CO.
== Mechanism of action ==
The therapeutic consequences of HBOT and recompression result from multiple effects.
=== Pressure ===
The increased overall pressure is of therapeutic value in the treatment of decompression sickness and air embolism as it provides a physical means of reducing the volume of inert gas bubbles within the body; Exposure to this increased pressure is maintained for a period long enough to ensure that most of the bubble gas is dissolved back into the tissues, removed by perfusion and eliminated in the lungs.
The improved concentration gradient for inert gas elimination (oxygen window) by using a high partial pressure of oxygen increases the rate of inert gas elimination in the treatment of decompression sickness.
For many other conditions, the therapeutic principle of HBOT lies in its ability to drastically increase partial pressure of oxygen in the tissues of the body. The oxygen partial pressures achievable using HBOT are much higher than those achievable while breathing pure oxygen under normobaric conditions (i.e. at normal atmospheric pressure). This effect is achieved by an increase in the oxygen transport capacity of the blood. At normal atmospheric pressure, oxygen transport is limited by the oxygen binding capacity of hemoglobin in red blood cells and very little oxygen is transported by blood plasma. Because the hemoglobin of the red blood cells is almost saturated with oxygen at atmospheric pressure, this route of transport cannot be exploited any further. Oxygen transport by plasma, however, is significantly increased using HBOT because of the higher solubility of oxygen as pressure increases.
== Hyperbaric chambers ==
=== Construction ===
The traditional type of hyperbaric chamber used for therapeutic recompression and HBOT is a rigid shelled pressure vessel. Such chambers can be run at absolute pressures typically about 6 bars (87 psi), 600,000 Pa or more in special cases. Navies, professional diving organizations, hospitals, and dedicated recompression facilities typically operate these. They range in size from semi-portable, one-patient units to room-sized units that can treat eight or more patients. The larger units may be rated for lower pressures if they are not primarily intended for treatment of diving injuries.
A rigid chamber may consist of:
a pressure vessel designed to a code such as ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code
viewports to allow the medical personnel to visually monitor the occupants, and can be used for hand signalling as an auxiliary emergency communications method. The major components are the window (transparent acrylic), the window seat (holds the acrylic window), and retaining ring. Interior lighting can be provided by mounting lights outside the viewports. Viewports are a feature specific to PVHOs due to the need to see the people inside and evaluate their health. Other materials have been attempted, but they consistently fail to maintain their seal or have cracks which would progress rapidly to catastrphophic failure. Acrylic is more likely to have small cracks the operators can see and have time to take mitigation steps instead of failing catastrophically. Counterfeit chambers often do not use acrylic windows.
one or more human entry hatches – small and circular or wheel-in type hatches for patients on gurneys;
the entry lock that allows human entry – a separate chamber with two hatches, one to the outside and one to the main chamber, which can be independently pressurized to allow patients to enter or exit the main chamber while it is still pressurized;
a low volume medical or service airlock for medicines, instruments, and food;
transparent ports or closed-circuit television that allows technicians and medical staff outside the chamber to monitor the patient inside the chamber;
an intercom system allowing two-way communication;
an optional carbon dioxide scrubber – consisting of a fan that passes the gas inside the chamber through a soda lime canister;
a control panel outside the chamber to open and close valves that control air flow to and from the chamber, and regulate oxygen to hoods or masks;
an over-pressure relief valve;
a built-in breathing system (BIBS) to supply and exhaust treatment gas;
a fire suppression system.
Flexible monoplace chambers are available ranging from collapsible flexible aramid fiber-reinforced chambers which can be disassembled for transport via truck or SUV, with a maximum working pressure of 2 bar above ambient complete with BIBS allowing full oxygen treatment schedules. to portable, air inflated "soft" chambers that can operate at between 0.3 and 0.5 bars (4.4 and 7.3 psi) above atmospheric pressure with no supplemental oxygen, and longitudinal zipper closure.
==== Viewports ====
Acrylic windows with PVHO-1 defined standard geometries and design criteria are generally used. Shapes and sizes vary with chamber application and the requirements for the specific use.
The geometries in general use include:
Flat circular windows (low pressure)
Conical edged windows with flat inner and outer faces (high pressure on one side only)
Circular windows with double beveled edges
Light pipes
Low pressure, small diameter chambers may use large cylindrical windows fitted inside the metal structure. In some cases the whole cylindrical pressure chamber has been made from an acrylic tube.
The acrylic windows of a hyperbaric chamber have a limited lifespan, which can be expressed as the design life, which is the conservatively estimated life as calculated in the design process, typically about 10 years, and the service life, which is the actual time the window can be safely and legally used when well maintained, properly inspected, and repaired when necessary and possible and which can be as much as twice the design life.
There are three grades of inspection required:
Operational inspection of the inner and outer surfaces is included in the checks before first pressurisation of the day by a competent chamber operator, and ensures that the surfaces have not been damaged since the last use.
Maintenance inspection is done at specified intervals by a qualified maintenance inspector. This inspection is more thorough and may require removal of the window from the mounting to check for damage that is not visible when installed. This grade of inspection is generally also required for re-commissioning a chamber that has been out of service for longer than a specified period.
Seat and seal inspection is done whenever a window has been removed for inspection or repair or a new window installed.
The window is examined to detect crazing, cracks, blisters, discolouration, scratches or pits.
==== Operating pressures ====
The operating pressure depends on the application. Chambers used for clinical hyperbaric oxygen therapy commonly have a maximum allowable working pressure of 35 pounds per square inch (2.4 bar) with a maximum of about 150 pounds per square inch (10 bar) Chambers used for support of commercial or military diving operations and for research may have a maximum allowable working pressure of up to 1,000 pounds per square inch (69 bar).
=== Oxygen supply ===
In the larger multiplace chambers, patients inside the chamber breathe from either "oxygen hoods" – flexible, transparent soft plastic hoods with a seal around the neck similar to a space suit helmet – or tightly fitting oxygen masks, which supply pure oxygen and may be designed to directly exhaust the exhaled gas from the chamber. During treatment patients breathe 100% oxygen most of the time to maximise the effectiveness of their treatment, but have periodic "air breaks" during which they breathe chamber air (21% oxygen) to reduce the risk of oxygen toxicity. The exhaled treatment gas must be removed from the chamber to prevent the buildup of oxygen, which could present a fire risk. Attendants may also breathe oxygen some of the time to reduce their risk of decompression sickness when they leave the chamber. The pressure inside the chamber is increased by opening valves allowing high-pressure air to enter from storage cylinders, which are filled by an air compressor. Chamber air oxygen content is kept between 19% and 23% to control fire risk (US Navy maximum 25%). If the chamber does not have a scrubber system to remove carbon dioxide from the chamber gas, the chamber must be isobarically ventilated to keep the CO2 within acceptable limits.
A soft chamber may be pressurized directly from a compressor. or from storage cylinders.
Smaller "monoplace" chambers can only accommodate the patient, and no medical staff can enter. The chamber may be pressurised with pure oxygen or compressed air. If pure oxygen is used, no oxygen breathing mask or helmet is needed, but the cost of using pure oxygen is much higher than that of using compressed air. If compressed air is used, then an oxygen mask or hood is needed as in a multiplace chamber. Most monoplace chambers can be fitted with a demand breathing system for air breaks. In low pressure soft chambers, treatment schedules may not require air breaks, because the risk of oxygen toxicity is low due to the lower oxygen partial pressures used (usually 1.3 ATA), and short duration of treatment.
For alert, cooperative patients, air breaks provided by mask are more effective than changing the chamber gas because they provide a quicker gas change and a more reliable gas composition both during the break and treatment periods.
=== Personnel ===
Hyperbaric medical practitioner - a specialist in hyperbaric medicine
Diving medical practitioner – a specialist in diving medicine
Chamber operator – a person competent to operate a hyperbaric chamber
Hyperbaric nurse – a nurse responsible for administering hyperbaric oxygen therapy to patients and supervising them throughout the treatment.
Diving medical technician – member of a dive team who is trained in advanced first aid.
Chamber attendant – a person trained in basic first aid who is medically fit to dive in a chamber, usually a member of a diving team allocated to looking after the diver being treated.
== Treatments ==
Initially, HBOT was developed as a treatment for diving disorders involving bubbles of gas in the tissues, such as decompression sickness and gas embolism, It is still considered the definitive treatment for these conditions. The chamber treats decompression sickness and gas embolism by increasing pressure, reducing the size of the gas bubbles and improving the transport of blood to downstream tissues. After elimination of bubbles, the pressure is gradually reduced back to atmospheric levels. Hyperbaric chambers are also used for animals.
As of September 2023, a number of hyperbaric chambers in the US are turning divers with decompression sickness away, and only treating more profitable scheduled cases. The number of hyperbaric medical facilities in the US is estimated at about 1500, of which 67 are treating diving accidents, according to Divers Alert Network. Many facilities only provide hyperbaric treatment for wound care for economic reasons. Emergency hyperbaric services are more expensive to train and staff, and liability is increased.
=== Protocol ===
Emergency HBOT for decompression illness follows treatment schedules laid out in treatment tables. Most cases employ a recompression to 2.8 bars (41 psi) absolute, the equivalent of 18 metres (60 ft) of water, for 4.5 to 5.5 hours with the casualty breathing pure oxygen, but taking air breaks every 20 minutes to reduce oxygen toxicity. For extremely serious cases resulting from very deep dives, the treatment may require a chamber capable of a maximum pressure of 8 bars (120 psi), the equivalent of 70 metres (230 ft) of water, and the ability to supply heliox as a breathing gas.
U.S. Navy treatment charts are used in Canada and the United States to determine the duration, pressure, and breathing gas of the therapy. The most frequently used tables are Table 5 and Table 6. In the UK the Royal Navy 62 and 67 tables are used.
The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS) publishes a report that compiles the latest research findings and contains information regarding the recommended duration and pressure of the longer-term conditions.
=== Home and out-patient ===
There are several sizes of portable chambers, which are used for home treatment. These are usually referred to as "mild personal hyperbaric chambers", which is a reference to the lower pressure (compared to hard chambers) of soft-sided chambers. The American Medical Association is opposed to home use or any other use of hyperbaric chambers if it is not "in facilities with appropriately trained staff including physician supervision and prescription and only when the intervention has scientific support or rationale" due demonstrated hazard
In the US, these "mild personal hyperbaric chambers" are categorized by the FDA as CLASS II medical devices and requires a prescription in order to purchase one or take treatments. As with any hyperbaric chamber, the FDA require compliance with ASME and NFPA standards. The most common option (but not approved by FDA) some patients choose is to acquire an oxygen concentrator which typically delivers 85–96% oxygen as the breathing gas.
Oxygen is never fed directly into soft chambers but is rather introduced via a line and mask directly to the patient. FDA approved oxygen concentrators for human consumption in confined areas used for HBOT are regularly monitored for purity (±1%) and flow (10 to 15 liters per minute outflow pressure). An audible alarm will sound if the purity ever drops below 80%. Personal hyperbaric chambers use 120 volt or 220 volt outlets. The FDA warns against the use of oxygen concentrators or oxygen tanks with chambers that does not meet ASME and FDA standards, regardless of if the concentrators are FDA approved.
== History ==
=== Hyperbaric air ===
Junod built a chamber in France in 1834 to treat pulmonary conditions at pressures between 2 and 4 atmospheres absolute.
During the following century "pneumatic centres" were established in Europe and the USA which used hyperbaric air to treat a variety of conditions.
Orval J Cunningham, a professor of anesthesia at the University of Kansas in the early 1900s observed that people with circulatory disorders did better at sea level than at altitude and this formed the basis for his use of hyperbaric air. In 1918, he successfully treated patients with the Spanish flu with hyperbaric air. In 1930 the American Medical Association forced him to stop hyperbaric treatment, since he did not provide acceptable evidence that the treatments were effective.
=== Hyperbaric oxygen ===
The English scientist Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen in 1775. Shortly after its discovery, there were reports of toxic effects of hyperbaric oxygen on the central nervous system and lungs, which delayed therapeutic applications until 1937, when Behnke and Shaw first used it in the treatment of decompression sickness.
In 1955 and 1956 Churchill-Davidson, in the UK, used hyperbaric oxygen to enhance the radiosensitivity of tumours, while Ite Boerema, at the University of Amsterdam, successfully used it in cardiac surgery.
In 1961 Willem Hendrik Brummelkamp et al. published on the use of hyperbaric oxygen in the treatment of clostridial gas gangrene.
In 1962 Smith and Sharp reported successful treatment of carbon monoxide poisoning with hyperbaric oxygen.
The Undersea Medical Society (now Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society) formed a Committee on Hyperbaric Oxygenation which has become recognized as the authority on indications for hyperbaric oxygen treatment.
=== Incidents ===
Fires inside a hyperbaric chamber are extremely dangerous. A review article published in 1997 found 77 human fatalities in 35 different hyperbaric chamber fires that occurred from 1923 to 1996. Further studies indicate while the treatment is often considered safe, the use of hyperbaric equipment comes with risks to the operating personnel when improperly used. Proper equipment maintenance and safety procedures for the use of pressure equipment is mandatory.
1997: Ten patients and a nurse were killed in Milan, Italy after a fire broke out inside a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
2009: A grandmother and her four year old grandson died after a hyperbaric chamber caught fire and exploded in Florida. The boy was receiving treatment in the chamber for cerebral palsy and had traveled from Italy where the treatment is outlawed to undergo the procedure.
2012: A hyperbaric oxygen chamber exploded in Florida, killing a woman and a thoroughbred horse who was receiving treatment. The explosion occurred after the horse kicked out at the chamber, creating sparks which ignited a fire.
2015: A dog was killed in Georgia when the chamber it was receiving treatment in caught fire and exploded. The dog was being treated for arthritis.
2016: A fire killed four people who were receiving treatment inside a hyperbaric chamber at Mintohardjo Navy Hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia. The fire was reportedly caused by an electrical short circuit. After the fire broke out, operators used a sprinkler system and an emergency shut off system to rescue the victims, but live-saving efforts were prevented as the machine became engulfed in flames.
2016: A man in Victoria, Australia died in a hyperbaric chamber of undisclosed causes while receiving treatment. The practitioners overseeing his care were found responsible for failing to ensure the patient's safety leading to his death. They were later fined AU$716,750.
2025: A hyperbaric chamber exploded in Michigan, killing a five year old boy.
== Society and culture ==
=== Regulation ===
The use of hyperbaric chambers for medical and therapeutic procedures is generally regulated. Authorities have warned of potential risks to patients receiving treatment in unlicensed facilities, notably in Israel, Canada, and the United States. In Italy, the use of hyperbaric chambers for therapy was severely restricted to limited medical settings after a serious fire which killed ten patients in 1997.
In some jurisdictions, the use and availability of HBOT is further restricted at the subnational level. In the U.S. state of North Carolina, several cities including Durham, Raleigh and Charlotte have ordered operators of mild hyperbaric oxygen therapy to close to protect public safety due to a risk of fire.
Unlicensed and fraudulent operators have been subject to prosecution. In Australia, Oxymed Australia Pty Ltd and director Malcolm Hooper were ordered to pay AUS $3 million in fines after advertising hyperbaric therapy against the country's Therapeutic Goods Act. In Canada, certain soft-shelled hyperbaric chambers were removed from the market for a potential risk to patients.
=== Costs ===
HBOT is recognized by Medicare in the United States as a reimbursable treatment for 14 UHMS "approved" conditions. A 1-hour HBOT session may cost between $300 and higher in private clinics, and over $2,000 in hospitals. U.S. physicians (M.D. or D.O.) may lawfully prescribe HBOT for "off-label" conditions such as stroke, and migraine. Such patients are treated in outpatient clinics. In the United Kingdom most chambers are financed by the National Health Service, although some, such as those run by Multiple Sclerosis Therapy Centres, are non-profit. In Australia, HBOT is not covered by Medicare as a treatment for multiple sclerosis. China and Russia treat more than 80 maladies, conditions, and trauma with HBOT.
== Research ==
Aspects under research include radiation-induced hemorrhagic cystitis; and inflammatory bowel disease, rejuvenation.
Some research found evidence that HBOT improves local tumor control, mortality, and local tumor recurrence for cancers of the head and neck.
Some research also found evidence of an increase in stem progenitor cells and a decrease in inflammation.
=== Neurological ===
Tentative evidence shows a possible benefit in cerebrovascular diseases. Rats subjected to HBOT after some time following the acute phase of experimentally-induced stroke showed reduced inflammation, increased brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and evidence of neurogenesis. Another rat study showed improved neurofunctional recovery as well as neurogenesis following the late-chronic phase of experimentally-induced stroke.
The clinical experience and results so far published has promoted the use of HBOT therapy in patients with cerebrovascular injury and focal cerebrovascular injuries. However, the power of clinical research is limited because of the shortage of randomized controlled trials.
=== Radiation wounds ===
A 2010 review of wounds from radiation therapy found that, while most studies suggest a benefit, more experimental and research is needed to validate its use.
=== Respiratory distress ===
People who are having extreme difficulty breathing – acute respiratory distress syndrome – are commonly given oxygen and there have been limited trials of hyperbaric equipment in such cases. Examples include treatment of the Spanish flu and COVID-19.
== See also ==
Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society – US based organisation for research and education in hyperbaric physiology and medicine.
South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society – Publisher for diving and hyperbaric medicine and physiology
Decompression chamber – Any pressure vessel for human occupancy used to decompress a person
Hyperbaric treatment schedules – Planned hyperbaric exposure using a specified breathing gas as medical treatment
Transdermal continuous oxygen therapy – Wound closure technique using external oxygen exposure
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy from eMedicine
Duke University Medical Center Archives contains collections of multiple individuals who worked with hyperbaric medicine | Wikipedia/Hyperbaric_oxygen_therapy |
The Clinton body count is a conspiracy theory centered around the belief that former U.S. President Bill Clinton and his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have secretly had their political opponents murdered, often made to look like suicides, totaling as many as 50 or more listed victims. The Congressional Record (1994) stated that the compiler of the original list, Linda Thompson, admitted she had "no direct evidence" of Clinton killing anyone. Indeed, she claimed the deaths were probably caused by "people trying to control the president" but refused to say who they were.
Such allegations have been circulated since at least 1994, when a film called The Clinton Chronicles, produced by Larry Nichols and promoted by Rev. Jerry Falwell, accused Bill Clinton of multiple crimes, including murder. Additional promulgators of the conspiracy include Christopher Ruddy, Donald Trump, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Several sources have discredited the conspiracy theory, such as the Congressional Record, the Lakeland Ledger, the Chicago Tribune, Snopes and others, pointing to detailed death records, the unusually large circle of associates that a president is likely to have, and the fact that many of the people listed had been misidentified or were still alive. Others had no known link to the Clintons.
== History ==
In 1994, Citizens for Honest Government, a California-based conservative group, released the documentary The Clinton Chronicles, which featured conservative commentator Larry Nichols—a former Arkansas state employee under Clinton's governorship who was fired for making calls to the Contras from his office—and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. The documentary promoted the claim that the Clintons were involved in the deaths of numerous people they had often only loose connections with, including Vince Foster. Falwell heavily promoted the documentary in a series of TV infomercials.
In August 1994, Congressman Andrew Jacobs Jr. condemned the conspiracy theory in the Congressional Record, in the wake of The Clinton Chronicles leading to the conspiracy theory spreading among conservative activists and commentators. Jacobs cited an article in U.S. News & World Report by Greg Ferguson and David Bowermaster titled "Whatever It Is, Bill Clinton Likely Did It", which he inserted into the Record. The article determined that the original list, titled "Clinton Body Count: Coincidence or the Kiss of Death?" and consisting of 24 people, was compiled by lawyer and activist Linda Thompson and submitted to former congressman William Dannemeyer, who sent the list to congressional leadership and urged hearings. Ferguson and Bowermaster concluded "Thompson admits she has 'no direct evidence' of Clinton killing anyone. Indeed, she says the deaths were probably caused by 'people trying to control the president' but refuses to say who they were."
== Alleged victims ==
=== Don Henry and Kevin Ives ===
Don Henry and Kevin Ives, two Arkansas teenagers, were killed and their bodies placed on railroad tracks on August 23, 1987. At the time, the boys' deaths were controversially ruled accidental, but after Kevin Ives' body was exhumed and a second autopsy performed, the original examiner's ruling was overruled and the cause of death for Kevin Ives and Don Henry was changed from accidental to homicide. Conspiracy theorists, as well as Linda Ives, the mother of Kevin Ives, posit that the boys came upon a drug drop from an airplane, similar to Barry Seal's operations, near Mena and were then murdered. It was alleged in The Clinton Chronicles that during Bill Clinton's tenure as the governor of Arkansas he profited from drug smuggling at the Mena Airport and covered up the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the boys.
=== C. Victor Raiser II ===
C. Victor Raiser II was National Finance Co-chairman for Bill Clinton. He died in a plane crash along with his son and four others on July 30, 1992, when the de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver they had chartered for a fishing trip crashed near Dillingham, Alaska. Conspiracy theorists believe the crash to have been deliberately caused, however the National Transportation Safety Board ruled it as an accident, stating:[The probable cause of the accident was] the pilot's delayed decision in reversing course and his failure to maintain airspeed during the maneuver. Factors related to the accident were: mountainous terrain and a low ceiling.
=== Ian Spiro ===
Ian Stuart Spiro was a commodities broker who shot his family dead in their home and then was found in his car, having committed suicide by cyanide poisoning. The case was officially declared a murder-suicide case at the hands of Spiro due to financial troubles. When he was revealed to be an American and British intelligence liaison, numerous conspiracy theories came about surrounding the families’ deaths, including involving the Clintons.
=== Mary Mahoney ===
Mary Mahoney was a former White House intern who, in the early summer of 1997, was gunned down during an attempted robbery inside the Starbucks in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. where Mahoney was working behind the counter. The robber entered the store and shot Mahoney after she attempted to take his gun. He then shot two Starbucks employees and fled. However, conspiracy theorists believe Mahoney was killed on the orders of the Clintons.
=== Vince Foster ===
Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., on July 20, 1993. An autopsy determined that he was shot in the mouth, and no other wounds were found on his body. His death was ruled a suicide by five official investigations, but he remains a subject of conspiracy theories that he was actually murdered by the Clintons for knowing too much.
=== Jerry Parks ===
Jerry Parks, head of security for the Clinton headquarters during his presidential campaign in 1992, was killed on September 26, 1993, as he left a Mexican restaurant at the edge of Little Rock, Arkansas, by a man in another car that shot him ten times using a 9mm handgun. Parks’ son, Gary, asserted that his father collected a secret file of Clinton's "peccadilloes", and that his father was using the file to try to blackmail the Clinton campaign.
=== Edward Eugene Willey ===
Edward Eugene Willey, Jr. was a Clinton fundraiser whose wife, Kathleen Willey, alleged on the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes that Bill Clinton had sexually assaulted her on November 29, 1993. Kathleen also testified on the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit against Clinton. Edward was found dead in the Virginia woods, and his death was ruled a suicide.
=== Ron Brown ===
Ron Brown, who served as the Secretary of Commerce during the first term of President Bill Clinton. Prior to this he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Brown had been under investigation by an independent counsel for the Commerce Department trade mission controversy and was a material witness, who had been noticed to testify, in Judicial Watch's lawsuit against the Clinton Commerce Department. He and 34 others died in the 1996 Croatia USAF CT-43 crash.
=== Jim McDougal ===
Jim McDougal, a financial partner of the Clintons in the real estate venture that led to the Whitewater scandal. McDougal died of a heart attack at the Federal Correctional Facility in Fort Worth, Texas, on March 8, 1998.
=== John F. Kennedy Jr. ===
John F. Kennedy Jr., who was, according to polls, the most popular Democrat in New York. According to friends, Kennedy considered seeking the seat of retiring Sen. Daniel Moynihan in the 2000 United States Senate election in New York but died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999. Hillary Clinton was elected to Moynihan's vacated seat on November 7, 2000.
=== Seth Rich ===
The unsolved 2016 murder of Democratic National Committee staff member Seth Rich prompted conspiracy theorists to speculate that Hillary Clinton arranged his death; the theory was based on a debunked Fox News report, later retracted, that Rich had been responsible for Wikileaks' release of DNC emails during the 2016 United States presidential campaign. Various elements of this theory have been promoted by Julian Assange and prominent right-wing figures like Alex Jones, Newt Gingrich, and Sean Hannity.
=== Victor Thorn ===
Victor Thorn, an anti-government conspiracy theorist and author of three books accusing the Clintons of involvement in murder and drug trafficking, died in 2016 from a self-inflicted gunshot. Proponents of the conspiracy theory, including political consultant Roger Stone, claimed that Thorn had been murdered for his attacks on the Clintons. Both Thorn's family and American Free Press, a right-wing newspaper that Thorn worked for, reported that Thorn had killed himself.
=== Shawn Lucas ===
Shawn Lucas, a process server in Washington, D.C., served the Democratic National Committee with a lawsuit from Bernie Sanders alleging that the DNC had committed electoral fraud to ensure that Hillary Clinton defeated Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries. On August 2 2016, Lucas was found dead at his home, which investigators stated was caused by the "combined adverse effects of fentanyl, cyclobenzaprine, and mitragynine". Lucas's minor role in the lawsuit against the DNC, combined with the fact that his cause of death was not released to the public for several months, led to proponents of the theory suggesting that he had in fact been murdered. According to Snopes, many internet users who supported the murder theory falsely claimed that Lucas was the "lead attorney" in the DNC lawsuit. Some also tried to connect Lucas's death to that of Seth Rich (see above).
=== Jeffrey Epstein ===
Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, being held on federal charges of child sex trafficking, was found dead in his cell at the high-security Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan on August 10, 2019. An official autopsy later declared the cause of death as a suicide by hanging. His death led to conspiracy theories being relayed on social media, particularly relating to Bill Clinton and President Donald Trump. Hours after Epstein's death, Trump retweeted claims that Epstein's death was related to Clinton, including the hashtag #ClintonBodyCount. Lynne Patton, a Trump appointee at HUD, said "Hillary'd!!" and used the hashtag #VinceFosterPartTwo in an Instagram post about Epstein's death. Political commentator Dinesh D'Souza attempted to use the time he spent in a federal correctional center to lend authority to the conspiracy theory that the Clintons were responsible for Epstein's death.
In May 2025, the White House press briefing included Zero Hedge's Liam Cosgrove, where he connected Epstein and the body count conspiracy theory.
=== Christopher Sign ===
Reporter Christopher Sign broke the news of a meeting on June 27, 2016, on the Phoenix Sky Harbor tarmac between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The timing of the meeting happened during the 2016 presidential election when then-candidate Hillary Clinton was under scrutiny for how she handled certain emails during her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State. Sign was found dead in his Alabama home on June 12, 2021, and his death was investigated as a suicide. Several right-wing figures, including Lauren Boebert, Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk, as well as the pro-Trump cable channel One America News Network, suggested that Sign had been murdered by the Clintons.
=== Kobe Bryant ===
Los Angeles Lakers basketballer Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash alongside eight others on January 26, 2020. Members of the QAnon movement claimed that the crash had been engineered to kill Bryant in order to prevent him from exposing financial misconduct by the Clintons. This claim was based on a Facebook post in which Bryant allegedly threatened the release of "information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton". PolitiFact reported that no such post existed and that the claim was a hoax.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the crash that killed Bryant was caused when the helicopter's pilot flew into low cloud and lost control.
=== Jovenel Moïse ===
Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on July 7, 2021, when gunmen attacked his residence in Pèlerin 5, a district of Pétion-Ville. Martine Moïse, the first lady of Haiti, was hospitalized for wounds sustained during the attack. Some right-wing conspiracy theorists have claimed that the Clintons were involved in Moïse's death, pointing to political controversies regarding aid given to Haiti by the Clinton Foundation, such as "hurricane-proof" classroom trailers that were found to be structurally unsafe and laced with formaldehyde. Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who claim that Donald Trump is secretly waging war against a cabal of child traffickers that includes the Clintons, heavily discussed the idea that they had a hand in the assassination. Discussion of the unfounded claim caused the term "Clintons" to become a top trend on Twitter.
=== Jean-Luc Brunel ===
Jean-Luc Brunel, suspected of being involved in a global underage sex trafficking ring organized by Epstein, died by suicide in prison before going on trial, on February 19, 2022. Senator Ted Cruz attempted to link Brunel's death to the Clintons by asking "Anyone know where Hillary was this weekend?".
=== Mark Middleton ===
Mark Middleton was a businessman who served as a special adviser to President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. He died by suicide in Perry County, Arkansas on May 7, 2022 with a shotgun found near his dead body. His family was harassed by conspiracy theorists after his death.
== Others ==
Fabricated screenshots of tweets stating "I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton." that were supposedly sent by figures such as celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, basketball player Kobe Bryant, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and Queen Elizabeth II prior to their deaths have appeared on social media.
== References == | Wikipedia/Clinton_body_count_conspiracy_theory |
The Statesmen, or Statesmen Clan (Lithuanian: "valstybininkai", "valstybininkų" klanas, generally written with quote marks) is a conspiracy theory which claims that a deep state of unelected officials, based in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Security Department of Lithuania (VSD), seeks to influence the actions of elected officials, protect each other in power and take control of Lithuania. The conspiracy theory emerged in 2006, after the death of VSD officer Vytautas Pociūnas in Belarus, who the theory claims was a whistleblower of the clan's activities. The conspiracy theory was promoted by politicians in the Homeland Union (TS-LKD).
Though primarily connected with investigations from 2006 to 2010, the theory has experienced a revival since 2019, after opponents of the Homeland Union claimed that the "clan" remains active and is pressuring the Šimonytė Cabinet.
== Content ==
According to Valdas Vasiliauskas, editor-in-chief of Lietuvos žinios (later a Member of the Seimas for the Way of Courage party), the Statesmen are "a clan-like group of persons connected by constant mutual relations, distribution of roles and tasks among group members", it is a highly organized and hierarchical organization (Vasiliauskas identified Albinas Januška as its leader), has control of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Security Department, the President of Lithuania, the military, police, the political sciences faculty of Vilnius University and is connected with the courts, political parties and the media.
Pociūnas was generally described as a whistleblower, a VSD official who was aware of the conspiracy and was killed for attempting to reveal it to the media. The specific information differed. In 2008, Vasiliauskas claimed that Pociūnas investigated the connections between the "Statesmen" and the energy company Dujotekana, as well as the company's influence in government institutions. Later, in 2014, he claimed that Pociūnas was aware about the CIA black site in Antaviliai, near Vilnius, and the alleged bribes to VSD officials which allowed its creation.
It had been alleged that the "Statesmen" were responsible for the fall of Brazauskas Cabinet II and convinced members of the Labour Party to support the formation of the Kirkilas Cabinet. Viktor Uspaskich accused "statesmen" of attempting to destroy his political career and his party via Labour's "dark accounting" case. Rolandas Paksas, President of Lithuania impeached in 2004, claimed that he opposed the "statesmen" during his presidency and was removed for refusing to allow the establishment of the Antaviliai CIA black site. In 2007, he claimed that "statesmen" conspired to raise attention towards LGBT rights in Lithuania to distract attention from their case.
According to Rasa Juknevičienė, Member of the Seimas from the Homeland Union, the deep state emerged after the 1998 Russian financial crisis and the 2000 Lithuanian parliamentary election, which spurned a group of individuals to "take the reins of the state to their hands" with Russian financial support. Vasiliauskas claimed that the conspiracy formed as early as 1990, within the deputies of the Supreme Council of Lithuania, also known as the Reconstituent Seimas, including members of the former Communist Party of Lithuania. Antanas Valionis claimed that "TS-LKD campaign against the so-called Statesmen" could have been motivated by the struggles of business groups in the energy sector in 2000–2006 and VSD investigations into previous unexplained violent acts, such as the Bražuolė bridge bombing in 1994 and the bombing of the editorial office of Lietuvos rytas in 1995. According to the politician, the TS-LKD interpreted this as a conspiracy against them.
== History ==
=== Death of Vytautas Pociūnas ===
Though the pejorative term "valstybininkas" ("Statesman", meaning an official who belongs to a group of influential figures seeking personal gain) has been used in Lithuanian media since at least 2005, the conspiracy theory emerged after Vytautas Pociūnas, a VSD officer stationed in Brest, Belarus, was found dead after falling out of the window of Hotel Intourist on 23 August 2006. The death was ruled an accident, but it was rumoured that Pociūnas was killed for his alleged investigations into a deep state within the Lithuanian government and institutions, and their anti-state activities. It became more prominent after an investigation into Pociūnas' death by the State Prosecutor's Office was closed in late 2006 after a very quick investigation (including a claim that Pociūnas fell out of a window while urinating, which was interpreted as a smear campaign), and after an Ekstra magazine interview of VSD deputy director Darius Jurgelevičius in September 2006, in which he commented on the public interest in the Pociūnas case:
There are many nuances and details. And if all this rummaging around in those bones continues, moments that will not add honor to the whole thing will start to emerge. I think someone is trying to make a big show, but the result, I believe, will be disappointing. Unfortunate.
Numerous protests were held in support of Pociūnas and his surviving family, and the final annual commemoration of his death was held in 2016. The death was also followed by an investigation by the Seimas National Security and Defense Committee (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublikos Seimo nacionalinio saugumo ir gynybos komitetas, NSGK) into VSD activity, initiated by Homeland Union Member of the Seimas Rasa Juknevičienė.
=== 2006 Seimas investigation ===
On 4 December 2006, NSGK published their conclusion on the activities of the State Security Department. 33 active (in December 2006) and 4 former VSD officials, Seimas members Andrius Kubilius, Jurgis Razma, Antanas Valionis, former secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Albinas Januška, former Director General of VSD, ambassador to Spain Mečys Laurinkus, consul general in Grodno Daiva Mockuvienė, television journalist Joana Lapėnienė, Vytautas Pociūnas's wife Liudvika Pociūnienė and brother Algimantas Pociūnas, and signatory of the Act of March 11 Algirdas Endriukaitis testified before the committee.
The investigation was controversial. Januška resigned from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, claiming that he is unable to answer public criticism while keeping state secrets, but was immediately reappointed as advisor to Gediminas Kirkilas. NSGK members unsuccessfully demanded certificates from the VSD related to possible corrupt connections of high-ranking officials. Refused, the politicians turned to President Valdas Adamkus hoping to convince him to temporarily suspend the then head of the VSD, Arvydas Pocius, whose decision not to provide information was assessed as a mockery of the Seimas. However, the president refused to meet with members of the Seimas. During the investigation, independent journalists published information regarding the suspects' alleged membership in the KGB and connections with the Russian state energy company Gazprom.
In the committee's opinion, Pociūnas was removed from his previous duties within the VSD and assigned to Belarus in order to stop corruption investigations he was conducting in the transport and energy sectors. In addition, the committee stated that
certain signs identified during the parliamentary investigation allow to assume that some VSD investigations, actions of directors and officials in some cases may have been carried out or their results used for the benefit of certain political groups, in other cases - to influence these political groups or politicians themselves.
The committee's opinion statement first coined the term "statesman" to refer to individuals allegedly involved, to Albinas Januška, without a negative connotation.
The term "statesmen" was originally claimed by the accused politicians and civil servants themselves, to express their patriotism. Mečys Laurinkus commented on the existence of a group which "formulated tasks" for the State Security Department on 30 October 2007:
In many democratic states, there is a mechanism for forming tasks for the intelligence service and even reviewing them annually. These are special groups of politicians in the government or presidency. There is no such mechanism in Lithuania, the VSD works according to the Law on the Fundamentals of National Security, like a radar signaling an impending threat.
It is effective, but very expensive, and it also duplicates the work of other services. Several influential Lithuanian politicians, who are quite rightly called by the honorable name of "statesmen", took the initiative of formulating tasks. Unusual, new, but very necessary work has received distorted evaluations from both inside and outside the institution.
This was taken by various politicians in the country to be a confirmation of the existence of the conspiracy, and Member of the Seimas Algimantas Matulevičius (Civic Democracy Party), in charge of a parliamentary investigation into VSD activity, described it as an unconstitutional act. Laurinkus later claimed that he does not remember the existence of such a scandal.
=== Renewed criminal investigation ===
Vytautas Pociūnas' widow, Liudvika Pociūnienė, requested the reopening of the terminated investigation in November 2006, claiming that it lacked detail and was not impartial. She was joined by Member of the Seimas Saulius Pečeliūnas (TS-LKD), who formed a nonpartisan civil society organization, Rally of Citizens (Lithuanian: Piliečių santalka), claiming to combat perceived cliques in the government and a "nomenklatura more powerful than the law". Both complaints were dismissed by the General Prosecutor's Office in July 2007 on lacking grounds.
Pociūnienė received support throughout the political spectrum. Vytautas Landsbergis, former leader of the Homeland Union, asserted that the conclusions of the prosecutor's office that Pociūnas died in an accident were "worthless", and the New Union (Social Liberals) lodged a demand that the General Prosecutor's Office should make the materials of the investigation file public. On 17 August 2007, Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas announced the formation of a special work committee which would investigate the circumstances of Pociūnas' death, led by publicist Vytautas Ališauskas and staffed by Seimas and European Parliament members from several political parties. New forensic and medical experts were hired after Pociūnas' widow and the press criticized the negligence of the forensic experts during the initial investigation.
The renewed investigation was slow and controversial. It was criticized by President Valdas Adamkus as a threat to the independence of the prosecution system. The committee could only meet in 2008 due to conflicting schedules of the committee members (including two EP members, who worked in Brussels and could only participate on Fridays), and several of the committee's members resigned before the first meeting due to this inactivity. Meanwhile, at the order of court, the General Prosecutor's Office renewed investigation into the case, which doubled the work of the committee. It was shut down in March 2008. An independent investigation commission was organized by Sąjūdis in July 2008. Vygaudas Ušackas alleged that asking for Landsbergis's support to be selected as Minister of Foreign Affairs in October 2008, he was requested to "eliminate the Statesmen element administered by Albinas Januška".
On 24 February 2009, the case was closed again and the General Prosecutor's Office reaffirmed that Pociūnas' death was an accident. Liudvika Pociūnienė once again protested the verdict. On 9 June 2009, the Vilnius District Court ordered the prosecutors to reopen the case a third time. Under court order, the case was also reclassified as a murder case. After investigations into official documents, over 100 witnesses questioned and experiments organized in the Inturist hotel in Brest, the case was closed as an accident again on 1 February 2013. Pociūnienė requested the case to be reopened again, but her request was dismissed.
=== 2008 "List of the Statesmen" publication ===
On 26 March 2008, an article titled "Lithuania Has Been Taken Over by the Statesmen Clan?" (Lithuanian: "Lietuvą užvaldė „valstybininkų" klanas?") was published on the newspaper Lietuvos žinios. This article compiled a list of 43 civil servants, diplomats, advisors of then-president Valdas Adamkus, VSD employees, businessmen, political scientists, and members of the Seimas, who were allegedly members of a single hierarchical structured "clan" which seeks to take over the state. According to editor-in-chief Valdas Vasiliauskas, it was published under a pseudonym to "protect the author from possible retaliation".
In the same month, Mečys Laurinkus published an open letter for Vytautas Landsbergis, requesting him to use his authority to end "the idiotic persecution of some civil servants that has been going on for almost two years now". Laurinkus also asked the leadership of TS-LKD to mention a single crime committed by the alleged "statesmen".
An investigation into the circumstances surrounding the formation of the Kirkilas Cabinet was proposed in the Seimas in 2008, but was voted down. Discussion of the "List of Statesmen" and the high point of the conspiracy theory coincided with the 2008 Lithuanian parliamentary election, which was seen as an opportunity for "De-Albinization". Several parties vowed to destroy the conspiracy's perceived power in their electoral campaigns. Opponents of the perceived "statesmen" described themselves as "patriots" (Lithuanian: "pilietininkai"). Both sides alleged that the other side was influenced or controlled by corporations and foreign interests - "statesmen" referred to the holding company MG Baltic and chemical company Achema, while "patriots" referred to Dujotekana and the business alliance "VP Ten", led by Nerijus Numavičius. Both sides accused the other of collusion with Russia.
The election was won by the Homeland Union, which was joined by the Liberal and Centre Union, the National Resurrection Party and the Liberal Movement in a centre-right "Coalition for Change" (Lithuanian: Permainų koalicija), which formed the Kubilius Cabinet II.
=== "Hawks" counter-conspiracy ===
In November 2008, VSD director Povilas Malakauskas informed the newly appointed Homeland Union prime minister Andrius Kubilius of the existence of an alleged anti-state group called "Hawks" (Lithuanian: "vanagai"). "Hawks" were journalists and politicians affiliated with the political right who were actively involved in the alleged "unmasking" of "statesmen" activity. Valdas Vasiliauskas, journalist Tomas Čyvas, Darius Kuolys (later founder of the Lithuanian List), Audrius Bačiulis, Virgis Valentinavičius (advisor of Andrius Kubilius), Vladas Laučius (chief editor of news portal Alfa.lt, previously consultant for MG Baltic Media) and others were alleged as members of this counter-conspiracy. Alleged members of this group claimed that this was a VSD attempt to control the media and influence politicians.
Edvardas Čiuldė claimed that "hawks" represented the interests of large media companies and were financed by the alcohol producer Stumbras, owned by MG Baltic.
=== Election of Dalia Grybauskaitė ===
Dalia Grybauskaitė, President of Lithuania from 2009 to 2019, won the 2009 Lithuanian presidential election with an anti-systemic platform and was supported by the Homeland Union. After her inauguration, several state officials implicated in the conspiracy theory were removed from office. In August 2009, in a controversial decree, she fired deputy director of the VSD Darius Jurgelevičius, while Mečys Laurinkus was accused of politicking in diplomatic service and recalled from the Lithuanian embassy in Georgia in late 2009. Valdas Vasiliauskas described it as "a war between the President and the Statesmen".
Albinas Januška retired from politics in late 2008 to herd sheep in a farm near Zarasai, but continued to unofficially advise politicians on state affairs.
By late 2010, the Homeland Union dropped their interest in the "statesmen" conspiracy theory and ceased investigations in government institutions such as the VSD, although it was still maintained by independent "hawk" journalists, the Civic Democracy Party and the Way of Courage party.
According to declassified VSD information, officials allegedly a part of the "Statesmen" group (including Albinas Januška and Raimondas Lopata) attempted to appoint Mindaugas Bastys as Minister of Agriculture in the Butkevičius Cabinet in 2012.
=== Revival ===
In early 2023, the conspiracy theory was revived after the publication of the book "The Whistleblower and the President" (Lithuanian: Pranešėjas ir prezidentas) by Dovydas Pancerovas and Birutė Davidonytė, which described alleged business and VSD involvement in the Gitanas Nausėda campaign during the 2019 Lithuanian presidential election, including illegal collection of personal information. After the publication of the book, MPs of the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union alleged that the book was published to discredit the incumbent president and proposed an investigation into "statesmen" activity, but the proposal did not find support even among the opposition.
In January 2024, Gitanas Nausėda's chief advisor Frederikas Jansonas claimed that appointments to vacant ambassador positions are delayed due to "statesmen" sabotage, and alleged that the conspiracy group is allied with the Šimonytė Cabinet. He identified members of the government, such as Žygimantas Pavilionis, as individuals listed in the 2008 "List of the Statesmen". Albinas Januška dismissed the allegations.
== Alleged members ==
Proponents of the conspiracy theory generally refer to individuals named in the "List of the Statesmen" (Lithuanian: "valstybininkų" sąrašas), which lists the alleged deep state's members and supporters. The list was originally published by the newspaper Lietuvos žinios on 26 March 2008:
Albinas Januška, advisor to Gediminas Kirkilas (Prime Minister of Lithuania from 2006 to 2008), generally alleged to be the leader of the conspiracy;
Mečys Laurinkus, director of the VSD from 1998 to 2004;
Officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
Laimonas Tallat-Kelpša, ministry secretary;
Žygimantas Pavilionis, ministry secretary;
Violeta Gaižauskatė, ministry official;
Rimantas Šidlauskas, ambassador to Russia;
Viktoras Baublys, consul general to Kaliningrad;
Edminas Bagdonas, ambassador to Belarus;
Algirdas Kumža, ambassador to Ukraine;
Egidijus Meilūnas, ambassador to Poland;
Juozas Bernatonis, ambassador to Estonia, former vice-chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania;
Advisors to Valdas Adamkus, President of Lithuania from 1998 to 2003 and from 2004 to 2009:
Valteris Baliukonis, advisor to the President on foreign policy;
Simonas Šatūnas, advisor to the President on foreign policy;
Lauras Bielinis, advisor to the President on internal policy;
Mindaugas Ladiga, advisor to the President, former VSD officer;
Aušra Rauličkytė, advisor to the President on legal matters;
Members of the Institute of International Relations and Political Sciences of Vilnius University, alleged by conspiracy theorists to be a "Statesmen factory":
Raimundas Lopata, director of the institute from 1999 to 2009;
Audrius Siaurusevičius, journalist, lecturer;
Egidijus Kūris, justice in the Constitutional Court of Lithuania and its president from 2002 to 2008;
Povilas Makalauskas, director of the Special Investigation Service from 2004 to 2007;
Valdas Tutkus, commander of the Lithuanian Armed Forces from 2004 to 2009;
Algis Vaičeliūnas, general, candidate to director of the VSD in 2007, deputy of Albinas Januška on national defense;
Kęstutis Lančinskas, deputy general commissioner of the Lithuanian Police Force;
Gediminas Kirkilas, leader of the Social Democratic Party and Prime Minister from 2006 to 2008;
Justinas Karosas, member of the Social Democratic Party, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Seimas;
Antanas Valionis, member of the Seimas from the New Union (Social Liberals), Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2000 to 2006;
The newspaper also claimed that other, unmentioned figures are affiliated with the conspiracy within political parties, in the legal system and in business.
== Impact ==
=== Political impact ===
The Statesmen conspiracy theory was pronounced during the 2008 Lithuanian parliamentary election. In their 2008 election programs, the Civic Democracy Party vowed to "destroy the "statesmen clan"", and Order and Justice claimed that they "seek power in order to restore the state to the people, which they were robbed by the "statesmen" clan". The conspiracy was also frequently referred to by politicians of the Homeland Union, such as Rasa Juknevičienė, as well as President Dalia Grybauskaitė, who connected it with Russian influence in the Lithuanian government.
During Kubilius Cabinet II, the death of Vytautas Pociūnas was brought up by Conservative politicians, such as Jurgis Razma, as waving the bloody shirt to support reforms to the State Security Department and the dissolution of the national energy company LEO LT.
The Statesmen conspiracy theory emerged at a similar time as the Case of Drąsius Kedys, another controversial legal case which led to public protest against perceived corruption and "clans" in the state apparatus. According to controversial journalist and TV presenter Rūta Janutienė, in both cases, "the victim is turned into the culprit of the accident, labels of alcoholics and drug addicts are attached to the deceased". Tomas Čyvas claimed that state security services connected to the conspiracy were responsible for separating Drąsius Kedys and his daughter. Similarly, the investigation into the unexplained assassination of VSD officer Juras Abromavičius took place in 2007, and some journalists and conspiracy theorists stated that they were committed by the same "mafia clan".
Vytautas Pociūnas' widow, Liudvika Pociūnienė, became a member of TS-LKD and was elected as a Member of the Seimas in the 2020 Lithuanian parliamentary election.
=== Foreign assessment ===
A 2006 November file on the resignation of Albinas Januška by the United States embassy in Lithuania was leaked from a document cache by WikiLeaks. In it, US officials express their surprise at Januška's resignation, mention his influence in the Kirkilas Cabinet and state theories about his resignation by questioned Lithuanian officials, including possible Russian involvement. According to the document,
Whenever a prominent official in Lithuania becomes the victim of a scandal, it is usual to blame Russia. We may never know why this mysterious official resigned. What still confuses us is that A. Januska resigned because of such hard-to-prove and unfounded accusations. For all we know, he could have overcome this situation if he had wanted to. However, we believe that this Svengali of Lithuania will remain active and influential in the circles of Lithuanian domestic and foreign politics in the future.
=== In popular culture ===
A previously unnamed street in the Pilaitė district in Vilnius was named Vytautas Pociūnas Street in 2016.
The conspiracy theory was parodied on the Lithuanian political satire TV show Dviračio žinios.
== See also ==
Antaviliai
Bražuolė bridge bombing
Coup of the Volunteers
lt:Juras Abromavičius
Vytautas Pociūnas
== References == | Wikipedia/Statesmen_(conspiracy_theory) |
Reptilians (also called reptoids, archons, reptiloids, saurians, draconians, or lizard people) are supposed reptilian humanoids, which play a prominent role in fantasy, science fiction, ufology, and conspiracy theories. The idea of reptilians was popularised by David Icke, a conspiracy theorist who claims shapeshifting reptilian aliens control Earth by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate human societies. Icke has stated on multiple occasions that many world leaders were, or are possessed by, so-called reptilians.
Some conspiracy theorists espousing the extraterrestrial hypothesis claim they either come from the Draco constellation or the Orion constellation or are allies with nefarious extraterrestrials from the Orion constellation.
Others claim they are interdimensional, coming from another universe or dimension.
== Origins ==
Michael Barkun, professor of political science at Syracuse University, posits that the idea of a reptilian conspiracy originated in the fiction of Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard, in his story "The Shadow Kingdom", published in Weird Tales in August 1929. This story drew on theosophical ideas of the "lost worlds" of Atlantis and Lemuria, particularly Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine written in 1888, with its reference to "'dragon-men' who once had a mighty civilization on a Lemurian continent".
Howard's "serpent men" were described as humanoids (with human bodies and snake heads) who were able to imitate humans at will, and who lived in underground passages and used their shapechanging and mind-control abilities to infiltrate humanity. Clark Ashton Smith used Howard's "serpent men" in his stories, as well as themes from H. P. Lovecraft, and he, Howard and Lovecraft together laid the basis for the Cthulhu Mythos.
In the 1940s, American occultist Maurice Doreal (also known as Claude Doggins) wrote a pamphlet entitled "Mysteries of the Gobi" that described a "serpent race" with "bodies like man but...heads...like a great snake" and an ability to take human form. These creatures also appeared in Doreal's poem "The Emerald Tablets", in which he referred to Emerald Tablets written by "Thoth, an Atlantean Priest king". Barkun asserts that "in all likelihood", Doreal's ideas came from "The Shadow Kingdom", and that in turn, "The Emerald Tablets" formed the basis for David Icke's book, Children of the Matrix.
Historian Edward Guimont has argued that the reptilian conspiracy theory, particularly as expounded by Icke, drew from earlier pseudohistorical legends developed during the colonisation of Africa, particularly surrounding Great Zimbabwe and the mokele-mbembe.
== Alien abduction ==
Alien abduction narratives sometimes allege contact with reptilian creatures. One of the earliest reports was that of Ashland, Nebraska police officer Herbert Schirmer, who under hypnosis recalled being taken aboard a UFO in 1967 by humanoid beings with a slightly reptilian appearance, who wore a "winged serpent" emblem on the left side of their chests. Skeptics consider his claims to be a hoax.
== David Icke ==
According to British conspiracy theorist David Icke, who first published on this theme in his 1999 work The Biggest Secret, tall, blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptilian humanoids from the Alpha Draconis star system, now hiding in underground bases, are the force behind a worldwide conspiracy against humanity. He contends that most of the world's ancient and modern leaders are related to these reptilians, including the Merovingian dynasty, the Rothschilds, the Bush family and the British Royal family. Icke's conspiracy theories now have supporters in up to 47 countries and he has given lectures to crowds of up to 6,000 people.
American writer Vicki Santillano included Icke's conspiracy theory in her list of the 10 most popular conspiracy theories. A poll of Americans in 2013 by Public Policy Polling indicated that 4% of registered voters (±2.8%) believed in David Icke's ideas.
== Politics ==
On September 12, 2003, during the provincial election campaign in Ontario, Canada, the Ernie Eves campaign issued a news release that called opponent Dalton McGuinty an "evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet". The words appeared at the end of the news release. Eves said the epithet was meant as a joke, and acknowledged the words were "over the top", but refused to apologize.
In the closely-fought 2008 U.S. Senate election in Minnesota between comedian and commentator Al Franken and incumbent Senator Norm Coleman, one of the ballots challenged by Coleman included a vote for Franken with "Lizard People" written in the space provided for write-in candidates. Lucas Davenport, who later claimed to have written the gag ballot, said, "I don't know if you've heard the conspiracy theory about the Lizard Men; a friend of mine, we didn't like the candidates, so we were at first going to write in 'revolution', because we thought that was good and to the point. And then, we thought 'the Lizard People' would be even funnier." Franken won the election after recount.
In February 2011, on the Opie and Anthony radio show, the comedian Louis C.K. jokingly asked former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a number of times if he and Dick Cheney were lizard people who enjoyed the taste of human flesh. Amused by Rumsfeld's refusal to directly answer the question, C.K. suggested it was a possible admission of guilt. He went on to further muse that perhaps those who are lizard people cannot lie about it; when asked if they are lizards, they either have to avoid answering the question or say yes.
On March 4, 2013, a video depicting a security agent with unusual features guarding a speech by U.S. President Barack Obama was spotlighted in a Wired report about shapeshifting reptilian humanoids. This led to a tongue-in-cheek response from chief National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden who said "any alleged program to guard the president with aliens or robots would likely have to be scaled back or eliminated in the sequester".
In October 2022, Dutch MP Thierry Baudet, head of the far-right Forum for Democracy, said in an interview with the "Geopolitics and Empire" podcast that he believes that the world is "being governed by evil reptiles."
Some adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory have also borrowed from the reptilian conspiracy theory, including elements shared in anti-Semitism conspiracy theories.
North Korea's Korean Central News Agency used the theory to claim that other non-North Korean media were reptile.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Dunning, Brian (May 21, 2007). "Skeptoid #46: Support Your Local Reptoid". Skeptoid. | Wikipedia/Reptilian_conspiracy_theory |
The Zionist occupation government, Zionist occupational government or Zionist-occupied government (ZOG), sometimes also called the Jewish occupational government (JOG), is an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Jews secretly control the governments of Western states. It is a contemporary variation on the centuries-old belief in an international Jewish conspiracy. According to believers, a secret Zionist organization actively controls international banks, and through them governments, to conspire against white, Christian, or Islamic interests.
The expression is used by white supremacist, white nationalist, far-right, nativist or antisemitic groups in Europe and the United States, as well as by ultra-nationalists such as Pamyat in Russia.
Some organizations that employ (or have in the past employed) the term are partially or wholly inspired by religious aims or ideals. American far-right groups founded upon racialist, conspiratorial, and apocalypticist interpretations of Christianity, including the Freemen, various Identity Christian churches and sects, and the Ku Klux Klan are examples. Additionally, some contemporary militant, authoritarian, and theocratic Islamist and Islamic extremist organizations, including Salafi-jihadist terrorist cells, have used the term "ZOG" in propaganda campaigns.
The word Zionist in "Zionist occupation government" is used to equate being Jewish with the ideology of Zionism. As such, Zionists are depicted by the theory as conspiring for Jews and Israel to control the world as depicted in the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
== Origins ==
The association of Jews with the control of economic forces is the modern resurgence of an old stereotype, that of the "greedy Jewish merchant", that has been present in the Christian world since the Middle Ages. The conspiracy theory illustrates a specifically American far-right agrarian preoccupation, namely the vital possibility of extinction allegedly faced by the rural world, seen as the backbone of America, a danger caused by a remote, centralized and power-hungry metropolitan elite corrupted by "alien" influences.
== History ==
In late 19th-century France, the insinuation that the French government was in the power of the Jews was a commonplace claim in anti-republican discourse. The British fascist Arnold Leese already had the habit of referring to the "Jewish government" of his nation in the interwar and postwar decades. At the same time, Nazis under the Weimar Republic dismissed a so-called "Jewish" hand behind that regime.
An early appearance of the term was in a 1976 article, "Welcome to ZOG-World", attributed to an American neo-Nazi named Eric Thomson, but Canadian white nationalists also used the term. The concept (although not the term itself) is a major theme in the 1978 book The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce, founder of the National Alliance, a white nationalist organization. The term came to the attention of a larger audience in a 27 December 1984 article in The New York Times about robberies committed in California and Washington by a white supremacist group called The Order. According to the Times, the crimes "were conducted to raise money for a war upon the United States Government, which the group calls 'ZOG', or Zionist Occupation Government." In 1985, the Oregon-based far-right group Posse Comitatus claimed: "Our nation is now completely under the control of the International Invisible government of World Jewry."
The Order of the Silent Brotherhood was an offshoot of the Aryan Nations, an organization founded in the early 1970s by Richard Girnt Butler, who since the 1950s had been associated with another antisemitic group, the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian. Both these groups trace their origins to antisemitic activists such as Gerald L.K. Smith and have interacted with the Ku Klux Klan. The term appeared extensively in Aryan Nations literature. In 1985, the Anti-Defamation League reported that the Aryan Nations had set up an electronic bulletin board system called "Aryan Nation Liberty Net" to offer information for the locations of Communist Party USA offices and "ZOG informers".
In 1996, the Aryan Nations posted on its website an "Aryan Declaration of Independence" saying that "the history of the present Zionist Occupied Government of the United States of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations [...] [all] having a direct object—the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states." Claiming that "the eradication of the White race and its culture" is "one of its foremost purposes", the ZOG is accused of relinquishing powers of government to private corporations, white traitors and ruling class Jewish families. It accused ZOG Jews of subverting the constitutional rule of law; responsibility for post-Civil War Reconstruction; subverting the monetary system with the Federal Reserve System; confiscating land and property; limiting freedoms of speech, religion and gun ownership; murdering, kidnapping and imprisoning patriots; abdicating national sovereignty to the United Nations; political repression; wasteful bureaucracy; loosening restrictions on immigration and drug trafficking; raising taxes; polluting the environment; commandeering the military, mercenaries and police; denying Aryan cultural heritage; and inciting immigrant insurrections.
Since 1996, the term has spread in usage. It is now popular with many other antisemitic organizations. Swedish Neo-Nazis say that Jews—in what they call the Swedish Zionist occupied government—are importing immigrants to "dilute the blood of the white race". The antisemitic website Jew Watch claims that the entire spectrum of Western nations and other countries are being ruled by "Zionist Occupation Governments".
Slovak politician Marian Kotleba, whose party (People's Party Our Slovakia) won two seats in the European Parliament in the 2019 election, claims that the "Z. O. G." controls Slovak politics.
== Conspiracy theories ==
Activists imagined a variety of plots gravitating around the original conspiracy theory—for instance, that as many as 4,000 Jews were warned of the September 11 attacks. Believers also claim that ZOG-like forces control American foreign policy. Despite their singularities, most ZOG theories involve the idea of a Jewish power over finance or banking, including one imagining Jewish control of the Federal Reserve.
Neo-Nazi David Lane developed his version of the white genocide conspiracy theory in his c. 1995 White Genocide Manifesto, the origin of the later use of the term. Lane claimed that the government policies of many Western countries had the intent of destroying white European culture and making white people an "extinct species". Lane—a founding member of the organization The Order—criticized miscegenation, abortion, homosexuality, alleged Jewish control of the media, "multiracial sports", the legal repercussions against those who "resist genocide", and the ZOG that he said controls the United States and the other majority-white countries, which encourages "white genocide".
== See also ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Daniels, Jessie (1997), White Lies: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse, UK: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-91289-X, Conceptualizations of class and state converge in the white supremacist discourse in the characterization of the United States government as the 'Zionist Occupation Government' (ZOG)... As indicated by the ubiquitous reference to the state as 'ZOG' ('Zionist' is equated with 'Jewish') within these publications, the state is depicted as inherently 'Jewish', a racial identity within the discourse. The government, as well as the corporate elite, is supposedly 'occupied' and controlled by Jews.
== External links ==
"Aryan nations", Poisoning the Web: Hatred Online, The Anti-Defamation League, archived from the original on 2009-08-02, retrieved 2005-05-04.
"Extremists conflicted", The Christian Science Monitor, 18 June 2002.
Southern Poverty Law Center | Wikipedia/Zionist_Occupation_Government_conspiracy_theory |
The Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT) is a non-profit organization devoted to autism. It was founded by parent advocate Catherine Maurice in 1998 and is currently based in Hoboken, New Jersey. Members of its advisory board consist of Eric Fombonne and Stephen Barrett. Previous board members include Bridget Taylor, Gina Green, and Tristram Smith until his death in August 2018.
A report by the Association for Behavior Analysis International mentioned ASAT's website as a useful resource for parents of children with autism, as does the website of the University of North Texas and that of the University of Michigan Health System.
== Views ==
ASAT disseminates information about science-based autism treatment regardless of discipline and urges consumers to exercise caution when making choices about autism treatment. ASAT has warned against chelation therapy as an autism treatment, noting that two children have been reported to have died as a result of this therapy, and concluding that "there is not enough scientific evidence available at this time to advocate a role for chelation of heavy metals in the treatment of autism, and there is potential for adverse side effects." They take a similar viewpoint with regard to the use of secretin. Treatments they consider to be unproven, rather than disproven, include homeopathy and animal therapy. Published research related to the hundreds of autism treatments are provided on ASAT's website. ASAT maintains that it is incumbent on any provider to be transparent about the existence or non-existence of scientific support for any treatment being promoted.
== Criticism ==
ASAT was criticized in 1999 by Bernard Rimland, who contended that applied behavior analysis is not as effective as ASAT claims and called their position on autism treatments "nonsensical and counterfactual". ASAT responded by saying that, in recent years, the Autism Research Review International, where Rimland had published his article, had displayed "a consistent pattern of premature and uncritical promotion of treatment 'breakthroughs' in the absence of credible research support", including facilitated communication.
== References == | Wikipedia/Association_for_Science_in_Autism_Treatment |
Proponents and practitioners of various esoteric forms of spirituality and alternative medicine refer to a variety of claimed experiences and phenomena as being due to "energy" or "force" that defy measurement or experimentation, and thus are distinct from uses of the term "energy" in science.
Claims related to energy therapies are most often anecdotal, rather than being based on repeatable empirical evidence, thus not following the scientific method.
There is no scientific evidence for the existence of such energy, and physics educators criticize the use of the term "energy" to describe ideas in esotericism and spirituality as unavoidably confusing.
== History ==
The concept of esoteric energy has appeared in various cultures and spiritual traditions throughout history. Although interpretations differ, many traditions describe it as a vital force that animates living beings and permeates the cosmos. These ideas often overlap with religious, medical, and mystical frameworks, influencing practices ranging from healing to spiritual enlightenment.
In ancient civilizations, esoteric energy was frequently associated with breath, spirit, or divine power. The ancient Egyptians referred to ka, a vital essence that sustained life and represented a person’s spiritual double. In ancient Greece, the Stoics developed the concept of pneuma, a universal breath that pervades all existence, while Aristotle and Plato explored the idea of a world soul, or anima mundi, as the unifying force of nature. The Romans adopted similar notions through the term spiritus, which referred to both breath and an animating principle.
Eastern traditions developed complex theories of energy as a subtle force flowing through the body and the universe. In Taoist philosophy and Traditional Chinese Medicine, qi (气) was understood as a dynamic energy circulating through the body's meridians, influencing health and vitality. The concept of qi also appears in the art of feng shui and Chinese martial arts. Practices such as acupuncture, tai chi, and qi gong were developed to regulate and cultivate this energy. Eastern philosophy also includes the notion of "negative qi", typically understood as introducing negative moods like outright fear or more moderate expressions like social anxiety or awkwardness. Deflecting this negative qi through geomancy is a goal of feng shui. The traditional explanation of acupuncture states that it works by manipulating the circulation of qi through a network of meridians. In tai chi, the ancient Chinese martial art, participants aim to concentrate and balance the body's qi, providing benefits to mental and physical health.
Similarly, in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, prana (प्राण, prāṇa; the Sanskrit word for breath, "life force” or "vital principle") was described as the breath-based life force that moves through nadis, subtle channels that distribute energy throughout the body. In Hindu literature, prāṇa is sometimes described as originating from the Sun and connecting the elements. The practice of pranayama, a form of breath control, was believed to balance and enhance pranic energy. In Tibetan Buddhism, lung (རླུང་) refers to a form of wind-energy that plays a key role in meditation, visualization, and tantric yogic practices. Japan also adopted energy concepts from China, referring to ki (気) as a life force that could be harnessed for healing, as seen in the development of Reiki. Practitioners of Reiki believe that qi is transmitted to the client via the palms of the practitioner’s hands. In yoga, Ayurveda, and Indian martial arts, it permeates reality on all levels, including inanimate objects.
Western esotericism has incorporated energy concepts into its mystical and occult traditions. Medieval and Renaissance alchemy often described an inherent vital force that could transmute base materials into gold and refine the human soul. In the 18th century, Franz Mesmer ignited debate with his theory of animal magnetism, suggesting that an invisible magnetic fluid pervades living beings and could be manipulated for healing. Attention to vitalism grew in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 19th century, the Theosophical Society introduced theories of etheric energy, the astral plane, and subtle bodies, which became influential in later esoteric and New Age movements. In the 20th century, Wilhelm Reich expanded on these ideas with his concept of orgone energy, which he claimed to be a fundamental cosmic force that could influence health and psychology.
Many indigenous and shamanic traditions also describe energy in ways that influence their spiritual and healing practices. Native American belief systems frequently refer to a medicine energy that connects all living things, often associated with the guidance of spirit beings. In African spirituality, particularly among the Yoruba, aṣẹ is regarded as a divine force that animates life and can be channeled through ritual and invocation. Similarly, in Polynesian traditions, mana is seen as a powerful spiritual energy that exists in people, objects, and the natural world.
=== In biology ===
As biologists studied embryology and developmental biology, particularly before the discovery of genes, a variety of organisational forces were posited to account for their observations. German biologist Hans Driesch (1867–1941), proposed entelechy, an energy which he believed controlled organic processes. However, such ideas are discredited and modern science has all but abandoned the attempt to associate additional energetic properties with life.
It is not the scientific concept of energy that is being referred to in the context of spirituality and alternative medicine. As Brian Dunning writes:
That's all that energy is: a measurement of work capability. But in popular culture, 'energy' has somehow become a noun. "Energy" is often spoken of as if it is a thing unto itself, like a region of glowing power, that can be contained and used. Here's a good test. When you hear the word "energy" used, substitute the phrase "measurable work capability". Does the usage still make sense? Remember, energy itself is not the thing being measured: energy is the measurement of work performed or of potential... Thus, this New Age concept of the body having an "energy field" is fatally doomed. There is no such thing as an energy field; they are two unrelated concepts.
Despite the lack of scientific support, spiritual writers and thinkers have maintained ideas about energy and continue to promote them either as useful allegories or as fact. The field of energy medicine purports to manipulate energy, but there is no credible evidence to support this.
== Conceptual frameworks ==
Esoteric traditions have developed various conceptual models to describe the nature, flow, and function of energy within the human body, the natural world, and the cosmos. These frameworks often include subtle bodies, energy centers, and channels through which energy is believed to move. Many of these ideas are found in religious, mystical, and alternative healing traditions, forming the foundation for practices such as yoga, meditation, alchemy, and energy healing.
The concept of subtle bodies appears across many traditions, referring to layers of existence beyond the physical body. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, the astral body (sūkṣma śarīra) and the causal body (kāraṇa śarīra) are described as non-material sheaths that house consciousness and energy. Theosophy expands on this idea, describing multiple energetic layers such as the etheric body, which is said to interface between the physical and astral realms. The aura, often depicted as a luminous field surrounding the body, is another widely recognized concept in spiritual traditions, believed to reflect an individual’s emotional, mental, and spiritual state.
Energy is often thought to flow through structured pathways within the body. Hindu and Buddhist traditions describe nadis, subtle channels through which prana moves, while Traditional Chinese Medicine speaks of meridians, pathways that distribute qi and regulate bodily functions. Tibetan Buddhism similarly identifies a system of tsa (channels), which direct lung (wind energy) throughout the body. In Western esotericism, alchemists and Hermeticists developed related ideas, proposing that spiritual energy circulates through subtle currents within the human microcosm, mirroring celestial movements.
Energy centers, often referred to as chakras, are believed to serve as focal points where energy gathers and transforms. Hindu and Tantric Buddhist traditions describe a system of seven primary chakras, each corresponding to different aspects of human consciousness and physiology, from the Muladhara (root) chakra at the base of the spine to the Sahasrara (crown) chakra at the top of the head. Each chakra is associated with specific elements, colors, and vibrational frequencies, and practices such as mantra recitation, visualization, and breath control are used to balance these centers. Western occultists, including figures from the Theosophical and Hermetic traditions, have adapted the chakra system into their mystical frameworks.
The role of breath is emphasized in many traditions as a means of controlling and directing energy. In pranayama, controlled breathing techniques regulate prana to cultivate spiritual and physical well-being. Similarly, qi gong and tai chi involve intentional breathwork to guide Qi and harmonize the body’s energy. These practices often intersect with meditation and visualization, creating a bridge between physical exercises and mystical states of awareness.
Another key aspect of esoteric energy frameworks is their connection to consciousness and transformation. Many traditions describe spiritual progress as a refinement of energy, where lower, denser energies are transmuted into higher states of awareness. Alchemical traditions, for example, speak of refining vital energy through symbolic processes like calcination, dissolution, and sublimation, ultimately leading to enlightenment. In Western occultism, energy manipulation is a key principle in ceremonial magic, where the practitioner directs subtle forces through will and intention.
== Locations ==
There are various sacred natural sites that people of different belief systems find numinous or have an "energy" with significance to humans. The idea that some kind of "negative energy" is responsible for creating or attracting ghosts or demons appears in contemporary paranormal culture and beliefs as exemplified in the TV shows Paranormal State and Ghost Hunters.
== See also ==
== References ==
=== Works cited ===
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Media related to Energy (esotericism) at Wikimedia Commons | Wikipedia/Energy_(esotericism) |
Attachment therapy (also called "the Evergreen model", "holding time", "rage-reduction", "compression therapy", "rebirthing", "corrective attachment therapy", "coercive restraint therapy", and "holding therapy") is a pseudoscientific mental health intervention intended to treat attachment disorders in children. During the height of its popularity, the practice was found primarily in the United States; much of it was centered in about a dozen clinics in Evergreen, Colorado, where Foster Cline, one of its founders, established a clinic in the 1970s.
The practice has resulted in adverse outcomes for children, including at least six documented child fatalities. Since the 1990s, there have been a number of prosecutions for deaths or serious maltreatment of children at the hands of "holding therapists" or parents following their instructions. Two of the most well-known cases are those of Candace Newmaker in 2000 and the Gravelles in 2003. Following the associated publicity, some advocates of attachment therapy began to alter views and practices to be less potentially dangerous to children. This change may have been hastened by the publication of a task force report on the subject in January 2006, commissioned by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC), which was largely critical of attachment therapy. In April 2007, ATTACH, an organization originally set up by attachment-based therapists, formally adopted a white paper stating its unequivocal opposition to the use of coercive practices in therapy and parenting, promoting instead newer techniques of attunement, sensitivity and regulation.
Attachment therapy is primarily based on Robert Zaslow's rage-reduction therapy from the 1960s-1970s and on psychoanalytic theories about suppressed rage, catharsis, regression, breaking down of resistance and defence mechanisms. Zaslow and other early proponents such as Nikolas Tinbergen and Martha Welch used it as a treatment for autism, based on the now discredited belief that autism was the result of failures in the attachment relationship with the mother.
This form of treatment differs significantly from attachment-based therapies, as well as talking psychotherapies such as attachment-based psychotherapy and relational psychoanalysis.
== Theory ==
Attachment therapy is a treatment used primarily with fostered or adopted children who have behavioral difficulties, including disobedience and perceived lack of gratitude or affection for their caregivers. The children's problems are ascribed to an inability to bond to their new parents, because of suppressed rage due to past maltreatment and abandonment. Attachment therapy involves a child being firmly held and/or lain upon by therapists or parents. Through this process of restraint and confrontation, therapists seek to produce in the child a range of responses such as rage and despair with the goal of achieving catharsis. In theory, when the child's resistance is overcome and the rage is released, the child is reduced to an infantile state in which he or she can be "re-parented" by methods such as cradling, rocking, bottle feeding and enforced eye contact. The aim is to promote bonding with the new caregivers. Control over the children is usually considered essential, and the therapy is often accompanied by parenting techniques which emphasize obedience. These accompanying parenting techniques are based on the belief that a properly bonded child should comply with parental demands in a manner "fast, snappy and right the first time" and should be "fun to be around". These techniques have been implicated in several child deaths and other harmful effects.
This form of therapy, including diagnosis and accompanying parenting techniques, is not scientifically validated, nor is it considered to be part of mainstream psychology. The form described as "attachment therapy", despite its name, has theoretical foundations inconsistent with those of attachment theory and its guidance is incompatible with the norms of attachment-based therapy.
== Treatment characteristics ==
The controversy, as outlined in the 2006 American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) Task Force Report, has broadly centered around "holding therapy" and coercive, restraining, or aversive procedures. These include deep tissue massage, aversive tickling, punishments related to food and water intake, enforced eye contact, requiring children to submit totally to adult control over all their needs, barring normal social relationships outside the primary caretaker, encouraging children to regress to infant status, reparenting, attachment parenting, or techniques designed to provoke cathartic emotional discharge. Variants of these treatments have carried various labels that change frequently. They may be known as "rebirthing therapy", "compression therapy", "corrective attachment therapy", "the Evergreen model", "holding time", "rage-reduction therapy", or "prolonged parent-child embrace therapy". Some authors critical of this therapeutic approach have used the term Coercive Restraint Therapy. It is this form of treatment for attachment difficulties or disorders which is popularly known as "attachment therapy". Advocates for Children in Therapy, a group that campaigns against attachment therapy, give a list of therapies they state are attachment therapy by another name. They also provide a list of additional therapies used by attachment therapists which they consider to be unvalidated.
Matthew Speltz of the University of Washington School of Medicine describes a typical treatment taken from The Center's material (apparently a replication of the program at the Attachment Center, Evergreen) as follows:
Like Welsh [sic] (1984, 1989), The Center induces rage by physically restraining the child and forcing eye contact with the therapist (the child must lie across the laps of two therapists, looking up at one of them). In a workshop handout prepared by two therapists at The Center, the following sequence of events is described: (1) therapist 'forces control' by holding (which produces child 'rage'); (2) rage leads to child 'capitulation' to the therapist, as indicated by the child breaking down emotionally ('sobbing'); (3) the therapist takes advantage of the child's capitulation by showing nurturance and warmth; (4) this new trust allows the child to accept 'control' by the therapist and eventually the parent. According to The Center's treatment protocol, if the child 'shuts down' (i.e., refuses to comply), he or she may be threatened with detainment for the day at the clinic or forced placement in a temporary foster home; this is explained to the child as a consequence of not choosing to be a 'family boy or girl.' If the child is actually placed in foster care, the child is then required to 'earn the way back to therapy' and a chance to resume living with the adoptive family.
According to the APSAC Task Force,
A central feature of many of these therapies is the use of psychological, physical, or aggressive means to provoke the child to catharsis, ventilation of rage, or other sorts of acute emotional discharge. To do this, a variety of coercive techniques are used, including scheduled holding, binding, rib cage stimulation (e.g., tickling, pinching, knuckling), and/or licking. Children may be held down, may have several adults lie on top of them, or their faces may be held so they can be forced to engage in prolonged eye contact. Sessions may last from 3 to 5 hours, with some sessions reportedly lasting longer ... Similar but less physically coercive approaches may involve holding the child and psychologically encouraging the child to vent anger toward her or his biological parent.
The APSAC Task Force describes how the conceptual focus of these treatments is the child's individual internal pathology and past caregivers rather than current parent-child relationships or current environment. If the child is well-behaved outside the home, the child's doing so is seen as successful manipulation of outsiders rather than as evidence of a problem in the current home or current parent-child relationship. The APSAC Task Force noted that this perspective has its attractions because it relieves the caregivers of responsibility to change aspects of their own behavior and aspirations. Proponents believe that traditional therapies fail to help children with bonding problems because it is impossible to establish a trusting relationship with them. They believe this is because children with bonding problems actively avoid forming genuine relationships. Proponents emphasize the child's resistance to bonding and the need to break it down. In rebirthing and similar approaches, protests of distress from the child are considered to be resistance that must be overcome by more coercion.
Coercive techniques, such as scheduled or enforced holding, may also serve the intended purpose of demonstrating dominance over the child. Establishing total adult control, demonstrating to the child that they have no control, and demonstrating that all of the child's needs are met through the adult, is a central tenet of many controversial attachment therapies. Similarly, many controversial treatments hold that children described as attachment–disordered must be pushed to revisit and relive early trauma. Children may be encouraged to regress to an earlier age where trauma was experienced or be reparented through holding sessions. Other features of holding therapy are the "two-week intensive" course of therapy, and the use of "therapeutic foster parents" with whom the child stays whilst undergoing therapy. According to O'Connor and Zeanah, the "holding" approach would be viewed as intrusive and therefore non-sensitive and counter-therapeutic, in contrast with accepted theories of attachment.
According to Advocates for Children in Therapy,
Attachment Therapy almost always involves extremely confrontational, often hostile confrontation of a child by a therapist or parent (sometimes both). Restraint of the child by more powerful adult(s) is considered an essential part of the confrontation." The purported correction is described as "... to force the children into loving (attaching to) their parents; ... there is a hands-on treatment involving physical restraint and discomfort. Attachment Therapy is the imposition of boundary violations – most often coercive restraint – and verbal abuse on a child, usually for hours at a time; ... Typically, the child is put in a lap hold with the arms pinned down, or alternatively an adult lies on top of a child lying prone on the floor.
Psychiatrist Bruce Perry cites the use of holding therapy techniques by caseworkers and foster parents investigating a Satanic Ritual Abuse case in the late 1980s, early 1990s, as instrumental in obtaining lengthy and detailed alleged "disclosures" from children. In his opinion, using force or coercion on traumatized children simply re-traumatizes them and far from producing love and affection, produces obedience based on fear, as in the trauma bond known as Stockholm syndrome.
=== Parenting techniques ===
Therapists often instruct parents to follow programs of treatment at home, for example obedience-training techniques such as "strong sitting" (frequent periods of required silence and immobility) and withholding or limiting food. Earlier authors sometimes referred to this as "German Shepherd training". In some programs children undergoing the two-week intensive stay with "therapeutic foster parents" for the duration or beyond and the adoptive parents are trained in their techniques.
According to the APSAC Task Force, because it is believed children with bonding problems resist bonding, fight against it and seek to control others to avoid bonding, the child's character flaws must be broken before bonding can occur. According to proponents, their idea of attachment parenting may include keeping the child at home with no social contacts, home schooling, hard labor or meaningless repetitive chores throughout the day, motionless sitting for prolonged periods of time, and control of all food and water intake and bathroom needs. Children described as attachment-disordered are expected by attachment therapists to comply with parental commands "fast and snappy and right the first time", and to always be "fun to be around" for their parents. Deviation from this standard, such as not finishing chores or arguing, is interpreted as a sign of attachment disorder that must be forcibly eradicated. From this perspective, parenting a child with an attachment disorder is a battle, and winning the battle by defeating the child is paramount.
Proper appreciation of total adult control is also considered vital, and information, such as how long a child will be with therapeutic foster parents or what will happen to him or her next, is deliberately withheld. Attachment parenting expert Nancy Thomas states that attachment-disordered children act worse when given information about what is going to occur because they will use the information to manipulate their environment and everyone in it.
In addition to restrictive behavior, parents are advised to provide daily sessions in which older children are treated as if they were babies to create attachment. The child is held in the caregiver's lap, rocked, hugged and kissed, and fed with a bottle and given sweets. These sessions are carried out at the caregiver's wish and not upon the child's request.
Attachment-based parenting is the widely acknowledged to be the opposite of what holding therapy proponents describe. Attachment is an affectionate, mutually satisfying relationship between a child and a caregiver that serves the purpose of making the child feel safe, secure, protected from danger, and comforted especially after exposure to danger. In addition, bonding and attachment involve overlapping concepts but describe different phenomenon.
=== Contrasting attachment theory-based methods ===
In contrast, traditional attachment theory holds that the provision of a safe and predictable environment and caregiver qualities such as sensitivity, responsiveness to children's physical and emotional needs and consistency, support the development of healthy attachment. Therapy based on this viewpoint emphasizes providing a stable environment and taking a calm, sensitive, non-intrusive, non-threatening, patient, predictable, and nurturing approach toward children. Further, as attachment patterns develop within relationships, methods to correct problems with attachment focus on improving the stability and positive qualities of the caregiver-child interactions and relationship. All mainstream interventions with an existing or developing evidential foundation focus on enhancing caregiver sensitivity, creating positive interactions with caregivers, or change of caregiver if that is not possible with existing caregivers. Some interventions focus specifically on increasing caregiver sensitivity in foster parents.
== Theoretical principles ==
Like a number of other alternative mental health treatments for children, attachment therapy is based on some assumptions that differ strongly from the theoretical foundations of other attachment-based therapies. In contrast to traditional attachment theory, the theory of attachment described by attachment therapy proponents is that young children who experience adversity (including maltreatment, loss, separations, adoption, frequent changes in child care, colic or even frequent ear infections) become enraged at a very deep and primitive level. This results in a lack of ability to bond, attach, or to be genuinely affectionate to others. Suppressed or unconscious rage is theorized to prevent the child from forming bonds with caregivers and leads to behavior problems when the rage erupts into unchecked aggression. Such children are said to fail to develop a conscience, to not trust others, to seek control rather than closeness, to resist the authority of caregivers, and to engage in endless power struggles. They are seen as highly manipulative and as trying to avoid true attachments while simultaneously striving to control those around them through manipulation and superficial sociability. Such children are said to be at risk of becoming psychopaths who will go on to engage in very serious delinquent, criminal, and antisocial behaviors if left untreated. The tone in which the attributes of these children are described has been characterized as "demonizing".
Advocates of this treatment also believe that emotional attachment of a child to a caregiver begins during the prenatal period, during which the unborn child is aware of the mother's thoughts and emotions. If the mother is distressed by the pregnancy, especially if she considers abortion, the child responds with distress and anger that continue through postnatal life. If the child is separated from the mother after birth, no matter how early this occurs, the child again feels distress and rage that will block attachment to a foster or adoptive caregiver. To the contrary, attachment research establishes that the attachment system does is not activated until a child is approximately seven months old.
If the child has had a peaceful gestation, but after birth suffers pain or ungratified needs during the first year, attachment will again be blocked. If the child reaches the toddler period safely, but is not treated with strict authority during the second year, according to the so-called "attachment cycle", attachment problems will result. Failure of attachment results in a lengthy list of mood and behavior problems, but these may not be revealed until the child is much older. According to attachment therapist Elizabeth Randolph, attachment problems can be diagnosed even in an asymptomatic child through observation of the child's inability to crawl backward on command.
Critics say holding therapies have been promoted as "attachment" therapies, even though they are more antithetical to than consistent with attachment theory, and not based on attachment theory or research. Indeed, they are considered incompatible. There are many ways in which holding therapy/attachment therapy contradicts Bowlby's attachment theory, e.g. attachment theory's fundamental and evidence-based statement that security is promoted by sensitivity. According to Mary Dozier, "holding therapy does not emanate in any logical way from attachment theory or from attachment research".
== Diagnosis and attachment disorder ==
To the extent that attachment disorders exist or can be diagnosed, holding therapy methods were not recognized in mainstream practice. Prior and Glaser describe two discourses on attachment disorder. One is science-based, found in academic journals and books with careful reference to theory, international classifications and evidence. They list Bowlby, Ainsworth, Tizard, Hodges, Chisholm, O'Connor and Zeanah and colleagues as respected attachment theorists and researchers in the field. The other discourse is found in clinical practice, non-academic literature and on the Internet where claims are made which have no basis in attachment theory and for which there is no empirical evidence. In particular unfounded claims are made as to efficacy of treatments. The Internet is considered essential to the popularization of holding therapy as an "attachment" therapy.
The APSAC Task Force describes the relationship between the proponents of holding therapy and mainstream therapies as polarized. "This polarization is compounded by the fact that holding therapy has largely developed outside the mainstream scientific and professional community and flourishes within its own networks of attachment therapists, treatment centers, caseworkers, and parent support groups. Indeed, proponents and critics of the controversial attachment therapies appear to move in different worlds."
=== Diagnosis lists and questionnaires ===
Both the APSAC Task Force and Prior and Glaser describe the proliferation of alternative "lists" and diagnoses, particularly on the Internet, by proponents of holding therapy, that are not in accord with either DSM or ICD classifications and which are partly based on the unsubstantiated views of Zaslow and Menta and Cline. According to the Task Force, "These types of lists are so nonspecific that high rates of false-positive diagnoses are virtually certain. Posting these types of lists on internet sites that also serve as marketing tools may lead many parents or others to conclude inaccurately that their children have attachment disorders."
Prior and Glaser describe the lists as "wildly inclusive" and state that many of the behaviors in the lists are likely to be the consequences of neglect and abuse rather than located within the attachment paradigm. Descriptions of children are frequently highly pejorative and "demonizing". Examples given from lists of attachment disorder symptoms found on the internet include lying, avoiding eye contact except when lying, persistent nonsense questions or incessant chatter, fascination with fire, blood, gore and evil, food related issues (such as gorging or hoarding), cruelty to animals and lack of conscience. They also give an example from the Evergreen Consultants in Human Behavior which offers a 45-symptom checklist including bossiness, stealing, enuresis and language disorders.
A commonly used diagnostic checklist in attachment therapy is the Randolph Attachment Disorder Questionnaire or "RADQ", which originated at the Institute for Attachment in Evergreen. It is presented not as an assessment of reactive attachment disorder but rather attachment disorder. The checklist includes 93 discrete behaviors, many of which either overlap with other disorders, like Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder or are not related to attachment difficulties. It is largely based on the earlier Attachment Disorder Symptom Checklist which itself shows considerable overlap with even earlier checklists for indicators of sexual abuse. The Attachment Disorder Symptom Checklist includes statements about the parent's feelings toward the child as well as statements about the child's behavior. For example, parental feelings are evaluated through responses to such statements as "Parent feels used" and "is wary of the child's motives if affection is expressed", and "Parents feel more angry and frustrated with this child than with other children". The child's behavior is referred to in such statements as "Child has a grandiose sense of self-importance" and "Child 'forgets' parental instructions or directives". The compiler of the RADQ claims validity by reference to the Attachment Disorder Symptom Checklist. It also purports to diagnose attachment disorder for which there is no classification. A critic has stated that a major problem of the RADQ is that it has not been validated against any established objective measure of emotional disturbance.
=== Patient recruitment ===
In addition to concerns about the use of non-specific diagnostic checklists on the Internet being used as a marketing tool, the Task Force also noted the extreme claims made by proponents as to both the prevalence and effect of attachment disorders. Some proponents suggest most or a high proportion of adopted children are likely to have an attachment or bonding disorder. Statistics on the prevalence of maltreatment are wrongly used to estimate the prevalence of RAD. Problematical or less desirable styles such as insecure or disorganized attachment are conflated with attachment disorder. Children are labeled as "RADs", "RAD-kids" or "RADishes". They are seen as manipulative, dishonest, without conscience and dangerous. Some holding therapy sites predict that attachment-disordered children will grow up to become violent predators or psychopaths unless they receive the treatment proposed. A sense of urgency is created which serves to justify the application of aggressive and unconventional techniques. One site was noted to contain the argument that Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, and Jeffrey Dahmer were examples of children who were attachment-disordered who "did not get help in time". Foster Cline, in his seminal work on holding therapy, Hope for High Risk and Rage Filled Children, uses the example of Ted Bundy.
In answering the question posed as to how a treatment widely regarded by attachment clinicians and researchers as destructive and unethical came to be linked with attachment theory and to be seen as a viable and useful treatment, O'Connor and Nilson cite the use of the Internet to publicize holding therapy and the lack of knowledgeable mainstream professionals or appropriate mainstream treatments or interventions. They set out recommendations for the better dissemination of both understanding of attachment theory and knowledge of the more recent evidence-based treatment options available.
Rachel Stryker in her anthropological study The Road to Evergreen argues that adoptive families of institutionalized children who have difficulties transitioning to a nuclear family are attracted to the Evergreen model despite the controversy, because it legitimises and reanimates the same ideas about family and domesticity as does the adoption process itself, offering renewed hope of "normal" family life. Institutionalized or abused children often do not conform to adopters conceptualizations of family behaviours and roles. The Evergreen model pathologizes the child's behaviour by a medical diagnosis, thus legitimising the family. As well as the promise of working where traditional therapies fail, holding therapy also offers the idea of attachment as a negotiable social contract that can be enforced in order to convert the unsatisfactory adoptee into the "emotional asset" the family requires. By the use of confrontation the model offers the means to condition children to comply with parental expectations. Where the therapy fails to achieve this the fault is attributed to the child's conscious choice to not be a family member, or the child's inability to perform as family material.
=== Contrasting mainstream position ===
Within mainstream practice, disorders of attachment are classified in DSM-5 and ICD-10 as reactive attachment disorder (generally known as RAD), and Disinhibited social engagement disorder. Both classification systems warn against automatic diagnosis based on abuse or neglect. Many symptoms are present in a variety of other more common and more easily treatable disorders. There is as yet no other accepted definition of attachment disorders.
According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) practice parameter published in 2005, the question of whether attachment disorders can be reliably diagnosed in older children and adults has not been resolved. Attachment behaviors used for the diagnosis of RAD change markedly with development and defining analogous behaviors in older children is difficult. There are no substantially validated measures of attachment in middle childhood or early adolescence.
== Prevalence ==
Holding therapy prospered during the 1980s and 1990s as a consequence of both the influx of older adopted orphans from Eastern European and third world countries and the inclusion of reactive attachment disorder in the 1980 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders which attachment therapists adopted as an alternative name for their existing unvalidated diagnosis of attachment disorder.
According to the APSAC Task Force, these therapies are sufficiently prevalent to have prompted position statements or specific prohibitions against using coercion or restraint as a treatment by mainstream professional societies such as: American Psychological Association (Division on Child Maltreatment), National Association of Social Workers (and its Utah Chapter), American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and American Psychiatric Association. The Association for the Treatment and Training in the Attachment of Children, (ATTACh), an organization for professionals and families associated with holding therapy, has also issued statements against coercive practices. Two American states, Colorado and North Carolina, have outlawed rebirthing. There have been professional licensure sanctions against some leading proponents and successful criminal prosecutions and imprisonment of therapists and parents using holding therapy techniques. Despite this, the treatments appear to be continuing among networks of attachment therapists, attachment therapy centers, caseworkers, and adoptive or foster parents. The advocacy group ACT states, "Attachment Therapy is a growing, underground movement for the 'treatment' of children who pose disciplinary problems to their parents or caregivers."
Rachel Stryker in her anthropological study The Road to Evergreen states that attachment therapies "of all stripes" are increasingly popular in the US and that the number of therapists associated with the Evergreen model registering with ATTACh grows each year. She cites the large number of formerly institutionalized domestic and foreign adoptees in the US and the apparently higher risk of disruption of foreign adoptions, of which there were 216,000 between 1998 and 2008.
The practice of holding therapy is not confined to the US. Prior and Glaser cite at least one clinic in the UK. Attachment therapists from the USA have conducted conferences in the UK. The British Association for Adoption and Fostering, (BAAF), has issued an extensive position statement on the subject which covers not only physical coercion but also the underlying theoretical principles. It had been thought, until recently, that therapists calling themselves "attachment therapists" practising in the UK tended to be practising conventional forms of psychotherapy based on attachment theory. In 2009 The British Journal of Social Work accepted an article rehabilitating holding therapy, "To Have and to Hold: Questions about a Therapeutic Service for Children" describing an earlier study involving the Keys Attachment Centre in Rossendale, Lancashire and the surrounding Keys Attachment Homes. In 2012, first-hand accounts from a survivor and a number of professionals provided evidence that the coercive Evergreen model of holding therapy had been systematically used to treat children in Local Authority care within a programme in North West England.
== Developments ==
The APSAC Task Force stated that proponents of holding therapy correctly point out that most critics have never actually observed any of the treatments they criticize or visited any of the centers where the controversial therapies are practiced. Proponents argue that their therapies present no physical risk if undertaken properly and that critics' concerns are based on unrepresentative occurrences and misapplications of techniques, or misunderstanding by parents. Holding is described as gentle or nurturing and it is maintained that intense, cathartic approaches are necessary to help children with attachment disorders. Their evidence for this is primarily clinical experience and testimonials.
According to the APSAC Task Force, there are controversies within the holding therapy community about coercive practices. There has been a move away from coercive and confrontational models towards attunement and emotional regulation amongst some leaders in the field, notably Hughes, Kelly and Popper. A number of therapies are quite different from those that have led to the abuse and deaths of children in much publicized court cases. The Task Force, however, points out that all the therapies, including those using frankly coercive practices, present themselves as humane, respectful and nurturing; therefore caution is advised. Some practitioners condemn the most dangerous techniques but continue to practice other coercive techniques. Others have taken a public stand against coercion. The Task Force was of the view that all could benefit from more transparency and specificity as to how the therapy is behaviorally delivered.
In 2001, 2003 and 2006, ATTACh, an organization set up by Foster Cline and associates, issued a series of statements in which they progressively changed their stance on coercive practices. In 2001, after the death of Candace Newmaker they stated "The child will never be restrained or have pressure put on them in such a manner that would interfere with their basic life functions such as breathing, circulation, temperature, etc." A White Paper, formally accepted in April 2007, "unequivocally state(s) our opposition to the use of coercive practices in therapy and parenting." They acknowledge ATTACh's historical links with catharsis, provocation of rage, and intense confrontation, among other overtly coercive techniques (and indeed continue to offer for sale books by controversial proponents) but state that the organization has evolved significantly away from earlier positions. They state that their recent evolution is due to a number of factors including tragic events resulting from such techniques, an influx of members practicing other techniques such as attunement and a "fundamental shift ... away from viewing these children as driven by a conscious need for control toward an understanding that their often controlling and aggressive behaviors are automatic, learned defensive responses to profoundly overwhelming experiences of fear and terror." While being of the view that authoritative practices are necessary, and that nurturing touch and treatment aimed at the perceived developmental rather than chronological age are an integral part of the therapy, the White Paper promotes the techniques of attunement, sensitivity and regulation and deprecates coercive practices such as enforced holding or enforced eye contact.
== History ==
Matthew Speltz of the University of Washington School of Medicine states that the roots of holding therapy are traceable to psychologist Robert Zaslow and his "Z-process" in the 1970s. Zaslow attempted to force attachment in autistic children by creating rage while holding them against their will. He believed this would lead to a breakdown in their defense mechanisms, making them more receptive to others. Zaslow thought attachment arose when an infant experienced feelings of pain, fear and rage, and then made eye contact with the carer who relieved those feelings. If an infant did not experience this cycle of events by having his fear and rage relieved, the infant would not form an attachment and would not make eye contact with other people. Zaslow believed that creating pain and rage and combining them with eye contact would cause attachment to occur, long after the normal age for such developments. Holding therapies derive from these "rage-reduction" techniques applied by Zaslow. The holding is not used for safety purposes but is initiated for the purpose of provoking strong negative emotions such as fear and anger. The child's release typically depends upon his or her compliance with the therapist's clinical agenda or goals. In 1971, Zaslow surrendered his California psychology license following an injury to a patient during rage-reduction therapy. Zaslow's ideas on the use of the Z-process and holding for autism have been dispelled by research on the genetic/biologic causes of autism.
Zaslow and his "Z-process", a physically rough version of holding therapy, influenced Foster Cline (known as the "father of attachment therapy") and associates at his clinic in Evergreen A key tenet of Zaslow's approach was the notion of "breaking through" a child's defenses—based on the model of ego defenses borrowed from psychoanalytic theory, which critics state has been misapplied. The "breaking through" metaphor was then applied to children whose attachments were thought to be impaired. The clinic, originally called the Youth Behavior Program, was subsequently renamed the Attachment Center at Evergreen.
In 1983, ethologist Nikolas Tinbergen published a book recommending the use of holding therapy by parents as a treatment or "cure" for autistic children. Tinbergen based his ideas on his methods of observational study of birds. Parents were advised to hold their autistic children despite resistance and to endeavor to maintain eye contact and share emotions. Tinbergen believed that autism related to a failure in the bond between mother and child caused by "traumatic influences" and that enforced holding and eye contact could establish such a relationship and rescue the child from autism. Tinbergen's interpretations of autism were without scientific rigor and were contrary to the then growing acceptance that autism had a genetic cause. Despite the lack of a sound theoretical or scientific base, holding therapy as a treatment for autism is still practiced in some parts of the world, notably Europe.
Speltz cites child psychiatrist Martha Welch and her 1988 book, Holding Time, as the next significant development. Like Zaslow and Tinbergen, Welch recommended holding therapy as a treatment for autism. Like Tinbergen, Welch believed autism was caused by the failure of the attachment relationship between mother and child. Mothers were instructed to hold their defiant child, provoking anger and rage, until such time as the child ceased to resist, at which point a bonding process was believed to begin.
Foster Cline and associates at the Attachment Center at Evergreen, Colorado began to promote the use of the same or similar holding techniques with adopted, maltreated children who were said to have an "attachment disorder". This was replicated elsewhere such as at "The Center" in the Pacific Northwest. A number of other clinics arose in Evergreen, Colorado, set up by those involved in or trained at the Attachment Center at Evergreen (renamed the Institute for Attachment and Development in about 2002). These included one set up by Connell Watkins, formerly an associate of Foster Cline at the Attachment Center and its clinical director. Watkins was one of the therapists convicted in the Candace Newmaker case in 2001 in which a child was asphyxiated during a rebirthing process in the course of a two-week holding therapy "intensive". Foster Cline gave up his license and moved to another state following an investigation of a separate holding therapy related incident.
In addition to the notion of "breaking through" defense mechanisms, other metaphors were adopted by practitioners relating to the supposed effects of early deprivation, abuse or neglect on the child's ability to form relationships. These included the idea of the child's development being "frozen" and treatment being required to "unfreeze" development. Practitioners of holding therapy also added some components of Bowlby's attachment theory and the therapy came to be known as attachment therapy. Language from attachment theory is used but descriptions of the practices contain ideas and techniques based on misapplied metaphors deriving from Zaslow and psychoanalysis, not attachment theory. According to Prior and Glaser "there is no empirical evidence to support Zaslow's theory. The concept of suppressed rage has, nevertheless, continued to be a central focus explaining the children's behavior."
Cline's privately published work Hope for high risk and rage filled children also cites family therapist and hypnotherapist Milton Erickson as a source, and reprints parts of a case of Erickson's published in 1961. The report describes the case of a divorced mother with a non-compliant son. Erickson advised the mother to sit on the child for hours at a time and to feed him only on cold oatmeal while she and a daughter ate appetizing food. The child did increase in compliance, and Erickson noted, with apparent approval, that he trembled when his mother looked at him. Cline commented, with respect to this and other cases, that in his opinion all bonds were trauma bonds. According to Cline, it illustrates the three essential components of 1) taking control, 2) the child's expression of rage; and, 3) relaxation and the development of bonding.
In addition, proponents believed that holding induced age regression, enabling a child to make up for physical affection missed earlier in life. Regression is key to the holding therapy approach. In holding therapy, breaking down the child's resistance by confrontational techniques is thought to reduce the child to an infantile state, thus making the child receptive to forming attachment by the application of early parenting behaviors such as bottle feeding, cradling, rocking and eye contact. Some, but by no means all, attachment therapists have used rebirthing techniques to aid regression. The roots of the form of rebirthing used within holding therapy lie in primal therapy (sometimes known as primal scream therapy), another therapy based on beliefs in very early trauma and the transformational nature of age regression. Bowlby explicitly rejected the notion of regression stating "present knowledge of infant and child development requires that a theory of developmental pathways should replace theories that invoke specific phases of development in which it is held a person may become fixated and/or to which he may regress."
According to O'Connor and Nilsen, although other aspects of treatment are applied, the holding component has attracted most attention because proponents believe it is an essential ingredient. They also considered the lack of available and suitable interventions from mainstream professionals as essential to the popularization of holding therapy as an attachment therapy.
In 2003, an issue of Attachment & Human Development was devoted to the subject of attachment therapy with articles by well-known experts in the field of attachment. Attachment researchers and authors condemned it as empirically unfounded, theoretically flawed and clinically unethical. It has also been described as potentially abusive and a pseudoscientific intervention, not based on attachment theory or research, that has resulted in tragic outcomes for children including at least six documented child fatalities. In 2006, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) Task Force reported on the subjects of attachment therapy, reactive attachment disorder, and attachment problems and laid down guidelines for the future diagnosis and treatment of attachment disorders. The APSAC Task Force was largely critical of Attachment Therapy's theoretical base, practices, claims to an evidence base, non-specific symptoms lists published on the internet, claims that traditional treatments do not work and dire predictions for the future of children who do not receive attachment therapy. "Although focused primarily on specific attachment therapy techniques, the controversy also extends to the theories, diagnoses, diagnostic practices, beliefs, and social group norms supporting these techniques, and to the patient recruitment and advertising practices used by their proponents." In 2007, Scott Lilienfeld included holding therapy as one of the potentially harmful therapies (PHT's) at level 1 in his Psychological Science review. Describing it as "unfortunately" referred to as "attachment therapy", Mary Dozier and Michael Rutter consider it critical to differentiate it from treatments derived from attachment theory. A mistaken association between attachment therapy and attachment theory may have resulted in a relatively unenthusiastic view towards the latter among some practitioners despite its relatively profound lines of research in the field of socioemotional development.
== Claims ==
According to the APSAC Task Force, proponents of holding therapy commonly assert that their therapies alone are effective for attachment-disordered children and that traditional treatments are ineffective or harmful. The APSAC Task Force expressed concern over claims by therapies to be "evidence-based", or the only evidence-based therapy, when the Task Force found no credible evidence base for any such therapy so advertised. Nor did it accept more recent claims to evidence base in its November 2006 Reply.
Two approaches on which published studies have been undertaken are holding therapy and dyadic developmental psychotherapy. Each of these non-randomized studies concluded that the treatment method studied was effective. Both the APSAC Task Force and Prior and Glaser cite and criticize the one published study on holding therapy undertaken by Myeroff et al., which "purports to be an evaluation of holding therapy". This study covers the "across the lap" approach, described as "not restraint" by Howe and Fearnley but "being held whilst unable to gain release." Prior and Glaser state that although the Myeroff study claims it is based on attachment theory, the theoretical basis for the treatment is in fact Zaslow.
Dyadic developmental psychotherapy was developed by psychologist Daniel Hughes, described by the Task Force as a "leading attachment therapist". Hughes' website gave a list of attachment therapy techniques, repeated by the APSAC Task Force from an earlier website, which he stated do not or should not form part of dyadic developmental psychotherapy, which the Task Force took as a description of attachment therapy techniques. Two studies on dyadic developmental psychotherapy have been published by Becker-Weidman, the second being a four-year follow up of the first. Prior and Glaser state Hughes' therapy reads as good therapy for abused and neglected children, though with "little application of attachment theory", but the advocacy group ACT and the Task Force place Hughes within the attachment therapy paradigm.
In 2004, Saunders, Berliner and Hanson developed a system of categories for social work interventions which has proved somewhat controversial. In their first analysis, holding therapy was placed in Category 6 as a "Concerning treatment". In 2006 Craven and Lee classified 18 studies in a literature review under the Saunders, Berliner & Hanson system. They considered both dyadic developmental psychotherapy and holding therapy. They placed both in Category 3 as "Supported and acceptable". This categorization by Craven and Lee has been criticized as unduly favorable, a point to which Craven and Lee responded by arguments in support of holding therapy. Both Myeroff et al.'s study and Becker-Weidman's first study (published after the main Report) were examined in the Task Force's November 2006 Reply to Letters and were criticized as to their methodology. Becker-Weidman's study was described by the Task Force as "an important first step toward learning the facts about DDP outcomes" but falling far short of the criteria necessary to constitute an evidence base.
Some studies are still being undertaken on coercive therapies. A non-randomized, before-and-after 2006 pilot study by Welch (the progenitor of "holding time") et al. on Welch's "prolonged parent-child embrace therapy" was conducted on children with a range of diagnoses for behavioral disorders and claimed to show significant improvement.
In March 2007, attachment therapy was placed on a list of treatments that have the potential to cause harm to clients in the APS journal, Perspectives on Psychological Science. Concern was expressed about methods that involve holding and restraint, and the lack of randomized, controlled experiments showing the effectiveness of the treatment.
In 2010 a modest social work study and "invitation to a debate", based on interviews with the deliverers and recipients of a therapeutic intervention incorporating non-coercive holding at one centre in the UK, called for further consideration of the use of this type of intervention. The intervention was not described as "holding therapy" but as using a degree of holding in the course of therapy. Although recipients were generally positive about the therapy received, the holding aspect was the least liked. The authors call for research and a debate on issues of what constitutes "coercion" and the distinctions between the different variants of "holding" in therapy.
== Cases of harm and death ==
There have been a number of cases of serious harm to children, all adopted, while using the therapy. An estimated six children have died as a consequence of the more coercive forms of such treatments or the application of the accompanying parenting techniques.
Andrea Swenson, 1990; a 13-year-old adopted girl undergoing attachment therapy at The Attachment Center, Evergreen, Colorado. She was placed with "therapeutic foster parents". When the insurance company refused to continue to pay for her treatment, the adoptive parents were asked to allow the foster parents to adopt Andrea so that a fresh claim could be made. Andrea, having asked her foster parents what would happen if she took an overdose of drugs or slit her wrist, and been told she would die, took an overdose of aspirin. She was violently ill during the night and was incoherent, breathing heavily and still vomiting in the morning. Nevertheless, the foster parents went bowling, leaving her alone. A visitor found her dead in the hallway. The suit was settled out of court.
Lucas Ciambrone, 1995; a seven-year-old adopted boy who was starved, beaten, bitten and forced to sleep in a stripped bathroom at his parents home in Sarasota, Florida. At the post-mortem he was found to have 200 bruises and five old broken ribs. The adoptive mother was convicted as the abuser and the adoptive father of being aware but doing nothing to prevent it or seek help. Foster Cline gave evidence for both parents claiming Lucas had reactive attachment disorder and that living with such a child was like living "in a situation with the same psychic pressures as those experienced in a concentration camp or cult" and that the parents were in no way responsible for the genesis of Lucas' alleged difficult behaviors. No violent or angry behaviors were reported at school.
David Polreis, 1996; a two-year-old adopted boy who was beaten to death by his adoptive mother. Foster Cline gave evidence for the mother claiming David had reactive attachment disorder. The adoptive mother, supported by attachment therapists practising the Evergreen model, claimed he had beaten himself to death as a consequence of his attachment disorder. She subsequently instead claimed he had attacked her and she had acted in self-defense. David had been diagnosed with attachment disorder by an attachment therapist and was undergoing treatment and accompanying attachment parenting techniques. Mourners at the funeral were asked to contribute to The Attachment Center.
Krystal Tibbets, 1997; a three-year-old adopted child who was killed by her adoptive father using holding therapy techniques he claimed had been taught to him by an attachment therapy center in Midvale, Utah. This was denied by the therapist and the adoptive mother. He lay on top of Krystal, a technique known as "compression therapy", and pushed his fist into her abdomen to release "visceral rage" and to enforce bonding. When she stopped screaming and struggling he believed she had "shut down" as a form of "resistance". After his release from a five-year prison sentence the adoptive father campaigned to have attachment therapy banned.
Candace Newmaker, 2000; a ten-year-old adopted girl who was killed by asphyxiation during a rebirthing session used as part of a two-week attachment therapy "intensive". The two attachment therapists, Connell Watkins (formerly of The Attachment Center, Evergreen) and Julie Ponder were each sentenced to 16 years imprisonment for their part in the therapy during which Candace was wrapped in blankets and required to struggle to be reborn, against the weight of several adults. Her inability to struggle out was interpreted as "resistance". Her adoptive mother and the "therapeutic foster parents" with whom she had been placed received lesser penalties. Watkins was released on parole in August 2008 after serving approximately 7 years of her sentence.
Logan Marr, 2001; a five-year-old child who had been fostered by a Maine state caseworker. While having a tantrum, the screaming girl was buckled into a highchair, wrapped with duct tape, including over her mouth, and left in a basement where she suffocated. The foster mother claimed to have used some attachment therapy ideas and techniques she had picked up when working as a caseworker.
Cassandra Killpack, 2002; a four-year-old adopted child who died from complications of hyponatremia secondary to water intoxication. This apparently occurred when she was restrained in a chair and forced to drink excessive amounts of water by her adoptive parents as part of an "attachment-based" treatment using techniques they claimed had been taught to them at the attachment therapy center where Cassandra was undergoing treatment. It appears this was a punishment for having drunk some of her sister's drink.
Gravelles, 2003; 11 children adopted by Michael and Sharon Gravelle. Ten of the 11 children slept in cages. The case also involved allegations of extreme control over food and toileting and severe punishments for disobedience. The children were home-schooled. Some of the children underwent holding therapy from their attachment therapist and the adoptive parents used accompanying attachment therapy parenting techniques at home. The adoptive parents and therapist were prosecuted and convicted in 2003.
Vasquez, 2007: four adopted children, three of them were kept in cages, fed limited diets, and permitted only primitive sanitary facilities. The fourth child, the favorite, was given medication to delay puberty. The adoptive mother received a prison sentence of less than a year and her parental rights were terminated in 2007. There was no therapist in this case but the adoptive mother claimed that three of her four adopted children had reactive attachment disorder.
Skyler Wilson, 2023: A 2-year-old adopted child who died from hypoxic brain injuries after being "swaddled" and allegedly duct-taped to the floor by his adoptive parents, who referenced Nancy Thomas by name in information provided to the police. A former foster parent also alleged that the adoptive parents performed exorcisms. Jodi and Joseph Wilson are currently awaiting trial.
== See also ==
Attachment-based therapy
Traumatic bonding
Child development
Child abuse
Theraplay
Child of Rage
Death of Candace Newmaker
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Fairlove, Abigail (26 December 2012). "Importance of Strong Sitting for Reactive Attachment Disorder Treatment". Rad Children- Information on Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder ( RAD ). Abigail Fairlove. Archived from the original on 2 May 2014. Retrieved 2 May 2014.
(APSAC Task Force report), Chaffin M, Hanson R, Saunders BE, et al. (2006c), "Report of the APSAC Task Force on attachment therapy, reactive attachment disorder, and attachment problems", Child Maltreat, 11 (1): 76–89, doi:10.1177/1077559505283699, PMID 16382093, S2CID 11443880
Mercer J, Sarner L, Rosa L (2003), Attachment Therapy on Trial: The Torture and Death of Candace Newmaker, Praeger, ISBN 978-0-275-97675-0
O'Connor TG, Nilsen WJ (2005), "Models versus Metaphors in Translating Attachment Theory to the Clinic and Community", in Berlin LJ, Ziv Y, Amaya-Jackson L, Greenberg MT (eds.), Enhancing Early Attachments: Theory, Research, Intervention and Policy, Duke series in child development and public policy, Guilford Press, ISBN 978-1-59385-470-6
Prior V, Glaser D (2006), Understanding Attachment and Attachment Disorders: Theory, Evidence and Practice, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Series, London: Jessica Kingsley, ISBN 978-1-84310-245-8, OCLC 70663735
Zeanah, Charles H.; Chesher, Tessa; Boris, Neil W.; AACAP Committee on Quality Issues (November 2016). "Practice Parameter for the Assessment and Treatment of Children and Adolescents With Reactive Attachment Disorder and Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder". Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 55 (11): 990–1003. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2016.08.004. PMID 27806867.
== External links ==
Advocates for Children in Therapy
Science based medicine
Report of the APSAC Task Force on Attachment Therapy, Reactive Attachment Disorder, and Attachment Problems | Wikipedia/Holding_therapy |
Phantom time conspiracy theory is a pseudohistorical conspiracy theory first asserted by Heribert Illig in 1991. It hypothesizes a conspiracy by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III and Pope Sylvester II to fabricate the Anno Domini dating system retroactively, in order to place them at the special year of AD 1000, and to rewrite history to legitimize Otto's claim to the Holy Roman Empire. Illig believed that this was achieved through the alteration, misrepresentation and forgery of documentary and physical evidence. According to this scenario, the entire Carolingian period, including the figure of Charlemagne, is a fabrication, with a "phantom time" of 297 years (AD 614–911) added to the Early Middle Ages.
Evidence contradicts the hypothesis and it failed to gain the support of historians, and calendars in other European countries, most of Asia and parts of pre-Columbian America contradict this.
== Heribert Illig ==
Illig was born in 1947 in Vohenstrauß, Bavaria. He was active in an association dedicated to Immanuel Velikovsky, catastrophism and historical revisionism, the Gesellschaft zur Rekonstruktion der Menschheits- und Naturgeschichte (English: Society for the Reconstruction of Human and Natural History). From 1989 to 1994 he acted as editor of the journal Vorzeit-Frühzeit-Gegenwart (English: Prehistory-Proto-History-Present). Since 1995, he has worked as a publisher and author under his own publishing company, Mantis-Verlag, and publishing his own journal, Zeitensprünge (English: Leaps in Time). Outside of his publications related to revised chronology, he has edited the works of Egon Friedell.
Before focusing on the early medieval period, Illig published various proposals for revised chronologies of prehistory and of Ancient Egypt. His proposals received prominent coverage in German popular media in the 1990s. His 1996 Das erfundene Mittelalter (English: The Invented Middle Ages) also received scholarly recensions, but was universally rejected as fundamentally flawed by historians.
In 1997, the journal Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften (English: Ethics and Social Sciences) offered a platform for critical discussion to Illig's proposal, with a number of historians commenting on its various aspects.
After 1997, there has been little scholarly reception of Illig's ideas, although they continued to be discussed as pseudohistory in German popular media.
Illig continued to publish on the "phantom time hypothesis" until at least 2013.
Also in 2013, he published on an unrelated topic of art history, on German Renaissance master Anton Pilgram, but again proposing revisions to conventional chronology, and arguing for the abolition of the art historical category of Mannerism.
== Claims ==
Illig's claims include:
That there is a scarcity of archaeological evidence that can be reliably dated to the period AD 614–911.
That the dating methods used for such recent periods, radiometry and dendrochronology, are inaccurate.
That medieval historians rely too much on written sources.
That the presence of Romanesque architecture in tenth-century Western Europe suggests that the Roman era was not as long ago as conventionally thought.
That at the time of the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in AD 1582, there should have been a discrepancy of thirteen days between the Julian calendar and the real (or tropical) calendar, when the astronomers and mathematicians working for Pope Gregory XIII had found that the civil calendar needed to be adjusted by only ten days. From this, Illig concludes that the AD era had counted roughly three centuries which never existed.
== Refutation ==
Observations in ancient astronomy, especially those of solar eclipses cited by European sources prior to 600 AD (when phantom time would have distorted the chronology), agree with the usual chronology and not with Illig's. Besides several others that are perhaps too vague to disprove the phantom time hypothesis, two in particular are dated with enough precision to question the hypothesis. One is reported by Pliny the Elder in 59 AD. This date has a confirmed eclipse. In addition, observations during the Tang dynasty in China, and Halley's Comet, for example, are consistent with current astronomy with no "phantom time" added.
Archaeological remains and dating methods such as dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) refute, rather than support, "phantom time".
The Gregorian reform was never purported to bring the calendar in line with the Julian calendar as it had existed at the time of its institution in 45 BC, but as it had existed in 325 AD, the time of the Council of Nicaea, which had established a method for determining the date of Easter Sunday by fixing the vernal equinox on March 21 in the Julian calendar. By 1582, the astronomical equinox was occurring on March 10 in the Julian calendar, but Easter was still being calculated from a nominal equinox on March 21. In 45 BC the astronomical vernal equinox took place around March 23. Illig's "three missing centuries" thus correspond to the 369 years between the institution of the Julian calendar in 45 BC, and the fixing of the Easter Date at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.
If Charlemagne and the Carolingian dynasty were fabricated, there would have to be a corresponding fabrication of the history of the rest of Europe during the same era, including Anglo-Saxon England, the Papacy, and the Byzantine Empire. The "phantom time" period also encompasses the life of Muhammad and the Islamic expansion into the areas of the former Western Roman Empire, including the conquest of Visigothic Iberia. This history too would have to be forged or drastically misdated. It would also have to be reconciled with the history of the Tang dynasty of China and its contact with the Islamic world, such as at the Battle of Talas.
== Bibliography ==
Publications by Illig:
Egon Friedell und Immanuel Velikovsky. Vom Weltbild zweier Außenseiter, Basel 1985.
Die veraltete Vorzeit, Heribert Illig, Eichborn, 1988
with Gunnar Heinsohn: Wann lebten die Pharaonen?, Mantis, 1990, revised 2003 ISBN 3-928852-26-4
Karl der Fiktive, genannt Karl der Große, 1992
Hat Karl der Große je gelebt? Bauten, Funde und Schriften im Widerstreit, 1994
Hat Karl der Große je gelebt?, Heribert Illig, Mantis, 1996
Das erfundene Mittelalter. Die größte Zeitfälschung der Geschichte, Heribert Illig, Econ 1996, ISBN 3-430-14953-3 (revised ed. 1998)
Das Friedell-Lesebuch, Heribert Illig, C.H. Beck 1998, ISBN 3-406-32415-0
Heribert Illig, with Franz Löhner: Der Bau der Cheopspyramide, Mantis 1998, ISBN 3-928852-17-5
Wer hat an der Uhr gedreht?, Heribert Illig, Ullstein 2003, ISBN 3-548-36476-4
Heribert Illig, with Gerhard Anwander: Bayern in der Phantomzeit. Archäologie widerlegt Urkunden des frühen Mittelalters., Mantis 2002, ISBN 3-928852-21-3
== See also ==
Cultural depictions of Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor
Historical negationism
The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended
Glasgow Chronology
New Chronology (Fomenko)
New Chronology (Rohl)
Revised chronology of Immanuel Velikovsky
Jean Hardouin
Historicity of Muhammad
Simulation hypothesis
== References ==
== Sources ==
Illig, Heribert: Enthält das frühe Mittelalter erfundene Zeit? and subsequent discussion, in: Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften 8 (1997), pp. 481–520.
Schieffer, Rudolf: Ein Mittelalter ohne Karl den Großen, oder: Die Antworten sind jetzt einfach, in: Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 48 (1997), pp. 611–17.
Matthiesen, Stephan: Erfundenes Mittelalter – fruchtlose These!, in: Skeptiker 2 (2002).
== External links ==
Explanation of the "phantom time hypothesis" in English (pdf)
Critique of Illig personal interactions, not his hypothesis in English
A short explanation of the "phantom time hypothesis"
Dunning, Brian (2012-10-16). "Skeptoid #332: The Phantom Time Hypothesis". Skeptoid. | Wikipedia/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory |
Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices which are associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes informally known as the Christian Science church. It was founded in 1879 in New England by Mary Baker Eddy, who wrote the 1875 book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which outlined the theology of Christian Science. The book was originally called Science and Health; the subtitle with a Key to the Scriptures was added in 1883 and later amended to with Key to the Scriptures.
The book became Christian Science's central text, along with the Bible, and by 2001 had sold over nine million copies.
Eddy and 26 followers were granted a charter by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1879 to found the "Church of Christ (Scientist)"; the church would be reorganized under the name "Church of Christ, Scientist" in 1892. The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was built in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1894. Known as the "thinker's religion", Christian Science became the fastest growing religion in the United States, with nearly 270,000 members by 1936 — a figure which had declined to just over 100,000 by 1990 and reportedly to under 50,000 by 2009. The church is known for its newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, which won seven Pulitzer Prizes between 1950 and 2002, and for its public Reading Rooms around the world.
Christian Science's religious tenets differ considerably from many other Christian denominations, including key concepts such as the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, atonement, the resurrection, and the Eucharist. Eddy, for her part, described Christian Science as a return to "primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing". Adherents subscribe to a radical form of philosophical idealism, believing that reality is purely spiritual and the material world an illusion. This includes the view that disease is a mental error rather than physical disorder, and that the sick should be treated not by medicine but by a form of prayer that seeks to correct the beliefs responsible for the illusion of ill health.
The church does not require that Christian Scientists avoid medical care—many adherents use dentists, optometrists, obstetricians, physicians for broken bones, and vaccination when required by law—but maintains that Christian Science prayer is most effective when not combined with medicine. The reliance on prayer and avoidance of medical treatment has been blamed for the deaths of adherents and their children. Between the 1880s and 1990s, several parents and others were prosecuted for, and in a few cases convicted of, manslaughter or neglect.
== Overview ==
=== Metaphysical family ===
Several periods of Protestant Christian revival nurtured a proliferation of new religious movements in the United States. In the latter half of the 19th century, these included what came to be known as the metaphysical family: groups such as Christian Science, Divine Science, the Unity School of Christianity, and (later) the United Church of Religious Science. From the 1890s, the liberal section of the movement became known as New Thought, in part to distinguish it from the more authoritarian Christian Science.
The term metaphysical referred to the movement's philosophical idealism, a belief in the primacy of the mental world. Adherents believed that material phenomena were the result of mental states, a view expressed as "life is consciousness" and "God is mind." The supreme cause was referred to as Divine Mind, Truth, God, Love, Life, Spirit, Principle or Father–Mother, reflecting elements of Plato, Hinduism, Berkeley, Hegel, Swedenborg, and transcendentalism.
The metaphysical groups became known as the mind-cure movement because of their strong focus on healing. Medical practice was in its infancy, and patients regularly fared better without it. This provided fertile soil for the mind-cure groups, who argued that sickness was an absence of "right thinking" or failure to connect to Divine Mind. The movement traced its roots in the United States to Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), a New England clockmaker turned mental healer. His advertising flyer, "To the Sick" included this explanation of his clairvoyant methodology: "he gives no medicines and makes no outward applications, but simply sits down by the patients, tells them their feelings and what they think is their disease. If the patients admit that he tells them their feelings, &c., then his explanation is the cure; and, if he succeeds in correcting their error, he changes the fluids of the system and establishes the truth, or health. The Truth is the Cure. This mode of practise applies to all cases. If no explanation is given, no charge is made, for no effect is produced." Mary Baker Eddy had been a patient of his (1862–1865), leading to debate about how much of Christian Science was based on his ideas.
New Thought and Christian Science differed in that Eddy saw her views as a unique and final revelation. Eddy's idea of malicious animal magnetism (that people can be harmed by the bad thoughts of others) marked another distinction, introducing an element of fear that was absent from the New Thought literature. Most significantly, she dismissed the material world as an illusion, rather than as merely subordinate to Mind, leading her to reject the use of medicine, or materia medica, and making Christian Science the most controversial of the metaphysical groups. Reality for Eddy was purely spiritual.
=== Christian Science theology ===
Christian Science leaders place their religion within mainstream Christian teaching, according to J. Gordon Melton, and reject any identification with the New Thought movement. Eddy was strongly influenced by her Congregationalist upbringing. According to the church's tenets, adherents accept "the inspired Word of the Bible as [their] sufficient guide to eternal Life ... acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God ... [and] acknowledge His Son, one Christ; the Holy Ghost or divine Comforter; and man in God's image and likeness." When founding the Church of Christ, Scientist, in April 1879, Eddy wrote that she wanted to "reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing". Later she suggested that Christian Science was a kind of second coming and that Science and Health was an inspired text. In 1895, in the Manual of the Mother Church, she ordained the Bible and Science and Health as "Pastor over the Mother Church".
Christian Science theology differs in several respects from that of traditional Christianity. Eddy's Science and Health reinterprets key Christian concepts, including the Trinity, divinity of Jesus, atonement, and resurrection; beginning with the 1883 edition, she added "with a Key to the Scriptures" to the title and included a glossary that redefined the Christian vocabulary. At the core of Eddy's theology is the view that the spiritual world is the only reality and is entirely good, and that the material world, with its evil, sickness and death, is an illusion. Eddy saw humanity as an "idea of Mind" that is "perfect, eternal, unlimited, and reflects the divine", according to Bryan Wilson; what she called "mortal man" is simply humanity's distorted view of itself. Despite her view of the non-existence of evil, an important element of Christian Science theology is that evil thought, in the form of malicious animal magnetism, can cause harm, even if the harm is only apparent.
Eddy viewed God not as a person but as "All-in-all". Although she often described God in the language of personhood—she used the term "Father–Mother God" (as did Ann Lee, the founder of Shakerism), and, in the third edition of Science and Health, she referred to God as "she"—God is mostly represented in Christian Science by the synonyms "Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love". The Holy Ghost is Christian Science, and heaven and hell are states of mind. There is no supplication in Christian Science prayer. The process involves the Scientist engaging in a silent argument to affirm to herself the unreality of matter, something Christian Science practitioners will do for a fee, including in absentia, to address ill health or other problems. Wilson writes that Christian Science healing is "not curative ... on its own premises, but rather preventative of ill health, accident and misfortune, since it claims to lead to a state of consciousness where these things do not exist. What heals is the realization that there is nothing really to heal." It is a closed system of thought, viewed as infallible if performed correctly; healing confirms the power of Truth, but its absence derives from the failure, specifically the bad thoughts, of individuals.
Eddy accepted as true the creation narrative in the Book of Genesis up to chapter 2, verse 6—that God created man in his image and likeness—but she rejected the rest "as the story of the false and the material", according to Wilson. Her theology is nontrinitarian: she viewed the Trinity as suggestive of polytheism. She saw Jesus as a Christian Scientist, a "Way-shower" between humanity and God, and she distinguished between Jesus the man and the concept of Christ, the latter a synonym for Truth and Jesus the first person fully to manifest it. The crucifixion was not a divine sacrifice for the sins of humanity, the atonement (the forgiveness of sin through Jesus's suffering) "not the bribing of God by offerings", writes Wilson, but an "at-one-ment" with God. Her views on life after death were vague and, according to Wilson, "there is no doctrine of the soul" in Christian Science: "[A]fter death, the individual continues his probationary state until he has worked out his own salvation by proving the truths of Christian Science." Eddy did not believe that the dead and living could communicate.
To the more conservative of the Protestant clergy, Eddy's view of Science and Health as divinely inspired was a challenge to the Bible's authority. "Eddyism" was viewed as a cult; one of the first uses of the modern sense of the word was in A. H. Barrington's Anti-Christian Cults (1898), a book about Spiritualism, Theosophy and Christian Science. In a few cases Christian Scientists were expelled from Christian congregations, but ministers also worried that their parishioners were choosing to leave. In May 1885 the London Times' Boston correspondent wrote about the "Boston mind-cure craze": "Scores of the most valued Church members are joining the Christian Scientist branch of the metaphysical organization, and it has thus far been impossible to check the defection." In 1907 Mark Twain described the appeal of the new religion to its adherents:
[Mrs. Eddy] has delivered to them a religion which has revolutionized their lives, banished the glooms that shadowed them, and filled them and flooded them with sunshine and gladness and peace; a religion which has no hell; a religion whose heaven is not put off to another time, with a break and a gulf between, but begins here and now, and melts into eternity as fancies of the waking day melt into the dreams of sleep.
They believe it is a Christianity that is in the New Testament; that it has always been there, that in the drift of ages it was lost through disuse and neglect, and that this benefactor has found it and given it back to men, turning the night of life into day, its terrors into myths, its lamentations into songs of emancipation and rejoicing.
There we have Mrs. Eddy as her followers see her. ... They sincerely believe that Mrs. Eddy's character is pure and perfect and beautiful, and her history without stain or blot or blemish. But that does not settle it.
== History ==
=== Mary Baker Eddy and the early Christian Science movement ===
Mary Baker Eddy was born Mary Morse Baker on a farm in Bow, New Hampshire, the youngest of six children in a religious family of Protestant Congregationalists. In common with most women at the time, Eddy was given little formal education, but read widely at home and was privately tutored. From childhood, she lived with protracted ill health. Eddy's first husband died six months after their marriage and three months before their son was born, leaving her penniless; and as a result of her poor health she lost custody of the boy when he was four. She married again, and her new husband promised to become the child's legal guardian, but after their marriage he refused to sign the needed papers and the boy was taken to Minnesota and told his mother had died. Eddy, then known as Mary Patterson, and her husband moved to rural New Hampshire, where Eddy continued to suffer from health problems which often kept her bedridden. Eddy tried various cures for her health problems, including conventional medicine as well as many forms of alternative medicine such as Grahamism, electrotherapy, homeopathy, hydropathy, and finally mesmerism under Phineas Quimby. She was later accused by critics, beginning with Julius Dresser, of borrowing ideas from Quimby in what biographer Gillian Gill would call the "single most controversial issue" of her life.
In February 1866, Eddy fell on the ice in Lynn, Massachusetts. Evidence suggests she had severe injuries, but a few days later she apparently asked for her Bible, opened it to an account of one of Jesus' miracles, and left her bed telling her friends that she was healed through prayer alone. The moment has since been controversial, but she considered this moment one of the "falling apples" that helped her to understand Christian Science, although she said she did not fully understand it at the time.
In 1866, after her fall on the ice, Eddy began teaching her first student and began writing her ideas which she eventually published in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, considered her most important work. Her students voted to form a church called the Church of Christ (Scientist) in 1879, later reorganized as The First Church of Christ, Scientist, also known as The Mother Church, in 1892. She founded the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in 1881 to continue teaching students, Eddy started a number of periodicals: The Christian Science Journal in 1883, the Christian Science Sentinel in 1898, The Herald of Christian Science in 1903, and The Christian Science Monitor in 1908, the latter being a secular newspaper. The Monitor has gone on to win seven Pulitzer prizes as of 2011. She also wrote numerous books and articles in addition to Science and Health, including the Manual of The Mother Church which contained by-laws for church government and member activity, and founded the Christian Science Publishing Society in 1898 in order to distribute Christian Science literature. Although the movement started in Boston, the first purpose-built Christian Science church building was erected in 1886 in Oconto, Wisconsin. During Eddy's lifetime, Christian Science spread throughout the United States and to other parts of the world including Canada, Great Britain, Germany, South Africa, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Australia, and elsewhere.
Eddy encountered significant opposition after she began teaching and writing on Christian Science, which only increased towards the end of her life. One of the most prominent examples was Mark Twain, who wrote a number of articles on Eddy and Christian Science which were first published in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1899 and were later published as a book. Another extended criticism, which again was first serialized in a magazine and then published in book form, was Georgine Milmine and Willa Cather's The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science which first appeared in McClure's magazine in January 1907. Also in 1907, several of Eddy's relatives filed an unsuccessful lawsuit instigated by the New York World, known in the press as the "Next Friends Suit", against members of Eddy's household, alleging that she was mentally unable to manage her own affairs. The suit fell apart after Eddy was interviewed in her home in August 1907 by the judge and two court-appointed masters (one a psychiatrist) who concluded that she was mentally competent. Separately, she was seen by two psychiatrists, including Allan McLane Hamilton, who came to the same conclusion. The McClure's and New York World stories are considered to at least partially be the reason Eddy asked the church in July 1908 to found the Christian Science Monitor as a platform for responsible journalism.
Eddy died two years later, on the evening of Saturday, December 3, 1910, aged 89. The Mother Church announced at the end of the Sunday morning service that Eddy had "passed from our sight". The church stated that "the time will come when there will be no more death," but that Christian Scientists "do not look for [Eddy's] return in this world." Her estate was valued at $1.5 million, most of which she left to the church.
=== The Christian Science movement after 1910 ===
In the aftermath of Eddy's death, some newspapers speculated that the church would fall apart, while others expected it to continue just as it had before. As it was, the movement continued to grow in the first few decades after 1910. The Manual of the Mother Church prohibits the church from publishing membership figures, and it is not clear exactly when the height of the movement was. A 1936 census counted c. 268,915 Christian Scientists in the United States (2,098 per million), and Rodney Stark believes this to be close to the height. However, the number of Christian Science churches continued to increase until around 1960, at which point there was a reversal and, since then, many churches have closed their doors. The number of Christian Science practitioners in the United States began to decline in the 1940s according to Stark. According to J. Gordon Melton, in 1972 there were 3,237 congregations worldwide, of which roughly 2,400 were in the United States; and, in the following ten years, about 200 congregations were closed.
During the years after Eddy's death, the church has gone through a number of hardships and controversies. This included attempts to make practicing Christian Science illegal in the United States and elsewhere; a period known as the Great Litigation which involved two intertwined lawsuits regarding church governance; persecution under the Nazi and Communist regimes in Germany and the Imperial regime in Japan; a series of lawsuits involving the deaths of members of the church, most notably some children; and a controversial decision to publish a book by Bliss Knapp. In conjunction with the Knapp book controversy, there was controversy within the church involving The Monitor Channel, part of The Christian Science Monitor which had been losing money, and which eventually led to the channel shutting down. Acknowledging their earlier mistake, of accepting a multi-million dollar publishing incentive to offset broadcasting losses, The Christian Science Board Of Directors, with the concurrence of the Trustees Of The Christian Science Publishing Society, withdrew Destiny Of The Mother Church from publication in September 2023. In addition, it has since its beginning been branded as a cult by more fundamentalist strains of Christianity, and attracted significant opposition as a result. A number of independent teachers and alternative movements of Christian Science have emerged since its founding, but none of these individuals or groups have achieved the prominence of the Christian Science church.
Despite the hardships and controversies, many Christian Science churches and Reading Rooms remain in existence around the world, and, in recent years, there have been reports of the religion growing in Africa, though it remains significantly behind other evangelical groups. The Christian Science Monitor also remains a well-respected non-religious paper which is especially noted for its international reporting and lack of partisanship.
== Healing practices ==
=== Christian Science prayer ===
[A]ll healing is a metaphysical process. That means that there is no person to be healed, no material body, no patient, no matter, no illness, no one to heal, no substance, no person, no thing and no place that needs to be influenced. This is what the practitioner must first be clear about.
Christian Scientists avoid almost all medical treatment, relying instead on Christian Science prayer. This consists of silently arguing with oneself; there are no appeals to a personal god, and no set words. Caroline Fraser wrote in 1999 that the practitioner might repeat: "the allness of God using Eddy's seven synonyms—Life, Truth, Love, Spirit, Soul, Principle and Mind," then that "Spirit, Substance, is the only Mind, and man is its image and likeness; that Mind is intelligence; that Spirit is substance; that Love is wholeness; that Life, Truth, and Love are the only reality." She might deny other religions, the existence of evil, mesmerism, astrology, numerology, and the symptoms of whatever the illness is. She concludes, Fraser writes, by asserting that disease is a lie, that this is the word of God, and that it has the power to heal.
Christian Science practitioners are certified by the Church of Christ, Scientist, to charge a fee for Christian Science prayer. There were 1,249 practitioners worldwide in 2015; in the United States in 2010 they charged $25–$50 for an e-mail, telephone or face-to-face consultation. Their training is a two-week, 12-lesson course called "primary class", based on the Recapitulation chapter of Science and Health. Practitioners wanting to teach primary class take a six-day "normal class", held in Boston once every three years, and become Christian Science teachers. There are also Christian Science nursing homes. They offer no medical services; the nurses are Christian Scientists who have completed a course of religious study and training in basic skills, such as feeding and bathing.
The Christian Science Journal and Christian Science Sentinel publish anecdotal healing testimonials (they published 53,900 between 1900 and April 1989), which must be accompanied by statements from three verifiers: "people who know [the testifier] well and have either witnessed the healing or can vouch for [the testifier's] integrity in sharing it". Philosopher Margaret P. Battin wrote in 1999 that the seriousness with which these testimonials are treated by Christian Scientists ignores factors such as false positives caused by self-limiting conditions. Because no negative accounts are published, the testimonials strengthen people's tendency to rely on anecdotes. A church study published in 1989 examined 10,000 published testimonials, 2,337 of which the church said involved conditions that had been medically diagnosed, and 623 of which were "medically confirmed by follow-up examinations". The report offered no evidence of the medical follow-up. The Massachusetts Committee for Children and Youth listed among the report's flaws that it had failed to compare the rates of successful and unsuccessful Christian Science treatment.
Nathan Talbot, a church spokesperson, told the New England Journal of Medicine in 1983 that church members were free to choose medical care, but according to former Christian Scientists those who do may be ostracized. In 2010 the New York Times reported church leaders as saying that, for over a year, they had been "encouraging members to see a physician if they feel it is necessary", and that they were repositioning Christian Science prayer as a supplement to medical care, rather than a substitute. The church has lobbied to have the work of Christian Science practitioners covered by insurance.
As of 2015, it was reported that Christian Scientists in Australia were not advising anyone against vaccines, and the religious exception was deemed "no longer current or necessary". In 2021, a church Committee on Publication reiterated that although vaccination was an individual choice, that the church did not dictate against it, and those who were not vaccinated did not do so because of any "church dogma".
== Church of Christ, Scientist ==
=== Governance ===
In the hierarchy of the Church of Christ, Scientist, only the Mother Church in Boston, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, uses the definite article in its name. Otherwise the first Christian Science church in any city is called First Church of Christ, Scientist, then Second Church of Christ, Scientist, and so on, followed by the name of the city (for example, Third Church of Christ, Scientist, London). When a church closes, the others in that city are not renamed.
Founded in April 1879, the Church of Christ, Scientist is led by a president and five-person board of directors. There is a public-relations department, known as the Committee on Publication, with representatives around the world; this was set up by Eddy in 1898 to protect her own and the church's reputation. The church was accused in the 1990s of silencing internal criticism by firing staff, delisting practitioners and excommunicating members.
The church's administration is headquartered on Christian Science Center on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Huntington Avenue, located on several acres in the Back Bay section of Boston. The 14.5-acre site includes the Mother Church (1894), Mother Church Extension (1906), the Christian Science Publishing Society building (1934)—which houses the Mary Baker Eddy Library and the church's administrative staff—the Sunday School building (1971), and the Church Colonnade building (1972). It also includes the 26-story Administration Building (1972), designed by Araldo Cossutta of I. M. Pei & Associates, which until 2008 housed the administrative staff from the church's 15 departments. There is also a children's fountain and a 690 ft × 100 ft (210 m × 30 m) reflecting pool.
=== Manual of The Mother Church ===
Eddy's Manual of The Mother Church (first published 1895) lists the church's by-laws. Requirements for members include daily prayer and daily study of the Bible and Science and Health. Members must subscribe to church periodicals if they can afford to, and pay an annual tax to the church of not less than one dollar.
Prohibitions include engaging in mental malpractice; visiting a store that sells "obnoxious" books; joining other churches; publishing articles that are uncharitable toward religion, medicine, the courts or the law; and publishing the number of church members. The manual also prohibits engaging in public debate about Christian Science without board approval, and learning hypnotism. It includes "The Golden Rule": "A member of The Mother Church shall not haunt Mrs. Eddy's drive when she goes out, continually stroll by her house, or make a summer resort near her for such a purpose."
=== Services ===
The Church of Christ, Scientist is a lay church which has no ordained clergy or rituals, and performs no baptisms; with clergy of other faiths often performing marriage or funeral services since they have no clergy of their own. Its main religious texts are the Bible and Science and Health. Each church has two Readers, who read aloud a "Bible lesson" or "lesson sermon" made up of selections from those texts during the Sunday service, and a shorter set of readings to open Wednesday evening testimony meetings. In addition to readings, members offer testimonials during the main portion of the Wednesday meetings, including recovery from ill health attributed to prayer. There are also hymns, time for silent prayer, and repeating together the Lord's Prayer at each service.
=== Notable members ===
Notable adherents of Christian Science have included Directors of Central Intelligence William H. Webster and Admiral Stansfield M. Turner; and Richard Nixon's chief of staff H. R. Haldeman and Chief Domestic Advisor John Ehrlichman. The viscounts Waldorf and Nancy Astor, the latter of whom was the first female member of British Parliament, were both Christian Scientists; as were two other early women in Parliament, Thelma Cazalet-Keir and Margaret Wintringham. Thelma's brother Victor Cazalet was also a member of the church. Another was naval officer Charles Lightoller, who survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Other adherents in the United States government also include Senator Jocelyn Burdick, Governor Scott McCallum, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. A number of suffragists were Christian Scientists including Vida Goldstein, Muriel Matters, and Nettie Rogers Shuler. Businesswomen Martha Matilda Harper and Bette Nesmith Graham were both Christian Scientists. As was the founder of the Braille Institute of America, J. Robert Atkinson.
In sports, Harry Porter, Harold Bradley Jr., and George Sisler were all adherents. Christian Scientists within the film industry, include Carol Channing and Jean Stapleton; Colleen Dewhurst; Joan Crawford, Doris Day, George Hamilton, Mary Pickford, Ginger Rogers, Mickey Rooney; Horton Foote; King Vidor; Robert Duvall, and Val Kilmer. Those raised by Christian Scientists include jurist Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg; Ellen DeGeneres, Henry Fonda, Audrey Hepburn; James Hetfield, Marilyn Monroe, Robin Williams, Elizabeth Taylor, and Anne Archer. Four prominent African American entertainers who have been associated with Christian Science are Pearl Bailey, Lionel Hampton, Everett Lee, and Alfre Woodard.
=== Christian Science Publishing Society ===
The Christian Science Publishing Society publishes several periodicals, including the Christian Science Monitor, winner of seven Pulitzer Prizes between 1950 and 2002. This had a daily circulation in 1970 of 220,000, which by 2008 had contracted to 52,000. In 2009 it moved to a largely online presence with a weekly print run. In the 1980s the church produced its own television programs, and in 1991 it founded a 24-hour news channel, which closed with heavy losses after 13 months.
The church also publishes the weekly Christian Science Sentinel, the monthly Christian Science Journal, and the Herald of Christian Science, a non-English publication. In April 2012 JSH-Online made back issues of the Journal, Sentinel and Herald available online to subscribers.
=== Works by Mary Baker Eddy ===
== See also ==
Affirmative prayer – form of prayer that focuses on a positive outcomePages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback
Faith healing – Prayer and gestures perceived to bring divine intervention in physical healing
New religious movement – Religious community or spiritual group of modern origin
New Thought – 19th-century American spiritual movement
Principia College – Private liberal arts college in Elsah, Illinois, U.S.
Therapeutic nihilism – View that medical treatment is futile
Third Great Awakening – Period of religious activism in American history
== Citations ==
=== Notes ===
=== References ===
=== Sources ===
Bates, Ernest S.; Dittemore, John V. (1932). Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition. New York: A. A. Knopf.
Beasley, Norman (1956). The Continuing Spirit. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce.
Fraser, Caroline (1999). God's Perfect Child. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Fuller, Linda K. (2011). The Christian Science Monitor: An Evolving Experiment in Journalism. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-31337994-9. Archived from the original on 2022-11-01.
Gardner, Martin (August 22, 1999). "Mind Over Matter". Los Angeles Times.
Gill, Gillian (1998). Mary Baker Eddy. Reading, MA: Perseus Books. ISBN 978-0-73820042-2.
Gottschalk, Stephen (2006). Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy's Challenge to Materialism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Knee, Stuart E. (1994). Christian Science in the Age of Mary Baker Eddy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0-31328360-4.
Koestler-Grack, Rachel A. (2004). Mary Baker Eddy. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 978-0-79107866-2.
Margolick, David (August 6, 1990). "In Child Deaths, a Test for Christian Science". The New York Times.
Melton, J. Gordon (1992). Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America. New York: Garland Pub.
Milmine, Georgine; Cather, Willa (1909). The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science. New York: Doubleday.
Peel, Robert (1971). Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 9780030867002.
Voorhees, Amy B. (2021). A New Christian Identity: Christian Science Origins and Experience in American Culture. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
== Further reading ==
Church histories
(chronological)
Books by former Christian Scientists
== External links ==
Plainfield Christian Science Church, Independent—A part of the Christian Science movement, independent from the Mother Church in Boston | Wikipedia/Christian_Science |
Free energy suppression (or new energy suppression) is a conspiracy theory that technologically viable, pollution-free, no-cost energy sources are being suppressed by governments, corporations, or advocacy groups. Devices allegedly suppressed include perpetual motion machines, cold fusion generators, torus-based generators, reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology, anti-gravity propulsion systems, and other generally unproven or physically impossible, low-cost energy sources.
== Claims ==
The alleged suppression (or weakening) of the technology is claimed to have occurred since the mid-19th century and allegedly perpetrated by various government agencies, corporate powers, special interest groups, and fraudulent inventors. The special interest groups are usually claimed to be associated with the fossil fuel or nuclear industry, whose business model would be threatened.
Claims of suppression include:
The claim that the scientific community has controlled and suppressed research into alternative avenues of energy generation via the institutions of peer review and academic pressure.
The claim that devices exist which are capable of extracting significant and usable power from pre-existing unconventional energy reservoirs, such as the quantum vacuum zero point energy, for little or no cost, but are being suppressed.
The claim that related patents have been bought up, such as those for 100 mpg carburetors.
Some people who have been claimed to be suppressed, harassed, or killed for their research are Stanley Meyer,
Eugene Mallove,
and Nikola Tesla. Free energy proponents claim that Tesla developed a system (the Wardenclyffe Tower) that could generate unlimited energy for free. His system was only intended to transmit energy for free; the system's energy would still need to be generated through conventional means.
Proponents of the conspiracy theory include Gary McKinnon, a Scottish computer hacker who unlawfully accessed computer systems to look for evidence of a secret free energy device.
Followers of the Tartaria conspiracy theory believe an advanced civilization called Tartaria destroyed by a "mud flood" now covered up by the world's governments once had free wireless energy.
== See also ==
Disclosure (ufology)
Gravitational energy
Invention Secrecy Act
List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
Potential cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Barkun, Michael (2003). A culture of conspiracy – Apocalyptic visions in contemporary America. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23805-2. | Wikipedia/Free_energy_suppression_conspiracy_theory |
Claims of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism have been extensively investigated and found to be false. The link was first suggested in the early 1990s and came to public notice largely as a result of the 1998 Lancet MMR autism fraud, characterised as "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". The fraudulent research paper, authored by Andrew Wakefield and published in The Lancet, falsely claimed the vaccine was linked to colitis and autism spectrum disorders. The paper was retracted in 2010 but is still cited by anti-vaccine activists.
The claims in the paper were widely reported, leading to a sharp drop in vaccination rates in the UK and Ireland. Promotion of the claimed link, which continues in anti-vaccination propaganda despite being refuted, has led to an increase in the incidence of measles and mumps, resulting in deaths and serious permanent injuries. Following the initial claims in 1998, multiple large epidemiological studies were undertaken. Reviews of the evidence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences, the UK National Health Service, and the Cochrane Library all found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Physicians, medical journals, and editors have described Wakefield's actions as fraudulent and tied them to epidemics and deaths.
An investigation by journalist Brian Deer found that Wakefield, the author of the original research paper linking the vaccine to autism, had multiple undeclared conflicts of interest, had manipulated evidence, and had broken other ethical codes. The Lancet paper was partially retracted in 2004 and fully retracted in 2010, when Lancet's editor-in-chief Richard Horton described it as "utterly false" and said that the journal had been deceived. Wakefield was found guilty by the General Medical Council of serious professional misconduct in May 2010 and was struck off the Medical Register, meaning he could no longer practise as a physician in the UK. In January 2011, Deer published a series of reports in the British Medical Journal, which in a signed editorial stated of the journalist, "It has taken the diligent scepticism of one man, standing outside medicine and science, to show that the paper was in fact an elaborate fraud." The scientific consensus is that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism and that the vaccine's benefits greatly outweigh its potential risks.
== Background ==
=== Revaccination campaign ===
In the wake of the measles outbreaks, which occurred in England in 1992, and on the basis of analyses of seroepidemiological data combined with mathematical modeling, British Health authorities predicted a major resurgence of measles in school-age children. Two strategies were then examined: either to target vaccination at all children without a history of prior measles vaccination or to immunize all children irrespective of vaccination history. In November 1994, the latter option was chosen and a national measles and rubella vaccination campaign, described as "one of the most ambitious vaccination initiatives that Britain has undertaken" was commenced: within one month, 92% of the 7.1 million schoolchildren in England aged 5–16 years received measles and rubella (MR) vaccine.
=== MMR litigation starts ===
In April 1994, Richard Barr, a solicitor, succeeded in winning legal aid for the pursuit of a class action lawsuit against the manufacturers of MMR vaccines under the UK Consumer Protection Act 1987. The class action case was aimed at Aventis Pasteur, SmithKline Beecham, and Merck, manufacturers respectively of Immravax, Pluserix-MMR and MMR II. This suit, based on a claim that MMR is a defective product and should not have been used, was the first big class action lawsuit funded by the Legal Aid Board (which became the Legal Services Commission, which in turn was replaced by the Legal Aid Agency) after its formation in 1988. Noticing two publications from Andrew Wakefield that explored the role of measles virus in Crohn's disease and inflammatory bowel disease, Barr contacted Wakefield for his expertise. According to Wakefield supporters, the two men first met on 6 January 1996. The Legal Services Commission halted proceedings in September 2003, citing a high probability of failure based on the medical evidence, bringing an end to the first case of research funding by the LSC.
== 1998 The Lancet paper ==
Wakefield's paper "Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children" was published in The Lancet on 28 February 1998. An investigation by journalist Brian Deer found that Wakefield had multiple undeclared conflicts of interest, had manipulated evidence, and had broken other ethical codes. Based on Deer's findings, Peter N. Steinmetz summarizes six fabrications and falsifications in the paper itself and in Wakefield's response in the areas of findings of non-specific colitis; behavioral symptoms; findings of regressive autism; ethics consent statement; conflict of interest statement; and methods of patient referral. The Lancet paper was partially retracted in 2004 and fully retracted in 2010, when The Lancet's editor-in-chief Richard Horton described it as "utterly false" and said that the journal had been deceived. Wakefield was found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council in May 2010 and was struck off the Medical Register, barring him from practicing medicine in the UK. In 2011, Deer provided further information on Wakefield's improper research practices to the British Medical Journal, which in a signed editorial described the original paper as fraudulent.
The scientific consensus is that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism and that the vaccine's benefits greatly outweigh its risks. However, by the time that scientists had shown the narrative to be false, it had become part of the lay understanding of autism. The narrative was easy to understand and apparently consistent with anecdotal evidence of children receiving autism diagnoses shortly after having been vaccinated.
By the time it was retracted, all authors other than Wakefield had requested their names be removed from the publication.
Fiona Godlee, editor of The BMJ, said in January 2011:
The original paper has received so much media attention, with such potential to damage public health, that it is hard to find a parallel in the history of medical science. Many other medical frauds have been exposed but usually more quickly after publication and on less important health issues.
== Media role ==
Observers have criticized the involvement of mass media in the controversy, what is known as 'science by press conference', alleging that the media provided Wakefield's study with more credibility than it deserved. A March 2007 paper in BMC Public Health by Shona Hilton, Mark Petticrew, and Kate Hunt postulated that media reports on Wakefield's study had "created the misleading impression that the evidence for the link with autism was as substantial as the evidence against" through an attempt to create "balanced reporting". Earlier papers in Communication in Medicine and British Medical Journal concluded that media reports provided a misleading picture of the level of support for Wakefield's hypothesis.
A 2007 editorial in Australian Doctor complained that some journalists had continued to defend Wakefield's study even after The Lancet had published the retraction by 10 of the study's 12 original authors, but noted that it was an investigative journalist, Brian Deer, who had played a leading role in exposing weaknesses in the study. PRWeek noted that after Wakefield was removed from the general medical register for misconduct in May 2010, 62% of respondents to a poll regarding the MMR controversy stated they did not feel that the media conducted responsible reporting on health issues.
A New England Journal of Medicine article examining the history of anti-vaccine activists said that opposition to vaccines has existed since the 19th century, but "now the antivaccinationists' media of choice are typically television and the Internet, including its social media outlets, which are used to sway public opinion and distract attention from scientific evidence". The editorial characterized anti-vaccine activists as people who "tend toward complete mistrust of government and manufacturers, conspiratorial thinking, denialism, low cognitive complexity in thinking patterns, reasoning flaws, and a habit of substituting emotional anecdotes for data", including people who range from those "unable to understand and incorporate concepts of risk and probability into science-grounded decision making" and those "who use deliberate mistruths, intimidation, falsified data, and threats of violence".
In a January 2011 editorial in The American Spectator, Robert M. Goldberg contended that evidence from the scientific community of issues with Wakefield's research "were undermined because the media allowed Wakefield and his followers to discredit the findings just by saying so".
Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus, also partly blames the media for presenting a false balance between scientific evidence and people's personal experiences: "Reporting fell into this 'on the one hand, on the other hand' fallacy, this notion that if you have two sides that are disagreeing, that means that you should present both of them with equal weight."
Concerns have also been raised over the journal peer review system, which largely relies on trust among researchers, and the role of journalists reporting on scientific theories that they "are hardly in a position to question and comprehend". Neil Cameron, a historian who specializes in the history of science, writing for the Montreal Gazette, labeled the controversy a "failure of journalism" that resulted in unnecessary deaths, saying that: 1) The Lancet should not have published a study based on "statistically meaningless results" from only 12 cases; 2) the anti-vaccination crusade was continued by the satirical Private Eye magazine; and 3) a grapevine of worried parents and "nincompoop" celebrities fueled the widespread fears. The Gazette also reported that:
There is no guarantee that debunking the original study is going to sway all parents. Medical experts are going to have to work hard to try to undo the damage inflicted by what is apparently a rogue medical researcher whose work was inadequately vetted by a top-ranked international journal.
=== Folk epidemiology ===
Folk epidemiology of autism refers to the popular beliefs about the origin of autism. Without direct informed knowledge of autism, a complex disorder, members of the public are easily influenced by rumors and misinformation presented in the mass media and repeated on social media and the internet.
These misinformed beliefs persist even when contradicted by scientific evidence. Folk epidemiology persists because people seek, receive, and preferentially believe information that is consistent with their existing views; misjudge the reliability of their sources of information, and are misled by anecdotal evidence; and tend not to revise their opinions even when their original sources of information are shown to be wrong.
A June 2024 report in Ars Technica discusses recent research into popular beliefs about vaccines and autism in the US, finding lack of awareness of the CDC's clear stance against vaccines as a cause of autism. The article cites an April 2024 survey in which, "24 percent of US adults denied or disputed that the CDC ever said that", a result little changed from 2018. It also reports that a small but non-trivial percentage of Americans believe the vaccine definitely or probably causes autism (rising from 9% in 2021 to 10% in 2023). The research mainly comes from surveys by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
== Litigation ==
During the 1980s and 1990s, a number of lawsuits were brought against manufacturers of vaccines, alleging the vaccines had caused physical and mental disorders in children. While these lawsuits were unsuccessful, they did lead to a large jump in the costs of the MMR vaccine, and pharmaceutical companies sought legislative protections. In 1993, Merck KGaA became the only company willing to sell MMR vaccines in the United States and the United Kingdom.
=== Italy ===
In June 2012, a local court in Rimini, Italy, ruled that the MMR vaccination had caused autism in a 15-month-old boy. The court relied heavily on the discredited Lancet paper and largely ignored the scientific evidence presented to it. The decision was appealed. On 13 February 2015, the decision was overturned by a Court of Appeals in Bologna.
=== Japan ===
The MMR scare caused a low percentage of mumps vaccination (less than 30%), which resulted in outbreaks in Japan. There were up to 2002 measles-caused deaths in Japan while there were none in the UK, but the extra deaths were attributed to Japan's application of the vaccine at a later age. A spokesman for the Ministry of Health said that the discontinuation had no effect in measles, but also mentioning that there were more deaths by measles while MMR was being used. In 1994 the government dropped the vaccination requirement for measles and rubella due to the 1993 MMR scare.: 2 It has been called a "measles exporter" by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As another consequence of the scare, in 2003, 7 million schoolchildren had not been vaccinated against rubella.
Autism rates continued to rise in Japan after the discontinuation of the MMR vaccine, which disproves any large-scale effect of vaccination, and means that the withdrawal of MMR in other countries is unlikely to cause a reduction in autism cases. The Japanese government does not recognize any link between MMR and autism. By 2003 it was still trying to find a combined vaccine to replace MMR.
It was later discovered that some of the vaccines were administered after their expiry date and that the MMR compulsory vaccination was only retracted after the death of three children and more than 2000 reports of adverse effects. By 1993 the Japanese government had paid $160,000 in compensation to the families of each of the three dead children. Other parents received no compensation because the government said that it was unproven that the MMR vaccine had been the cause; they decided to sue the manufacturer instead of the government. The Osaka district court ruled on 13 March 2003 that the death of two children (among numerous other serious conditions) had been indeed caused by Japan's strain of Urabe MMR. In 2006, the Osaka High Court stated in another ruling that the state was responsible for failing to properly supervise a manufacturer of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, which caused severe side effects in children.
=== United Kingdom ===
Commenced before the Civil Procedure Rules were promulgated, the MMR Litigation had its status as group litigation achieved by the then Lord Chief Justice's practice direction of 8 July 1999. On 8 June 2007, the High Court judge, Justice Keith, put an end to the group litigation because the withdrawal of legal aid by the legal services commission had made the pursuit of most of the claimants impossible. He ruled that all but two claims against pharmaceutical companies must be discontinued. The judge stressed that his ruling did not amount to a rejection of any of the claims that MMR had seriously damaged the children concerned.
A pressure group, JABS (Justice, Awareness and Basic Support), was established to represent families with children who, their parents said, were "vaccine-damaged". £15 million in public legal aid funding was spent on the litigation, of which £9.7 million went to solicitors and barristers, and £4.3 million to expert witnesses.
=== United States ===
The omnibus autism proceeding (OAP) is a coordinated proceeding before the Office of Special Masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims—commonly called the vaccine court. It is structured to facilitate the handling of nearly 5000 vaccine petitions involving claims that children who have received certain vaccinations have developed autism. The Petitioners' Steering Committee have claimed that MMR vaccines can cause autism, possibly in combination with thiomersal-containing vaccines. In 2007 three test cases were presented to test the claims about the combination; these cases failed. The vaccine court ruled against the plaintiffs in all three cases, stating that the evidence presented did not validate their claims that vaccinations caused autism in these specific patients or in general.
In some cases, the plaintiffs' attorneys opted out of the Omnibus Autism Proceedings, which were concerned solely with autism, and issues concerned with bowel disorders; they argued their cases in the regular vaccine court.
On 30 July 2007, the family of Bailey Banks, a child with pervasive developmental delay, won its case versus the Department of Health and Human Services. In a case listed as relating to "non-autistic developmental delay", Special Master Richard B. Abell ruled that the Banks had successfully demonstrated, "the MMR vaccine at issue actually caused the conditions from which Bailey suffered and continues to suffer." In his conclusion, he ruled that he was satisfied that MMR had caused a brain inflammation called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM). He reached this conclusion because of two vaccine cases in 1994 and 2001, which had concluded, "ADEM can be caused by natural measles, mumps, and rubella infections, as well as by measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines."
In other cases, attorneys did not claim that vaccines caused autism; they sought compensation for encephalopathy, encephalitis, or seizure disorders.
== Research ==
The number of reported cases of autism increased dramatically in the 1990s and early 2000s. This increase is largely attributable to changes in diagnostic practices; it is not known how much, if any, growth came from real changes in autism's prevalence, and no causal connection to the MMR vaccine has been demonstrated.
In 2004, a meta review financed by the European Union assessed the evidence given in 120 other studies and considered unintended effects of the MMR vaccine, concluding that although the vaccine is associated with positive and negative side effects, a connection between MMR and autism was "unlikely". Also in 2004, a review article was published that concluded, "The evidence now is convincing that the measles–mumps–rubella vaccine does not cause autism or any particular subtypes of autistic spectrum disorder." A 2006 review of the literature regarding vaccines and autism found "[t]he bulk of the evidence suggests no causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism." A 2007 case study used the figure in Wakefield's 1999 letter to The Lancet alleging a temporal association between MMR vaccination and autism to illustrate how a graph can misrepresent its data, and gave advice to authors and publishers to avoid similar misrepresentations in the future. A 2007 review of independent studies performed after the publication of Wakefield et al.'s original report found that the studies provided compelling evidence against the hypothesis that MMR is associated with autism. A review of the work conducted in 2004 for UK court proceedings but not revealed until 2007 found that the polymerase chain reaction analysis essential to the Wakefield et al. results was fatally flawed due to contamination, and that it could not have possibly detected the measles that it was supposed to have detected. A 2009 review of studies on links between vaccines and autism discussed the MMR vaccine controversy as one of three main hypotheses that epidemiological and biological studies failed to support.
In 2012, the Cochrane Library published a review of dozens of scientific studies involving about 14,700,000 children, which found no credible evidence of an involvement of MMR with either autism or Crohn's disease. The article was updated in 2020 and again in 2021, with the authors stating, "We have observed an improvement in the quality of the design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR and MMRV in recent years both pre- and post-marketing." A June 2014 meta-analysis involving more than 1.25 million children found "vaccinations are not associated with the development of autism or autism spectrum disorder. Furthermore, the components of the vaccines (thimerosal or mercury) or multiple vaccines (MMR) are not associated with the development of autism or autism spectrum disorder." In July 2014, a systematic review found "strong evidence that MMR vaccine is not associated with autism", and in March 2019, a large-scale study conducted by Statens Serum Institut following over 650,000 children for over 10 years found no link between the vaccine and autism, even among children with autistic siblings.
== Disease outbreaks ==
After the controversy began, the MMR vaccination compliance dropped sharply in the United Kingdom, from 92% in 1996 to 84% in 2002. In some parts of London, it was as low as 61% in 2003, far below the rate needed to avoid an epidemic of measles. By 2006 coverage for MMR in the UK at 24 months was 85%, lower than the about 94% coverage for other vaccines.
After vaccination rates dropped, the incidence of two of the three diseases increased greatly in the UK. In 1998 there were 56 confirmed cases of measles in the UK; in 2006 there were 449 in the first five months of the year, with the first death since 1992; cases occurred in inadequately vaccinated children. Mumps cases began rising in 1999 after years of very few cases, and by 2005 the United Kingdom was in a mumps epidemic with almost 5000 notifications in the first month of 2005 alone. The age group affected was too old to have received the routine MMR immunisations around the time the paper by Wakefield et al. was published, and too young to have contracted natural mumps as a child, and thus to achieve a herd immunity effect. With the decline in mumps that followed the introduction of the MMR vaccine, these individuals had not been exposed to the disease, but still had no immunity, either natural or vaccine induced. Therefore, as immunisation rates declined following the controversy and the disease re-emerged, they were susceptible to infection. Measles and mumps cases continued in 2006, at incidence rates 13 and 37 times greater than respective 1998 levels. Two children who underwent kidney transplantation in London were severely and permanently injured by measles encephalitis.
Disease outbreaks also caused casualties in nearby countries. Three deaths and 1,500 cases were reported in the Irish outbreak of 2000, which occurred as a direct result of decreased vaccination rates following the MMR scare.
In 2008, for the first time in 14 years, measles was declared endemic in the UK, meaning that the disease was sustained within the population; this was caused by the preceding decade's low MMR vaccination rates, which created a population of susceptible children who could spread the disease. MMR vaccination rates for English children were unchanged in 2007–08 from the year before, at too low a level to prevent serious measles outbreaks. In May 2008, a British 17-year-old with an underlying immunodeficiency died of measles. In 2008 Europe also faced a measles epidemic, including large outbreaks in Austria, Italy, and Switzerland.
Following the January 2011 BMJ statements about Wakefield's fraud, Paul Offit, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a "long-time critic of the dangers of the anti-vaccine movement", said, "that paper killed children", and Michael Smith of the University of Louisville, an "infectious diseases expert who has studied the autism controversy's effect on immunization rates", said "clearly, the results of this (Wakefield) study have had repercussions." In 2014, Laurie Garrett, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, blamed "Wakefieldism" for an increase in the number of unvaccinated children in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, saying, "Our data suggests that where Wakefield's message has caught on, measles follows."
=== Impact on society ===
The New England Journal of Medicine said that antivaccinationist activities resulted in a high cost to society, "including damage to individual and community well-being from outbreaks of previously controlled diseases, withdrawal of vaccine manufacturers from the market, compromising of national security (in the case of anthrax and smallpox vaccines), and lost productivity".
Costs to society from declining vaccination rates (in US dollars) were estimated by AOL's DailyFinance in 2011:
A 2002–2003 outbreak of measles in Italy, "which led to the hospitalizations of more than 5,000 people, had a combined estimated cost between 17.6 million euros and 22.0 million euros".
A 2004 outbreak of measles from "an unvaccinated student return[ing] from India in 2004 to Iowa was $142,452".
A 2006 outbreak of mumps in Chicago, "caused by poorly immunized employees, cost the institution $262,788, or $29,199 per mumps case".
A 2007 outbreak of mumps in Nova Scotia cost $3,511 per case.
A 2008 outbreak of measles in San Diego, California cost $177,000, or $10,376 per case.
In the United States, Jenny McCarthy blamed vaccinations for her son Evan's disorders and leveraged her celebrity status to warn parents of a link between vaccines and autism. Evan's disorder began with seizures and his improvement occurred after the seizures were treated, symptoms experts have noted are more consistent with Landau–Kleffner syndrome, often misdiagnosed as autism. After the Lancet article was discredited, McCarthy continued to defend Wakefield. An article in Salon.com called McCarthy "a menace" for her continued position that vaccines are dangerous.
Bill Gates has reacted strongly to Wakefield and the work of anti-vaccination groups:
Dr. [Andrew] Wakefield has been shown to have used absolutely fraudulent data. He had a financial interest in some lawsuits, he created a fake paper, the journal allowed it to run. All the other studies were done, showed no connection whatsoever again and again and again. So it's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts—you know, they, they kill children. It's a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.
The proportion of children in England receiving the vaccine by the age of two fell to 91.2% in 2017–18, from 91.6% the year before. Only 87.2% of five-year-olds had received both MMR vaccines.
With the onset of a large number of measles outbreaks in the United States in 2019, there is fear that parents who have not had their children vaccinated will help to spread infectious diseases in schools and universities where there are already other outbreaks.
== See also ==
Autism rights movement
Autism's False Prophets
Controversies in autism
Epidemiology of autism
Measles resurgence in the United States
Vaccine shedding
== References ==
== Further reading == | Wikipedia/MMR_vaccine_fraud |
The white genocide, white extinction, or white replacement conspiracy theory is a white nationalist conspiracy theory that claims there is a deliberate plot (often blamed on Jews) to cause the extinction of white people through forced assimilation, mass immigration, or violent genocide. It purports that this goal is advanced through the promotion of miscegenation, interracial marriage, mass non-white immigration, racial integration, low fertility rates, abortion, pornography, LGBT identities, governmental land-confiscation from whites, organised violence, and eliminationism in majority white countries. Under some theories, Black people, Hispanics, Asians, and Arabs are blamed for the secret plot, but usually as more fertile immigrants, invaders, or violent aggressors, rather than as the masterminds. A related, but distinct, conspiracy theory is the Great Replacement theory.
White genocide is a political myth based on pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and ethnic hatred, and is driven by a psychological panic often termed "white extinction anxiety". Objectively, white people are not dying out or facing extermination. The purpose of the conspiracy theory is to justify a commitment to a white nationalist agenda in support of calls to violence.
The theory was popularized by white separatist neo-Nazi David Lane around 1995, and has been leveraged as propaganda in Europe, North America, South Africa, and Australia. Similar conspiracy theories were prevalent in Nazi Germany and have been used in the present day interchangeably with, and as a broader and more extreme version of Renaud Camus's 2011 The Great Replacement, focusing on the white population of France. Since the 2019 Christchurch and El Paso shootings, of which the shooters' manifestos decried a "white replacement" and have referenced the concept of "Great Replacement", Camus's conspiracy theory (often called "replacement theory" or "population replacement"), along with Bat Ye'or's 2002 Eurabia concept and Gerd Honsik's resurgent 1970s myth of a Kalergi plan, have all been used synonymously with "white genocide" and are increasingly referred to as variations of the conspiracy theory.
In August 2018, United States president Donald Trump was accused of endorsing the conspiracy theory in a foreign policy tweet instructing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate South African "land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers", claiming that the "South African government is now seizing land from white farmers". Unsubstantiated claims that the South African farm attacks on farmers disproportionately target whites are a key element of the conspiracy theory, portrayed in media as a form of gateway or proxy issue to "white genocide" within the wider context of the Western world. The topic of farm seizures in South Africa and Zimbabwe has been a rallying cry of white nationalists and alt-right groups who use it to justify their vision of white supremacy. In 2025, Trump openly claimed there was a white genocide in South Africa.
== History ==
The idea of a distinct white human race began with German physician and anthropologist Johann Blumenbach, who in 1775 claimed that there were five such races: Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian (or Negroid), and American Indian.
=== Background ===
==== France ====
The idea of a "replacement" of indigenous white people under the guidance of a hostile elite can be further traced back to pre-WWII antisemitic conspiracy theories which posited the existence of a Jewish plot to destroy Europe through miscegenation, especially in Édouard Drumont's antisemitic bestseller La France juive (1886). Commenting on this resemblance, historian Nicolas Lebourg and political scientist Jean-Yves Camus suggest that Renaud Camus's contribution in The Great Replacement (2011) was to replace the antisemitic elements with a clash of civilizations between Muslims and Europeans. Also in the late 19th century, imperialist politicians invoked the Péril jaune (Yellow Peril) in their negative comparisons of France's low birth-rate and the high birth-rates of Asian countries. From that claim arose an artificial, cultural fear that immigrant-worker Asians soon would "flood" France. This danger supposedly could be successfully countered only by increased fecundity of French women. Then, France would possess enough soldiers to thwart the eventual flood of immigrants from Asia. Maurice Barrès's nationalist writings of that period have also been noted in the ideological genealogy of the "Great Replacement", Barrès contending both in 1889 and in 1900 that a replacement of the native population under the combined effect of immigration and a decline in the birth rate was happening in France.
==== Eugenics ====
The conspiracy theory had precursors in early 20th-century eugenics theories, which were popular in white-majority countries such as Australia and New Zealand, where it was feared that non-white immigrants would eventually supplant the white population.
==== Madison Grant in the United States ====
In 1916, the American eugenicist and lawyer Madison Grant wrote a book entitled The Passing of the Great Race which, while largely ignored when it first appeared, went through four editions, becoming part of popular culture in 1920s America and, in the process, spawned the ideology that the founding-stock of the United States, the so-called Nordic race, were under extinction threats from assimilation with non-whites. Grant wrote of it:
Neither the black, nor the brown, nor the yellow, nor the red will conquer the white in battle. But if the valuable elements in the Nordic race mix with inferior strains or die out through race suicide, then the citadel of civilization will fall for mere lack of defenders.
Grant claimed that the race which "built" America was in danger of extinction unless the US reined in immigration of Jews and others.
==== Nazi Germany ====
Adolf Hitler wrote to Grant to thank him for writing The Passing of the Great Race, calling it "my Bible". Incorporating Grant's theory, Nazis employed the conspiracy theory widely as propaganda, as exemplified in a 1934 pamphlet written for the "Research Department for the Jewish question" of Walter Frank's "Reich Institute" with the title "Are the white people dying: the future of the white and the colored peoples in the light of biological statistics". Nazis used the conspiracy theory as a call to arms in a bid to gain power through cultural hegemony and scapegoating Jews by leveraging long-running historical prejudices.
Prior to Nazis coming to power, German eugenicists, including Jewish medical and psychiatric professionals, did consider Jews to be distinct from white Europeans, but not so "degenerate" or unfit as to require anything more than guidance avoiding heritable disease via marriage counseling and, as early as 1918, screening for Jews wishing to emigrate to Palestine.
=== Neo-Nazis' accusations against Jews ===
The modern conspiracy theory can be traced back to post-war European neo-Nazi circles, especially René Binet's 1950 book Théorie du Racisme. The latter influenced French 1960s far-right movements such as Europe-Action, which argued that "systematic race mixing [was] nothing more than a slow genocide". In December 1948, Binet's newspaper L'Unité wrote: "We accuse the Zionists and anti-racists of the crime of genocide because they claim to be imposing on us a crossbreeding that would be the death and destruction of our race and civilization".
The term "white genocide" appeared sporadically in the American Nazi Party's White Power newspaper as early as 1972 and was used by the White Aryan Resistance in the 1970s and 1980s, where it primarily referred to contraception and abortion. The conspiracy theory was developed by the neo-Nazi David Lane in his White Genocide Manifesto (c. 1995, origin of the later use of the term), where he made the claim that the government policies of many Western countries had the intent of destroying white European culture and making white people an "extinct species". Lane—a founding member of the organization The Order—criticized miscegenation, abortion, homosexuality, Jewish control of the media, "multi-racial sports", the legal repercussions against those who "resist genocide", and the "Zionist Occupation Government" that he said controls the United States and the other majority-white countries and which encourages "white genocide".
Shortly after Lane's Manifesto, the Aryan Nations published their 1996 Declaration of Independence stating that the Zionist Occupation Government sought "the eradication of the white race and its culture" as "one of its foremost purposes". It accused such Jews of subverting the constitutional rule of law; responsibility for post-Civil War Reconstruction; subverting the monetary system with the Federal Reserve System, confiscating land and property; limiting freedoms of speech, religion, and gun ownership; murdering, kidnapping and imprisoning patriots; abdicating national sovereignty to the United Nations; political repression; wasteful bureaucracy; loosening restrictions on immigration and drug trafficking; raising taxes; polluting the environment; commandeering the military, mercenaries, and police; denying Aryan cultural heritage; and inciting immigrant insurrections. Of these accusations, only passage of the Federal Reserve Act, ratification of the Charter of the United Nations, and imprisonment of members of The Order were cited as specific instances.
Another strand developed in Europe in the 1970s by Austrian neo-Nazi Gerd Honsik, who distorted the early 20th century writings of Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi with his invention of the Kalergi plan conspiracy theory, which was popularized in a 2005 book.
=== Rhodesian scare tactics ===
In 1966, Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith was described as having convinced white Rhodesians that their only alternative to his government's Rhodesian Bush War was "dictatorship and white genocide" by communist-backed black nationalist guerrillas.
White supremacists are described as being obsessed with the treatment of the formerly dominant white minorities in Zimbabwe and South Africa by the black majorities where "the diminished stature of whites is presented as an ongoing genocide that must be fought." In particular, the story of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was formerly known, ruled by a segregationist government under which most black people were denied the right to vote, holds a particular fascination for white supremacists. Zimbabwe's disastrous economic collapse under the leadership of its second black president, Robert Mugabe, together with the Mugabe government's policies towards the white minority has been cited by white supremacists as evidence of both the inferiority of blacks and a case of genocide against whites. In alt-right and white supremacist groups, there is much nostalgia for Rhodesia, which is seen as a state that fought valiantly for white supremacy in Africa in the 1960–1970s until it was betrayed.
=== Alt-right ===
In 2008, the conspiracy theory spread beyond its explicit neo-Nazi and white nationalist origins, to be embraced by the newly founded alt-right movement. Discussion threads on the white nationalist Internet forum Stormfront often center around the theme of white people being subjected to genocidal policies by their governments. The concept has also been popularized by the alt-right and alt-lite movements in the United States. The notion of racial purity, homogeneity or "racial hygiene" is an underlying theme of the white genocide discourse and it has been used by people with neo-Nazi and white supremacist backgrounds.
While individual iterations of the conspiracy theory vary on who is assigned blame, Jewish influence, people who hate whites, and liberal political forces are commonly cited by white supremacists as being the main factors leading to a white genocide. This view is held by prominent figures such as David Duke, who cites Jews and "liberal political ideals" as the main causes. White nationalist Robert Whitaker, who coined the phrase "anti-racist is a code word for anti-white" in a widely circulated 2006 piece seeking to popularize the white genocide concept online, used "anti-White" to describe those he believed are responsible for the genocide of white people, and continued to view it as a Jewish conspiracy while emphasizing that others also supported the "anti-White" cause. However, the view that Jews are responsible for a white genocide is contested by other white supremacist figures, such as Jared Taylor.
=== The Great Replacement ===
Starting with French author Renaud Camus and his 2011 book Le Grand Remplacement, the conspiracy theory of the Great Replacement focused on a displacement of French whites by predominantly Muslim population from the Middle East and Africa, then turned into a pan-European concept which spread across most major countries' politics on the continent. Despite a common reference to a "genocide" of indigenous white peoples and a global plan led by a conspiring power, Camus's theory does not include the antisemitic canard of a Jewish plot. His removal of antisemitism from the original neo-Nazi theory (which has been replaced in the European context with Islamophobia), along with his use of simple catch-all slogans, have been cited as reasons for its broader appeal.
The Great Replacement has also been compared with the European Islamophobic strain of Bat Ye'or's 2002 Eurabia conspiracy theory, and with ideas expressed by far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, in his 2083: A European Declaration of Independence manifesto. Since the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, where the shooter named his manifesto The Great Replacement, the French-originated phrase has been widely established as synonymous with "white genocide", used by mainstream Western media interchangeably, and deemed largely responsible for the emerging term of "white replacement".
By 2017, at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, white nationalists were referencing the conspiracy theory as tiki torch-wielding protestors, who yelled "You will not replace us!" and "Jews will not replace us!". In response, Camus stated that he did not support Nazis or violence, but that he could understand why white Americans felt angry about being replaced, and that he approved of the sentiment.
== White extinction anxiety ==
"White genocide anxiety", "white displacement anxiety", and the most commonly referred to, "white extinction anxiety" or panic, are said to be a key driving force behind the conspiracy theory and its supporters' adherence to it. The thesis, often cited as an explanation for some sections of white society's resistance to racial diversity, is reported as virtually inseparable from the conspiracy theory itself.
Former diplomat and scholar Alfredo Toro Hardy, who credits journalist Charles M. Blow with the term "white extinction anxiety", has outlined how "the anxieties related to the changing racial landscape of the United States" were at the heart of the concept, and propelled policies such as the Trump administration's "extreme measures against Southern immigrants". In this regard, Trump has been accused of capitalizing on "white genocide anxiety" with claims that immigration had "changed the fabric of Europe", and empowering his supporters in media, such as Laura Ingraham, to stoke fears of "massive demographic changes" within the US. Science journalist Ronald Bailey proposes that Trump is merely "the latest demagogue to rise to power by stoking white folks' ethnic fears", and that "white extinction panics" have historically occurred in the US each time the foreign-born population reached above 13 percent.
Blow has defined "white extinction anxiety" as the fear that white people will become a minority, stripped of their race-based privilege. Analyzing the concept, he examined Pat Buchanan's rhetoric (described by Bailey as a form of blood and soil mantra); of whether the nations of Europe and North America had the "will and capacity to halt the invasion of the countries" before immigration altered the "political, social, racial, ethnic – character of the country entirely". Addressing Buchanan's arguably ethnic nationalist conclusions that "You cannot stop these sentiments of people who want to live together with their own and they want their borders protected", Blow said, "Make no mistake here, Buchanan is talking about protecting white dominance, white culture, white majorities and white power".
Anti-racism activist Jane Elliott has suggested that this anxiety, or "Fear of White Genetic Annihilation", is so great that political leaders will resort to any measures in order to prevent the white extinction event that they believe is unfolding, including measures such as the Alabama abortion ban. Anders Behring Breivik's core ideology, and motivations behind his white supremacist attacks, has been described as white extinction anxiety. He had written: "This crisis of mass immigration and sub-replacement fertility is an assault on the European people that, if not combated, will ultimately result in the complete racial and cultural replacement of the European people".
According to professor Alexandra Minna Stern, who has detailed the connection between the conspiracy theory and the anxiety-framed concept, factions of the alt-right are distorting fertility statistics into a "conspiratorial campaign of white extinction" which is being fueled by a looming "white extinction anxiety". She says this phenomenon is driving alt-right strategies such as encouraging couples of Western and Northern European ethnicity to have up to eight children.
== Advocacy and spread ==
The white genocide conspiracy theory has continuously recurred among the far-right in a variety of forms, all centered around a core theme of white populations being replaced, removed, or simply killed.
=== Africa ===
==== South Africa ====
Far-right and alt-right figures, such as singer Steve Hofmeyr, have claimed that a "white genocide" is taking place in South Africa. The South African singer, songwriter, political activist, actor, and TV presenter supports and promotes the conspiracy theory. The Conversation has credited Hofmeyr with popularizing the concept. In January 2017, media reported that Hofmeyr was set to meet US President-elect Donald Trump to discuss "white genocide" in South Africa. Hofmeyr later thanked Trump when the latter shared a tweet asking "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers".
The manifesto of far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, entitled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, devotes an entire section to an alleged "genocide" against Afrikaners. It also contains several other references to alleged persecution of whites in South Africa and the attacks on white farmers. Mike Cernovich, an American alt-right commentator, has previously stated that "white genocide in South Africa is real". The survivalist group the Suidlanders has claimed credit for internationally publicizing the risks of a race war and ethnic cleansing against whites.
Africa Check, a fact-checking organisation, rejected these claims as false in 2013: "In fact, whites are less likely to be murdered than any other race group." Africa Check reported that while whites account for nearly 9% of the South African population they represent just 1.8% of murder victims. Lizette Lancaster from the Institute for Security Studies has said that "Whites are far less likely to be murdered than their black or coloured counterparts." British journalist Joe Walsh reported that the murder rates in the mainly white suburbs of Johannesburg were far lower than in the black townships of Johannesburg, leading him to conclude: "If there was any kind of genocide being carried out against white people in the country then the safest areas of the continent's most dangerous city would not be predominately white."
South African journalist Lynsey Chutel reported in 2018: "After a peak in 2001/2002, the number of farm attacks—rape, robbery and other forms of violent crime short of murder—has decreased to about half. Similarly, the number of murders on farms peaked in 1997/1998 at 153, but today that number is below 50." Chutel stated that although some of the murders of white farmers may indeed be racially motivated, South Africa is a country with a high violent crime rate and white farmers are "isolated and believed to be wealthy". In the period July 2017 to July 2018, 47 farmers of all races were killed in South Africa, down from 66 murdered between July 2016 and July 2017. The worst year for farm murders in South Africa was 1998, when 153 farmers were killed. Between April 2016 and March 2017, there were a total of 19,016 murders in South Africa, suggesting that farmers are not especially likely to be killed in South Africa. Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch has condemned the misuse of his groups' reports of the threat of polarization in South Africa to further the idea of "white genocide".
Even mainstream American conservatives who often championed the causes of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa, seeing both regimes as having supposedly more enlightened policies towards black people than the policy of integration in the United States, embraced the variants of the white genocide theory as part of the defense of Rhodesia and South Africa. In 2015, the Canadian journalist Jeet Heer wrote: "The idea that whites in America have a natural affinity with white colonialists in Africa did not spring from the neo-Nazi far-right, but rather the conservative movement that coalesced around National Review in the 1950s." In the July 1988 edition of Commentary, David Roberts, Jr., compared Nelson Mandela to Pol Pot and the African National Congress (ANC), the now ruling party in South Africa, to the Khmer Rouge, implying that the ANC would exterminate South African whites if it came to power. Shortly before his death in 2005 Samuel T. Francis, the former editor of the conservative Washington Times, warned about the possibility of a "white genocide" in South Africa.
Simon Roche, an Afrikaner nationalist from South Africa and a spokesman for the survivalist group, the Suidlanders, that exists, in his words, "to prepare a Protestant Christian South African Minority for a coming violent revolution", visited the US in 2017 to promote the thesis that the white minority in South Africa is faced with the threat of ethnic cleansing. Roche stated he went to the US to "raise awareness of and support for the Caucasian Christian conservative volk [people] of South Africa ... There's a natural affinity with conservative white Americans."
The Afrikaner group AfriForum's deputy director Ernst Roets has been erroneously linked by Radio 702, which it later apologised for, to false claims of white genocide, and South African government authorization of uncompensated seizures of land from white farmers. Roets' 2018 book Kill the Boer argues that the government is also complicit in attacks on white farmers, and characterizes the events as ethnic cleansing. Another South African, Willem Petzer, appeared as a guest on Gavin McInnes's podcast, accusing the ANC government of planning genocide.
=== Europe ===
==== Finland ====
In a survey conducted by Iltalehti, one-third of the voters of the far-right Finns Party, the second biggest party in parliament, thought that "the European race must be prevented from mixing with darker races, otherwise the European native population will eventually become extinct". Finns Party Minister of the Interior Mari Rantanen wrote that if Finns remain naive on immigration, Finns "will not remain blue-eyed" and shared writings referring to refugees as "parasites". Toni Jalonen, at the time deputy-chair of the Finns Party Youth, posted a picture of a black family with the text "Vote for the Finns, so that Finland's future doesn't look like this".
While the Finns Party have brought the white genocide rhetoric into the parliament, it entered politics before them. For example, in the 1990s, Oulu city councillor and former leader of Nordic Realm Party-aligned Patriotic Finnish Youth Jouni Lanamäki gained attention with statements that he aims to keep Oulu "a white Nordic city" and the survival of Finns requires "combatting the colored peoples".
==== France ====
Figures on the right of French politics, such as Renaud Camus, have claimed that a "white genocide" or "Great Replacement" is occurring in France. Camus's definition, which focuses largely on the white Christian population in France, has been used in media interchangeably with white genocide, and described as a narrower, less extreme and more nationally focused version of the broader conspiracy theory. Despite his focus on the specific demographics of France, Camus also believes all Western countries are facing a form of "ethnic and civilizational substitution".
In June 2017, Senator Stéphane Ravier's aide, running as one of the National Front's candidates, endorsed the conspiracy theory. Publishing a blonde girl's photograph with the words "Say no to white genocide" days before the 2017 French legislative election, Ravier's assistant gave a political ultimatum "the National Front or the invasion".
==== Germany ====
The 2015 New Year's Eve attacks in Cologne resulted in accusations that the federal government and media were deliberately avoiding public interest reporting on 1,200 sexual assaults by thousands of young male Muslim immigrants. Apologies for hesitancy by public television channel ZDF strengthened claims of a Lügenpresse (lying press) by populist and far-right parties as evidence for widespread conspiracy by German institutions. The unprecedented scale of border crossings during 2015 and 2016 compelled Chancellor Angela Merkel to impose "temporary restrictions" on transit across the border with Austria. The alt-right conspiracy website Zero Hedge listed statistics on migrant crime in Germany alongside statements from politicians and news articles, presented as "contradictions confirming a deep-state level of conspiracy ... to push through a pro-immigration policy in Germany". During the 2017 German election campaign, the far-right Alternative for Germany party ran advertisements featuring a pregnant woman's abdomen with the slogan, "New Germans? We'll make them ourselves". Events like the 2015 New Year's Eve sexual assaults, and the great replacement conspiracy theory also further radicalized right-wing extremist Stephan Ernst, who in response assassinated the local politician Walter Lübcke in 2019. Based on protocols of his first confession, Ernst held Lübcke responsible for letting non-white refugees into the country.
==== Hungary ====
A state-sponsored campaign led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has employed a wide range of historical anti-Semitic tropes to accuse philanthropist George Soros of engaging in conspiracies to support and deceive the public about nonwhite immigrants. Orbán has accused Soros, a Jew whose family survived hostile conditions during Hungary's Nazi occupation, of being a Nazi himself, and has introduced legislation known as the "Stop Soros law" to criminalize organized support of immigrants. These fabrications have become popular with the alt-right in Europe and the US. Orbán's 2018 campaign slogan was "Christianity is Europe's last hope", saying, "our worst nightmares can come true. The West falls as it fails to see Europe being overrun."
==== Poland ====
Hundreds of Polish Facebook groups such as "Stop White Genocide" have produced and disseminated images depicting African and Middle eastern people as belonging to separate "primitive" species, lacking the human intelligence of white Europeans. Websites such as "Conspiracy Files" have fabricated allegations of political compacts to bolster nonwhite immigration against popular will, such as agreements signed by EU leaders and African nations to increase Europe's African population to 300 million by 2068, making native whites, "minorities within their own homeland".
==== Russia ====
Much of the theory that South African whites are faced with the threat of "genocide" originates with internet rumors started by the Government of Russia. Russia-24, a television channel owned by the Russian government, aired a segment in the summer of 2018 about Afrikaner farmers wanting to immigrate to Russia as "brothers in faith". The present government in Russia led by Vladimir Putin often attacks the ideology of liberalism for putting the individual before the collective, and promotes "white genocide" stories both as a way of showing the failure of liberalism and to promote the thesis that group identities matter far more than individual identities. The ideology of the Russian state is that the interests of the collective take precedence over the individual, and evidence of alleged failures of liberalism abroad are extensively covered by the Russian media. The Australian historian Mark Edele stated: "There is definitely an attempt [by Russia] to support alt-right views and extreme right organisations outside of Russia ... Russia supports groups that will undermine liberal views. That's the logic of sponsorship of alt-right groups by Russia ... There is a longstanding anxiety among Russia's nationalists that Russians are dying out because of falling birth rates compared to non-Slavic peoples. It reverberates with white genocide fears."
The Canadian alt-right personality Lauren Southern had a sympathetic interview with the Russian fascist thinker Aleksandr Dugin, who told her "liberalism denies the existence of any collective identities" and that "liberalism is based on the absence of any form of collective identity". Dugin used the case of white South African farmers allegedly threatened with genocide as proof of the failure of liberalism, for putting the individual ahead of the collective. After the end of apartheid in 1994, South Africa was presented as the "rainbow nation" where henceforward people, regardless of their skin color, would be judged only as individuals. From the viewpoint of the Russian state, presenting liberalism in South Africa as a blood-soaked disaster is a way of discrediting liberalism in general.
==== Sweden ====
The 2017 Swedish neo-Nazi propaganda film Europa: The Last Battle claims that Jews are conspiring to engineer the downfall of the white race by encouraging immigration and interracial relationships.
==== United Kingdom ====
In a 2015 Breitbart News article, the anti-Islamic For Britain party founder and leader Anne Marie Waters described white genocide as "part of a broad-ranging, virulent, and vicious hatred of white Western people" and claimed that European leaders aimed to "extinguish Western culture".
In December 2015, former EDL leader Tommy Robinson endorsed the white genocide myth. In his 2015 book Enemy of the State, Robinson claimed how previously white British majority areas of his hometown, Luton, had suffered "ethnic cleansing" and claimed that the United Kingdom was "sleepwalking" its "way towards a Muslim takeover".
A few weeks before the 2016 Brexit referendum, an unemployed gardener with links to far-right organisations murdered Member of Parliament Jo Cox because of her support of the European Union and work in support of immigrants, saying she was part of a left-wing conspiracy perpetuated by the mainstream media and a traitor to the white race. A March 2016 survey ahead of the referendum found 41% of Britons thought their government was concealing the true number of immigrants.
Katie Hopkins, an English media personality, made a documentary supporting the conspiracy theory of an ongoing white genocide against farmers in South Africa. In March 2018, British journalist Rod Liddle was identified as promoting the conspiracy theory in an article in The Spectator, according to Vice website. He suggested Lauren Southern, who had made her own documentary about South Africa, would have been greeted positively had it been about "any other brand of genocide".
Katie Hopkins has also promoted the idea that both immigration and multiculturalism are intended to cause white genocide. Yahoo! News reported that while traveling for the documentary, "her intention was to 'expose' the white genocide" happening to farmers in South Africa.
In September 2018, with the arrest of some Neo-Nazi members of National Action, the counter-terrorist Prevent programme identified the white supremacist group as subscribing to the white extinction conspiracy theory. A governmental co-ordinator stated that the organization "sees the extinction of white people as a very real and likely possibility".
In March 2019, Catherine Blaiklock resigned as leader of the Brexit Party after she shared a photo on social media of a multi-racial primary school in England with the caption "This is a British school. This is white genocide". Another shared post of Blaiklock's claimed that multiculturalism amounted to "the replacement of the indigenous European people". In April 2019, a Conservative Party candidate for local elections was revealed to have promoted the conspiracy theory after endorsing online material which claimed that the "destruction of the white race" was being brought about by non-white immigrants who were "flooding" Europe "disguised as so-called 'refugees'" in an alleged plot to "enforce miscegenation" on white Europeans. He was subsequently suspended from his party but remained on the ballot for the election.
The identitarian movement Generation Identity party leader and neo-Nazi Mark Collett has been actively promoting the conspiracy theory on Twitter and YouTube.
=== United States and Canada ===
According to Erika Lee, in 1894 the old stock Yankee upper-class founders of the Immigration Restriction League were "convinced that Anglo-Saxon traditions, peoples, and culture were being drowned in a flood of racially inferior foreigners from Southern and Eastern Europe."
In 2007, conservative Ann Coulter described non-white immigration to the United States as "white genocide" in her article titled "Bush's America: Roach Motel". Vox has reported on Coulter as one of many providing a platform for "the 'white genocide' myth". She has been described as a "champion" of the ideas behind the conspiracy theory following a book she wrote on the subject. She has also claimed that "a genocide" is occurring against white South African farmers.
In October 2014, white nationalist Greg Johnson promoted the white extinction conspiracy theory, suggesting that "the organized Jewish community is the principal enemy—not the sole enemy, but the principal enemy—of every attempt to halt and reverse white extinction. One cannot defeat an enemy one will not name. Therefore, White Nationalism is inescapably anti-Semitic."
In December 2014, Ku Klux Klan leader Thomas Robb proposed that white genocide was occurring due to the immigration and high birth-rates of non-whites. He claimed that demographic change was affecting the economic, racial and social landscape of Harrison, Arkansas, and the US at large, and that this amounted to "white genocide being committed against our people". Around that time, the concept appeared on billboards in the United States near Birmingham, Alabama, and Harrison, Arkansas.
==== 2016 US presidential election campaigns ====
In October 2015, Mike Cernovich, a social media personality, published the white nationalist catchphrase "diversity is code for white genocide", claiming that his discovery of the concept had caused him to cease being a libertarian and instead become an alt-right activist. Days later, he invoked the conspiracy theory again, warning that "white genocide will sweep up the SJWs", a prediction that Muslims would murder what he labelled social justice warriors in the United States. In November 2015, Cernovich insisted that "white genocide is real" in relation to South Africa. After a public backlash, he deleted several tweets referring to the conspiracy theory.
During the 2016 US presidential election, there were allegations that aspects of the conspiracy theory had been adopted as dog-whistling by some mainstream conservative political figures. In January 2016, Donald Trump garnered controversy after retweeting Twitter user @WhiteGenocideTM, and @EustaceFash, whose Twitter header image at the time also included the term "white genocide". A 2016 analysis of his Twitter feed during the Republican presidential primaries showed that 62% of those that he chose to retweet in an average week followed multiple accounts which discussed the conspiracy theory, and 21% followed prominent white nationalists online.
By March 2016, Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., had been accused by mainstream media of being an advocate of the conspiracy theory, or pretending to be an advocate for political gain, after his interview with white supremacist James Edwards during the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. The following month, Jack Posobiec, a leading alt-right Trump activist and, at the time, US naval intelligence officer with military security clearance, began frequently tweeting about white genocide.
While Donald Trump supporters on the Reddit discussion forum r/The_Donald generally agreed that white genocide is occurring, they disagreed about the responsible parties. The Southern Poverty Law Center said "Tea Party conservatives characterize it as a scheme by Democrats to gain voters. For the white nationalists, the main villain is 'international Jewry.' InfoWars fans blame 'globalists'—a label that is often interchangeable with 'Jews'—seeking to dumb down Western populations with 'low-IQ migrants' who are more easily controlled." In August 2017, at least 330 r/The_Donald posts referred to the "Kalergi plan", a purported conspiracy to replace the European population with African migrants.
The month before the US presidential election, white supremacist Richard B. Spencer declared that whatever the upcoming result, that he would be "profoundly grateful to Donald Trump for the rest of my life". Invoking "white genocide" in the same interview, he labelled anti-discrimination laws "the enemy of all tradition, not just the Anglo-Saxon American society it has helped destroy", and Martin Luther King Jr. as "the god of white dispossession". The same month, William Daniel Johnson, leader of the American Freedom Party, was pushing the theory in support of Trump for president; denouncing "the death of the white race, caused by the concepts of diversity and multiculturalism", he said that America needed a "strong leader" like Trump, likening the Republican candidate favorably with Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.
By early November, one week before the election, KKK leader Thomas Robb was invoking the conspiracy theory in support of Trump's Make America Great Again message, claiming that the concept was inextricably linked with the restoration of white power in the US In February 2017, it was reported that neo-Confederate activist Michael Hill was using Rhodesia to reference and warn against an apparent "racial genocide" of whites in the United States. Hill, a co-founder of the League of the South, equates multiculturalism within the country as part of an ongoing white genocide.
By March 2017, Republican congressman Steve King was using rhetoric that Mother Jones and Paste writers described as invoking the conspiracy theory, saying that "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies" and using the phrase "cultural suicide". Vox and The New Republic have described him as an adherent of the theory that immigration and other forms of population shift represent a slow genocide against white populations. In the same month, white supremacist David Duke, a former Republican Louisiana State Representative, posted YouTube videos stating that Jews are "organizing white genocide". The former Grand Wizard of the KKK also accused Anthony Bourdain of wanting a genocide of white people.
==== Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville ====
In August 2017, a white supremacist protest named the Unite the Right rally was held in Charlottesville, Virginia, largely driven by the ideology of the "white genocide" narrative. The protest was ostensibly centered around the impending removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, who was the commander of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. The night before the rally, leaflets were distributed en masse in the city, bearing the recurrent slogan "Diversity is a code word for white genocide".
Speaking at the event in Charlottesville, Jason Kessler, the primary organizer behind the rally and a white nationalist blogger, claimed that "the first and foremost reason that we're having this rally, is for that park and for that statue. It's about white genocide. It's about the replacement of our people, culturally and ethnically". Kessler has repeatedly promoted the conspiracy theory, using his website to criticize what he called "white genocide" and an "attack on white history".
Other prominent white nationalists also tied the conspiracy theory to the motivations behind Unite the Right. Giving a speech at the rally, Neo-nazi Mike Enoch said "We're here to talk about white genocide, the deliberate and intentional displacement of the white race".
==== Trump administration foreign policy on South Africa ====
In the fall of 2017, it was reported broadcaster Alex Jones and his fake news organization InfoWars were promoting the white genocide myth. The Suidlanders (a völkisch group involved in spreading the conspiracy theory in South Africa) accepted invitations to contribute to the platform on multiple occasions. Around the same time, Jones claimed white genocide was a serious threat in the US; on a cultural front, with what he asserted were black NFL players advocating for "white genocide" by refusing to stand for the national anthem, and the apparent physical threat of Democrats and communists plotting genocidal attacks specifically against white Americans.
Jones has been described as particularly instrumental in the American spread of conspiracy theories about white genocide in Africa, while his long-time political ally, radio host Michael Savage, has devoted an episode of his show to conspiracy theories about white genocide in the region.
In August 2018, US President Donald Trump brought the concept of "white genocide" in relation to South Africa significantly further into mainstream media discourse, after he publicly instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate South African farm attacks, an instruction which was broadly portrayed in media as Trump and his administration advocating for an unfounded conspiracy theory.
Trump had apparently gained his information from Tucker Carlson, a conservative political commentator for Fox News, who has been described as bringing the conspiracy theory of an ongoing "white genocide" in South Africa into the mainstream after a piece about the topic on his show caught the attention of president. Vox described him as having "taken up the cause" of the "virulent, racist conspiracy theory" of white genocide. Amanda Marcotte, writing in Salon, has said that Carlson avoids using the specific phrase "white genocide", but that "its basic premise is embedded throughout his show". The SPLC has accused his website, The Daily Caller, of promoting the theory in relation to South African farm attacks. Carlson asserted he was shocked his statements could be considered an appeal to white nationalists, dismissing questions about his show's high support among them as "stupid" and saying he knew nothing about them.
New York magazine had claimed Trump was attempting to "change the conversation – to one about 'white genocide' in South Africa"; Esquire reported that the "President of the United States is now openly promoting an international racist conspiracy theory as the official foreign policy of the United States." According to the SPLC, Trump had "tweeted out his intention to put the full force of the US State Department behind a white nationalist conspiracy theory".
==== Reaction to US–South Africa policy ====
In August 2018, many politicians and public figures responded critically to US President Donald Trump's foreign policy initiative to investigate the seizure of land from white farmers and apparent evoking of the conspiracy theory. These included multiple members of the South African Parliament and RSA Deputy President David Mabuza, who rejected the conspiracy theory, calling it "far from the truth". He stated that "we would like to discourage those who are using this sensitive and emotive issue of land to divide us as South Africans by distorting our land reform measures to the international community and spreading falsehoods that our 'white farmers' are facing the onslaught from their own government."
Julius Malema MP reacted, saying "there is no white genocide in South Africa", that Trump's intervention into their ongoing land reform issues "only made them more determined ... to expropriate our land without compensation", and that there is a black genocide in the US. Jeremy Cronin MP stated that the South African government needed to "send a signal to the courts, to Trump, to Fox News Agency" over the issue. The deputy Minister of Public Works spoke against the conspiracy theory; in a committee meeting in the South African parliament, he indicated that land expropriation without compensation should not be viewed as a white genocide. Whereas Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Lindiwe Sisulu, claimed that his foreign policy tweet was "regrettable" and "based on false information", and that the conspiracy theory in general was "a right-wing ideology, and it is very unfortunate".
In the US, former US Ambassador to South Africa Patrick Gaspard, and American media personalities Chris Cuomo, Mika Brzezinski and Al Sharpton spoke out against the US President on the issue. Labelling Trump's actions as "dangerous and poisoned", Gaspard opposed the concept, claiming the conspiracy theory was "trafficking in a white supremacist story line", and that the concept is a "white-supremacist meme from the darkest place".
Cuomo, a television journalist, while stating that "like all conspiracy tripe, there's a kernel of truth" to the theory (in relation to land reform in South Africa) but concluded that the concept was a "bogus cause that white nationalists are selling". He rejected what he said was Donald Trump, and his administration, claiming "white farmers" were "being hunted down and killed and having their land stolen".
With a substantive response, American anti-racism activist, Tim Wise, critically analyzed the conspiracy theory further; stating that it was a form of negrophobia, being directed politically to "scare white Americans" about non-whites within the US. Wise has proposed that the paranoia around the conspiracy theory dates back to the Haitian Revolution and North American slave rebellions, but that changing demographics of the United States have heightened existing anxiety, stating that "the reason it is amplified today is that in the recent past the cultural norm of the country was still dominantly white."
Mika Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe, spoke out against the concept, labelling it as "a racist conspiracy theory". American civil rights activist, Al Sharpton joined Brzezinski in her opposition, labelling it as "neo-Nazi propaganda". Discussing the issue on an MSNBC segment with Katy Tur and foreign correspondent Greg Myre, Sharpton stated that it is "not true" that "white farmers are being killed in South Africa" for racial reasons. A year later, Trump administration speechwriter Stephen Miller claimed US citizens were facing the same threat, saying that nonwhite congresswomen want to "destroy America with open borders", even if "American citizens lose their jobs, lose their homes, lose their livelihoods, lose their health coverage, and lose their very lives".
==== Subsequent events ====
In November 2018, Matthew Heimbach, former leader of the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party, led a protest in Little Rock, Arkansas, over an alleged white genocide occurring in South Africa. He called on the US government to sanction South Africa for the "violation of international law" in its treatment of white South Africans. In January 2019, the KKK distributed business cards in Philadelphia with various racist slogans such as "White People are a World Wide minority and there are programs of Genocide against white children", in what appeared to be deliberately targeting African-American neighborhoods with material which promoted the conspiracy theory.
Three independent analyses of Trump re-election campaign advertisements shown in 2019 found 2,200 ads warning of an "invasion" by immigrants. In asking for help to fund a wall along the US–Mexico border, the ads included all-caps warnings of a "state of emergency", saying, "America's safety is at risk", and that it is "critical that we stop the invasion". Other ads said Trump has "taken multiple trips to the border to show the true invasion happening but the Democrats and the Fake News Media just won't listen". In remarks in the Oval Office in March 2019, Trump said immigrants were trying to "rush our borders. ... People hate the word 'invasion', but that's what it is. It's an invasion of drugs and criminals and people." In an interview on 6 June, Trump told Fox News, "I told Mexico, if you don't stop this onslaught, this invasion—people get angry when I use the word 'invasion'—people like Nancy Pelosi that honestly they don't know what the hell they're talking about."
In May 2025, Trump confronted South African president Cyril Ramaphosa with false claims of white genocide during an Oval Office meeting, and played a video of killings he said supported his position. During the meeting, Trump brought up Elon Musk, who was standing behind him and has previously endorsed claims of South African white genocide, stating that: "Elon is from South Africa. I don't want to get him involved. That's all I have to do. Get him into another thing. But Elon happens to be from South Africa." To support his claims of white genocide, Trump showed footage of body bags, claiming that these were "all white farmers that are being buried" in an incident in South Africa, however in actuality the footage was from the Democratic Republic of Congo where there was a conflict involving Rwandan-supported M23 rebels.
==== Fox News era ====
The American news channel Fox News is described by multiple mainstream media sources as aligned with the concept and narrative of the white genocide conspiracy theory and using its prominence to bring rhetoric of demographic threats to white Americans further into the center of US discourse. Amanda Marcotte, writing in Salon, has stated that Fox's default ideology is "strikingly similar" to "fascistic replacement theory" and "white genocide". Marcotte wrote that this ideology is especially the case for the network's prime-time commentators, such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. Paste magazine has argued that "far-right" Great Replacement rhetoric is not only a nightly fixture of Tucker Carlson Tonight, but a "foundational" principle of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
GQ has reported that Fox News' "popular primetime" shows are an important pipeline to President Donald Trump's political positions, such as the investigation into land reform in South Africa, and that Carlson's show in particular dedicates segments to "'great replacement' propaganda". The warnings delivered by "conservative pundits on Fox News" are driving fears of an "existential threat" of a white genocide, according to The Atlantic, who particularly analyzed Laura Ingraham's nativist remarks, such as "massive demographic changes" apparently being inflicted upon white Americans against their will. While The New York Times identified Carlson as engaging in replacement theory fear-mongering, in relation to family birthrates in the US, ThinkProgress accused him of using the popularity of Fox News, as a platform, to push fears of demographic change through immigration and feminism, causing a so-called "genocide" of American white men.
==== Canada ====
In June 2017, far-right political commentator Faith Goldy endorsed the conspiracy theory. Publishing a video for The Rebel Media called "White Genocide in Canada?", Goldy compared the shifting demographics of Canada and its immigration policies to "white genocide". Goldy has been described by GQ magazine as "one of Canada's most prominent propagandists" for the theory. Later that month, Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes promoted the conspiracy theory after stating that white women having abortions and immigration is "leading to white genocide in the West". He also claimed "white genocide" was "much more intense" in South Africa. McInnes is one of the main leaders of a far-right faction that believes in the conspiracy theory.
In December 2017, YouTuber Stefan Molyneux pushed the conspiracy theory, claiming there was a "demographic decline among the whites that is happening in Europe and in North America", that supposedly predicted a "quasi-extinction" of white people. Molyneux, an advocate of the theory, in February 2018 published a video regarding the concept, titled "White Farmers Slaughtered in South Africa", which interviewed fellow white genocide conspiracy theorist Lauren Southern. Southern, a far-right activist, has frequently pushed white genocide rhetoric, using it as an argument against immigration. She has advocated for European countries to refuse refugees from Africa and Asia, saying that immigration would lead to white genocide, and has been labelled in media as a "booster" for the conspiracy at large. In 2018, Southern produced a documentary called Farmlands about post-Apartheid farm violence in South Africa.
In March 2019, white supremacist Paul Fromm was reported to have endorsed the "white genocide" themed (The Great Replacement) manifesto of the Christchurch mosque shooting perpetrator. Referring to it as "cogent" and a "historical document", Fromm republished the manifesto on his website, stating that he agreed with its analysis.
=== Australia ===
American Neo-Nazi literature such as The Turner Diaries and Lane's White Genocide Manifesto have spread online to right wing groups in Australia. A collection of writings called Siege by James Mason was cited as an inspiration by some of the twenty-two neo-Nazis who infiltrated the New South Wales Young Nationals party from which they were banned for life for trying to advance the creation of an ethno-state. Themes of the "defense of Western civilization" and the achievements of ethnic Whites have become racist dog whistles for groups advancing theories of an impending white genocide.
In March 2018, several Australian tabloids owned by the News Corporation ran articles alleging that South African whites were faced with genocide and which led the Australian home affairs minister Peter Dutton to promise fast-track visas for any South African white wishing to emigrate to Australia. Dutton is known for his anti-immigrant and anti-refugee stance, which led to questions about his willingness to accept South African whites into Australia as refugees, since he normally opposes Australia accepting refugees. One News Corp columnist, Miranda Devine, wrote about the ties as she saw them between the Australian people and "our oppressed white, Christian, industrious, rugby and cricket-playing Commonwealth cousins" threatened by South African blacks whom she promised would integrate "seamlessly" into Australia as opposed to immigration from Third World countries.
Another Australian News Corporation columnist Caroline Marcus connected the alleged plight of South African whites to what she saw as a broader attack on whites across the world, writing "the truth is, there are versions of this anti-white, vengeance theme swirling in movements around the western world, from Black Lives Matter in the US to Invasion Day protests back home." The British journalist Jason Wilson noted that the News Corporation run by the Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch also owns Fox News, which has aired stories portraying South African whites as a persecuted minority, leading him to accuse the News Corporation of promoting this narrative around the world.
In 2018, a resolution declaring "It's OK to be white", and decrying "the deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on the Western civilization", was introduced in the Australian Senate by Pauline Hanson, an anti-immigrant Senator who leads the One Nation Party. The motion was narrowly defeated. The same slogan, which is associated with white supremacist rhetoric, was also depicted on a shirt worn by the far-right Canadian YouTuber Lauren Southern during a visit to Australia.
After Australian white-genocide conspiracy theorist Brenton Tarrant carried out the March 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, Queensland Senator Fraser Anning released a statement saying the cause of the attacks was "the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place". Anning has called for a "final solution" to nonwhite immigration to Australia, and frequently issues calls to stop white genocide on social media. Other politicians such as Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton have helped propel the idea of white genocide into the mainstream.
==== New Zealand ====
The accused perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings alluded to "white genocide" and ethnic and racial "replacement" in a 74-page manifesto posted shortly before the attacks.
South African expatriates in New Zealand have been spreading white genocide myths on Facebook and by demonstrating in marches.
== Influence on far-right terrorism ==
=== United States ===
Timothy McVeigh, the main perpetrator of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 and injured more than 680, carried pages from The Turner Diaries, a fictional account of white supremacists who ignite a revolution by blowing up the FBI headquarters with a truck bomb. The book was greatly influential in shaping white nationalism and in the later development of white genocide conspiracy theory. Although the bomber did not attribute his motives to the white nationalist movement, he frequently cited The Turner Diaries and had been reprimanded in the Army for wearing a "white power" T-shirt purchased at a Ku Klux Klan rally.
Richard Baumhammers, the perpetrator of a 2000 shooting spree in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that killed five people and injured a sixth, complained that European Americans are being outnumbered by minorities and immigrants, calling on a website for "an end to non-white immigration" because "almost all" present day immigration "is non-European."
Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., the perpetrator of a shooting spree that killed three people at a Jewish community center and retirement home in Overland Park, Kansas, had supported the slogan: "Diversity is code for white genocide." He stated that the "systematic genocide of white people by Jews" was his motive, and that he, "had a patriotic intent to stop genocide against my people". On Easter Sunday, the day after the shooting, white supremacists delivered "white genocide" themed Easter eggs to several houses in Henrico County, Virginia, repeating the "Diversity = white genocide" mantra.
Dylann Roof, the perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting that killed nine people and injured a tenth, included a photo on his Facebook page of him wearing a jacket decorated with two emblems that are popular among American white supremacists: the flag of the former Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe) and the flag of apartheid-era South Africa. He had been blogging on a website called "The Last Rhodesian" (www.lastrhodesian.com) registered on 9 February 2015, which included an unsigned manifesto containing his opinions of "Blacks", "Jews", "Hispanics" and "East Asians". Saying he became "racially aware" as a result of the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, he wrote that because he kept hearing people talk about the incident, he "decided to look him up" and read the Wikipedia article about it. He concluded that George Zimmerman had been in the right, and was unable to comprehend why the case had gained national attention. He said he then searched for black on white crime on Google and found the website of the Council of Conservative Citizens, where he read "pages upon pages" of cases involving black people murdering white people, stating that he had "never been the same since that day." For these reasons, Federal prosecutors said he was "self-radicalized" online, instead of adopting his white supremacist ideology through personal associations or experiences with white supremacists.
The driver responsible for the Charlottesville car attack against protesters at the Unite the Right rally had previously espoused neo-Nazi and white supremacist beliefs. He had driven from Ohio to join the rally in which participants chanted, "Jews will not replace us." He killed one person and injured 28.
The perpetrator of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that killed eleven and injured another seven wrote "Jews are the children of Satan" in his social media profile, using neo-Nazi and white supremacist symbolism associated with David Lane, along with the Nazi slogan, "Heil Hitler". He supported white genocide conspiracy theories, writing in one instance, "Daily Reminder: Diversity means chasing down the last white person." He also wrote diatribes against white women who have relationships with black men. In the weeks before the shooting, Bowers made anti-Semitic posts directed at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society who sponsor the National Refugee Shabbat. Shortly before the attack, in an apparent reference to immigrants to the United States, he posted on Gab that "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in."
The perpetrator of the Poway synagogue shooting that killed one and injured three others blamed Jews for white genocide, which he described as the "meticulously planned genocide of the European race" in his manifesto.
The perpetrator of the 2019 El Paso shooting that killed 23 and injured another 23 had published a manifesto expressing support for the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto, saying the El Paso attack was in response to a "Hispanic invasion of Texas ... defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement.... the Hispanic community was not my target before I read The Great Replacement." Several commentators noted that the manifesto echoed themes in Donald Trump's campaign speeches, including repeated claims of a Hispanic invasion along with general extremism and hateful language, whose proponents have been emboldened and mobilized by Trump's rhetoric and increasingly frequent talking points in right-wing media outlets. Trump, in turn, called for "strong background checks, perhaps marrying this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform", which some commentators said blamed immigration for the massacre.
The suspect in the 2022 Buffalo shooting that killed ten people and injured three others blamed Jews and African-Americans for white genocide in a manifesto, according to law enforcement officials. He had taken inspiration from other far-right mass shooters, whom he regarded as "heroes".
=== Europe ===
Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, had participated for years in debates on Internet forums and spoken against Islam and immigration. He wrote a 1,518-page compendium including frequent mentions of alleged ongoing genocide against white Europeans. Analysts described him as having Islamophobic views and a hatred of Islam, and as someone who considered himself as a knight dedicated to stemming the tide of Muslim immigration into Europe. The text copies sections of the Unabomber Manifesto, without giving credit, while substituting the words "cultural Marxists" for "leftists" and "Muslims" for "black people". The New York Times described American influences in the writings, noting that the compendium mentions the anti-Islamist American Robert Spencer 64 times and cites Spencer's works at great length. The work of Bat Ye'or is cited dozens of times. It regards Islam and "cultural Marxism" as the enemy and argues for the annihilation of "Eurabia" and multiculturalism, to preserve a Christian Europe.
=== New Zealand ===
The perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings that killed 51 and injured 40 explained in a manifesto that he carried out the attack to fight ongoing "white genocide" by foreign "invaders". He had forwarded stories about white women's low fertility rates on his social media accounts. Photographs from his initial court appearance showed him making the "OK" symbol appropriated by white supremacists with his fingers.
== Criticism and resistance ==
White genocide is a myth based on false science, false history, and hatred. White people are not dying out, and are not facing extermination. White supremacists claim that diversity is equivalent to white genocide. Scholars describe white supremacists as fabricating paranoid claims that their survival as a race is threatened, for example by, "individualism, celibacy, feminism and other forms of sex-role confusion, misplaced environmentalism, and white demonization and guilt," all of which are claimed to promote reproductive failure.
White genocide conspiracy theory frames evidence of declining birth rates in support of extremist views and calls to violence. White supremacists are successfully constructing false narratives of genocide to incite violence at an increasing rate. Literature propounding the white genocide conspiracy theory has incited violence; The Turner Diaries, for instance, is responsible for inciting many violent crimes, including those of Timothy McVeigh. The US Republican Party as led by Donald Trump has repeatedly and openly courted white supremacists and endorsed the falsehoods they promote, including those of white genocide.
In October 2016, Sanjiv Bhattacharya analyzed the belief in the conspiracy theory amongst the alt-right. While considering the prospect that non-Hispanic whites will be less than 50% of the US population by 2044; Bhattacharya, a British journalist, pointed out the racist hypocrisy in the statement "Diversity equals white genocide", discussing how the "alt right loves to evoke genocide while harbouring Holocaust deniers".
Around the Christmas period of 2016, George Ciccariello-Maher, an American political scientist, satirically tweeted "All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide". As a result of the ensuing controversy, Ciccariello-Maher resigned from his job as an associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University. Ciccariello-Maher continued to strongly oppose the conspiracy theory, claiming that it was "invented by white supremacists and used to denounce everything from inter-racial relationships to multicultural policies." He has labelled the concept as a "figment of the racist imagination" and claimed that "it should be mocked."
Adrianne Black, an American former white supremacist and goddaughter of David Duke, after initially supporting and helping to popularize the concept, has renounced and opposed the white genocide conspiracy theory. Black has claimed that the concept was about pushing white nationalists into a false and overt paranoia about demographics of the United States. Eli Saslow, an American journalist who worked with Black on her 2018 book Rising out of Hatred, has spoken against the conspiracy theory, labelling it as a "really effective" form of propaganda or indoctrination. He stated that "unfortunately, in part because it's built upon a very real and dark truth in American history—which is that white supremacy has always been a big part of what this country is—white nationalists were able to start capitalizing on that." Saslow has claimed the conspiracy theory is a way to "sanitize" white America's history of racism and violence, by focusing on the "ways that white people are under attack in this country," including "white genocide" and "building a wall".
In January 2019, Democratic Philadelphia City Council member Kenyatta Johnson labelled the Ku Klux Klan's distribution of "white genocide" promotional material in black neighborhoods of Philadelphia as an "upsetting and disgusting" act. In June 2019, Canadian author Naomi Klein addressed the narrative of "white genocide", criticizing the concept as an attack on women's reproductive freedom, in that it wished to deny abortion rights to white women having white children, while seeking to suppress non-white immigrant birthrates. The following month, critical theorist Bernard Harcourt detailed how the American New Right was seeking to orient its political message around the fear of a white genocide occurring. He proposed that "neo-fascist, white supremacist, revolutionary language" was becoming mainstream and was in effect "starting to change the way people are willing to express themselves", including President Trump.
In March 2019, journalist Adam Serwer suggested that the conspiracy theory did not sincerely refer to "mass murder, ethnic cleansing, or even violence," but rather to a perceived "loss of political and cultural hegemony in countries that white supremacists think should belong to white people by law." Serwer proposed that the conspiracy was "a kind of projection, a paranoia that the past genocide, colonialism, and ethnic cleansing forced on the West's former subjects will be visited upon it." The same month, Farhad Manjoo detailed how "white-extinction theory" was nonsense. Proposing that the "white genocide" label had "failed to take off", proving ineffective for conspiracy theorists attempting to push the narrative. Manjoo, an American journalist, suggested that the "Great Replacement" (which the Christchurch mosque shooter used for a manifesto title) was a softer reinvention, being to the white genocide conspiracy theory what the term Identitarian is to "white supremacist".
In April 2019, British academic Elif Shafak detailed how Renaud Camus' theory of the Great Replacement has created an ideological worldview for the far-right to amplify into a "white genocide" narrative in the West. Shafak argues that the conspiracy theory is also embedded in the works of Thilo Sarrazin, such as Germany Abolishes Itself and 2018's Hostile Takeover. Later that month, Jonathan Freedland and Mehdi Hasan released a joint analysis of far-right extremism and the ideology behind "white genocide". Discussing Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, Robert Gregory Bowers, and his rhetoric, Freeland and Hasan, both political journalists, labelled the conspiracy theory as racist and unhinged and argued that it had both the Muslim and Jewish "communities in its murderous sights". They concluded that both groups should "stand and fight it together".
In May 2019, political commentator Nick Cohen analyzed how "white genocide" narratives created anti-immigrant and societal sexual tension. He argued that the conspiracy theory was an effective form of racism and propaganda, which had penetrated Viktor Orbán's Hungarian government, but revealed a far-right paranoia that European men were not virile enough. In June 2019, professor of economics Jonathan Portes, while describing the concept as a "lunatic" conspiracy theory, detailed how more respectable versions of "white genocide" were being promoted by academic and media figures, and therefore pushing the idea further into mainstream discourse.
== See also ==
White demographic decline
Demographic threat
Demographic engineering
Angry white male
Disappearing blonde gene hoax
Love jihad conspiracy theory
Replacement migration
Black genocide in the United States
Umvolkung, a Nazi ideology used to describe a process of cultural assimilation
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Alba, Richard. The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream (Princeton UP, 2020) coaccess
Alexander, Charles C. "Prophet of American Racism: Madison Grant and the Nordic Myth" Phylon 23#1 pp. 73–90 online.
Daniel, Reginald. "Sociology of Multiracial Identity in the Late 1980s and Early 1990s: The Failure of a Perspective." Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies 8.2 (2021): 106–125. online
Leslie, Gregory John, and David O. Sears. "The Heaviest Drop of Blood: Black Exceptionalism Among Multiracials." Political Psychology (2022). online
Rodríguez-Muñiz, Michael. Figures of the future: Latino civil rights and the politics of demographic change (Princeton University Press, 2021).
Song, Miri. "Who counts as multiracial?." Ethnic and Racial Studies 44.8 (2021): 1296–1323.
Stefaniak, Anna, and Michael JA Wohl. "In time, we will simply disappear: Racial demographic shift undermines privileged group members' support for marginalized social groups via collective angst." Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 25.3 (2022): NP1-NP23. online | Wikipedia/White_genocide_conspiracy_theory |
Climate change denial (also global warming denial) is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none. Climate change denial includes unreasonable doubts about the extent to which climate change is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, and the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions.: 170–173 To a lesser extent, climate change denial can also be implicit when people accept the science but fail to reconcile it with their belief or action. Several studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism,: 691–698 pseudoscience, or propaganda.: 351
Many issues that are settled in the scientific community, such as human responsibility for climate change, remain the subject of politically or economically motivated attempts to downplay, dismiss or deny them—an ideological phenomenon academics and scientists call climate change denial. Climate scientists, especially in the United States, have reported government and oil-industry pressure to censor or suppress their work and hide scientific data, with directives not to discuss the subject publicly. The fossil fuels lobby has been identified as overtly or covertly supporting efforts to undermine or discredit the scientific consensus on climate change.
Industrial, political and ideological interests organize activity to undermine public trust in climate science.: 691–698 Climate change denial has been associated with the fossil fuels lobby, the Koch brothers, industry advocates, ultraconservative think tanks, and ultraconservative alternative media, often in the U.S.: 351 More than 90% of papers that are skeptical of climate change originate from right-wing think tanks. Climate change denial is undermining efforts to act on or adapt to climate change, and exerts a powerful influence on the politics of climate change.: 691–698
In the 1970s, oil companies published research that broadly concurred with the scientific community's view on climate change. Since then, for several decades, oil companies have been organizing a widespread and systematic climate change denial campaign to seed public disinformation, a strategy that has been compared to the tobacco industry's organized denial of the hazards of tobacco smoking. Some of the campaigns are even carried out by the same people who previously spread the tobacco industry's denialist propaganda.
== Terminology ==
Climate change denial refers to denial, dismissal, or doubt of the scientific consensus on the rate and extent of climate change, its significance, or its connection to human behavior, in whole or in part. Climate denial is a form of science denial. It can also take pseudoscientific forms. The terms climate skeptics or contrarians are nowadays used with the same meaning as climate change deniers even though deniers usually prefer not to, in order to sow confusion as to their intentions.
The terminology is debated: most of those actively rejecting the scientific consensus use the terms skeptic and climate change skepticism, and only a few have expressed preference for being described as deniers.: 2 But the word "skepticism" is incorrectly used, as scientific skepticism is an intrinsic part of scientific methodology. In fact, all scientists adhere to scientific skepticism as part of the scientific process that demands continuing questioning. Both options are problematic, but climate change denial has become more widely used than skepticism.
The term contrarian is more specific but less frequently used. In academic literature and journalism, the terms climate change denial and climate change deniers have well-established usage as descriptive terms without any pejorative connotation.
The terminology evolved and emerged in the 1990s. By 1995 the word "skeptic" was being used specifically for the minority who publicized views contrary to the scientific consensus. This small group of scientists presented their views in public statements and the media rather than to the scientific community.: 9, 11 : 69–70, 246 Journalist Ross Gelbspan said in 1995 that industry had engaged "a small band of skeptics" to confuse public opinion in a "persistent and well-funded campaign of denial". His 1997 book The Heat is On may have been the first to concentrate specifically on the topic. In it, Gelbspan discusses a "pervasive denial of global warming" in a "persistent campaign of denial and suppression" involving "undisclosed funding of these 'greenhouse skeptics'" with "the climate skeptics" confusing the public and influencing decision makers.: 3, 33–35, 173
In December 2014, an open letter from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry called on the media to stop using the term skepticism when referring to climate change denial. It contrasted scientific skepticism—which is "foundational to the scientific method"—with denial—"the a priori rejection of ideas without objective consideration"—and the behavior of those involved in political attempts to undermine climate science. It said: "Not all individuals who call themselves climate change skeptics are deniers. But virtually all deniers have falsely branded themselves as skeptics. By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry."
In 2015, The New York Times's public editor said that the Times was increasingly using denier when "someone is challenging established science", but assessing this on an individual basis with no fixed policy, and would not use the term when someone was "kind of wishy-washy on the subject or in the middle". The executive director of the Society of Environmental Journalists said that while there was reasonable skepticism about specific issues, she felt that "denier" was "the most accurate term when someone claims there is no such thing as global warming, or agrees that it exists but denies that it has any cause we could understand or any impact that could be measured".
A petition by climatetruth.org asked signers to "Tell the Associated Press: Establish a rule in the AP Stylebook ruling out the use of 'skeptic' to describe those who deny scientific facts". In September 2015, the Associated Press announced "an addition to AP Stylebook entry on global warming" that advised "to describe those who don't accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from human-made forces, use 'climate change doubters' or 'those who reject mainstream climate science'. Avoid use of 'skeptics' or 'deniers'". In May 2019, The Guardian also rejected use of the term "climate skeptic" in favor of "climate science denier".
In addition to explicit denial, people have also shown implicit denial by accepting the scientific consensus but failing to "translate their acceptance into action". This type of denial is also called soft climate change denial.
== Categories and tactics ==
In 2004, German climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf described how the media give the misleading impression that climate change is still disputed within the scientific community, attributing this impression to climate change skeptics' PR efforts. He identified different positions that climate skeptics argue, which he used as a taxonomy of climate change skepticism. Later the model was also applied to denial:
Trend skeptics or deniers (who claim that no significant warming is taking place): "Given that the warming is now evident even to laypeople, the trend skeptics are a gradually vanishing breed. They [...] claim that the warming trend measured by weather stations is an artefact due to urbanisation around those stations (urban heat island effect)."
Attribution skeptics or deniers (who accept the climate change trends but claim there are natural causes for this, not human-made ones): "A few of them even deny that the rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content is anthropogenic; they claim that the atmospheric carbon dioxide is released from the ocean by natural processes."
Impact skeptics or deniers (who think climate change is harmless or even beneficial, for example the "potential extension of agriculture into higher latitudes").
Sometimes consensus denial is added, for people who question the existence of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change.
The National Center for Science Education describes climate change denial as disputing differing points in the scientific consensus, a sequential range of arguments from denying the occurrence of climate change, accepting that but denying any significant human contribution, accepting these but denying scientific findings on how this would affect nature and human society, to accepting all these but denying that humans can mitigate or reduce the problems. James L. Powell provides a more extended list,: 170–173 as does climatologist Michael E. Mann in "six stages of denial", a ladder model whereby deniers have over time conceded acceptance of points, while retreating to a position that still rejects the mainstream consensus:
CO2 is not actually increasing.
Even if it is, the increase has no impact on the climate since there is no convincing evidence of warming.
Even if there is warming, it is due to natural causes.
Even if the warming cannot be explained by natural causes, the human impact is small, and the impact of continued greenhouse gas emissions will be minor.
Even if the current and future projected human effects on Earth's climate are not negligible, the changes are generally going to be good for us.
Whether or not the changes are going to be good for us, humans are very adept at adapting to changes; besides, it's too late to do anything about it, and/or a technological fix is bound to come along when we really need it.
Climate change denial is a form of denialism. Chris and Mark Hoofnagle have defined denialism in this context as the use of rhetorical devices "to give the appearance of legitimate debate where there is none, an approach that has the ultimate goal of rejecting a proposition on which a scientific consensus exists." This process characteristically uses one or more of the following tactics:
Allegations that scientific consensus involves conspiring to fake data or suppress the truth: a climate change conspiracy theory.
Fake experts, or individuals with views at odds with established knowledge, at the same time marginalizing or denigrating published topic experts. Like the manufactured doubt over smoking and health, a few contrarian scientists oppose the climate consensus, some of them the same people.
Selectivity, such as cherry-picking atypical or even obsolete papers, in the same way that the MMR vaccine controversy was based on one paper: examples include discredited ideas of the medieval warm period.
Unworkable demands of research, claiming that any uncertainty invalidates the field or exaggerating uncertainty while rejecting probabilities and mathematical models.
Logical fallacies.
=== Discussing specific aspects of climate change science ===
Some politicians and climate change denial groups say that because CO2 is only a trace gas in the atmosphere (0.04%), it cannot cause climate change. But scientists have known for over a century that even this small proportion has a significant warming effect, and doubling the proportion leads to a large temperature increase. Some groups allege that water vapor is a more significant greenhouse gas, and is left out of many climate models. But while water vapor is a greenhouse gas, its very short atmospheric lifetime (about 10 days) compared to that of CO2 (hundreds of years) means that CO2 is the primary driver of increasing temperatures; water vapor acts as a feedback, not a forcing, mechanism.
Climate denial groups may also argue that global warming has stopped, that a global warming hiatus is in effect, or that global temperatures are actually decreasing, leading to global cooling. These arguments are based on short-term fluctuations and ignore the long-term pattern.
Some groups and prominent deniers such as William Happer argue that there is a greenhouse gas saturation effect that significantly decreases the warming potential of further gases released into the atmosphere. Such an effect does exist in some form, as Happer's research demonstrates, but is likely negligible with respect to net global warming.
Climate change denial literature often features the suggestion that we should wait for better technologies before addressing climate change, when they will be more affordable and effective. The belief that technological innovation rather than widespread social change will offer solutions is sometime called techno-optimism.
==== Playing up the potential non-human causes ====
Climate denial groups often point to natural variability, such as sunspots and cosmic rays, to explain the warming trend. According to these groups, there is natural variability that will abate over time, and human influence has little to do with it. But climate models already take these factors into account. The scientific consensus is that they cannot explain the observed warming trend.
==== Playing up flawed studies ====
In 2007, the Heartland Institute published an article titled "500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares" by Dennis T. Avery, a food policy analyst at the Hudson Institute. Avery's list was immediately called into question for misunderstanding and distorting the conclusions of many of the named studies and citing outdated, flawed studies that had long been abandoned. Many of the scientists on the list demanded their names be removed. At least 45 of them had no idea they were included as "co-authors" and disagreed with the article's conclusions. The Heartland Institute refused these requests, saying that the scientists "have no right—legally or ethically—to demand that their names be removed from a bibliography composed by researchers with whom they disagree".
==== Disputing IPCC reports and processes ====
Deniers have generally attacked either the IPCC's processes, scientist or the synthesis and executive summaries; the full reports attract less attention.
In 1996, climate change denier Frederick Seitz criticized the 1995 IPCC Second Assessment Report, alleging corruption in the peer-review process. Scientists rejected his assertions; the presidents of the American Meteorological Society and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research described his claims as part of a "systematic effort by some individuals to undermine and discredit the scientific process".
In 2005, the House of Lords Economics Committee wrote, "We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations." It doubted the high emission scenarios and said that the IPCC had "played-down" what the committee called "some positive aspects of global warming". The main statements of the House of Lords Economics Committee were rejected in the response made by the United Kingdom government.
On 10 December 2008, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works minority members released a report under the leadership of the Senate's most vocal global warming denier, Jim Inhofe. It says it summarizes scientific dissent from the IPCC. Many of its statements about the numbers of people listed in the report, whether they are actually scientists, and whether they support the positions attributed to them, have been disputed. Inhofe also said that "some parts of the IPCC process resembled a Soviet-style trial, in which the facts are predetermined, and ideological purity trumps technical and scientific rigor."
==== Creating doubts about scientific publishing processes ====
Some climate change deniers promote conspiracy theories alleging that the scientific consensus is illusory, or that climatologists are acting out of their own financial interests by causing undue alarm about a changing climate. Some climate change deniers claim that there is no scientific consensus on climate change, that any evidence for a scientific consensus is faked, or that the peer-review process for climate science papers has become corrupted by scientists seeking to suppress dissent. No evidence of such conspiracies has been presented. In fact, much of the data used in climate science is publicly available, contradicting allegations that scientists are hiding data or stonewalling requests.
Some climate change deniers assert that the scientific consensus on climate change is based on conspiracies to produce manipulated data or suppress dissent. It is one of a number of tactics used in climate change denial to attempt to manufacture political and public controversy disputing this consensus. These people typically allege that, through worldwide acts of professional and criminal misconduct, the science behind climate change has been invented or distorted for ideological or financial reasons. They promote harmful conspiracy theories alleging that scientists and institutions involved in global warming research are part of a global scientific conspiracy or engaged in a manipulative hoax.
The Great Global Warming Swindle is a 2007 British polemical documentary film directed by Martin Durkin that denies the scientific consensus about the reality and causes of climate change, justifying this by suggesting that climatology is influenced by funding and political factors. The film strongly opposes the scientific consensus on climate change. It argues that the consensus on climate change is the product of "a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry: created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists; supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding; and propped up by complicit politicians and the media". The programme's publicity materials claim that man-made global warming is "a lie" and "the biggest scam of modern times." The film received strong criticism from many scientists and others. Journalist George Monbiot called it "the same old conspiracy theory that we've been hearing from the denial industry for the past ten years".
The climate deniers involved in the Climatic Research Unit email controversy ("Climategate") in 2009 claimed that researchers faked the data in their research publications and suppressed their critics in order to receive more funding (i.e. taxpayer money). Eight committees investigated these allegations and published reports, each finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. According to the Muir Russell report, the scientists' "rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt", the investigators "did not find any evidence of behavior that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments", but there had been "a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness." The scientific consensus that climate change is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged at the end of the investigations.
=== Being "lukewarm" or "skeptical" ===
In 2012, Clive Hamilton published the essay "Climate change and the soothing message of luke-warmism". He defined luke-warmists as "those who appear to accept the body of climate science but interpret it in a way that is least threatening: emphasising uncertainties, playing down dangers, and advocating a slow and cautious response. They are politically conservative and anxious about the threat to the social structure posed by the implications of climate science. Their 'pragmatic' approach is therefore alluring to political leaders looking for a justification for policy minimalism." He cited Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, and also Roger A. Pielke Jr., Daniel Sarewitz, Steve Rayner, Mike Hulme and "the pre-eminent luke-warmist" Danish economist Bjørn Lomborg.
Climate change skepticism, while in some cases professing to do research on climate change, has focused instead on influencing the opinion of the public, legislators and the media, in contrast to legitimate science.: 28
Pope Francis groups together four types of respondents rejecting climate change: those who "deny, conceal, gloss over or relativize the issue".
=== Pushing for adaptation only ===
The conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, whose "Environmental Task Force" contains a number of climate change deniers, including Sherwood Idso and S. Fred Singer, has said, "The growing consensus on climate change policies is that adaptation will protect present and future generations from climate-sensitive risks far more than efforts to restrict CO2 emissions."
The adaptation-only plan is also endorsed by oil companies like ExxonMobil. According to a Ceres report, "ExxonMobil's plan appears to be to stay the course and try to adjust when changes occur. The company's plan is one that involves adaptation, as opposed to leadership."
The George W. Bush administration also voiced support for an adaptation-only policy in 2002. "In a stark shift for the Bush administration, the United States has sent a climate report [U.S. Climate Action Report 2002] to the United Nations detailing specific and far-reaching effects it says global warming will inflict on the American environment. In the report, the administration also for the first time places most of the blame for recent global warming on human actions—mainly the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere." The report "does not propose any major shift in the administration's policy on greenhouse gases. Instead it recommends adapting to inevitable changes instead of making rapid and drastic reductions in greenhouse gases to limit warming." This position apparently precipitated a similar shift in emphasis at the COP 8 climate talks in New Delhi several months later; "The shift satisfies the Bush administration, which has fought to avoid mandatory cuts in emissions for fear it would harm the economy. 'We're welcoming a focus on more of a balance on adaptation versus mitigation', said a senior American negotiator in New Delhi. 'You don't have enough money to do everything.'"
Some find this shift and attitude disingenuous and indicative of a bias against prevention (i.e. reducing emissions/consumption) and toward prolonging the oil industry's profits at the environment's expense. In an article addressing the supposed economic hazards of addressing climate change, writer and environmental activist George Monbiot wrote: "Now that the dismissal of climate change is no longer fashionable, the professional deniers are trying another means of stopping us from taking action. It would be cheaper, they say, to wait for the impacts of climate change and then adapt to them".
=== Delaying climate change mitigation measures ===
Climate change deniers often debate whether action (such as the restrictions on the use of fossil fuels to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions) should be taken now or in the near future. They fear the economic ramifications of such restrictions. For example, in a 1998 speech, a staff member of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argued that emission controls' negative economic effects outweighed their environmental benefits. Climate change deniers tend to argue that even if global warming is caused solely by the burning of fossil fuels, restricting their use would damage the world economy more than the increases in global temperature.
Conversely, the general consensus is that early action to reduce emissions would help avoid much greater economic costs later, and reduce the risk of catastrophic, irreversible change.
Earlier, climate change deniers' online YouTube content focused on denying global warming, or saying such warming is not caused by humans burning fossil fuel. As such denials became untenable, content shifted to asserting that climate solutions are unworkable, that global warming is harmless or even beneficial, and that the environmental movement is unreliable.
A 2016 article in Science made the case that opposition to climate policy was beginning to take a "rhetorical shift away from outright skepticism" and called this neoskepticism. Rather than denying the existence of global warming, neoskeptics instead "question the magnitude of the risks and assert that reducing them has more costs than benefits." According to the authors, the emergence of neoskepticism "heightens the need for science to inform decision making under uncertainty and to improve communication and education."
There is a range of possible mitigation policies. Disagreement over the sufficiency, viability, or desirability of a given policy is not necessarily neoskepticism. But neoskepticism is marked by failure to appreciate the increased risks associated with delayed action. Gavin Schmidt has called neoskepticism a form of confirmation bias and the tendency to always take "as gospel the lowest estimate of a plausible range". Neoskeptics err on the side of the least disruptive projections and least active policies and, as such, neglect or misapprehend the full spectrum of risks associated with global warming.
In political terms, soft climate denial can stem from concerns about the economics and economic impacts of climate change, particularly the concern that strong measures to combat global warming or mitigate its impacts will seriously inhibit economic growth.: 10
=== Promoting conspiracy theories ===
Climate change denial is commonly rooted in a phenomenon known as conspiracy theory, in which people misattribute events to a powerful group's secret plot or plan. People with certain cognitive tendencies are also more drawn than others to conspiracy theories about climate change. Conspiratorial beliefs are more predominantly found in narcissistic people and those who consistently look for meanings or patterns in their world, including believers in paranormal activity. Climate change conspiracy disbelief is also linked to lower levels of education and analytic thinking.
Scientists are investigating which factors associated with conspiracy belief can be influenced and changed. They have identified "uncertainty, feelings of powerlessness, political cynicism, magical thinking, and errors in logical and probabilistic reasoning".
In 2012, researchers found that belief in other conspiracy theories was associated with being more likely to endorse climate change denial. Examples of science-related conspiracy theories that some people believe include that aliens exist, childhood vaccines are linked to autism, Bigfoot is real, the government "adds fluoride to drinking water for 'sinister' purposes", and the moon landing was faked.
Examples of alleged climate change conspiracies include:
Aiming at New World Order: Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, suggested in 2006 that supporters of the Kyoto Protocol such as Jacques Chirac are aiming at global governance. In his speech, Inhofe said: "So, I wonder: are the French going to be dictating U.S. policy?" William M. Gray also claimed in 2006 that scientists support the scientific consensus on climate change because they were promoted by government leaders and environmentalists seeking world government. He added that its purpose was to exercise political influence, to try to introduce world government, and to control people.
To promote other types of energy sources: Some have claimed that the "threat of global warming is an attempt to promote nuclear power". Another claim is that "because many people have invested in renewable energy companies, they stand to lose a lot of money if global warming is shown to be a myth. According to this theory, environmental groups therefore bribe climate scientists to doctor their data so that they are able to secure their financial investment in green energy."
== Psychology ==
A study published in PLOS One in 2024 found that even a single repetition of a claim was sufficient to increase the perceived truth of both climate science-aligned claims and climate change skeptic/denial claims—"highlighting the insidious effect of repetition". This effect was found even among climate science endorsers.
== Connections to other debates ==
=== Links with other environmental issues ===
Many of the climate change deniers have disagreed, in whole or part, with the scientific consensus regarding other issues, particularly those relating to environmental risks, such as ozone depletion, DDT, and passive smoking.
In the 1990s, the Marshall Institute began campaigning against increased regulations on environmental issues such as acid rain, ozone depletion, second-hand smoke, and the dangers of DDT.: 170 In each case their argument was that the science was too uncertain to justify any government intervention, a strategy it borrowed from earlier efforts to downplay the health effects of tobacco in the 1980s.: 170 This campaign would continue for the next two decades.: 105
=== Links with nationalism and right-wing groups ===
In 2023, an increase in climate change denial was noted, particularly among supporters of the far right.
It has been suggested that climate change can conflict with a nationalistic view because it is "unsolvable" at the national level and requires collective action between nations or between local communities, and that therefore populist nationalism tends to reject the science of climate change.
The UK Independence Party's policy on climate change has been influenced by climate change denier Christopher Monckton and by its energy spokesman Roger Helmer, who has said, "It is not clear that the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is anthropogenic."
Jerry Taylor of the Niskanen Center posits that climate change denial is an important component of Trumpian historical consciousness, and "plays a significant role in the architecture of Trumpism as a developing philosophical system".
Though climate change denial was apparently waning circa 2021, some right-wing nationalist organizations have adopted a theory of "environmental populism" advocating that natural resources be preserved for a nation's existing residents, to the exclusion of immigrants. Other such right-wing organizations have contrived new "green wings" that falsely assert that refugees from poor nations cause environmental pollution and climate change and should therefore be excluded.
A study published in PLOS Climate studied two forms of national identity—defensive or "national narcissism" and "secure national identification"—for their correlation to support for policies to mitigate climate change and transition to renewable energy. The authors defined national narcissism as "a belief that one's national group is exceptional and deserves external recognition underlain by unsatisfied psychological needs". They defined secure national identification as "reflect[ing] feelings of strong bonds and solidarity with one's ingroup members, and sense of satisfaction in group membership". The researchers concluded that secure national identification tends to support policies promoting renewable energy, while national narcissism is inversely correlated with support for such policies—except to the extent that such policies, as well as greenwashing, enhance the national image. Right-wing political orientation, which may indicate susceptibility to climate conspiracy beliefs, was also found to be negatively correlated with support for genuine climate mitigation policies.
=== Conservative views ===
One worldview that often leads to climate change denial is belief in free enterprise capitalism. The "freedom of the commons" (tragedy of the commons), or the freedom to use natural resources as a public good as it is practiced in free enterprise capitalism, destroys important ecosystems and their functions, and so having a stake in this worldview does not correlate with climate change mitigation behavior. Political worldview plays an important role in environmental policy and action. Liberals tend to focus on environmental risks, while conservatives focus on the benefits of economic development. Because of this difference, conflicting opinions on the acceptance of climate change arise.
A study of climate change denial indicators in public opinion data from ten Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010 shows that conservative white men in the U.S. are significantly more likely to deny climate change than other Americans. Conservative white men who report understanding climate change very well are even more likely to deny climate change.
Another reason for the discrepancy in climate change denial between liberals and conservatives is that "contemporary environmental discourse is based largely on moral concerns related to harm and care, which are more deeply held by liberals than by conservatives"; if the discourse is instead framed using moral concerns related to purity that are more deeply held by conservatives, the discrepancy is resolved.
In the U.S., climate change denial largely correlates with political affiliation. This is partially because Democrats focus more on tighter government regulations and taxation, which are the basis for most environmental policy. Political affiliation also affects how different people interpret the same facts. More highly educated people are less likely to rely on their own interpretation and political ideology rather than on scientists' opinions. Therefore, political worldviews override expert opinion on the interpretation of climate facts and evidence of anthropogenic climate change.
Affiliation with a political group, especially in the U.S., is an important personal and social identity for many. Because of this, many people hold the popular values of their political affiliation, regardless of their personal beliefs, so as not to be ostracized by the group.
== History ==
U.S. fossil fuel companies have known about global warming since at least the 1960s. In 1966, a coal industry research organization, Bituminous Coal Research Inc., published its finding that if then prevailing trends of coal consumption continued, "the temperature of the earth's atmosphere will increase" and "vast changes in the climates of the earth will result. [...] Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London." In a discussion following this paper in the same publication, a combustion engineer for Peabody Coal, now Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal supplier, added that the coal industry was merely "buying time" before additional government air pollution regulations would be promulgated to clean the air. Nevertheless, the coal industry publicly advocated for decades thereafter the position that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beneficial for the planet.
In response to increasing public awareness of the greenhouse effect in the 1970s, conservative reaction built up, denying environmental concerns that could lead to government regulation. In 1977, the first Secretary of Energy, James Schlesinger, suggested President Jimmy Carter take no action regarding a climate change memo, citing uncertainty. During the presidency of Ronald Reagan, global warming became a political issue, with immediate plans to cut spending on environmental research, particularly climate-related, and stop funding for CO2 monitoring. Congressman Al Gore was aware of the developing science: he joined others in arranging congressional hearings from 1981 onward, with testimony from scientists including Revelle, Stephen Schneider, and Wallace Smith Broecker.
An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report in 1983 said global warming was "not a theoretical problem but a threat whose effects will be felt within a few years", with potentially "catastrophic" consequences. The Reagan administration called the report "alarmist" and the dispute was widely covered. Public attention turned to other issues, then the 1985 finding of a polar ozone hole brought a swift international response. To the public, this was related to climate change and the possibility of effective action, but news interest faded.
Public attention was renewed amid summer droughts and heat waves when James Hansen testified to a Congressional hearing on 23 June 1988, saying with high confidence that long-term warming was underway with severe warming likely within the next 50 years, and warning of likely storms and floods. There was increasing media attention: the scientific community had reached a broad consensus that the climate was warming, human activity was very likely the primary cause, and there would be significant consequences if the trend was not curbed. These facts encouraged discussion about new environmental regulations, which the fossil fuel industry opposed.
From 1989 onward, industry-funded organizations, including the Global Climate Coalition and the George C. Marshall Institute, sought to spread doubt, in a strategy already developed by the tobacco industry. A small group of scientists opposed to the consensus on global warming became politically involved, and with support from conservative political interests, began publishing in books and the press rather than in scientific journals. Historian Spencer Weart identifies this period as the point where skepticism about basic aspects of climate science was no longer justified, and those spreading mistrust about these issues became deniers.: 46 As the scientific community and new data increasingly refuted their arguments, deniers turned to political arguments, making personal attacks on scientists' reputations, and promoting ideas of global warming conspiracies.: 47
With the 1989 fall of communism, the attention of U.S. conservative think tanks, which had been organized in the 1970s as an intellectual counter-movement to socialism, turned from the "red scare" to the "green scare" tactic, which they saw as a threat to their aims of private property, free trade market economies, and global capitalism. They used environmental skepticism to promote denial of environmental problems such as loss of biodiversity and climate change.
The campaign to spread doubt continued into the 1990s, including an advertising campaign funded by coal industry advocates intended to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact". There was also a 1998 proposal by the American Petroleum Institute to recruit scientists to convince politicians, the media, and the public that climate science was too uncertain to warrant environmental regulation.
In 1998, journalists Ross Gelbspan noted that his fellow journalists accepted that global warming was occurring, but were in "'stage-two' denial of the climate crisis", unable to accept the feasibility of solutions to the problem.: 3, 35, 46, 197 His book, Boiling Point, published in 2004, detailed the fossil-fuel industry's campaign to deny climate change and undermine public confidence in climate science.
In Newsweek's August 2007 cover story "The Truth About Denial", Sharon Begley reported that "the denial machine is running at full throttle", and that this "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign" by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks, and industry had "created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change."
=== Similarities with tobacco industry tactics ===
In 2006, George Monbiot published an article about similarities between the methods of groups funded by Exxon and those of the tobacco giant Philip Morris, including direct attacks on peer-reviewed science and attempts to create public controversy and doubt.
The approach to downplay climate change's significance was copied from tobacco lobbyists, who attempted to prevent or delay the introduction of regulation in the face of scientific evidence linking tobacco to lung cancer. They attempted to discredit the research by creating doubt, manipulating debate, discrediting the scientists involved, disputing their findings, and creating and maintaining an apparent controversy by promoting claims that contradicted scientific research. Doubt shielded the tobacco industry from litigation and regulation for decades.
For example, in 1992 an EPA report linked secondhand smoke with lung cancer. In response, the tobacco industry engaged the APCO Worldwide public relations company, which set out a strategy of astroturfing campaigns to cast doubt on the science by linking smoking anxieties with other issues, including global warming, in order to turn public opinion against calls for government intervention. The campaign depicted public concerns as "unfounded fears" supposedly based only on "junk science" in contrast to their "sound science", and operated through front groups, primarily the Advancement of Sound Science Center (TASSC) and its Junk Science website, run by Steven Milloy. A tobacco company memo read, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."
During the 1990s, the tobacco campaign died away, and TASSC began taking funding from oil companies, including Exxon. Its website became central in distributing "almost every kind of climate-change denial that has found its way into the popular press.": 104–106 Monbiot wrote that TASSC "has done more damage to the campaign to halt [climate change] than any other body" by trying to manufacture the appearance of a grassroots movement against "unfounded fear" and "over-regulation".
=== Republican Party in the United States ===
The Republican Party in the United States is unique in denying anthropogenic climate change among conservative political parties in the Western world. In 1994, according to a leaked memo, the Republican strategist Frank Luntz advised members of the Republican Party, with regard to climate change, that "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue" and "challenge the science" by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view". (In 2006, Luntz said he still believes "back [in] '97, '98, the science was uncertain", but now agreed with the scientific consensus.) From 2008 to 2017, the Republican Party went from "debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist". In 2011, "more than half of the Republicans in the House and three-quarters of Republican senators" said "that the threat of global warming, as a human-made and highly threatening phenomenon, is at best an exaggeration and at worst an utter 'hoax'".
In 2014, more than 55% of congressional Republicans were reported to be climate change deniers. According to PolitiFact in May 2014, Jerry Brown's statement that "virtually no Republican" in Washington accepts climate change science was "mostly true"; PolitiFact counted "eight out of 278, or about 3 percent" of Republican members of Congress who "accept the prevailing scientific conclusion that global warming is both real and man-made."
In 2005, The New York Times reported that Philip Cooney, a former fossil fuel lobbyist and "climate team leader" at the American Petroleum Institute and President George W. Bush's chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, had "repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents". Sharon Begley reported in Newsweek that Cooney "edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as 'lack of understanding' and 'considerable uncertainty'." Cooney reportedly removed an entire section on climate in one report, whereupon another lobbyist sent him a fax saying "You are doing a great job."
In the 2016 U.S. election cycle, every Republican presidential candidate, and the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate, questioned or denied climate change, and opposed U.S. government steps to address it.
In 2016, Aaron McCright argued that anti-environmentalism—and climate change denial specifically—had expanded in the U.S. to become "a central tenet of the current conservative and Republican identity".
In a 2017 interview, United States Secretary of Energy Rick Perry acknowledged the existence of climate change and impact from humans, but said that he did not agree that carbon dioxide was its primary driver, pointing instead to "the ocean waters and this environment that we live in". The American Meteorological Society responded in a letter to Perry that it is "critically important that you understand that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the primary cause", pointing to conclusions of scientists worldwide.
Climate denial has started to decrease among the Republican Party leadership toward acknowledgment that "the climate is changing"; a 2019 study by several major think tanks called the climate right "fragmented and underfunded".
Florida Republican Tom Lee described people's emotional impact and reactions to climate change, saying: "I mean, you have to be the Grim Reaper of reality in a world that isn't real fond of the Grim Reaper. That's why I use the term 'emotionally shut down', because I think I think you lose people at hello a lot times in the Republican conversation over this."
When a moderator at the August 23, 2023, Republican presidential debate asked the candidates to raise their hands if they believed human behavior is causing climate change, none did. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said, "the climate change agenda is a hoax" and that "more people are dying of climate change policies than they actually are of climate change"; none of his competitors challenged him directly on climate. After investigating Ramaswamy's latter claim, a Washington Post fact check found no supporting evidence.
== Denial networks ==
=== Conservative and libertarian think tanks ===
A 2000 article explored the connection between conservative think tanks and climate change denial. Research found that specific groups were marshaling skepticism against climate change; a 2008 University of Central Florida study found that 92% of "environmentally skeptical" literature published in the U.S. was partly or wholly affiliated with self-proclaimed conservative think tanks.
In 2013, the Center for Media and Democracy reported that the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella group of 64 U.S. think tanks, had been lobbying on behalf of major corporations and conservative donors to oppose climate change regulation.
Conservative and libertarian think tanks in the U.S., such as The Heritage Foundation, Marshall Institute, Cato Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute, were significant participants in lobbying attempts seeking to halt or eliminate environmental regulations.
Between 2002 and 2010, the combined annual income of 91 climate change counter-movement organizations—think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations—was roughly $900 million. During the same period, billionaires secretively donated nearly $120 million (£77 million) via the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund to more than 100 organizations seeking to undermine the public perception of the science on climate change.
=== Publishers, websites and networks ===
In November 2021, a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified "ten fringe publishers" that together were responsible for nearly 70 percent of Facebook user interactions with content that denied climate change. Facebook said the percentage was overstated and called the study misleading.
The "toxic ten" publishers: Breitbart News, The Western Journal, Newsmax, Townhall, Media Research Center, The Washington Times, The Federalist, The Daily Wire, RT (TV network), and The Patriot Post.
The Rebel Media and its director, Ezra Levant, have promoted climate change denial and oil sands extraction in Alberta.
Willard Anthony Watts is an American blogger who runs Watts Up With That?, a climate change denial blog.
A piece of research from 2015 identified 4,556 people with overlapping network ties to 164 organizations that were responsible for most efforts to downplay the threat of climate change in the U.S.
==== Publications for school children ====
According to documents leaked in February 2012, The Heartland Institute is developing a curriculum for use in schools that frames climate change as a scientific controversy. In 2017, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) Glenn Branch wrote, "the Heartland Institute is continuing to inflict its climate change denial literature on science teachers across the country". Each significant claim was rated for accuracy by scientists who were experts on that topic. It was found that "the 'Key Findings' section are incorrect, misleading, based on flawed logic, or simply factually inaccurate". The NCSE has prepared Classroom Resources in response to Heartland and other anti-science threats.
In 2023, Republican politician and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee published Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change, which acknowledges global warming but minimizes the influence of human emissions. Marketed as an alternative to mainstream education, the publication does not attribute authorship or cite scientific credentials. The NCSE's deputy director called the publication "propaganda" and "very unreliable as a guide to climate change for kids", saying it represented "present-day" atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide as 280 parts per million (ppm), which was true in 391 BC but short of 2023's actual concentration of 420 ppm.
In 2023, the state of Florida approved a public school curriculum including videos produced by conservative advocacy group PragerU that liken climate change skeptics to those who fought Communism and Nazism, imply renewable energy harms the environment, and say current global warming occurs naturally.
Texas, which has a large influence on school textbooks published nationwide, proposed textbooks in 2023 that included more information about the climate crisis than editions a decade earlier. But some books clouded the human causes of climate change and downplayed the role of fossil fuels, with Texas U.S. Representative August Pfluger emphasizing the importance of "secure, reliable energy" (oil and natural gas) produced in the Permian Basin. In September 2023, Pfluger's Congressional website said, "we cannot allow the radical climate lobby to infiltrate Texas middle schools and brainwash our children", claiming that liquefied natural gas is "not only...good for our economy, but it's good for the environment".
== Notable people who deny climate change ==
=== Politicians ===
Acknowledgment of climate change by politicians, while expressing uncertainty as to how much of it is due to human activity, has been described as a new form of climate denial, and "a reliable tool to manipulate public perception of climate change and stall political action".
In 2010, Donald Trump said, "With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore....Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn't care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America's stupidity." In 2012, Trump tweeted, "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
On January 21, 2015, Jim Inhofe returned to chairing the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works as part of a new Republican majority in the Senate. In response to NOAA and NASA reports that 2014 had been the warmest year globally in the temperature record, he said, "we had the coldest in the western hemisphere in the same time frame", and attributed changes to a 30-year cycle, not human activity. In a debate the same day about a bill for the Keystone XL pipeline, Inhofe endorsed an amendment proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, "Climate change is real and not a hoax", which passed 98–1. Inhofe clarified his view, saying, "Climate is changing and climate has always changed and always will. There is archaeological evidence of that, there is biblical evidence of that, there is historical evidence of that", but added, "there are some people who are so arrogant to think they are so powerful they can change climate." On February 26, 2015, Inhofe brought a snowball to the Senate floor and tossed it before delivering remarks in which he said that environmentalists keep talking about global warming even though it keeps getting cold.
In 2017, former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn discussed the Paris agreement and denied the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. He claimed that sea level rise had been no more than 5 mm in 25 years, and asserted there was now global cooling. In 2013, he said, "I am a global warming denier. I don't deny that."
Republican Jim Bridenstine, the first elected politician to serve as NASA administrator, had previously said that global temperatures were not rising. But a month after the Senate confirmed his NASA position in April 2018, he acknowledged that human emissions of greenhouse gases are raising global temperatures.
During a May 2018 meeting of the United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Representative Mo Brooks claimed that sea level rise is caused not by melting glaciers but rather by coastal erosion and silt that flows from rivers into the ocean.
In 2019, Ernesto Araújo, the minister of foreign affairs appointed by Brazil's newly elected president Jair Bolsonaro, called global warming a plot by "cultural Marxists" and eliminated the ministry's climate change division.
An April 15, 2023, tweet by Republican U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said climate change was a "scam", that "fossil fuels are natural and amazing", and that "there are some very powerful people that are getting rich beyond their wildest dreams convincing many that carbon is the enemy". Her tweet included a chart that omitted carbon dioxide and methane—the two most dominant greenhouse gas emissions.
A 2024 analysis found 100 U.S. representatives and 23 U.S. senators—23% of the 535 members of Congress—to be climate change deniers, all the deniers being Republicans.
=== Scientists ===
American and New Zealand climate scientist Kevin Trenberth has published widely on climate change science and fought back against climate change misinformation for decades. He describes in his memoirs his "close encounters with deniers and skeptics"—with fellow meteorologists or climate change scientists. These included Richard Lindzen ("he is quite beguiling but is criticized as "intellectually dishonest" by his peers"; Lindzen was a professor of meteorology at MIT and has been called a contrarian in relation to climate change and other issues.), Roy Spencer (who has "repeatedly made errors that always resulted in lower temperature trends than were really present"), John Christy ("his decisions on climate work and statements appear to be heavily colored by his religion"), Roger Pielke Jr, Christopher Landsea, Pat Michaels ("long associated with the Cato Institute, he changed his bombastic tune gradually over time as climate change became more evident").: 95
Sherwood B. Idso is a natural scientist and is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In 1982 he published his book Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe?, which said increases in CO2 would not warm the planet, but would fertilize crops and were "something to be encouraged and not suppressed".
William M. Gray was a climate scientist (emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University) who supported climate change denial: he agreed that global warming was taking place, but argued that humans were responsible for only a tiny portion of it and it was largely part of the Earth's natural cycle.
In 1998, Frederick Seitz, an American physicist and former National Academy of Sciences president, wrote the Oregon Petition, a controversial document in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. The petition and accompanying "Research Review of Global Warming Evidence" claimed that "We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. [...] This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution". In their book Merchants of Doubt, the authors write that Seitz and a group of other scientists fought the scientific evidence and spread confusion on many of the most important issues of our time, like the harmfulness of tobacco smoke, acid rains, CFCs, pesticides, and global warming.: 25–29
== Lobbying and related activities ==
Efforts to lobby against environmental regulation have included campaigns to manufacture doubt about the science behind climate change and to obscure the scientific consensus and data.: 352 These have undermined public confidence in climate science.: 351
As of 2015, the climate change denial industry is most powerful in the U.S. Efforts by climate change denial groups played a significant role in the United States' rejection of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.
=== Fossil fuel companies and other private sector actors ===
Research conducted at an Exxon archival collection at the University of Texas and interviews with former Exxon employees indicate that the company's scientific opinion and its public posture toward climate change were contradictory. A systematic review of Exxon's climate modeling projections concluded that in private and academic circles since the late 1970s and early 1980s, ExxonMobil predicted global warming correctly and skillfully, correctly dismissed the possibility of a coming ice age in favor of a "carbon dioxide induced super-interglacial", and reasonably estimated how much CO2 would lead to dangerous warming.
Between 1989 and 2002, the Global Climate Coalition, a group of mainly U.S. businesses, used aggressive lobbying and public relations tactics to oppose action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight the Kyoto Protocol. Large corporations and trade groups from the oil, coal and auto industries financed the coalition. The New York Times reported, "even as the coalition worked to sway opinion [toward skepticism], its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted". In 2000, the Ford Motor Company was the first company to leave the coalition as a result of pressure from environmentalists. Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, the Southern Company and General Motors subsequently left the GCC. It closed in 2002.
From January 2009 through June 2010, the oil, coal and utility industries spent $500 million in lobby expenditures in opposition to legislation to address climate change.
A study in 2022 traced the history of an influential group of economic consultants hired by the petroleum industry from the 1990s to the 2010s to estimate the costs of various proposed climate policies. The economists used models that inflated predicted costs while ignoring policy benefits, and their results were often portrayed to the public as independent rather than industry-sponsored. Their work played a key role in undermining numerous major climate policy initiatives in the US over a span of decades. This study illustrates how the fossil fuel industry has funded biased economic analyses to oppose climate policy.
==== ExxonMobil ====
=== Attacks and threats towards scientists ===
Climate change deniers attacked the work of climate scientist Michael E. Mann for years. On 8 February 2024, Mann won a $1 million judgment for punitive damages in a defamation lawsuit filed in 2012 against bloggers who attacked his hockey stick graph of the Northern Hemisphere temperature rise. One of the bloggers had called Mann's work "fraudulent", contrary to numerous investigations that had already cleared Mann of any misconduct and supported the validity of his research.
After Elon Musk's 2022 takeover of Twitter (now X), key figures at the company who ensured trusted content was prioritized were removed, and climate scientists received a large increase in hostile, threatening, harassing, and personally abusive tweets from deniers.
In 2023, increases in climate change denial were reported, particularly on the far right. Climate change deniers threatened meteorologists, accusing them of causing a drought, falsifying thermometer readings, and cherry-picking warmer weather stations to misrepresent global warming. Also in 2023, CNN reported that meteorologists and climate communicators worldwide were receiving increased harassment and false accusations that they were lying about or controlling the weather, inflating temperature records to make climate change seem worse, and changing color palettes of weather maps to make them look more dramatic. The German television news service Tagesschau called this a global phenomenon.
=== Funding for deniers ===
Journalists reported in 2015 that oil companies had known since the 1970s that burning oil and gas could cause climate change but nonetheless funded deniers for years.
Several large fossil fuel corporations provide significant funding for attempts to mislead the public about climate science's trustworthiness. ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundations have been identified as especially influential funders of climate change contrarianism. The bankruptcy of the coal company Cloud Peak Energy revealed it funded the Institute for Energy Research, a climate denial think tank, as well as several other policy influencers.
After the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) offered British, American, and other scientists $10,000 plus travel expenses to publish articles critical of the assessment. The institute had received more than $1.6 million from Exxon, and its vice-chairman of trustees was former Exxon head Lee Raymond. Raymond sent letters that alleged the IPCC report was not "supported by the analytical work". More than 20 AEI employees worked as consultants to the George W. Bush administration.
The authors of the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt provide documentation for the assertion that professional deniers have tried to sow seeds of doubt in public opinion in order to halt any meaningful social or political action to reduce the impact of human carbon emissions. That only half of the American population believes global warming is caused by human activity could be seen as a victory for these deniers. One of the authors' main arguments is that most prominent scientists who have opposed the near-universal consensus are funded by industries, such as automotive and oil, that stand to lose money by government actions to regulate greenhouse gases.
The Global Climate Coalition was an industry coalition that funded several scientists who expressed skepticism about global warming. In 2000, several members left the coalition when they became the target of a national divestiture campaign run by John Passacantando and Phil Radford at Ozone Action. When Ford Motor Company left the coalition, it was regarded as "the latest sign of divisions within heavy industry over how to respond to global warming". After that, between December 1999 and early March 2000, the GCC was deserted by Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, energy firm the Southern Company and General Motors. The Global Climate Coalition closed in 2002.
In early 2015, several media reports emerged saying that Willie Soon, a popular scientist among climate change deniers, had failed to disclose conflicts of interest in at least 11 scientific papers published since 2008. They reported that he received a total of $1.25 million from ExxonMobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute, and a foundation run by the Koch brothers. Documents obtained by Greenpeace under the Freedom of Information Act show that the Charles G. Koch Foundation gave Soon two grants totaling $175,000 in 2005/6 and again in 2010. Grants to Soon between 2001 and 2007 from the American Petroleum Institute totaled $274,000, and between 2005 and 2010 from ExxonMobil totaled $335,000. The Mobil Foundation, the Texaco Foundation, and the Electric Power Research Institute also funded Soon. Acknowledging that he received this money, Soon said that he had "never been motivated by financial reward in any of my scientific research". In 2015, Greenpeace disclosed papers documenting that Soon failed to disclose to academic journals funding including more than $1.2 million from fossil fuel industry-related interests, including ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Southern Company.
Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy has said that deniers such as Michaels are lobbyists more than researchers, and "I don't think it's unethical any more than most lobbying is unethical". He said donations to deniers amount to "trying to get a political message across".
Robert Brulle analyzed the funding of 91 organizations opposed to restrictions on carbon emissions, which he called the "climate change counter-movement". Between 2003 and 2013, the donor-advised funds Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, combined, were the largest funders, accounting for about a quarter of the funds, and the American Enterprise Institute was the largest recipient, with 16% of the total funds. The study also found that the amount of money donated to these organizations by means of foundations whose funding sources cannot be traced had risen.
== Effects on public opinion ==
Public opinion on climate change is significantly affected by media coverage of climate change and the effects of climate change denial campaigns. Campaigns to undermine public confidence in climate science have decreased public belief in climate change, which in turn has affected legislative efforts to curb CO2 emissions.
Climate change conspiracy theories and denial have resulted in poor action or no action at all to effectively mitigate the damage done by global warming. 40% of Americans believed (ca. 2017) that climate change is a hoax even though 100% of climate scientists (as of 2019) believe it is real.
A study in 2015 stated: "Exposure to conspiracy theories reduced people's intentions to reduce their carbon footprint, relative to people who were given refuting information."
Manufactured uncertainty over climate change, the fundamental strategy of climate change denial, has been very effective, particularly in the U.S. It has contributed to low levels of public concern and to government inaction worldwide.: 255 A 2010 Angus Reid poll found that global warming skepticism in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom has been rising. There may be multiple causes of this trend, including a focus on economic rather than environmental issues, and a negative perception of the United Nations and its role in discussing climate change.
According to Tim Wirth, "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry. ... Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress." American media has propagated this approach, presenting a false balance between climate science and climate skeptics. In 2006 Newsweek reported that most Europeans and Japanese accepted the consensus on scientific climate change, but only one third of Americans thought human activity plays a major role in climate change; 64% believed that scientists disagreed about it "a lot".
Deliberate attempts by the Western Fuels Association "to confuse the public" have succeeded. This has been "exacerbated by media treatment of the climate issue". According to a 2012 Pew poll, 57% of Americans are unaware of, or outright reject, the scientific consensus on climate change. Some organizations promoting climate change denial have asserted that scientists are increasingly rejecting climate change, but this is contradicted by research showing that 97% of published papers endorse the scientific consensus, and that percentage is increasing with time.
On the other hand, global oil companies have begun to acknowledge the existence of climate change and its risks. Still, top oil firms are spending millions lobbying to delay, weaken, or block policies to tackle climate change.
Manufactured climate change denial is also influencing how scientific knowledge is communicated to the public. According to climate scientist Michael E. Mann, "universities and scientific societies and organizations, publishers, etc.—are too often risk averse when it comes to defending and communicating science that is perceived as threatening by powerful interests".
=== United States ===
A study found that public climate change policy support and behavior are significantly influenced by public beliefs, attitudes and risk perceptions. As of March 2018 the rate of acceptance among U.S. TV forecasters that the climate is changing has increased to 95 percent. The number of local TV stories about global warming has also increased, by a factor of 15. Climate Central has received some credit for this, because it provides classes for meteorologists and graphics for TV stations.
Popular media in the U.S. gives greater attention to climate change skeptics than the scientific community as a whole, and the level of agreement within the scientific community has not been accurately communicated. In some cases, news outlets have let climate change skeptics instead of experts in climatology explain the science of climate change. US and UK media coverage differ from that in other countries, where reporting is more consistent with the scientific literature. Some journalists attribute the difference to climate change denial being propagated, mainly in the U.S., by business-centered organizations employing tactics worked out previously by the U.S. tobacco lobby.
Denial of climate change is most prevalent among white, politically conservative men in the U.S. In France, the U.S., and the U.K., climate change skeptics' opinions appear much more frequently in conservative news outlets than others, and in many cases those opinions are left uncontested.
In 2018, the National Science Teachers Association urged teachers to "emphasize to students that no scientific controversy exists regarding the basic facts of climate change".
=== Europe ===
Climate change denial has been promoted by several far-right European parties, including Spain's Vox, Finland's far-right Finns Party, Austria's far-right Freedom Party, and Germany's anti-immigration Alternative for Deutschland (AfD).
In April 2023, French political scientist Jean-Yves Dormagen said that the modest and conservative classes were the most skeptical about climate change. In a study by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation published the same month, climate skepticism was compared to a new populism whose representative and spokesman is Steven E. Koonin.
== Responses to denialism ==
=== The role of emotions and persuasive argument ===
Climate denial "is not simply overcome by reasoned argument", because it is not a rational response. Attempting to overcome denial using techniques of persuasive argument, such as supplying a missing piece of information, or providing general scientific education may be ineffective. A person who is in denial about climate is most likely taking a position based on their feelings, especially their feelings about things they fear.
Academics have stated that "It is pretty clear that fear of the solutions drives much opposition to the science."
It can be useful to respond to emotions, including with the statement "It can be painful to realise that our own lifestyles are responsible", in order to help move "from denial to acceptance to constructive action."
=== Following people who have changed their position ===
Some climate change skeptics have changed their positions regarding global warming. Ronald Bailey, author of Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths (published in 2002), stated in 2005, "Anyone still holding onto the idea that there is no global warming ought to hang it up." By 2007, he wrote "Details like sea level rise will continue to be debated by researchers, but if the debate over whether or not humanity is contributing to global warming wasn't over before, it is now.... as the new IPCC Summary makes clear, climate change Pollyannaism is no longer looking very tenable."
Jerry Taylor promoted climate denialism for 20 years as former staff director for the energy and environment task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and former vice president of the Cato Institute. Taylor began to change his mind after climate scientist James Hansen challenged him to reread some Senate testimony. He became President of the Niskanen Center in 2014, where he is involved in turning climate skeptics into climate activists, and making the business case for climate action.
Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine, reached a tipping point in 2006 as a result of his increasing familiarity with scientific evidence, and decided there was "overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic global warming". Journalist Gregg Easterbrook, an early skeptic of climate change who authored the influential book A Moment on the Earth, also changed his mind in 2006, and wrote an essay titled "Case Closed: The Debate About Global Warming is Over". In 2006, he stated, "based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert."
In 2009, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev expressed his opinion that climate change was "some kind of tricky campaign made up by some commercial structures to promote their business projects". After the devastating 2010 Russian wildfires damaged agriculture and left Moscow choking in smoke, Medvedev commented, "Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change."
Bob Inglis, a former US representative for South Carolina, changed his mind in around 2010 after appeals from his son on his environmental positions, and after spending time with climate scientist Scott Heron studying coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef.
Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, funded by Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, had been a prominent critic of prevailing climate science. In 2011, he stated that "following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."
"I used to be a climate-change skeptic", conservative columnist Max Boot admitted in 2018, one who believed that "the science was inconclusive" and that worry was "overblown". Now, he says, referencing the Fourth National Climate Assessment, "the scientific consensus is so clear and convincing."
=== Effective approaches to dialogue ===
Explaining the techniques of science denial and misinformation, by presenting "examples of people using cherrypicking or fake experts or false balance to mislead the public", has been shown to inoculate people somewhat against misinformation.
Dialogue focused on the question of how belief differs from scientific theory may provide useful insights into how the scientific method works, and how beliefs may have strong or minimal supporting evidence. Wong-Parodi's survey of the literature shows four effective approaches to dialogue, including "[encouraging] people to openly share their values and stance on climate change before introducing actual scientific climate information into the discussion."
=== Approaches with farmers ===
One study of climate change denial among farmers in Australia found that farmers were less likely to take a position of climate denial if they had experienced improved production from climate-friendly practices, or identified a younger person as a successor for their farm. Therefore, seeing positive economic results from efforts at climate-friendly agricultural practices, or becoming involved in intergenerational stewardship of a farm may play a role in turning farmers away from denial.
In the United States, rural climate dialogues sponsored by the Sierra Club have helped neighbors overcome their fears of political polarization and exclusion, and come together to address shared concerns about climate impacts in their communities. Some participants who start out with attitudes of anthropogenic climate change denial have shifted to identifying concerns which they would like to see addressed by local officials.
=== Statements of well known people calling for climate action ===
In May 2013 Charles, Prince of Wales took a strong stance criticising both climate change deniers and corporate lobbyists by likening the Earth to a dying patient. "A scientific hypothesis is tested to absolute destruction, but medicine can't wait. If a doctor sees a child with a fever, he can't wait for [endless] tests. He has to act on what is there."
== See also ==
Agnotology – Study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt
Anti-environmentalism – Opposition to environmentalism
Climate movement – Social movement engaged in climate activism
CO2 Coalition – Nonprofit conservative think tank and climate denial organization
Environmental skepticism – Skepticism of environmentalism
Individual action on climate change – What everyone can do to limit climate change
Motivated reasoning – Processing personal/social information
Right-wing antiscience – Attitudes that reject science and the scientific methodPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
Semmelweis reflex – Cognitive bias
Skeptical Science – Climate science blog to counter arguments by climate change deniers
Films:
Climate Change Denial Disorder, satirical parody film about a fictional disease
Before the Flood, documenting climate change denial and lobbying processes
== References == | Wikipedia/Climate_change_conspiracy_theory |
Spygate is a disproven conspiracy theory peddled by 45th U.S. president Donald Trump and his political base on many occasions throughout his presidential term. It primarily centered around the idea that a spy was planted by the Obama administration to conduct espionage on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign for political purposes. On May 17, 2018, Trump tweeted: "Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI 'SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN EMBEDDED INFORMANT.'" In that tweet, he quoted Andrew C. McCarthy, who had just appeared on Fox & Friends repeating assertions from his own May 12 article for National Review.
Trump made more assertions, without providing evidence, on May 18 and May 22–23, 2018, adding that it was done in an effort to help Trump's rival, Hillary Clinton, win the general election. He said the supposed spy, later identified as professor Stefan Halper, was paid a "massive amount of money" for doing so. In the middle and second half of 2016, Halper, a longtime confidential source for U.S. intelligence, began working as a secret informant for the FBI, targeting three Trump campaign advisers separately in a covert effort to investigate suspected Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. However, as of May 2018, the Trump administration had produced no evidence that Halper had actually joined the Trump campaign or any politically motivated surveillance of the campaign.
On June 5, 2018, Trump further alleged that a counterintelligence operation into the Trump campaign had been running since December 2015. The House Intelligence Committee, then in Republican control, concluded in an April 2018 report that the FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign did not begin until late July 2016, while the February 2018 Nunes memo written by Republican aides reached the same conclusion, as did the February 2018 rebuttal memo by committee Democrats. Whether the use of the FISA warrant, which permits investigators to collect archived communications well prior to the issuance of the warrant, includes the December 2015 date remains partially classified.
Political commentators and high-ranking politicians from both sides of the political spectrum have dismissed Trump's allegations as lacking evidence and maintained that the FBI's use of Halper as a covert informant was in no way improper. Trump's claims about when the counterintelligence investigation was initiated have been shown to be false. A December 2019 Justice Department Inspector General report "found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any [Confidential Human Sources] within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign."
Spygate is similar to but distinct from Trump's March 2017 assertion that President Obama "had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower," which the Trump Justice Department stated was untrue in September 2017 and October 2018 federal court briefs. It is also part of Trump's larger list of spying allegations against the Obama administration.
== Background ==
=== Origins of FBI investigation ===
In early February 2018, the Nunes memo – written by aides of Republican Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee – confirmed that a tip about George Papadopoulos "triggered the opening of" the original FBI counterintelligence investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia in late July 2016. Later that month, a rebuttal memo by committee Democrats stated that "the FBI initiated its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016".
In April 2018, the House Intelligence Committee, then in Republican control, released a final report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which stated that the House Intelligence Committee found that "in late July 2016, the FBI opened an enterprise CI [counterintelligence] investigation into the Trump campaign following the receipt of derogatory information about foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos". In March 2019, Nunes, the then-ranking member of the committee, asserted that it was "for certain" false that the FBI investigation began in late July 2016 as his earlier report had found, but media reports offered no further evidence or explanation from Nunes on this claim.
On May 16, 2018, The New York Times reported the existence of a 2016 FBI investigation named Crossfire Hurricane tasked with investigating whether individuals within the Trump campaign had inappropriate or illegal links to Russian efforts to interfere with the election. Four individuals – Michael T. Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page and George Papadopoulos – were initially investigated because of such ties. During the investigation, the FBI obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters. The Times also reported that FBI agents, believing that Trump would lose the election, and cognizant of Trump's claims that the election was rigged against him, tried to avoid allowing the investigation to become public as they feared that Trump would blame his defeat on the revelation of the investigation.
=== Activities of Stefan Halper ===
Stefan Halper, an FBI informant, spoke separately to three Trump campaign advisers – Carter Page, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos – in 2016 in an effort to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. There is no evidence that Halper had actually joined Trump's campaign.
Page said that he "had extensive discussions" with Halper on "a bunch of different foreign-policy-related topics", ending in September 2017. A former federal law enforcement official told The New York Times that the initial encounter between Halper and Page at a London symposium on July 11–12, 2016 was a coincidence, rather than at the direction of the FBI.
Clovis's attorney said that Clovis and Halper had discussed China during their sole meeting on August 31 or September 1, 2016, and Clovis stated in May 2018 that it appeared Halper was only offering his assistance to the campaign.
The New York Times reported that on September 15, 2016, Halper asked Papadopoulos if he knew of any campaign coordination with Russian efforts to disrupt the election campaign; Papadopoulos twice denied he did, notwithstanding Joseph Mifsud telling him the previous April that Russians had Hillary Clinton emails, and Papadopoulos bragging about it to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in May. WikiLeaks released DNC emails on July 22, and four days later the Australian government informed the FBI of Downer's conversation with Papadopoulos, triggering the opening of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections on July 31. The failure of the FBI to include Papadopoulos's exculpatory statement to Stefan Halper denying that the Trump campaign was involved in the DNC email hack in its FISA application or to notify the FISA court thereafter was cited in the Inspector General's report as one of the principal faults of the Crossfire Hurricane Operation. Papadopoulos was paid $3,000 by Halper for a research paper on the oil fields of Turkey, Israel and Cyprus.
In April 2019, The New York Times reported that the FBI had asked Halper to approach Page and Papadopoulos, although it was not clear if he had been asked to contact Clovis. In May 2019, the Times reported that Page had urged Halper to meet with Clovis and that the FBI was aware of the meeting but had not instructed Halper to ask Clovis about Russia matters. The Times also reported that the FBI also sent an investigator under the pseudonym Azra Turk to meet with Papadopoulos, while posing as Halper's assistant. The Times stated that the FBI considered it essential to add a trained and trusted investigator like Ms. Turk as a "layer of oversight", in the event the investigation was ultimately prosecuted and the government needed the credible testimony of such an individual, without exposing Halper as a longtime confidential informant.
The 2019 Inspector General report on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation contained additional details about Halper's contacts with these three campaign members. The report describes him as "an FBI CHS" and notes that "the Crossfire Hurricane team conducted three CHS [confidential human source] operations prior to the team's initial receipt of Steele's reporting on September 9, 2016. All three CHS operations were with individuals who were still with the Trump campaign."
The first meeting, in August 2016, was a consensually recorded meeting with Carter Page.
The second meeting, in September 2016, was with "a high-level official in the Trump campaign who was not a subject of the investigation", likely Clovis. It too was a "consensually recorded meeting" and was "about Papadopoulos and Carter Page". "Little information" was received by Halper.
The third meeting, in September 2016, was with Papadopoulos.
=== Exposure of Stefan Halper ===
In late April 2018, Devin Nunes sent a classified subpoena to the Justice Department. In response, the Justice Department rejected the request for information "regarding a specific individual". On May 8, 2018, The Washington Post described this individual as "a top-secret intelligence source" and "a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI."
On May 17, 2018, The Daily Caller reported that Stefan Halper, a professor at Cambridge known for his work for the CIA, had met Trump campaign advisors Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. On May 18, The New York Times and The Washington Post separately published articles about an FBI informant gathering information from Trump campaign officials. Neither newspaper would then name the FBI informant, but the Times described him as an "American academic who teaches in Britain" who contacted Page and Papadopoulos, while the Post reported that he is "a retired American professor" who met Page "at a British university". New York described that putting the information in the Caller, Post and Times reports together "all but confirm" Halper as the FBI informant.
== Trump and his allies' allegations ==
=== May 2018 ===
On May 12, 2018 Andrew C. McCarthy wrote in the National Review that:
"[Glenn Simpson] testified that Christopher Steele told him the FBI had a “human source” – i.e., a spy— inside the Trump campaign. … Simpson gave his testimony about the FBI’s human source at a closed Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on August 22, 2017.”
“Simpson explained to the Senate committee (italics [McCarthy's]): Essentially what [Christopher Steele] told me was they [the FBI] had other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source and … one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization.”
On May 17, 2018, on Fox & Friends that prompted Trump's reply, where Andrew C. McCarthy said in reply to a question:
Kilmeade: “Are we wrong to point out this line buried in the middle of the [New York Times] story, at least one government informant met several times with Paige and Papadopoulos. Did they [the FBI] actually put someone undercover to try to bring these guys out?"
McCarthy: "Yeah, they did, Brian. I've written a couple of columns in the last week or so pointing out that there is probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign...”
On May 17, 2018, Trump tweeted:
Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI "SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN EMBEDDED INFORMANT." Andrew McCarthy says, "There’s probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign." If so, this is bigger than Watergate!
On May 18, Trump made the following statement on Twitter:
Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president. It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a "hot" Fake News story. If true – all time biggest political scandal!
On May 22, Trump made the following accusation on Twitter:
If the person placed very early into my campaign wasn't a SPY put there by the previous Administration for political purposes, how come such a seemingly massive amount of money was paid for services rendered – many times higher than normal ... Follow the money! The spy was there early in the campaign and yet never reported Collusion with Russia, because there was no Collusion. He was only there to spy for political reasons and to help Crooked Hillary win – just like they did to Bernie Sanders, who got duped!
A day later, he followed up with a related tweet:
SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!
Soon after this series of tweets, it was widely reported in the media that Trump's allegations of politically motivated spying were unsubstantiated. Trump has not offered any evidence for Spygate when asked for it, instead saying: "All you have to do is look at the basics and you'll see it." It was also widely reported that Trump's allegations were intended to discredit the Mueller Investigation. The Associated Press added that Trump had said he wanted "to brand" the informant as a "spy," as using a more nefarious term than "informant" would supposedly resonate more with the public.
In the May 22 tweets, Trump wrote that Halper, a longtime FBI informant, was paid a "massive amount of money" and concluded that he thus must be a spy implanted for "political purposes". Although the Defense department's Office of Net Assessment had paid Halper more than $1 million in contracts between 2012 and 2016 for "research and development in the social sciences and humanities," Halper subcontracted some of this work to other researchers, with about 40% of the money awarded before Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, and it is unknown whether the FBI paid Halper at all. Halper worked for the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and continued as a State and Defense department advisor until 2001. He had been considered for an ambassadorship in the Trump administration.
In the May 23 tweets, Trump misquoted former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, attributing to him the statement that "Trump should be happy that the FBI was SPYING on his campaign." Instead, when asked "Was the FBI spying on Trump's campaign?", Clapper said, "No, they were not." Clapper added that, although he does not "particularly like" the term "spying," he thinks that Trump should have been happy that the FBI was "spying on ... what the Russians were doing," and that the FBI were trying to determine whether the Russians were infiltrating his campaign, or trying to influence the election. Clapper later said that while some of the surveillance fit the dictionary definition of "spying," he objected strongly to the use of the term because of its misleading connotations.
On May 26, Trump questioned "why didn't the crooked highest levels of the FBI or 'Justice' contact me to tell me of the phony Russia problem?" NBC News reported in December 2017 that on July 19, 2016, after Trump won the Republican nomination, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned him that foreign adversaries, including Russia, would probably attempt to spy on and infiltrate his campaign. Trump was told to alert the FBI of any suspicious activity.
On May 27, when Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani was asked whether the promotion of the Spygate theory was meant to discredit the special counsel investigation, he replied that the investigators "are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president ... it is for public opinion" on whether to "impeach or not impeach" Trump.
=== June 2018 ===
On June 5, Trump made new accusations on Twitter:
Wow, Strzok-Page, the incompetent & corrupt FBI lovers, have texts referring to a counter-intelligence operation into the Trump Campaign dating way back to December, 2015. SPYGATE is in full force! Is the Mainstream Media interested yet? Big stuff!
However, the December 2015 texts do not make any reference to the Trump campaign or Russia.
This particular conspiracy theory promoted by Trump was traced by media outlets to originate from a Twitter user called @Nick_Falco, who on June 4 posted about the words "oconus lures" in December 2015 texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. While "oconus" refers to "outside the continental United States", Falco inferred that "lures" refer to spies. However, according to the United States Department of Justice, "lures" refer to "subterfuge to entice a criminal defendant to leave a foreign country so that he or she can be arrested". Falco suggested that the FBI may have "wanted to run a baited Sting Op using foreign agents against Trump," despite none of the texts mentioning the Trump campaign or Russia.
Also on June 4, Falco's tweet spread to the r/conspiracy forum on Reddit, and also The Gateway Pundit, a far-right, pro-Trump website which has published multiple false conspiracy theories. The Gateway Pundit wrote an article entitled: "Breaking: Senate releases unredacted texts showing FBI initiated MULTIPLE SPIES in Trump campaign in December 2015". However, the texts referenced by Falco were publicly released by a Senate committee months earlier in February 2018. On June 5, Lou Dobbs of Fox Business said that "the FBI may have initiated a number of spies into the Trump campaign as early as December of 2015". Dobbs's interviewee on the show, Chris Farrell of the conservative group Judicial Watch, agreed that the existence of an "intelligence operation directed against then-candidate Trump" was "indisputable". Trump's June 5 tweet on Spygate came less than an hour after he watched Dobbs's interview, with Trump tweeting praise of Dobbs for the "great interview".
After Trump made his June 5 tweet, Fox News described the news as "New Strzok-Page texts released", with Fox News television host Laura Ingraham saying: "It certainly appears they were looking to put more lures into the campaign in 2015." Republican Representative Ron DeSantis, a panelist on Ingraham's show, agreed that it was "clear" that the FBI investigation into Trump started earlier than July 2016.
After receiving information about George Papadopoulos's activities, the FBI began surveilling the Trump campaign to see if it was coordinating with the Russian's interference efforts. The revelation prompted the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign, which started on July 31, 2016.
== Reactions and criticism ==
=== May 2018 ===
Shortly after Trump's allegation, several members of Congress received a classified briefing on the matter from the Justice Department. Trey Gowdy, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee and a former federal prosecutor, stated after the briefing:
I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump...President Trump himself in the Comey memos said if anyone connected with my campaign was working with Russia, I want you to investigate it, and it sounds to me like that is exactly what the FBI did. I think when the President finds out what happened, he is going to be not just fine, he is going to be glad that we have an FBI that took seriously what they heard.... The FBI is doing what he told them to do.
Gowdy retracted this remark three weeks later indicating that his statement relied on briefings and "the word of the FBI and the DOJ" and that he should have insisted on seeing the actual documents. After a four-hour session reviewing documents at the Department of Justice, Gowdy said that was the first time he saw that Peter Strzok had actually initiated and approved Crossfire Hurricane, the exculpatory information on
George Papadopoulos, and also the first time he saw, despite the testimonial denials of the FBI that "Trump’s not the target, the campaign’s not the target" of the Crossfire Hurricane, the Trump campaign mentioned in the predicate document.
Senior Republicans including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, supported Gowdy's initial assessment of the situation.
Republican Representative Tom Rooney, who is on the House Intelligence Committee, chided Trump for creating "this thing to tweet about knowing that it's not true.... Maybe it's just to create more chaos." Republican senator Jeff Flake has said that the "so-called Spygate" is a "diversion tactic, obviously". while Republican Senator Marco Rubio said that "it appears that there was an investigation not of the campaign but of certain individuals who have a history that we should be suspicious of that predate the presidential campaign of 2015, 2016".
Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has said that Spygate is "lie-gate", a "piece of propaganda the president wants to put out and repeat". He accused President Trump of repeatedly spreading baseless lies by quoting that "people are saying ..." or "we've been told ...". Michael Hayden, a retired general, former Director of the National Security Agency and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said that Trump, through Spygate, was "simply trying to delegitimize the Mueller investigation, the FBI, the Department of Justice, and he's willing to throw almost anything against the wall".
Haaretz, Chris Megerian and Eli Stokols of Los Angeles Times, and Kyle Cheney of Politico have labelled Spygate as a conspiracy theory by President Trump.
Journalist Shepard Smith has said that "Fox News knows of no evidence to support the president's claim. Lawmakers from both parties say using an informant to investigate is not spying. It's part of the normal investigative process." Former judge and Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano also stated that the use of an informant was part of standard procedure.
Zack Beauchamp of Vox said that "Trump's misconception" appeared to come from Andrew C. McCarthy, who had just appeared on Fox & Friends repeating assertions from his own May 12 article for National Review.
Washington Post columnist Max Boot described Spygate as the latest example in a "nonstop" series of Trump's "nonsensical" allegations of a "Deep State" conspiracy against him. According to Boot, this included Trump's March 2017 Trump Tower wiretapping allegations refuted by Trump's own Justice Department, and Trump's January 2018 allegations that texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to "treason" – allegations that Trump made despite the fact that there was no evidence of an anti-Trump conspiracy.
Jon Meacham, a presidential historian, has said, in regard to Spygate: "The effect on the life of the nation of a president inventing conspiracy theories in order to distract attention from legitimate investigations or other things he dislikes is corrosive."
Aaron Blake, writing for The Washington Post, wrote that the "central problem" of the Spygate conspiracy theory is the "fact that these people who supposedly would do anything to stop Trump ... didn't". In the period before the election, the FBI "didn't use the information it had collected to actually prevent Trump from becoming president", as it did not publicly reveal it was already investigating links between George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Russia. Rather, the reports before the election were that the FBI saw no clear link between Russia and the Trump campaign, instead believing that Russia was trying to disrupt the election without purposely trying to elect Trump.
Steven Poole, writing for The Guardian, wrote that the real scandal was Trump using the "-gate" suffix for the issue, as the Spygate allegations are about "purely imaginary things".
CNN's Josh Campbell and Slate's Dahlia Lithwick felt that Trump was carrying out the act of rebranding, with Trump describing an "informant" as a "spy", and describing legal counter-intelligence gathering as illegitimate "deep state spying" and "Spygate".
=== June 2018 ===
The New York magazine addressed the June 2018 allegations by stating: "It's not surprising or scandalous that FBI agents would be using espionage tradecraft. Gateway Pundit seems to have invented the crucial factual element of the conspiracy out of thin air" while "Trump is citing right-wing conspiracy theorists who operate at a full level further removed from reality than the right-wing conspiracy theorists he customarily cites."
Zack Beauchamp of Vox said that "the FBI's investigation into Trump didn't open until July 2016" and that Trump's June 2018 allegation that a counterintelligence operation into his campaign was active in 2015 was based on an interpretation of the Strzok-Page texts that was "entirely unfounded in the actual evidence." Beauchamp claimed that this was an instance of a pattern in which "Fox picks up on some random internet rumor, the president picks it up from Fox, and then Fox and other right-wing outlets leap to defend what the president tweeted, which only reinforces Trump's sense that he's right." After reporting on both Trump's May 2018 and June 2018 tweets, Beauchamp wrote that the "best way to analyze 'Spygate' is ... a conspiracy theory... a ginned-up controversy Trump has capitalized on to justify his argument that the FBI is hopelessly biased against him".
=== August 2018 ===
On August 31, 2018, Trisha B. Anderson, who was the Deputy General Counsel of the FBI's Office of General Counsel in the counterintelligence operation of the Trump campaign, testified that "To my knowledge, the FBI did not place anybody within a campaign but, rather, relied upon its network of sources, some of whom already had campaign contacts."
== 2019 Inspector General report ==
A December 2019 Justice Department Inspector General report "found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any [Confidential Human Sources] within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign."
Attorney General Bill Barr, who had testified to Congress in April 2019, "I think spying did occur", issued a statement upon release of the inspector general's report in which he characterized the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation as "intrusive," but within the context of the FBI wiretap on former Trump aide Carter Page, rather than on the question of whether any individual had been directed to spy on the campaign. The inspector general determined that the FBI made 17 errors or omissions – some of them severe – in its FISA warrant applications for Page, and attributed the warrant problems to "gross incompetence and negligence" rather than intentional malfeasance or political bias. Benjamin Wittes concluded that the inspector general's report exposed a "worst-case-scenario. No, it's not political spying on the Trump campaign or anything like that.... Rather, the problem is a far more general one: It appears that the facts presented in a lot of FISA applications are not reliably accurate."
Barr and his designated investigator John Durham also had for months been investigating a conspiracy theory "Mr. Trump's allies have asserted, without evidence", that Joseph Mifsud "was actually a C.I.A. agent working as part of an Obama administration plot" to contact and entrap Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos in order to establish a false predicate to justify opening Crossfire Hurricane. Bill Priestap told Congress "there was no F.B.I. conspiracy against Mr. Trump or his campaign" and denied "the F.B.I. was secretly working with" professor Mifsud.
== Other uses ==
Reports from ABC News, Fox News and NBC News in May 2018 state that Trump used the term 'Spygate' for the claim that the FBI spied on his campaign using a confidential informant.
Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post wrote in May 2018 that the term 'Spygate' "refers to the news that the FBI obtained information from an informant – Stefan Halper, an emeritus professor at the University of Cambridge – who met with at least three members of Trump’s campaign staff suspected of having links to Russia." Kessler suggested that Trump's use of 'Spygate' was the latest in a series of Trump's attempts to discredit and obfuscate the Mueller investigation, and that, like the other attempts, this one may not "gain long-term traction".
Christina Zhao of Newsweek wrote in April 2019 that Spygate was a term that Trump "apparently coined to refer to allegations that the FBI had spied on his" 2016 presidential campaign. Zhao also noted that Attorney General William Barr had also discussed the claims while testifying to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee.
Zachary Basu of Axios wrote in April 2019 that the uncorroborated and "so-called 'spygate' scandal ... relates to alleged FISA abuses by the intelligence community", and "has been frequently promoted by defenders of President Trump".
== References == | Wikipedia/Spygate_(conspiracy_theory) |
Balneotherapy (Latin: balneum "bath") is a method of treating diseases by bathing, a traditional medicine technique usually practiced at spas. Since ancient times, humans have used hot springs, public baths and thermal medicine for therapeutic effects. While it is considered distinct from hydrotherapy, there are some overlaps in practice and in underlying principles. Balneotherapy may involve hot or cold water, massage through moving water, relaxation, or stimulation. Many mineral waters at spas are rich in particular minerals such as silica, sulfur, selenium, and radium. Medicinal clays are also widely used, a practice known as 'fangotherapy'.
== Definition and characteristics ==
"Balneotherapy" is the practice of immersing a subject in mineral water or mineral-laden mud; it is part of the traditional medicine of many cultures and originated in hot springs, cold water springs, or other sources of such water, like the Dead Sea.
== Presumed effect on diseases ==
Balneotherapy may be recommended for various illnesses, including arthritis, skin conditions and fibromyalgia. Balneotherapy should be discussed in advance with a physician before beginning treatment since several conditions, like heart disease and pregnancy, can result in a serious adverse effect.
Scientific studies into the effectiveness of balneotherapy do not show that balneotherapy is effective for treating rheumatoid arthritis. There is also no evidence indicating a more effective type of bath, or that bathing is more effective than exercise, relaxation therapy, or mudpacks. Most of the studies on balneotherapy have methodological flaws and are not reliable. A 2009 review of all published clinical evidence concluded that existing research is not sufficiently strong to draw firm conclusions about the efficacy of balneotherapy.
"Balneophototherapy" combines salt bathing (balneotherapy) and exposure to ultraviolet B-light (UVB) as a potential treatment for severe, chronic plaque psoriasis. A Cochrane review found low-quality evidence that salt bathing combined with UVB may relieve psoriasis severity compared to UVB treatment only.
A 2018 systematic review concluded that "balneotherapy and spa therapy may be considered useful interventions for managing stress conditions".
== See also ==
Boleslav Vladimirovich Likhterman
Enoch Heinrich Kisch
Destination spa
Hot spring
Hydrotherapy
Mineral spa
Onsen
Peloid
Thalassotherapy
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Nathaniel Altman, Healing springs: the ultimate guide to taking the waters : from hidden springs to the world's greatest spas. Inner Traditions / Bear & Company, 2000. ISBN 0-89281-836-0
James Crook, The Mineral Waters of the United States and their Therapeutic Uses, Lea Brothers & Co., New York and Philadelphia, 1899.
Dian Dincin Buchman, The complete book of water healing. 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill Professional, 2001. ISBN 0-658-01378-5
Jane Crebbin-Bailey, John W. Harcup, John Harrington, The Spa Book: The Official Guide to Spa Therapy. Publisher: Cengage Learning EMEA, 2005. ISBN 1-86152-917-1
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Balneotherapeutics" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 284–285.
Esti Dvorjetski, Leisure, pleasure, and healing: spa culture and medicine in ancient eastern Mediterranean., E. J. Brill, 2007 (illustrated). ISBN 90-04-15681-X
Carola Koenig, Specialized Hydro-, Balneo-and Medicinal Bath Therapy. Publisher: iUniverse, 2005. ISBN 0-595-36508-6
Anne Williams, Spa bodywork: a guide for massage therapists. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006. ISBN 0-7817-5578-6 | Wikipedia/Balneotherapy |
The finger pinching conspiracy theory is an antifeminist conspiracy theory that originated in South Korea. It claims that there is a deliberate plot to spread and promote misandry through symbolic hand gestures, and that radical feminist groups have propagated these hidden messages to humiliate men with small penises.
The theory first gained prominence in May 2021 when convenience store chain GS25 faced accusations of allegedly shoehorning a hand signal that disparaged penises in an advertisement, causing the company to retract it and issue an apology. Since then, numerous organizations were met with protests from theorists and announced similar apologies.
Despite contradictory claims and a general lack of evidence, the theory persists; notably in the video game industry, where Nexon led a public allegation against its collaborators. It is viewed as an antifeminist backlash movement in South Korea, and has been analyzed as a symptom of gender inequality in the country.
== Claims ==
According to authors who consider it false, the finger pinching conspiracy theory is based on a belief among South Korean men that feminists are planning covertly to worsen their lives or harm them. Proponents of the conspiracy theory usually claim that users of Megalia, a defunct radical feminist movement website, were successful in infiltrating various organizations. The theory argues its remnants started to plant a specific hand gesture (commonly referred to as the "finger pinching" gesture), with an index finger and thumb facing each other, which connotes small penis humiliation by implicitly signaling Korean men's penises are small. It is also reminiscent of Megalia's logo.
The place where the finger pinching is spotted as well as the extent to which they can be considered offensive varies between cases. Incidents reported on The New York Times essay included theorists associating the finger-pinching symbolism with depiction of hands pointing at mundane items, such as a credit card, a can of Starbucks espresso, or a COVID-19 vaccine. One anonymous theorist, having found the finger pinching in gender sensitivity educational materials for the Korean army, argued they could differentiate the problematic finger pinching gesture from ordinary hand gesture, because they thought the former contained explicit intentions.
== History ==
=== Background ===
South Korea in the 2020s has gender inequality in a number of aspects. As of 2021, the gender pay gap was at 35 percent, the widest among OECD economies, and 65 percent of public companies on the Korea Exchange had no female executives. Gender-based violence in South Korea was described by the Human Rights Watch as "shockingly widespread". In 2021, a woman was murdered or targeted for murder, on average, every 1.4 days or less.
Severe gender conflicts in the country have resulted in various forms of action. There have been organized social movements by women, referred to by The New York Times as "Asia's most successful MeToo movement". Since the late-2010s, there has reportedly been an increase in the number of antifeminist young men who view feminism as a supremacy movement that oppresses men. Reasons given for this belief include that women are not subjected to compulsory military service, intense job competition, the lack of political representation, refusal to take responsibility for the toxic masculinity of older generations, and being unfairly stereotyped as potential criminals. A 2021 survey claimed that 79% of South Korean men in their 20s believe they are victims of reverse discrimination. Antifeminists reportedly adopted terms like "femi" or "man haters" to discredit feminists.
In 2015, a radical feminist movement website named Megalia was founded. The website focused on antagonizing men. It became infamous for its logo that depicted an obscene hand gesture, with an index finger and thumb in a pinching motion; this was intended to mock alleged small penises. Megalia was shut down in 2017, although criticism of the group and its symbolism has reportedly persisted.
=== Origin and spread ===
On May 1, 2021, GS25's local retail firm GS Retail sent a digital notice letter to its customers via mobile messaging app KakaoTalk, announcing future promotional events in that month. The message contained a poster for camping-related items, which had a pictogram of hands grabbing a sausage. That same day, a rumor emerged that the picture was an intentional reference to the Megalia logo. The rumor reportedly spread quickly; it was first posted on a website called Ppomppu at 10:15 and reached other communities within an hour. GS25 responded to the incident before 13:00.
GS25 reacted by issuing apology letters and altering the poster twice that day. Each alteration was reportedly met with more allegations of radical feminist symbolism. Many other elements in the poster were accused of promoting radical feminism or disparaging men's penises. These accusations include: the crescent being the logo of a feminist club in universities, its tagline having an acronym of Megalia's name, the tent resembling a penis, or the campfire suggesting a sperm cell. Some of these claims were dismissed by some news outlets as a falsehood. For instance, conspiracy theorists claimed GS25 added the crescent in the poster's second iteration, suggesting it was a new hidden message planted by Megalia user. Kyunghyang Shinmun reported this is not true because it was already present in the first iteration, only cropped in certain versions of the advertisement. After going through multiple revisions, GS25 removed the poster altogether and issued another apology on social media on May 2.
Protests continued after GS25's announcement. On May 2, a petition on National Petition to the Blue House was launched to remove the GS25 business chain from the Korea Armed Forces; it received 42 thousand signatures in a day. Support for a boycott spread, with an image posted on social media comparing this movement to the 2019 boycott of Japanese products. One GS25-affiliated store owner put up a signboard that supported "equality of outcome and opportunity" and denounced feminism. Members of the New Men's Solidarity, a men's-rights group, protested outside the company's headquarters.
The integrity behind the online backlash was questioned by GS25 officials and third parties. Food industry retailers interviewed by The Hankyoreh described the accusation as "esoteric" and showed concerns that such incidents would demoralize their business. A person claiming to be the graphic designer of the GS25 poster contested the controversy on Blind on May 9, 2021. In a now-deleted statement, she said she doesn't support any ideology and her design didn't contain an expression of hate for men. Nevertheless, GS25 announced on May 31 that the graphic designer would be disciplined, and the GS Retail president was demoted. The GS25 incident is commonly referred to as the first publicized case of controversies surrounding the finger pinching.
=== MapleStory scandal ===
On November 25, 2023, finger pinching theorists suggested there was a vulgar display of misandry in Nexon's video game MapleStory, as its recently published trailer, promoting the new class Angelic Buster, featured a character that allegedly performed the finger pinching for 0.1 seconds. Theorists searched for similar gestures in other Nexon trailers, including Dungeon Fighter Online and Blue Archive. Theorists scrutinized the animation production studio that produced Nexon's trailers, Ppuri.
Nexon reportedly contacted Ppuri on November 26 and suggested it issue an apology. Accordingly, Ppuri posted its first apology letter at 16:12. Three hours later at 19:00, MapleStory director Kim Chang-seop announced that Nexon would remove all visual works created by Ppuri and condemned the animation studio in a YouTube livestream. Kim said that he was against people who implicitly express hatred, and promised Nexon would pursue legal action. Dungeon Fighter Online director Lee Wonman and Blue Archive director Kim Yongha expressed similar sentiments on the matter. Ppuri's works for those games were removed as well.
Nexon's response was followed by a major backlash from finger pinching theorists against Ppuri. A female Ppuri animator was doxed; her social media posts were analyzed and alleged to be confirmation of planting misandrist symbolism. The animator also received death threats and rape threats. Ppuri president Jang Seonyeong issued a second apology letter on November 27 in which she promised to fire the animator; Ppuri later claimed this was due to pressure from the theorists and their business relationship with Nexon (which composed 80 percent of their work at the time). This second public apology was taken down on the same day. Ppuri later overturned the decision of removing the employee from her position. Jang Seonyeong and Ppuri director Kim Sangjin explained that it was unjust to admit to a misdeed the studio has never done, and the director wanted to protect its animators from online harassment.
Nexon's public reprimand of Ppuri was positively received by its associated developers. Nexon union leader Bae Suchan likened the fingers to the English racial slur nigger, saying an expression must be redacted if it can be read as hate speech. When its umbrella organization, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), joined the press conference in front of Nexon's headquarters to condemn Nexon's action, Bae Suchan said they would consider leaving the KCTU because it focused more on political activities than efforts to protect the rights of its members. Supercat, the developer behind mobile game The Kingdom of the Winds published by Nexon, started in-house training that taught its workers not to express feminism in the game and included Ppuri animator's tweet as an example. On Blind, anonymous Nexon employee criticized Ppuri for putting the burden to fix the game on Nexon developers.
Later investigations performed by news media and Ppuri's interviews in December 2023 found that the allegations led by Nexon and the finger pinching theorists were erroneous. Worksheets provided by Ppuri revealed that the "feminist hand gesture" scene in the Angelic Buster trailer was not drawn by a female employee, but a male animator in his forties. Other vetted rumors include: that Ppuri has voided its offices and ghosted its clients (it never did, although a number of employees were temporarily relocated to other places in light of threatening phone calls and several unidentified people visiting and taking photos of the main office); that Ppuri interposed additional key poses between the original works and failed to notify Nexon (all works were closely supervised and approved by Nexon, including the alleged hand gesture scene); and that Ppuri has performed similar practice on a promotional video of Street Fighter 6 (the company did not work on said animatics).
Nexon has eluded subsequent contacts from Ppuri afterwards. The company faced additional complaints from Nexon players after the scandal, who insisted there're more pinch fingers in MapleStory. Each was resolved with Nexon removing the finger pinching.
Since the scandal, Ppuri sought to pursue legal actions against internet trolls who harassed its employees. Ppuri's press conference in December 2023 mentioned it had collected over thousands of internet posts of cyberbullying against the company and its animators; 308 posts were eventually chosen to press criminal charge through the Seocho District police between May and June 2024. The police initially dismissed Ppuri's charges in July 2024, on the basis that it's logical for defendants to criticize Ppuri animators for allying with feminists. It re-opened the case two days later, after its decision was met with public condemnation and a request for reinvestigation from the Prosecutors' Office. The police finished the re-investigation in February 2025 against the 86 specified defendants, some of which were informed for multiple offenses, including defamation and cyberstalking. The Ppuri animator and plaintiff appealed in April against those who were not informed, saying that the police did not explain properly on why they were acquitted.
== List of notable responses ==
== Discourse ==
The finger pinching conspiracy theory is widely agreed to be a hoax. No robust evidence suggests that radical feminist groups are planting the gesture to promote misandry. Some argue that the structure of the human hand results in the gesture being unintentionally formed many times a day. Some analysts have argued that isolating single frames from animation is meaningless, as animations exist in motion.
South Korean organizations that appeased the theorists were criticized and described as enabling their behavior. Several authors argued that such appeasement reinforced the confirmatory bias of the theorists, and infringed on people's rights to labor and expression. Others held media outlets responsible for spreading the conspiracy theory. Noh Jimin, of Media Today, criticized news outlets that she felt did not critically analyze the truthfulness of the GS25 and MapleStory incidents. Seoul University associate professor Kim Sooah claimed that Korean news media unconditionally published articles based on rumors about Megalia circulating in male-focused internet communites. Kim argued that these news articles created an illusion that there is a conspiracy to surreptitiously encourage misandry in South Korean society, and pressured organizations into avoiding being labelled misandrist regardless of whether such accusations were true.
The finger pinching theory was debated by news media as a medium of justifying harassment against women. The Korea Herald's Yim Hyunsu cited Jammi, a livestreamer accused of being a radical feminist in 2019 after she used a pinching hand sign, as an example of growing anti-feminist expectations placed on female celebrities. Jammi later committed suicide in January 2022 after online accusations of her being misandrist, with news coverage mentioning the finger pinching incident. Seoul Shinmun regarded the finger pinching theory as a tool of "hatred framing", taking certain keywords out of context and misrepresenting them to incriminate the speaker. Kim Jinsook, an assistant professor at Emory University, claimed antifeminists had borrowed strategies that called out sexism and misogyny and re-branded them as a consumer movement, intended to criticize feminism and drive feminists from public spaces. Kim said these dominant antifeminist groups, already exercising power within the society, co-opted cancel culture, disguising their behaviors as campaigns based on moral outrage.
Some presses argued the conspiracy theory has had a negative effect on creative works. The Chosun Ilbo reported that the finger pinching controversies, with the other internet disputes, have costed extra resources for companies to alter their commercial advertisements and avoid potential complaints. Webtoon, an American-Korean webcomic platform owned by Naver, became a subject of constant disputes for the company's policies over the fingers. Webtoon comics like Return of the Blossoming Blade and Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint were criticized for censoring the alleged depiction of finger pinching hand gestures, with opponents of the conspiracy theory describing Naver's actions as inconsistent censorship and misogynic.
=== Internet trolling ===
Critics of the finger pinching theory have focused on the impact of online communities, addressing their role in spreading rumors and encouraging online harassment against victims. Numerous authors have argued that a considerable number of theorists are exposed to male-dominated internet forums and social media. A 2021 The Hankyoreh report found that the accusations against GS25 in May 2021 came from and were subsequently spread by male-focused websites, including DC Inside, MLBpark, FMkorea, and Ruliweb. Based on its research, The Hankyoreh suggested these websites were pivotal to the backlash pattern. Other websites that some argued influenced the theorists include Namuwiki and Arcalive. SisaIN interviewed Ppuri animator regarding the 2023 MapleStory scandal and discussed how misinformation is spread through male-centric communities. Users of Namuwiki, a wiki website, compiled alleged incidents on a "misandry controversy" article; the article falsely concluded that the Ppuri incident was a conspiracy. Writing for Hankook Ilbo, Lee Hyemi argued these online communities misled their users by exaggerating the presence of now-defunct Megalia even though it was short-lived and, at its prime, didn't have nearly as many members as other active websites like Ilbe Storehouse and FMkorea.
Some commentators compared the theorists to supporters of other conspiracy theories. Semyung University professor Sim Seoktae compared the theorists to flat Earthers. Hankook Ilbo journalist In Hyeonu compared the theorists to Gamergate, which involved similar cherrypicking of information and harassment. In also compared the movement to Trumpism because of perceived neotribalism. He reported that Seoul National University professor Kim Sua suggested a counter-information campaign and to pass an anti-discrimination law. Several authors compared the finger pinching theorists to incels.
Several news media analyzed the finger pinching conspiracy theory as an online antifeminist movement in South Korea. Writers for Kyunghyang Shinmun claimed that the finger pinching theory is not an isolated incident, but a part of the ongoing antifeminist backlash movement on the South Korean internet since at least 2009. Several writers for The Hankyoreh listed nine other similar antifeminist backlashes that occurred in 2021. BBC compared the conspiracy theory to other antifeminist incidents in the country, such as when a woman was physically assaulted by a man in November 2023 because he thought she was a feminist for having short hair.
The conspiracy theory was noted for being a subject of doxing and cyberbullying. JoongAng Ilbo reported that this kind of "online lynch" must be regulated with law and punishment.
=== Politics ===
Several politicians have shown either support or objection for the conspiracy theory, sometimes conflicting within the same party. In 2021, Lee Jun-seok, an antifeminist figure and future party leader of the Reform Party, first expressed support for the theory after the GS25 incident. In 2023, he affirmed his support for the theorists after the MapleStory scandal. Ryu Ho-jeong, a self-proclaimed feminist and also future founding member of the New Reform Party, also supported the theory and criticized Ppuri. Formerly a game developer at Smilegate, Ryu argued that Ppuri had hurt other developers in the video game industry.
Other politician supporters included People Power Party member Her Eun-a and former Democratic Party member Lee Sang-heon, who both supported Nexon during the MapleStory scandal. Heo Eun-a told an interviewer that Ppuri committed antisocial behavior and instigated gender conflicts, which she believed must be penalized. When Lee Sang-heon was later informed by Kyunghyang Shinmun that Nexon's allegations had errors, he stood by his opinion and said that "the point is not a gender issue, but that there's a certain alignment buyers find uncomfortable". There were also other reports of the Democratic Party advisors publicly supporting Nexon and the conspiracy theory. Politicians who rejected the theory included Jang Hye-young, a Justice Party member. Jang criticized Lee Jun-seok and expressed sympathy to the people the theorists impacted.
In regard to the politicians' support, several argued that the theory's staying power originates from South Korean society's attempt at appeasing idaenam (a term referring to, sometimes derisively, South Korean men in their twenties). Kyunghyang Shinmun argued that the 2021 South Korean by-elections for the mayor of Seoul, where 72.5% of the male twenties supported Oh Se-hoon from the People Power Party in contrast to 22.2% for Park Young-sun from the Democratic Party, were a wake-up call for both parties, motivating politicians to shift their focus to courting idaenam. Several authors proposed that politicians stop using the gender conflict as a means to win over a certain group's votes.
=== Video game industry ===
The country's video game industry was often central to the discussion of the controversies by many authors, some of which grounded their arguments on insider testimonies, who have suspected video game companies of being involved in removing people who support feminism. Several publications claimed the finger pinching controversies are an extension of the industry-wide feminist discharge that started back in 2016. Pressian's Park Sanghyeok claimed that the industry's irresistance to the conspiracy theory stemmed from its skewed population over male demographics; according to Game Industry White Paper published by Korea Creative Content Agency, in 2022, only 19.1% of video game industry workers in South Korea were female.
The Counter-antifeminism Emergency Response Committee, founded in March 2024 as a collaborated effort to respond to antifeminism in the video game industry, claimed that they received 77 reports of shunning feminists and women within the industry from August to December 2023, of which 17 cases were workplace bullying, 9 were cyberbullying, and 7 were unfair dismissal. The organization cited numerous incidents where workers were unjustly treated or felt threatened, including: a staff who was fired after having arguments with a male worker who complained about women problems, with an executive explaining their actions were unforgivable; an interviewee who received questions from a company about Ppuri, merely days after the MapleStory scandal; and testimonies that claimed they were seen as feminists because they had short hair or didn't wear makeup for meetings.
Nexon received significant criticism for allegedly prioritizing appeasing the theorists. Insiders contacted by Segye Ilbo claimed that, when the company replaced a voice actor in July 2016 in reaction to players accusing her of radical feminism, Nexon's internal meetings concluded the action was successful in enlarging its playerbase. Segye Ilbo argued this foreshadowed Nexon's actions in the MapleStory scandal. An insider report from Kyunghyang Shinmun stated that Nexon ran a web scraping software biased toward male-dominated forums, as well as a program that rewarded community posts to form public opinion to its liking, though Nexon has denied this allegation. Kyunghyang Shinmun's Yu Seonhui cited a separate fiasco involving officially sanctioned Dungeon & Fighter convention, which predated the MapleStory scandal by a couple weeks and was seen by Yu as a precedent of the Nexon developers promoting misogyny. Prior to the event, Nexon requested its participants to submit their social media account ID, a rule that didn't exist until that year. When questioned, Nexon emphasized "user's right to know." Yu argued that Nexon's policy change coincided with the feminist blacklisting movement from finger pinching theorists, who demanded all participants' Twitter history be searched, and that Nexon made a deliberate move to enable harassment against female players. Yu also cited another incident during that time, where Nexon delisted Dungeon & Fighter YouTube promotion of a singer who supported feminism.
Korean WomenLink, a women's rights organization, performed a protest in front of Nexon headquarters as an act against the MapleStory scandal. It also sent the company a written opinion compiled from approximately ten thousand people. WomenLink was later fined ₩1,000,000 by Suwon District Court via summary order in November 2024, citing that its assembly was not reported to relevant authority beforehand. The organization appealed against the order and demanded for formal trial.
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Kim, Sooah (August 2021a). "'이대남'과 반 페미니즘 담론: '메갈 손가락 기호' 논란을 중심으로" [Men in their Twenties Angry at Feminism: Discourse Analysis of “Megal and the Finger Controversy ”] (PDF). Feminism and Korean Literature (in Korean). 53. The Academic Socity of Feminism and Korean Literature. ISSN 1229-4632 – via Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information.
2023 Game Industry White Paper. 35, Gyoyuk-gil, Naju-si, Jeollanam-do: Korea Creative Content Agency. February 29, 2024. ISBN 979-11-6677-232-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
Kim, Jinsook (September 2024a). "Calling out Feminists: Antifeminist Hijacking of Cancel Culture in South Korea". Television & New Media. 26 (1). Sage Publishing. doi:10.1177/15274764241277471. ISSN 1527-4764. | Wikipedia/Finger-pinching_conspiracy_theory |
The CIA Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory is a prominent John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory. According to ABC News, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is represented in nearly every theory that involves American conspirators. The secretive nature of the CIA, and the conjecture surrounding the high-profile political assassinations in the United States during the 1960s, has made the CIA a plausible suspect for some who believe in a conspiracy. Conspiracy theorists have ascribed various motives for CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, including Kennedy's firing of CIA director Allen Dulles, Kennedy's refusal to provide air support to the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy's plan to cut the agency's budget by 20 percent, and the belief that the president was weak on communism. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that the CIA was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
== Background ==
John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the killings of Kennedy and Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit but was murdered by nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days later.
In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald killed Kennedy and Tippit, and that there was no evidence that Oswald was part of a conspiracy. However, the discrepancies between the official investigations and the extraordinary nature of the assassination have led to a variety of theories about how and why Kennedy was assassinated, as well as the possibility of a conspiracy. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed that Oswald killed Kennedy, but concluded that a second gunman probably also fired at Kennedy and that a conspiracy was probable. The committee's conclusion of a conspiracy was based almost entirely on the results of a forensic analysis of a police dictabelt recording, which was later disputed.
== Origin and history ==
In 1966, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began an investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. Garrison's investigation led him to conclude that a group of right-wing extremists were involved with elements of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Garrison also came to believe that businessman Clay Shaw, head of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, was part of the conspiracy. On March 1, 1967, Garrison arrested and charged Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy.
Three days after Shaw's arrest, the Italian left-wing newspaper Paese Sera published an article alleging that Shaw was linked to the CIA through his involvement in the Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC), a subsidiary of the trade organization Permindex in which Shaw was a board member. According to Paese Sera, the CMC had been a front organization developed by the CIA for transferring funds to Italy for "illegal political-espionage activities." Paese Sera also reported that the CMC had attempted to depose French President Charles de Gaulle in the early 1960s. The newspaper printed other allegations about individuals it said were connected to Permindex, including Louis Bloomfield whom it described as "an American agent who now plays the role of a businessman from Canada [who] established secret ties in Rome with Deputies of the Christian Democrats and neo-Fascist parties."
The allegations were reprinted in various newspapers associated with the Communist parties in Italy (l'Unità), France (L'Humanité), and the Soviet Union (Pravda), as well as leftist newspapers in Canada and Greece, prior to reaching the American press eight weeks later. American journalist Max Holland wrote that the KGB planted the original story in Paese Sera, citing archives released by Vasili Mitrokhin, thereby influencing both Garrison's subsequent accusations against the CIA and Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK. In 1969, Shaw was brought to trial on charges of conspiring to assassinate Kennedy, and the jury found him not guilty.
The CIA has rejected allegations of involvement and has sought to counter these allegations. A declassified CIA cable sent to CIA overseas stations and bases in 1967 encourages agents to not discuss the assassination unless such a discussion is already occurring. It further suggests agents should “discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors” and “employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics”. It highlights book reviews and feature articles as one method and encourages claiming that “parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists”.
== Proponents and believers ==
Jim Garrison alleged that anti-Communist and anti-Castro extremists in the CIA plotted the assassination of Kennedy to maintain tension with the Soviet Union and Cuba, and to prevent a United States withdrawal from Vietnam. James Douglass wrote in JFK and the Unspeakable that the CIA, acting upon the orders of conspirators with the "military industrial complex", killed Kennedy and in the process set up Lee Harvey Oswald as a fall guy. Like Garrison, Douglass stated that Kennedy was killed because he was turning away from the Cold War and pursuing paths of nuclear disarmament, rapprochement with Fidel Castro, and withdrawal from the war in Vietnam.
Mark Lane — author of Rush to Judgment and Plausible Denial and the attorney who defended Liberty Lobby against a defamation suit brought by former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt — has been described as a leading proponent of the theory that the CIA was responsible for the assassination of Kennedy. Others who believe the CIA was involved include authors Anthony Summers and John M. Newman.
In 1977, the FBI released 40,000 files pertaining to the assassination of Kennedy, including an April 3, 1967, memorandum from Deputy Director Cartha DeLoach to Associate Director Clyde Tolson that was written less than a month after President Johnson learned from J. Edgar Hoover about CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro. According to DeLoach, LBJ aide Marvin Watson "stated that the President had told him, in an off moment, that he was now convinced there was a plot in connection with the assassination [of President Kennedy]. Watson stated the President felt that [the] CIA had had something to do with this plot." When questioned in 1975, during the Church Committee hearings, DeLoach told Senator Richard Schweiker that he "felt [that Watson's statement was] sheer speculation."
== Conspirators and evidence ==
=== Oswald impersonator in Mexico City conspiracy theory ===
Gaeton Fonzi was hired as a researcher in 1975 by the Church Committee and by the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1977. At the HSCA, Fonzi focused on the anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, and the links that these groups had with the CIA and the Mafia. Fonzi obtained testimony from Cuban exile Antonio Veciana that Veciana had once witnessed his CIA contact, who Fonzi would later come to believe was David Atlee Phillips, conferring with Lee Harvey Oswald. Through his research, Fonzi became convinced that Phillips had played a key role in the assassination of President Kennedy. Fonzi also concluded that, as part of the assassination plot, Phillips had actively worked to embellish Oswald's image as a communist sympathizer. He further concluded that the presence of a possible Oswald impersonator in Mexico City, during the period that Oswald himself was in Mexico City, may have been orchestrated by Phillips
This evidence first surfaced in testimony given to the HSCA in 1978, and through the investigative work of independent journalist Anthony Summers in 1979. Summers spoke with a man named Oscar Contreras, a law student at National University in Mexico City, who said that someone calling himself Lee Harvey Oswald struck up a conversation with him inside a university cafeteria, in the fall of 1963. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had taken a bus trip from Houston to Mexico City and back during September–October 1963. Contreras described "Oswald" as "over thirty, light-haired and fairly short" — a description that did not fit the real Oswald To Fonzi, it seemed improbable that the real Oswald would at random start a conversation regarding his difficulties in obtaining a Cuban visa with Contreras, a man who belonged to a pro-Castro student group and had contacts in the Cuban embassy in Mexico City.
Fonzi theorized that there was an Oswald impersonator in Mexico City, directed by Phillips, during the period that the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald himself had visited the city. Fonzi's belief was strengthened by statements from other witnesses. On September 27, 1963, and again a week later, a man identifying himself as Oswald visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. Consular Eusebio Azcue told Anthony Summers that the real Oswald "in no way resembled" the "Oswald" to whom he had spoken to at length. Embassy employee Sylvia Duran also told Summers that the real Oswald she eventually saw on film "is not like the man I saw here in Mexico City."
On October 1, the CIA recorded two tapped telephone calls to the Soviet embassy by a man identified as Oswald. The CIA transcriber noted that "Oswald" spoke in "broken Russian". The real Oswald was quite fluent in Russian. On October 10, 1963, the CIA issued a teletype to the FBI, the State Department and the Navy, regarding Oswald's visits to Mexico City. The teletype was accompanied by a photo of a man identified as Oswald who in fact looked nothing like him.
On November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination of President Kennedy, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's preliminary analysis of the assassination included the following:
The Central Intelligence Agency advised that on October 1st, 1963, an extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual identifying himself as Lee Oswald contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquiring as to any messages. Special agents of this Bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Texas, have observed photographs of the individual referred to above and have listened to a recording of his voice. These special agents are of the opinion that the referred-to individual was not Lee Harvey Oswald.
That same day, Hoover had this conversation with the new president, Lyndon Johnson:
JOHNSON: "Have you established any more about the [Oswald] visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico in September?"
HOOVER: "No, there's one angle that's very confusing for this reason. We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man at the Soviet Embassy, using Oswald's name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there was a second person who was at the Soviet Embassy."
Fonzi concluded it was unlikely that the CIA would legitimately not be able to produce a single photograph of the real Oswald as part of the documentation of his trip to Mexico City, given that Oswald had made five separate visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies (according to the Warren Commission) where the CIA maintained surveillance cameras.
=== Three tramps ===
The "three tramps" are three men photographed by several Dallas newspapers under police escort near the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy. The men were detained and questioned briefly by the Dallas police. They have been the subject of various conspiracy theories, including some that allege the three men to be known CIA agents. Some of these allegations are listed below.
E. Howard Hunt is alleged by some to be the oldest of the tramps. Hunt was a CIA station chief in Mexico City and was involved in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Hunt later worked as one of President Richard Nixon's White House Plumbers. Others believe that the oldest tramp is Chauncey Holt. Holt claimed to have been a double agent for the CIA and the Mafia, and claimed that his assignment in Dallas was to provide fake Secret Service credentials to people in the vicinity. Witness reports state that there were one or more unidentified men in the area claiming to be Secret Service agents. Both Dallas police officer Joe Smith and Army veteran Gordon Arnold have claimed to have met a man on or near the grassy knoll who showed them credentials identifying him as a Secret Service agent.
Frank Sturgis is thought by some to be the tall tramp. Like E. Howard Hunt, Sturgis was involved both in the Bay of Pigs invasion and in the Watergate burglary. In 1959, Sturgis became involved with Marita Lorenz. Lorenz would later claim that Sturgis told her that he had participated in a JFK assassination plot. In response to her allegations, Sturgis denied being involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. In an interview with Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post, Sturgis said that he believed communist agents had pressured Lorenz into making the accusations against him.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations had forensic anthropologists study the photographic evidence. The committee claimed that its analysis ruled out E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Dan Carswell, Fred Lee Chapman, and other suspects. The Rockefeller Commission concluded that neither Hunt nor Frank Sturgis were in Dallas on the day of the assassination. Records released by the Dallas Police Department in 1989 identified the three men as Gus Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John Gedney.
=== E. Howard Hunt ===
Several conspiracy theorists have named former CIA agent and Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt as a possible participant in the Kennedy assassination and some, as noted before, have alleged that Hunt is one of the three tramps. Hunt has taken various magazines to court over accusations with regard to the assassination.
In 1975, Hunt testified before the United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States that he was in Washington, D.C., on the day of the assassination. This testimony was confirmed by Hunt's family and a home employee of the Hunts.
In 1976, a magazine called The Spotlight ran an article accusing Hunt of being in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and of having a role in the assassination. Hunt won a libel judgment against the magazine in 1981, but this verdict was overturned on appeal. The magazine was found not liable when the case was retried in 1985. In 1985, Hunt was in court again in a libel suit against Liberty Lobby. During the trial, defense attorney Mark Lane was successful in creating doubt among the jury as to Hunt's location on the day of the Kennedy assassination through depositions from David Atlee Phillips, Richard Helms, G. Gordon Liddy, Stansfield Turner, and Marita Lorenz, as well as through his cross examination of Hunt.
In August 2003, while in failing health, Hunt allegedly confessed to his son of his knowledge of a conspiracy in the JFK assassination. However, Hunt's health improved and he went on to live four more years. Shortly before Hunt's death in 2007, he authored an autobiography which implicated Lyndon B. Johnson in the assassination, suggesting that Johnson had orchestrated the killing with the help of CIA agents who had been angered by Kennedy's actions as president. After Hunt's death, his sons, Saint John Hunt and David Hunt, stated that their father had recorded several claims about himself and others being involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.
In the April 5, 2007, issue of Rolling Stone, Saint John Hunt detailed a number of individuals purported to be implicated by his father, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Cord Meyer, David Phillips, Frank Sturgis, David Morales, Antonio Veciana, William Harvey, and an assassin he termed "French gunman grassy knoll" who some presume was Lucien Sarti. The two sons alleged that their father cut the information from his memoirs to avoid possible perjury charges. According to Hunt's widow and other children, the two sons took advantage of Hunt's loss of lucidity by coaching and exploiting him for financial gain. The Los Angeles Times said they examined the materials offered by the sons to support the story and found them to be "inconclusive".
=== David Sánchez Morales ===
Some researchers—among them Gaeton Fonzi, Larry Hancock, Noel Twyman, and John Simkin—believe that CIA operative David Morales was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Morales' friend, Ruben Carbajal, claimed that in 1973 Morales opened up about his involvement with the Bay of Pigs Invasion operation, and stated that "Kennedy had been responsible for him having to watch all the men he recruited and trained get wiped out." Carbajal claimed that Morales said, "Well, we took care of that SOB, didn't we?"
Morales is alleged to have once told friends, "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch, and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard", presumably referring to the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, and to the later assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles, California, on June 5, 1968. Morales is alleged to have expressed deep anger toward the Kennedys for what he saw as their betrayal during the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
=== Frank Sturgis ===
In an article published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel on December 4, 1963, James Buchanan, a former reporter for the Sun-Sentinel, claimed that Frank Sturgis had met Lee Harvey Oswald in Miami, Florida, shortly before Kennedy's assassination. Buchanan claimed that Oswald had tried to infiltrate the International Anti-Communist Brigade. When he was questioned by the FBI about this story, Sturgis claimed that Buchanan had misquoted him regarding his comments about Oswald.
According to a memo sent by L. Patrick Gray, acting FBI Director, to H. R. Haldeman on June 19, 1972, "[s]ources in Miami say he [Sturgis] is now associated with organized crime activities". In his book, Assassination of JFK, published in 1977, Bernard Fensterwald claims that Sturgis was heavily involved with the Mafia, particularly with Santo Trafficante's and Meyer Lansky's activities in Florida.
=== George de Mohrenschildt ===
After returning from the Soviet Union, Lee Harvey Oswald became friends with Dallas resident and petroleum geologist George de Mohrenschildt. Mohrenschildt would later write an extensive memoir in which he discussed his friendship with Oswald. Mohrenschildt's wife would later give the House Select Committee on Assassinations a photograph that showed Oswald in his Dallas backyard, holding two Marxist newspapers and a Carcano rifle, with a pistol on his hip. Thirteen years after the JFK assassination, in September 1976, the CIA requested that the FBI locate Mohrenschildt, in response to a letter Mohrenschildt had written to his friend, CIA Director George H. W. Bush, appealing to Bush to stop the agency from taking action against him.
Several Warren Commission critics, including Jesse Ventura, have alleged that Mohrenschildt was one of Oswald's CIA handlers but have offered little evidence. Jim Garrison referred to Mohrenschildt as one of Oswald's unwitting "baby-sitters ... assigned to protect or otherwise see to the general welfare of Oswald". On March 29, 1977, Mohrenschildt stated during an interview with author Edward Jay Epstein that he had been asked by CIA operative J. Walton Moore to meet with Oswald, something Mohrenschildt had also told the Warren Commission thirteen years earlier. When interviewed in 1978 by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, J. Walton Moore said that while he "had 'periodic' contact with Mohrenschildt", he had no recollection of any conversation with him concerning Oswald.
Mohrenschildt told Epstein that he would not have contacted Oswald had he not been asked to do so. (Mohrenschildt met with Oswald several times, from the summer of 1962 to April 1963.) The same day that Mohrenschildt was interviewed by Epstein, Mohrenschildt was informed by his daughter that a representative of the House Select Committee on Assassinations had stopped by and left his calling card, intending to return that evening. Mohrenschildt then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head shortly thereafter. Mohrenschildt's wife later told sheriff's office investigators that her husband had been hospitalized for depression and paranoia in late 1976 and had tried to kill himself four times that year.
=== Role of Oswald ===
In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald killed Kennedy and Tippit and that Oswald acted alone, and that "there is no evidence that [Oswald] was involved in any conspiracy directed to the assassination of the President." The Commission came to this conclusion after examining Oswald's Marxist and pro-Communist background, including his defection to Russia, the New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee he had organized, and the various public and private statements made by him espousing Marxism.
Some conspiracy theorists have argued that Oswald's pro-Communist behavior may have been a carefully planned ruse — a part of an effort by U.S. intelligence agencies to infiltrate left-wing organizations in the United States and to conduct counterintelligence operations. Others have speculated that Oswald was an agent or informant of the U.S. government, and was manipulated by his U.S. intelligence handlers to incriminate himself while being set up as a scapegoat.
Sean Murphy theorised that a man who was filmed by Dave Wiegman, Jr., of NBC, and James Darnell of WBAP-TV, standing on the Depository front steps during the assassination, dubbed the "prayer man", was Oswald.
Some researchers have suggested that Oswald was an active agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, pointing to the fact that Oswald attempted to defect to Russia but was nonetheless able to return without difficulty (even receiving a repatriation loan from the State Department) as evidence of such. Oswald's mother, Marguerite, often insisted that her son was recruited by an agency of the U.S. Government and sent to Russia. New Orleans District Attorney, and later judge, Jim Garrison, who in 1967 brought Clay Shaw to trial for the assassination of President Kennedy also held the opinion that Oswald was most likely a CIA agent who had been drawn into the plot to be used as a scapegoat, even going as far as to say that Oswald "genuinely was probably a hero".
Senator Richard Schweiker, a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence remarked that "everywhere you look with [Oswald], there're fingerprints of intelligence". Schweiker also told author David Talbot that Oswald "was the product of a fake defector program run by the CIA." Richard Sprague, interim staff director and chief counsel to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, stated that if he "had to do it over again", he would have investigated the Kennedy assassination by probing Oswald's ties to the Central Intelligence Agency.
In 1978, James Wilcott, a former CIA finance officer, testified before the HSCA that shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy he was advised by fellow employees at a CIA post abroad that Oswald was a CIA agent who had received financial disbursements under an assigned cryptonym. Wilcott was unable to identify the specific case officer who had initially informed him of Oswald's agency relationship, nor was he able to recall the name of the cryptonym, but he named several employees of the post abroad with whom he believed he had subsequently discussed the allegations. Later that year Wilcott and his wife, Elsie, also a former employee of the CIA, repeated those claims in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. The HSCA investigated Wilcott's claims- including interviews with the chief and deputy chief of station, as well as officers in finance, registry, the Soviet Branch and counterintelligence - and concluded in their 1979 report they were "not worthy of belief".
Despite its official policy of neither confirming nor denying the status of agents, both the CIA itself and many officers working in the region at the time (including David Atlee Phillips) have "unofficially" dismissed the plausibility of any CIA ties to Oswald. Robert Blakey, staff director and chief counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations supported that assessment in his conclusions as well. The House Select Committee on Assassinations found no evidence of any relationship between Oswald and the CIA.
== Organized crime and a CIA conspiracy ==
Some conspiracy theorists have alleged a plot involving elements of the Mafia, the CIA and the anti-Castro Cubans, including author Anthony Summers and journalist Ruben Castaneda. They cite U.S. government documents which show that, beginning in 1960, these groups had worked together in assassination attempts against Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Ruben Castaneda wrote: "Based on the evidence, it is likely that JFK was killed by a coalition of anti-Castro Cubans, the Mob, and elements of the CIA." In his book, They Killed Our President, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura also concluded: "John F. Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy involving disgruntled CIA agents, anti-Castro Cubans, and members of the Mafia, all of whom were extremely angry at what they viewed as Kennedy's appeasement policies toward Communist Cuba and the Soviet Union."
Jack Van Lanningham, a prison cellmate of Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, claimed that Marcello confessed to him in 1985 to having organized Kennedy's assassination. Lanningham also claimed that the FBI covered up the taped confession which he said the FBI had in its possession. Robert Blakey, who was chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded in his book, The Plot to Kill the President, that Marcello was likely part of a Mafia conspiracy behind the assassination, and that the Mafia had the means, motive, and opportunity required to carry it out.
== Notes ==
== References == | Wikipedia/CIA_Kennedy_assassination_conspiracy_theory |
Chronic Lyme disease (CLD) is the name used by some people with non-specific symptoms, such as fatigue, muscle pain, and cognitive dysfunction to refer to their condition, even if there is no evidence that they had Lyme disease. Both the label and the belief that these people's symptoms are caused by this particular infection are generally rejected by medical professionals. Chronic Lyme disease is distinct from post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, a set of lingering symptoms which may persist after successful antibiotic treatment of infection with Lyme-causing Borrelia bacteria, and which may have similar symptoms to those associated with CLD.
Despite numerous studies, there is no evidence that symptoms associated with CLD are caused by any persistent infection. The symptoms attributed to chronic Lyme are in many cases likely due to fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome. Fibromyalgia can be triggered by an infection, and antibiotics are not a safe or effective treatment for post-infectious fibromyalgia. Fatigue, joint and muscle pain are also experienced by a minority of people following antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease.
A number of alternative health products are promoted for chronic Lyme disease, of which possibly the most controversial and harmful is long-term antibiotic therapy, particularly intravenous antibiotics. Recognised authorities advise against long-term antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease, even where some symptoms persist post-treatment.
In the United States, after disciplinary proceedings by state medical licensing boards, a subculture of "Lyme literate" physicians has successfully lobbied for specific legal protections, exempting them from the standard of care and science-based treatment guidelines. Such legislation has been criticised as an example of "legislative alchemy", the process whereby pseudomedicine is legislated into practice. Some doctors view the promotion of chronic Lyme disease as an example of health fraud.
== Description and background ==
Chronic Lyme disease is distinct from untreated late-stage Lyme disease, which can cause arthritis, peripheral neuropathy and/or encephalomyelitis. Chronic Lyme disease is also distinct from post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS) when symptoms linger after standard antibiotic treatments. PTLDS is estimated to occur in less than 5% of people who had Lyme disease and were treated. In contrast to these recognized medical conditions, the promotion of chronic Lyme disease has been accused of being health fraud. In many cases there is no objective evidence that people who believe they have chronic Lyme have ever been infected with Lyme disease: standard diagnostic tests for infection are often negative.
While it is undisputed that people can have severe symptoms of an illness, the cause and appropriate treatment promoted by "chronic Lyme" advocates are controversial. The symptoms are similar to those of fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome. Fibromyalgia can be triggered by an infection, and then persist when the infection is completely removed from the body. A few doctors attribute these symptoms to persistent infection with Borrelia, or co-infections with other tick-borne pathogens, such as Ehrlichia and Babesia. Some conclude that the initial infection may cause an autoimmune reaction that continues to cause serious symptoms even after the bacteria have been eliminated by antibiotics.
A review looked at several animal studies that found the persistence of live but disabled spirochetes following treatment of B. burgdorferi infection with antibiotics. The authors noted that none of the lingering spirochetes were associated with inflamed tissues and criticized the studies for not having adequately considered the different pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics of the antibiotics used to treat the animals in the trials versus what would be expected to be used to treat humans. The authors concluded, "There is no scientific evidence to support the hypothesis that such spirochetes, should they exist in humans, are the cause of post-Lyme disease syndrome."
Major U.S. medical authorities, including the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Academy of Neurology, and the National Institutes of Health, have stated there is no convincing evidence that Borrelia is involved in the various symptoms classed as CLD, and particularly advise against long-term antibiotic treatment as it is ineffective and potentially harmful. Prolonged antibiotic therapy presents significant risks and can have dangerous, even deadly, side effects. Randomized placebo-controlled studies have shown that antibiotics offer no sustained benefit in people with chronic Lyme, with evidence of both placebo effects and significant adverse effects from such treatment. Many people who believe that they have chronic Lyme have fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia can be difficult to treat, and antibiotics do not work at all for fibromyalgia. A pressure group called the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) says that the persistence of B. burgdorferi may be responsible for manifestations of chronic Lyme disease symptoms.
False chronic Lyme disease diagnoses are frequently justified due to non-specific symptoms that are common in the population. Harriet Hall examined a long list of symptoms attributed to CLD and remarked that it "pretty much covers everyone." Consistent with this observation, a study found that a questionnaire of non-specific symptoms based on an ILADS symptom checklist could not distinguish between patients with possible post-Lyme symptoms and those with other conditions.
While many people who receive CLD diagnoses have unexplained symptoms (including chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia), others have well-defined diagnoses. Cases of cancer, a brain tumor, ALS, lupus, multiple sclerosis, a thyroid disorder, and mental disorders have each been misdiagnosed as CLD. Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also documented life-threatening infections caused by unnecessary treatment with intravenous antibiotics and immunoglobulins. An adolescent girl and a woman were hospitalized for septic shock, with the woman eventually dying. Other patients developed Staphylococcus aureus and intractable C. difficile.
== Identity ==
Among people who self-identify as having chronic Lyme, the idea of chronic Lyme functions as a type of social identity. In this sense, the goal of the label is not to identify particular objective facts that differentiate one medical condition from another; instead, the main goal is to validate the real suffering experienced by people living with an invisible illness and to provide social support for them as they cope with it. To some patients, receiving a CLD diagnosis can provide a sense of relief and optimism for the future. They may also become dedicated to fighting for recognition of CLD.
== Discredited beliefs ==
Patients who receive a false chronic Lyme diagnosis are frequently told that they have other diagnoses that are not scientifically recognized. Infections may be diagnosed even without compatible symptom history, exposure in an endemic area, or credible positive test results. Some inappropriately diagnosed "co-infections" may be based on known tick-borne infections, such as Babesiosis or anaplasmosis. Others, like bartonellosis or mycoplasmosis, have not been shown to be tick-borne or commonly comorbid with chronic Lyme disease. Some may be told that they are being poisoned by mold. NIH physician Adriana Marques has noted that patients may also be told that they have "metabolic and hormonal imbalances, immune dysfunction, heavy metal toxicity, allergies, damage by toxins, mitochondrial dysfunction and enzyme deficiencies".
CLD advocates have also attempted to link Lyme disease to so-called Morgellons disease, another condition unrecognized by medical science. Morgellons—which is generally considered a form of delusional parasitosis—involves a persistent and pathologic belief that the skin is producing fibers. Among the top promoters of Morgellons is former ILADS president Raphael Stricker, who claims that CLD is causing the fibers to grow. In 2015, The Atlantic reported that Stricker treats people who believe they have Morgellons with long-term antibiotics.
A belief in one’s chronic Lyme disease is often reinforced by fallacious reasoning. For example, if a patient either feels better or feels worse after a treatment, it may be wrongly interpreted as evidence both that the diagnosis is appropriate and that the treatment is working. In the chronic Lyme world, a patient with worsening symptoms may be told that they are "herxing". The "herxing" claims are based on a real phenomenon called the Jarisch–Herxheimer reaction but often do not resemble it. True Jarisch–Herxheimer reactions are generally transient, mild, and found only within the first 24 hours of beginning antibiotics. In online Lyme groups, patients have claimed to "herx" long after initial antibiotic treatment for durations that can last weeks. A mistaken belief that a treatment is working can cause patients to ignore serious drug side effects of antibiotics or prevent diagnosis and treatment of other true causes of worsening symptoms.
If a patient improves while on treatment, experts warn that this also should not be interpreted as evidence of Lyme infection and that the treatment is working. Randomized controlled trials found that close to 40% of people with post-Lyme symptoms felt better while on placebo. An assumption that a treatment works can be reinforced because antibiotics can have anti-inflammatory effects, and many conditions naturally improve over time.
== Political actions ==
While there is general agreement on the optimal treatment for Lyme disease, the existence of chronic Lyme is generally rejected because there is no evidence of its existence. Even among those who believe in it, there is no consensus over its prevalence, symptoms, diagnostic criteria, or treatment. The evidence-based perspective is exemplified by a 2007 review in The New England Journal of Medicine, which noted the diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease is used by a few physicians despite a lack of "reproducible or convincing scientific evidence", leading the authors to describe this diagnosis as "the latest in a series of syndromes that have been postulated in an attempt to attribute medically unexplained symptoms to particular infections." Medical authorities agree with this viewpoint: the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), the American Academy of Neurology, CDC, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), advise against long-term antibiotic treatment for people who identify as having chronic Lyme disease, given the lack of supporting evidence and the potential for harmful side-effects including toxicities.
A minority, primarily not medical practitioners, holds that chronic Lyme disease is responsible for a range of unexplained symptoms, sometimes in people without any evidence of past infection. This viewpoint is promoted by many who have been told they have the condition by people who lack experience in science or medicine. Groups, advocates, and the small number of physicians who support the concept of chronic Lyme disease have organized to lobby for recognition of this diagnosis, as well as to argue for insurance coverage of long-term antibiotic therapy, which most insurers deny, as it is at odds with the guidelines of major medical organizations.
Paul G. Auwaerter, director of infectious disease at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, cited the political controversy and high emotions as contributing to a "poisonous atmosphere" around Lyme disease, which he believes has led to doctors trying to avoid having Lyme patients in their practices.
=== IDSA lawsuit ===
In 2006, Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Attorney General, opened an antitrust investigation against the IDSA, accusing the IDSA Lyme disease panel of undisclosed conflicts of interest and of unduly dismissing alternative therapies and chronic Lyme disease. The investigation was closed on May 1, 2008, without charges when the IDSA agreed to submit to a review of its guidelines by a panel of independent scientists and physicians which would occur on July 30, 2009, citing mounting legal costs and the difficulty of presenting scientific arguments in a legal setting.
According to the agreement with Blumenthal, the IDSA Lyme disease guidelines remained in place and unchallenged. A Forbes piece described Blumenthal's investigation as "intimidation" of scientists by an elected official with close ties to Lyme advocacy groups. The Journal of the American Medical Association described the decision as an example of the "politicization of health policy" that went against the weight of scientific evidence and may have a chilling effect on future decisions by medical associations.
The expert panel's review was published in 2010, with the independent doctors and scientists in the panel unanimously endorsing the guidelines, stating "No changes or revisions to the 2006 Lyme guidelines are necessary at this time", and concluding long-term antibiotic treatments are unproven and potentially dangerous. The IDSA welcomed the final report, stating that "Our number one concern is the patients we treat, and we're glad patients and their physicians now have additional reassurance that the guidelines are medically sound."
=== Legal mandates to cover unproven treatments ===
The state of Connecticut, meanwhile, enacted a law on June 18, 2009, "to allow a licensed physician to prescribe, administer or dispense long-term antibiotics for a therapeutic purpose to a patient clinically diagnosed with Lyme disease." The states of Rhode Island, California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Maine, and Iowa have similar laws.
Massachusetts (2016) and Rhode Island (2003) have laws mandating insurance coverage for long-term antibiotic therapy for Lyme disease when deemed medically necessary by a physician. In 1999 Connecticut had passed a similar, though somewhat more restrictive law.
== Harassment of researchers ==
Some promoters of belief in CLD have harassed mainstream scientists and made false accusations. In 2001, The New York Times Magazine reported that Allen Steere, chief of immunology and rheumatology at Tufts Medical Center and a co-discoverer and leading expert on Lyme disease, had been harassed, stalked, and threatened by patients and patient advocacy groups angry at his refusal to substantiate their diagnoses of "chronic" Lyme disease and endorse long-term antibiotic therapy. Because this intimidation included death threats, Steere was assigned security guards.
== Media ==
A 2004 study in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal stated nine of nineteen Internet websites surveyed contained what were described as major inaccuracies. Websites described as providing inaccurate information included several with the word "lyme" in their domain name (e.g., lymenet.org), as well as the website of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society. A 2007 article in The New England Journal of Medicine argued media coverage of chronic Lyme disease ignored scientific evidence in favor of anecdotes and testimonials:
The media frequently disregard complex scientific data in favor of testimonials about patients suffering from purported chronic Lyme disease and may even question the competence of clinicians who are reluctant to diagnose chronic Lyme disease ... [contributing] to a great deal of public confusion with little appreciation of the serious harm caused to many patients who have received a misdiagnosis and have been inappropriately treated.
The 2008 documentary film Under Our Skin: The Untold Story of Lyme Disease is by a director whose sister self-identified with the condition. A columnist for Entertainment Weekly wrote of the film:
[Under Our Skin] embraces, with bits and pieces of skimpy evidence and a whole lot more paranoid leftist fervor, the notion that "chronic Lyme disease" is a condition that the medical establishment is locked in a conspiracy to deny the existence of. The filmmakers actually bungle what should have been their real subject (that the belief in chronic Lyme disease has become something of a cult, one that can ruin the lives of the people who think they have it).
== See also ==
List of diagnoses characterized as pseudoscience
== References ==
== External links ==
Dunning, Brian (March 10, 2020). "Skeptoid #718: Diagnosing Chronic Lyme Disease". Skeptoid. | Wikipedia/Chronic_Lyme_disease |
The strawman theory (also called the strawman illusion) is a pseudolegal conspiracy theory originating in the redemption/A4V movement and prevalent in antigovernment and tax protester movements such as sovereign citizens and freemen on the land. The theory holds that an individual has two personas, one of flesh and blood and the other a separate legal personality (i.e., the "strawman") and that one's legal responsibilities belong to the strawman rather than the physical individual.
Pseudolaw advocates claim that it is possible, through the use of certain "redemption" procedures and documents, to separate oneself from the "strawman", therefore becoming free of the rule of law. Hence, the main use of strawman theory is in escaping and denying liabilities and legal responsibility. Tax protesters, "commercial redemption" and "get out of debt free" scams claim that one's debts and taxes are the responsibility of the strawman and not of the real person. They back this claim by misreading the legal definition of person and misunderstanding the distinction between a juridical person and a natural person.
Canadian legal scholar Donald J. Netolitzky has called the strawman theory "the most innovative component of the Pseudolaw Memeplex".
Courts have uniformly rejected arguments relying on the strawman theory, which is recognized in law as a scam; the FBI considers anyone promoting it a likely fraudster, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) considers it a frivolous argument and fines people who claim it on their tax returns.
== Origin ==
The theory appeared circa 1999–2000, when it was conceived by North Dakota farmer turned pseudolegal activist Roger Elvick. A sovereign citizen and tax protester, Elvick was already the primary originator of the redemption movement. The strawman theory overlapped with those of the redemption movement: it eventually became a core concept of sovereign citizen ideology, as it connected their pseudolegal beliefs through an overarching explanation. Around the same period, this set of beliefs was introduced into Canada by Eldon Warman, a student of Elvick's theories who adapted them for a Canadian context. It was further reframed in Canada by the freeman on the land movement, which expanded to other Commonwealth countries.
== Assertions ==
The theory holds that an individual has two personas. One of them is a physical, tangible human being, and the other is the legal person, often referred to as a legal fiction. When a baby is born in the U.S., a birth certificate is issued, and the parents apply for a Social Security number. Sovereigns say the government uses that birth certificate to set up a secret Treasury account which it funds with an amount ranging from $600,000 to $20 million, depending on the particular sovereign belief system. Hence, every newborn's rights are split between those held by the flesh-and-blood baby and the corporate shell account.
One argument used by proponents of the strawman theory is based on a misinterpretation of the term capitis deminutio, used in ancient Roman law for the extinguishment of a person's former legal capacity. Adherents to the theory spell the term "Capitis Diminutio", and claim that capitis diminutio maxima (meaning, in Roman law, the loss of liberty, citizenship, and family) was represented by an individual's name being written in capital letters, hence the idea of individuals having a separate legal personality.
The strawman theory is coupled with the belief that the government is actually a corporation. Said corporation is supposedly bankrupt and uses its citizens as collateral against foreign debt. After each person's strawman is created through their birth certificate, a loan is taken out in the name of the strawman. The proceeds are then deposited into the secret government account associated with the fictitious person’s name.
Proponents of the theory believe the evidence is found on the birth certificate itself. Because many certificates show all capitals to spell out a baby's name, JOHN DOE (under the Strawman theory) is the name of the "straw man", and John Doe is the baby's "real" name. As the child grows, most legal documents will contain capital letters, which means that his state-issued driver's license, his marriage license, his car registration, his criminal court records, his cable TV bill, correspondence from the IRS, etc., pertain to his strawman and not his sovereign identity. In reality, the use of all capital letters is typically done to make certain statements clear and conspicuous, although this is not always the case.
The theory is also based in part on a misinterpretation of the Uniform Commercial Code, which provides an interstate standard for documents such as driver's licenses or for bank accounts: adherents to the theory see this as evidence that these documents, and the associated laws and financial obligations, do not apply to them, but instead to the "straw man".
To distinguish themselves from their "strawman", pseudolaw advocates may refer to their "flesh and blood" identity under by a slightly different name, such as "John of the family Doe" instead of "John Doe". One scheme, notably advocated by sovereign citizen theorist David Wynn Miller, involves adding punctuation—typically hyphens and colons—to one's name: Miller would write his name as :David-Wynn: Miller or David-Wynn: Miller and verbally said it "David hyphen Wynn full colon Miller".
A variation of the strawman theory is found in the "legal name fraud" movement, which believes that birth certificates give the state legal ownership of a personal name and that refusing to use this name removes oneself from the state's authority and a court's jurisdiction.
Russell Porisky, a Canadian tax protester who emulated Eldon Warman's ideas, promoted a version of the strawman theory by claiming that people could avoid paying taxes by proclaiming themselves to be "natural persons", in opposition to the government's version of a "person". His concepts relied on a misinterpretation of the definition of a "person" in section 248(1) of the Canadian Income Tax Act, which he combined with the strawman theory. Porisky was convicted in 2012 of tax evasion and was sentenced in 2016 to five and a half years in prison.
Believers of the theory also extend it to law and legal responsibilities, claiming that only their strawman is required to adhere to statutory laws. They also claim that legal proceedings are taken against strawmen rather than persons and when one appears in court they appear as representing their strawman. The justification for this is the false notion that governments cannot force anybody to do anything. A strawman is therefore created which the adherent believes he or she is free to command. Proponents cite a misinterpretation of a passage in chapter 39 of King John's Magna Carta stating in part that, "no freeman will be seized, dispossessed of his property, or harmed except by the law of the land”.
Adherents to the theory believe that separating from their strawman or refusing to be identified as such enables escape from their legal liabilities and responsibilities. This is typically attempted by denying they are a 'person' in the same way as their strawman, or by writing their name in non-standard ways, using red ink, and placing finger prints on court documents. The use of thumbprints and signatures in red ink, in particular, is meant to distinguish "flesh and blood" people from the "strawman", since black and blue inks are believed to indicate corporations. The theory also holds that even after "removing" their strawman, people must remain cautious and take steps to avoid recognizing the validity of government regulations, which would make them succumb to another "invisible contract", experience "joinder" and thus fall back under government authority.
The belief in the strawman articulates with the redemption movement's fraudulent debt and tax payment schemes, which imply that money from the secret account (known in some variations of the theory as a "Cestui Que Vie Trust") can be used to pay one's taxes, debts and other liabilities by simply writing phrases like "Accepted for Value" or "Taken for Value" on the bills or collection letters, or that the strawman's funds are accessible through the use of certain forms and securities. Such schemes are commonly known as A4V. By attempting to test this aspect of the theory, one may commit various forms of fraud and face criminal charges. One purported "redemption" method for appropriating the money from the alleged secret account is to file a UCC-1 financing statement against one's strawman after having taken the steps to "separate" from it.
One Canadian freeman on the land "guru" known under the pseudonym "John Spirit" developed a more sophisticated version of the strawman theory, based on misinterpretations of various international treaties and of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. His arguments were rejected by Canadian provincial and Federal courts.
== Legal status of the theory ==
In accepted legal theory there is a difference between what is known as a natural person and that of a corporate person. A corporate personhood applies to business, charities, governments and other recognized organisations. Courts recognize human beings as 'persons', not as a legal fiction joined to a flesh and blood human being but as one and the same. They have never recognized a right to distance oneself from one's person, or the ability to opt out of personhood.
In 2010, Canadian tax protester and vexatious litigant David Kevin Lindsay appealed his 2008 conviction and sentencing on five counts of failing to file income tax returns, on the ground that he was not a "person" as defined by the Income Tax Act. Lindsay's argument was that he had opted out of "personhood" in 1996, which made him "a full liability free will flesh and blood living man". The Supreme Court of British Columbia rejected his claims, commenting that "The ordinary sense of the word 'person' in the (Income Tax Act) is without ambiguity. It is clear that Parliament intended the word in its broadest sense."
In 2012, Associate Justice John D. Rooke of the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta addressed the strawman theory in detail in his Meads v. Meads decision, concluding: 'Double/split person' schemes have no legal effect. These schemes have no basis in law. There is only one legal identity that attaches to a person. If a person wishes to add a legal 'layer' to themselves, then a corporation is the proper approach.
Judge Norman K. Moon found such tactics an unconvincing argument in 2013 when an individual named Brandon Gravatt tried to overturn a drug conviction and get out of prison. The case was summarily dismissed by the court.
In 2016, a billboard campaign promoted the "legal name fraud" theory in the United Kingdom. Lawyer David Allen Green commented that the theory was "complete tosh" and potentially harmful to litigants who would use it in court: "If people try to use such things to avoid their legal obligations they can end up with county court judgments or even criminal convictions. You may as well walk into court with a t-shirt saying 'I am an idiot'."
In 2021, the District Court of Queensland dismissed an application that relied on the strawman theory, commenting that this argument "may properly be described as nonsense or gobbledygook". The court also pointed out that the strawman scheme, if it had any legal validity, would have adverse consequences for those affected:
An adult human being with full capacity can sue and be sued. They are subject to the criminal laws of this state. These fundamental propositions cannot be doubted. It is true that a natural person can create a legal entity that has a distinct legal personality – such entities are commonly called companies – but this is an adjunct to, rather than a replacement for, the legal personality of the human being. One way of illustrating why this must be so is to consider the consequences of the ability to 'renounce' legal personhood. The law has at times recognised categories of person who did not possess a legal personality. These categories included, before 1833, slaves, who were regarded as chattel property, could be bought and sold, and who had no rights under the law. At times women and children were thought not to possess a legal personality. (...) The fates of people who were in these categories were rarely pleasant. If the applicant were somehow able to renounce his legal personality, he would become a human being without rights. He would be mere property. Such an outcome would be antithetical to our society and system of laws.
Likewise, Donald J. Netolitzky has stressed that : In modern law, any human being is also innately a legal person, so the historical duality that might serve as a theoretical foundation for "Strawman" Theory is now irrevocably and innately melded together into a single unit. Any human being is a legal person.
It is impossible to dodge the law by insisting that an individual is different from his or her person. If a court can establish a person's identity, regardless of consent or cooperation, the court will engage in proceedings and sanctions against the individual. This is due to the legal principle known as Idem sonans (Latin for "sounding the same") which states that similar sounding names are just as valid in referring to a person.: p813 The earliest legal precedent is R v Davis in the United Kingdom in 1851.
If two names spelt differently necessarily sound alike, the court may, as matter of law, pronounce them to be idem sonantia; but if they do not necessarily sound alike, the question whether they are idem sonantia is a question of fact for the jury.
== References == | Wikipedia/Strawman_theory |
The California drought manipulation conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory that proposes that the 2011–2017 drought was a deliberate, man-made phenomenon, created by weather modification. It is largely promoted by a number of self-proclaimed "independent researchers" and "scientists", and by alternative news outlets. The theory has been dismissed by the scientific community and mainstream media as fringe science or pseudoscience.
== Key claims and components ==
The 2011–2017 drought inspired alarm among many, leading to the emergence of conspiracy theories purporting to explain the cause of a complex problem using oversimplified and non-evidence-based explanations.
Many of the proponents claim that chemtrails are used to affect storm clouds, in such a manner as to suppress the development of precipitation. This would occur because of the presence of too many cloud condensation nuclei, or "cloud seeds", in a single area. Others say that technologies similar to HAARP (a federal ionospheric research program, which was decommissioned in 2015), are being used to create a large and stubborn high-pressure area over the West Coast of the United States. They claim that this, also, discourages storms and rainfall.
Dane Wigington and his group GeoEngineering Watch were the most visible proponents of this theory. Wigington said that government agencies and other entities have economic and geopolitical motivations to manipulate the weather on the West Coast and elsewhere.
Proponents have claimed credibility for the theory, in part, as a result of a Los Angeles County cloud seeding program, begun in early 2016. This reinforced their view that government continues to engage in weather modification and/or climate engineering.
== See also ==
== References == | Wikipedia/California_drought_manipulation_conspiracy_theory |
"Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle, falsely claiming that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails. It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.
The personal email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, was hacked in a spear phishing attack in March 2016. WikiLeaks published his emails in November 2016. Proponents of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory falsely claimed the emails contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and U.S. restaurants with an alleged human trafficking and child sex ring. One of the establishments allegedly involved was the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C.
Members of the alt-right, conservative journalists, and others who had urged Clinton's prosecution over her use of an unrelated private email server spread the conspiracy theory on social media outlets such as 4chan, 8chan, Reddit and Twitter. In response, a man from North Carolina traveled to Comet Ping Pong to investigate the conspiracy and fired a rifle inside the restaurant to break the lock on a door to a storage room during his search. In addition, the restaurant's owner and staff received death threats from conspiracy theorists.
Pizzagate is generally considered a predecessor to the QAnon conspiracy theory. It also generated another offshoot conspiracy theory, called Frazzledrip, which involved Hillary Clinton participating in the ritual murder of a child. Pizzagate resurged in 2020, mainly due to QAnon. While initially it was spread by only the far-right, it has since been spread by users on TikTok "who don't otherwise fit a right-wing conspiracy theorist mold: the biggest Pizzagate spreaders on TikTok appear to otherwise be mostly interested in topics of viral dance moves and Black Lives Matter". The conspiracy theory has developed and become less partisan and political in nature, with less emphasis on Clinton and more on an alleged worldwide elite of child sex-traffickers.
== Origins ==
=== Genesis ===
On October 30, 2016, a Twitter account posting white supremacist material which said it was run by a Jewish New York lawyer falsely claimed that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails. Throughout October and November 2016, WikiLeaks had published John Podesta's emails. Proponents of the conspiracy theory read the emails and alleged they contained code words for pedophilia and human trafficking. Proponents also claimed that Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., was a meeting ground for Satanic ritual abuse.
Deriving its name from the Watergate scandal, the story was later posted on fake news websites, starting with Your News Wire, which cited a 4chan post from earlier that year. The Your News Wire article was subsequently spread by pro-Trump websites, including SubjectPolitics.com, which added the claim that the NYPD had raided Hillary Clinton's property. The Conservative Daily Post ran a headline claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed the conspiracy theory.
=== Spread on social media ===
According to the BBC, the allegations spread to "the mainstream internet" several days before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, after a Reddit user posted a Pizzagate "evidence" document. The original Reddit post, removed some time between November 4 and 21, alleged the involvement of Comet Ping Pong:
Everyone associated with the business is making semi-overt, semi-tongue-in-cheek, and semi-sarcastic inferences towards sex with minors. The artists that work for and with the business also generate nothing but cultish imagery of disembodiment, blood, beheadings, sex, and of course pizza.
The story was picked up by other fake news websites like InfoWars, Planet Free Will, and The Vigilant Citizen, and was promoted by alt-right activists such as Mike Cernovich, Brittany Pettibone, and Jack Posobiec. Other promoters included David Seaman, former writer for TheStreet.com, CBS46 anchor Ben Swann, basketball player Andrew Bogut, and Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson, as well as the German edition of The Epoch Times, a far-right Falun Gong-associated newspaper. On December 30, as Bogut recovered from a knee injury, members of /r/The Donald community on Reddit promoted a false theory that his injury was connected to his support for Pizzagate. Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University, said that a disproportionate number of tweets about Pizzagate came from the Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Vietnam, and that some of the most frequent retweeters were bots.
Members of the Reddit community /r/The_Donald created the /r/pizzagate subreddit to further develop the conspiracy theory. The sub was banned on November 23, 2016, for violating Reddit's anti-doxing policy after users posted personal details of people connected to the alleged conspiracy. Reddit released a statement afterwards, saying, "We don't want witchhunts on our site". After the ban on Reddit, the discussion was moved to the v/pizzagate sub on Voat, a now-defunct Reddit clone dedicated to far-right content.
Some of Pizzagate's proponents, including David Seaman and Michael G. Flynn (Michael Flynn's son), evolved the conspiracy into a broader government conspiracy called "Pedogate". According to this theory, a "satanic cabal of elites" of the New World Order operates international child sex trafficking rings.
By June 2020, the conspiracy theory found renewed popularity on TikTok, where videos tagged #Pizzagate were reaching over 80 million views (see relevant section).
=== Turkish press reports ===
In Turkey, the allegations were reported by pro-government newspapers (i.e., those supportive of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), such as Sabah, A Haber, Yeni Şafak, Akşam and Star. The story appeared on Turkey's Ekşi Sözlük website and on the viral news network HaberSelf, where anyone can post content. These forums reposted images and allegations directly from the since-deleted subreddit, which were reprinted in full in the state-controlled press. Efe Sozeri, a columnist for The Daily Dot, suggested Turkish government sources were pushing this story to distract attention from a child abuse scandal there in March 2016.
== Harassment of restaurant owners and employees ==
As Pizzagate spread, Comet Ping Pong received hundreds of threats from the theory's believers. The restaurant's owner, James Alefantis, told The New York Times: "From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we've come under constant assault. I've done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized."
Some adherents identified the Instagram account of Alefantis and pointed to some of the photos posted there as evidence of the conspiracy. Many of the images shown were friends and family who had liked Comet Ping Pong's page on Facebook. In some cases, imagery was taken from unrelated websites and purported to be Alefantis' own. The restaurant's owners and staff were harassed and threatened on social media websites, and the owner received death threats. The restaurant's Yelp page was locked by the site's operators citing reviews that were "motivated more by the news coverage itself than the reviewer's personal consumer experience".
Several bands who had performed at the pizzeria also faced harassment. For example, Amanda Kleinman of Heavy Breathing deleted her Twitter account after receiving negative comments connecting her and her band to the conspiracy theory. Another band, Sex Stains, had closed the comments of their YouTube videos and addressed the controversy in the description of their videos. The artist Arrington de Dionyso, who once had painted a mural at the pizzeria that had been painted over several years before the controversy, described the campaign of harassment against him in detail, and said of the attacks in general, "I think it's a very deliberate assault, which will eventually be a coordinated assault on all forms of free expression." The affair has drawn comparisons with the Gamergate harassment campaign.
Pizzagate-related harassment of businesses extended beyond Comet Ping Pong to include other nearby D.C. businesses such as Besta Pizza, three doors down from Comet; Little Red Fox cafe; bookstore Politics and Prose; and French bistro, Terasol. These businesses received a high volume of threatening and menacing telephone calls, including death threats, and also experienced online harassment. The co-owners of Little Red Fox and Terasol filed police reports.
Brooklyn restaurant Roberta's was also pulled into the hoax, receiving harassing phone calls, including a call from an unidentified person telling an employee that she was "going to bleed and be tortured". The restaurant became involved after a since-removed YouTube video used images from their social media accounts to imply they were part of the hoax sex ring. Others then spread the accusations on social media, claiming the "Clinton family loves Roberta's".
East Side Pies, in Austin, Texas, saw one of its delivery trucks vandalized with an epithet, and was the target of online harassment related to their supposed involvement in Pizzagate, alleged connections to the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Illuminati.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated Pizzagate-related threats in March 2017 as part of a probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
== Criminal responses ==
=== Shooting incident ===
Edgar Maddison Welch, a 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, arrived at Comet Ping Pong and fired three shots from an AR-15 style rifle that struck the restaurant's walls, a desk, and a door on December 4, 2016. Welch later told police that he had planned to "self-investigate" the conspiracy theory. Welch saw himself as the potential hero of the story—a rescuer of children. He surrendered after officers surrounded the restaurant and was arrested without incident; no one was injured.
Welch told police he had read online that the Comet restaurant was harboring child sex slaves and that he wanted to see for himself if they were there. In an interview with The New York Times, Welch later said that he regretted how he had handled the situation but did not dismiss the conspiracy theory, and rejected the description of it as "fake news". Some conspiracy theorists speculated the shooting was a staged attempt to discredit their investigations.
Welch was charged with one count of "interstate transportation of a firearm with intent to commit an offense" (a federal crime) on December 13, 2016. According to court documents, Welch attempted to recruit friends three days before the attack by urging them to watch a YouTube video about the conspiracy. He was subsequently charged with two additional offenses, with the grand jury returning an indictment charging him with assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.
Following a plea agreement with prosecutors, Welch pleaded guilty to the federal charge of interstate transport of firearms and the local District of Columbia charge of assault with a dangerous weapon on March 24, 2017. Welch also agreed to pay $5,744.33 for damages to the restaurant. U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (future Supreme Court Justice) sentenced Welch to four years in prison on June 22, 2017. At the sentencing hearing, Welch apologized for his conduct and said he had been "foolish and reckless". On March 3, 2020, Welch was transferred to a Community Corrections Center (CCC); he was released on May 28.
On January 4, 2025—eight years after the initial incident at Comet Ping Pong—two police officers from Kannapolis, North Carolina, pulled over Welch's vehicle at a traffic stop over an outstanding warrant for his arrest for a felony probation violation (Welch was a passenger in the vehicle). When they attempted to arrest him, he pulled out a gun and refused orders to drop it, and the officers shot him. Welch died two days later.
=== Other events ===
On January 12, 2017, Yusif Lee Jones, a 52-year-old man from Shreveport, Louisiana, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to making a threatening phone call to Besta Pizza, another pizzeria on the same block as Comet Ping Pong, three days after Welch's attack. He said he threatened Besta to "save the kids", and "finish what the other guy didn't".
The city of Portsmouth, England experienced its own version of Pizzagate when the Scottish owner of a vaping business was targeted in what the Sunday Times called a "xenophobic campaign" in 2018. This lasted six months. The main culprit, Oliver Redmond, was prosecuted and sentenced to five months in prison. Judge William Mousley QC also imposed a three-year restraining order and was quoted as follows: "Mr Cheape said he saw 15 to 20 screenshots a day regarding him, his partner, and his business. It was described as a paedophile grooming operation, and the suggestion was made that the children were in the basement of the store, and he described that you were passing information on to his suppliers that he was a paedophile and that there was an international investigation involving Mr Cheape."
Comet Ping Pong suffered an arson attack when a fire was started in one of its backrooms on January 25, 2019. Employees quickly extinguished the blaze and nobody was injured. The perpetrator escaped, but was arrested a few days later while climbing a fence at the Washington Monument and tied to the arson via security footage. He had posted a video referencing QAnon prior to the arson.
== Debunking ==
The conspiracy theory has been widely discredited and debunked. It has been judged to be false after detailed investigation by the fact-checking website Snopes.com and The New York Times. Numerous news organizations have debunked it as a conspiracy theory, including The New York Observer, The Washington Post, The Independent, The Huffington Post, The Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, Fox News, CNN, and the Miami Herald. The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia characterized the matter as "fictitious".
Much of the purported evidence cited by the conspiracy theory's proponents had been taken from entirely different sources and made to appear as if it supported the conspiracy. Images of children of family and friends of the pizzeria's staff were taken from social media sites such as Instagram and claimed to be photos of victims.
The New York Times published an article that analyzed the theory's claims on December 10, 2016. They emphasized that:
Theorists linked the conspiracy to Comet Ping Pong through similarities between company logos and symbols related to Satanism and pedophilia. However, The Times noted similarities were also found in the logos of a number of unrelated companies, such as AOL, Time Warner, and MSN.
Theorists claimed an underground network beneath Comet Ping Pong; the restaurant has no basement, however, and the picture used to support this claim was taken in another facility.
Theorists claimed to have a picture of restaurant owner Alefantis wearing a T-shirt endorsing pedophilia. However, the image was of another person, and the shirt, which read "J' ❤ L'Enfant," (French for "I ❤ The Child") was actually a reference to the L'Enfant Cafe-Bar in D.C., whose owner was pictured in the image, and which itself is named after Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the designer of much of the layout of Washington, D.C.
Theorists claimed John and Tony Podesta kidnapped Madeleine McCann in 2007 using police sketches that were, in fact, two sketches of the same suspect taken from the descriptions of two eyewitnesses. The descriptions mention the suspect was "aged between 20 and 40". However, in 2007, Tony Podesta was 64 and John Podesta was 58.
No alleged victims have come forward and no physical evidence has been found.
== Responses ==
In an interview with NPR on November 27, 2016, Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis referred to the conspiracy theory as "an insanely complicated, made-up, fictional lie-based story" and a "coordinated political attack". Syndicated columnist Daniel Ruth wrote that the conspiracy theorists' assertions were "dangerous and damaging fake allegations" and that they were "repeatedly debunked, disproved and dismissed".
Despite the conspiracy theory being debunked, it continued to spread on social media, with over one million messages using hashtag #Pizzagate on Twitter in November 2016. Stefanie MacWilliams, who wrote an article promoting the conspiracy on Planet Free Will, was subsequently reported by the Toronto Star as saying, "I really have no regrets and it's honestly really grown our audience". Pizzagate, she said, is "two worlds clashing. People don't trust the mainstream media anymore, but it's true that people shouldn't take the alternative media as truth, either".
On December 8, 2016, Hillary Clinton responded to the conspiracy theory, speaking about the dangers of fake news websites. She said, "The epidemic of malicious fake news and fake propaganda that flooded social media over the past year, it's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences".
=== Public opinion ===
A poll conducted by Public Policy Polling on December 6–7, 2016, asked 1,224 U.S. registered voters if they thought Hillary Clinton was "connected to a child sex ring being run out of a pizzeria in Washington DC". Nine percent of respondents said they believed she was connected, 72% said they did not, and 19% were not sure.
A poll of voters conducted on December 17–20 by The Economist/YouGov asked voters if they believed that "Leaked e-mails from the Clinton campaign talked about pedophilia and human trafficking - 'Pizzagate'." The results showed that 17% of Clinton voters responded "true" while 82% responded "not true"; and 46% of Trump voters responded "true" while 53% responded "not true".
Academic Roger Lancaster likened the impact of Pizzagate to the Satanic panic of the 1980s: at the time, hundreds of daycare workers were falsely accused of abusing children.
=== Alex Jones and InfoWars ===
After the Comet Ping Pong shooting, Alex Jones of InfoWars backed off from the idea that the D.C. pizzeria was the center of the conspiracy. On December 4, InfoWars uploaded a YouTube video that linked Pizzagate to the November 13 death of a sex-worker-rights activist. The video falsely claimed that she had been investigating a link between the Clinton Foundation and human trafficking in Haiti. It speculated she had been murdered in connection with her investigation. According to the activist's former employer, family and friends, her death was in fact a suicide and she was not investigating the Clinton Foundation. By December 14, Infowars had removed two of its three Pizzagate-related videos.
In February 2017, Alefantis' lawyers sent Jones a letter demanding an apology and retraction. Under Texas law, Jones was given a month to comply or be subject to a libel suit. In March 2017, Alex Jones apologized to Alefantis for promulgating the conspiracy theory, saying: "To my knowledge today, neither Mr. Alefantis, nor his restaurant Comet Ping Pong, were involved in any human trafficking as was part of the theories about Pizzagate that were being written about in many media outlets and which we commented upon." InfoWars also issued a correction on its website and Jones said, "I want our viewers and listeners to know that we regret any negative impact our commentaries may have had on Mr. Alefantis, Comet Ping Pong, or its employees. We apologize to the extent our commentaries could be construed as negative statements about Mr. Alefantis or Comet Ping Pong, and we hope that anyone else involved in commenting on Pizzagate will do the same thing."
=== Michael Flynn and Michael Flynn Jr. ===
In the days leading up to the 2016 election, Michael Flynn, then a close supporter of Donald Trump and later Trump's National Security Advisor, posted multiple tweets on Twitter containing conspiratorial material regarding Hillary Clinton and her staff. They alleged that John Podesta drank the blood and bodily fluids of other humans in Satanic rituals, which Politico says "soon morphed into the '#pizzagate' conspiracy theory involving Comet Ping Pong". On November 2, 2016, Flynn tweeted a link to a story with unfounded accusations and wrote, "U decide – NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc ... MUST READ!" The tweet was shared by over 9,000 people, but was deleted from Flynn's account sometime during December 12–13, 2016.
After the shooting incident at Comet Ping Pong, Michael Flynn Jr., Michael T. Flynn's son and also a member of Trump's transition team, tweeted: "Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many 'coincidences' tied to it." On December 6, 2016, Flynn Jr. was forced out of Trump's transition team. Spokesman Jason Miller did not identify the reason for his dismissal, however, The New York Times reported that other officials had confirmed it was related to the tweet.
== Developments within QAnon ==
=== Merger with QAnon ===
Pizzagate became a pillar of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, which emerged in 2017 and incorporated its beliefs. QAnon, which has been likened in the media to "Pizzagate on steroids", and a "big-budget sequel" to Pizzagate, linked the child trafficking ring to a nefarious worldwide conspiracy. It also developed Pizzagate's claims by adding the concepts that the sexual abuses are part of Satanic rituals and that the abusers murder the children to "harvest" the adrenochrome from their blood, which they then use as a drug or as an elixir to remain youthful.
=== Frazzledrip ===
A related conspiracy theory known as "Frazzledrip" (sometimes spelled "Frazzled.rip") emerged in 2018, claiming that an "extreme snuff film" was recovered from Anthony Weiner's stolen laptop and was circulating on the dark web. According to that story, the file named "Frazzled.rip" was hidden in a folder called "life insurance" in Weiner's computer: the video contained in that file was said to show Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin raping and murdering a young girl, drinking her adrenochrome-rich blood in a Satanic ritual, and "tak[ing] turns wearing the little girl's face like a mask".
Purported frames from the video circulated to back these claims: according to Snopes, some of these images came from a YouTube video originally posted on April Fools' Day 2018, and a photo which was said to show Huma Abedin wearing a mask had been taken from the website of a Washington D.C. Indian restaurant and portrayed the owner of that establishment. Hundreds of videos on YouTube promoted these false statements, and the claims were still circulating internationally within QAnon groups two years later in 2020.
=== Global spread ===
In 2020, as the broader QAnon movement became an international phenomenon, Pizzagate also gained new traction and became less U.S.-centric in nature, with videos and posts on the topic in Italy, Brazil, Turkey and other countries worldwide each gaining millions of views. This new iteration is less partisan; the majority of the (mostly teenage) promoters of the #PizzaGate hashtag on TikTok were not right-wing, and support the Black Lives Matter movement. It focuses on an alleged global elite of child sex-traffickers, ranging from politicians to powerful businesspeople and celebrities such as Bill Gates, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey and Chrissy Teigen. Justin Bieber's 2020 song "Yummy" was alleged to be about the conspiracy theory, and rekindled support for the theory during the year. The conspiracy theory gained traction when Venezuelan YouTuber, Dross Rotzank, made a video about Bieber's music video and its alleged references to Pizzagate. Rotzank's video gained 3 million views in two days and led "Pizzagate" to become a trending topic on the Spanish-language Twitter. Adherents of the theory also believe that Bieber gave a coded signal admitting as such in a later Instagram Live video, where he touched his hat after being asked to do so in the chat if he was a victim of Pizzagate (however, there is no indication that Bieber saw this comment).
In April 2020, a documentary promoting Pizzagate, Out of Shadows, was made by a former Hollywood stuntman and released on YouTube. TikTok users began promoting both Out of Shadows and the alleged Bieber association until the #PizzaGate hashtag was banned by the company. The New York Times said in June 2020 that posts on the platform with the #PizzaGate hashtag were "viewed more than 82 million times in recent months", and Google searches for the term also increased in that time. They also reported that "In the first week of June, comments, likes and shares of PizzaGate also spiked to more than 800,000 on Facebook and nearly 600,000 on Instagram, according to data from CrowdTangle ... That compares with 512,000 interactions on Facebook and 93,000 on Instagram during the first week of December 2016. From the start of 2017 through January of 2020, the average number of weekly PizzaGate mentions, likes and shares on Facebook and Instagram was under 20,000".
In August 2020, Facebook temporarily suspended use of the "#savethechildren" hashtag, when used to promote elements of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and QAnon. The improper use of the hashtag caused protests from the unrelated NGO Save the Children.
The Pizzagate Massacre (originally titled Duncan), a dark satire film inspired by the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and Edgar Maddison Welch's shooting of Comet Ping Pong, was released on VOD in November 2021.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Pizzagate at Wikimedia Commons | Wikipedia/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory |
The finger pinching conspiracy theory is an antifeminist conspiracy theory that originated in South Korea. It claims that there is a deliberate plot to spread and promote misandry through symbolic hand gestures, and that radical feminist groups have propagated these hidden messages to humiliate men with small penises.
The theory first gained prominence in May 2021 when convenience store chain GS25 faced accusations of allegedly shoehorning a hand signal that disparaged penises in an advertisement, causing the company to retract it and issue an apology. Since then, numerous organizations were met with protests from theorists and announced similar apologies.
Despite contradictory claims and a general lack of evidence, the theory persists; notably in the video game industry, where Nexon led a public allegation against its collaborators. It is viewed as an antifeminist backlash movement in South Korea, and has been analyzed as a symptom of gender inequality in the country.
== Claims ==
According to authors who consider it false, the finger pinching conspiracy theory is based on a belief among South Korean men that feminists are planning covertly to worsen their lives or harm them. Proponents of the conspiracy theory usually claim that users of Megalia, a defunct radical feminist movement website, were successful in infiltrating various organizations. The theory argues its remnants started to plant a specific hand gesture (commonly referred to as the "finger pinching" gesture), with an index finger and thumb facing each other, which connotes small penis humiliation by implicitly signaling Korean men's penises are small. It is also reminiscent of Megalia's logo.
The place where the finger pinching is spotted as well as the extent to which they can be considered offensive varies between cases. Incidents reported on The New York Times essay included theorists associating the finger-pinching symbolism with depiction of hands pointing at mundane items, such as a credit card, a can of Starbucks espresso, or a COVID-19 vaccine. One anonymous theorist, having found the finger pinching in gender sensitivity educational materials for the Korean army, argued they could differentiate the problematic finger pinching gesture from ordinary hand gesture, because they thought the former contained explicit intentions.
== History ==
=== Background ===
South Korea in the 2020s has gender inequality in a number of aspects. As of 2021, the gender pay gap was at 35 percent, the widest among OECD economies, and 65 percent of public companies on the Korea Exchange had no female executives. Gender-based violence in South Korea was described by the Human Rights Watch as "shockingly widespread". In 2021, a woman was murdered or targeted for murder, on average, every 1.4 days or less.
Severe gender conflicts in the country have resulted in various forms of action. There have been organized social movements by women, referred to by The New York Times as "Asia's most successful MeToo movement". Since the late-2010s, there has reportedly been an increase in the number of antifeminist young men who view feminism as a supremacy movement that oppresses men. Reasons given for this belief include that women are not subjected to compulsory military service, intense job competition, the lack of political representation, refusal to take responsibility for the toxic masculinity of older generations, and being unfairly stereotyped as potential criminals. A 2021 survey claimed that 79% of South Korean men in their 20s believe they are victims of reverse discrimination. Antifeminists reportedly adopted terms like "femi" or "man haters" to discredit feminists.
In 2015, a radical feminist movement website named Megalia was founded. The website focused on antagonizing men. It became infamous for its logo that depicted an obscene hand gesture, with an index finger and thumb in a pinching motion; this was intended to mock alleged small penises. Megalia was shut down in 2017, although criticism of the group and its symbolism has reportedly persisted.
=== Origin and spread ===
On May 1, 2021, GS25's local retail firm GS Retail sent a digital notice letter to its customers via mobile messaging app KakaoTalk, announcing future promotional events in that month. The message contained a poster for camping-related items, which had a pictogram of hands grabbing a sausage. That same day, a rumor emerged that the picture was an intentional reference to the Megalia logo. The rumor reportedly spread quickly; it was first posted on a website called Ppomppu at 10:15 and reached other communities within an hour. GS25 responded to the incident before 13:00.
GS25 reacted by issuing apology letters and altering the poster twice that day. Each alteration was reportedly met with more allegations of radical feminist symbolism. Many other elements in the poster were accused of promoting radical feminism or disparaging men's penises. These accusations include: the crescent being the logo of a feminist club in universities, its tagline having an acronym of Megalia's name, the tent resembling a penis, or the campfire suggesting a sperm cell. Some of these claims were dismissed by some news outlets as a falsehood. For instance, conspiracy theorists claimed GS25 added the crescent in the poster's second iteration, suggesting it was a new hidden message planted by Megalia user. Kyunghyang Shinmun reported this is not true because it was already present in the first iteration, only cropped in certain versions of the advertisement. After going through multiple revisions, GS25 removed the poster altogether and issued another apology on social media on May 2.
Protests continued after GS25's announcement. On May 2, a petition on National Petition to the Blue House was launched to remove the GS25 business chain from the Korea Armed Forces; it received 42 thousand signatures in a day. Support for a boycott spread, with an image posted on social media comparing this movement to the 2019 boycott of Japanese products. One GS25-affiliated store owner put up a signboard that supported "equality of outcome and opportunity" and denounced feminism. Members of the New Men's Solidarity, a men's-rights group, protested outside the company's headquarters.
The integrity behind the online backlash was questioned by GS25 officials and third parties. Food industry retailers interviewed by The Hankyoreh described the accusation as "esoteric" and showed concerns that such incidents would demoralize their business. A person claiming to be the graphic designer of the GS25 poster contested the controversy on Blind on May 9, 2021. In a now-deleted statement, she said she doesn't support any ideology and her design didn't contain an expression of hate for men. Nevertheless, GS25 announced on May 31 that the graphic designer would be disciplined, and the GS Retail president was demoted. The GS25 incident is commonly referred to as the first publicized case of controversies surrounding the finger pinching.
=== MapleStory scandal ===
On November 25, 2023, finger pinching theorists suggested there was a vulgar display of misandry in Nexon's video game MapleStory, as its recently published trailer, promoting the new class Angelic Buster, featured a character that allegedly performed the finger pinching for 0.1 seconds. Theorists searched for similar gestures in other Nexon trailers, including Dungeon Fighter Online and Blue Archive. Theorists scrutinized the animation production studio that produced Nexon's trailers, Ppuri.
Nexon reportedly contacted Ppuri on November 26 and suggested it issue an apology. Accordingly, Ppuri posted its first apology letter at 16:12. Three hours later at 19:00, MapleStory director Kim Chang-seop announced that Nexon would remove all visual works created by Ppuri and condemned the animation studio in a YouTube livestream. Kim said that he was against people who implicitly express hatred, and promised Nexon would pursue legal action. Dungeon Fighter Online director Lee Wonman and Blue Archive director Kim Yongha expressed similar sentiments on the matter. Ppuri's works for those games were removed as well.
Nexon's response was followed by a major backlash from finger pinching theorists against Ppuri. A female Ppuri animator was doxed; her social media posts were analyzed and alleged to be confirmation of planting misandrist symbolism. The animator also received death threats and rape threats. Ppuri president Jang Seonyeong issued a second apology letter on November 27 in which she promised to fire the animator; Ppuri later claimed this was due to pressure from the theorists and their business relationship with Nexon (which composed 80 percent of their work at the time). This second public apology was taken down on the same day. Ppuri later overturned the decision of removing the employee from her position. Jang Seonyeong and Ppuri director Kim Sangjin explained that it was unjust to admit to a misdeed the studio has never done, and the director wanted to protect its animators from online harassment.
Nexon's public reprimand of Ppuri was positively received by its associated developers. Nexon union leader Bae Suchan likened the fingers to the English racial slur nigger, saying an expression must be redacted if it can be read as hate speech. When its umbrella organization, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), joined the press conference in front of Nexon's headquarters to condemn Nexon's action, Bae Suchan said they would consider leaving the KCTU because it focused more on political activities than efforts to protect the rights of its members. Supercat, the developer behind mobile game The Kingdom of the Winds published by Nexon, started in-house training that taught its workers not to express feminism in the game and included Ppuri animator's tweet as an example. On Blind, anonymous Nexon employee criticized Ppuri for putting the burden to fix the game on Nexon developers.
Later investigations performed by news media and Ppuri's interviews in December 2023 found that the allegations led by Nexon and the finger pinching theorists were erroneous. Worksheets provided by Ppuri revealed that the "feminist hand gesture" scene in the Angelic Buster trailer was not drawn by a female employee, but a male animator in his forties. Other vetted rumors include: that Ppuri has voided its offices and ghosted its clients (it never did, although a number of employees were temporarily relocated to other places in light of threatening phone calls and several unidentified people visiting and taking photos of the main office); that Ppuri interposed additional key poses between the original works and failed to notify Nexon (all works were closely supervised and approved by Nexon, including the alleged hand gesture scene); and that Ppuri has performed similar practice on a promotional video of Street Fighter 6 (the company did not work on said animatics).
Nexon has eluded subsequent contacts from Ppuri afterwards. The company faced additional complaints from Nexon players after the scandal, who insisted there're more pinch fingers in MapleStory. Each was resolved with Nexon removing the finger pinching.
Since the scandal, Ppuri sought to pursue legal actions against internet trolls who harassed its employees. Ppuri's press conference in December 2023 mentioned it had collected over thousands of internet posts of cyberbullying against the company and its animators; 308 posts were eventually chosen to press criminal charge through the Seocho District police between May and June 2024. The police initially dismissed Ppuri's charges in July 2024, on the basis that it's logical for defendants to criticize Ppuri animators for allying with feminists. It re-opened the case two days later, after its decision was met with public condemnation and a request for reinvestigation from the Prosecutors' Office. The police finished the re-investigation in February 2025 against the 86 specified defendants, some of which were informed for multiple offenses, including defamation and cyberstalking. The Ppuri animator and plaintiff appealed in April against those who were not informed, saying that the police did not explain properly on why they were acquitted.
== List of notable responses ==
== Discourse ==
The finger pinching conspiracy theory is widely agreed to be a hoax. No robust evidence suggests that radical feminist groups are planting the gesture to promote misandry. Some argue that the structure of the human hand results in the gesture being unintentionally formed many times a day. Some analysts have argued that isolating single frames from animation is meaningless, as animations exist in motion.
South Korean organizations that appeased the theorists were criticized and described as enabling their behavior. Several authors argued that such appeasement reinforced the confirmatory bias of the theorists, and infringed on people's rights to labor and expression. Others held media outlets responsible for spreading the conspiracy theory. Noh Jimin, of Media Today, criticized news outlets that she felt did not critically analyze the truthfulness of the GS25 and MapleStory incidents. Seoul University associate professor Kim Sooah claimed that Korean news media unconditionally published articles based on rumors about Megalia circulating in male-focused internet communites. Kim argued that these news articles created an illusion that there is a conspiracy to surreptitiously encourage misandry in South Korean society, and pressured organizations into avoiding being labelled misandrist regardless of whether such accusations were true.
The finger pinching theory was debated by news media as a medium of justifying harassment against women. The Korea Herald's Yim Hyunsu cited Jammi, a livestreamer accused of being a radical feminist in 2019 after she used a pinching hand sign, as an example of growing anti-feminist expectations placed on female celebrities. Jammi later committed suicide in January 2022 after online accusations of her being misandrist, with news coverage mentioning the finger pinching incident. Seoul Shinmun regarded the finger pinching theory as a tool of "hatred framing", taking certain keywords out of context and misrepresenting them to incriminate the speaker. Kim Jinsook, an assistant professor at Emory University, claimed antifeminists had borrowed strategies that called out sexism and misogyny and re-branded them as a consumer movement, intended to criticize feminism and drive feminists from public spaces. Kim said these dominant antifeminist groups, already exercising power within the society, co-opted cancel culture, disguising their behaviors as campaigns based on moral outrage.
Some presses argued the conspiracy theory has had a negative effect on creative works. The Chosun Ilbo reported that the finger pinching controversies, with the other internet disputes, have costed extra resources for companies to alter their commercial advertisements and avoid potential complaints. Webtoon, an American-Korean webcomic platform owned by Naver, became a subject of constant disputes for the company's policies over the fingers. Webtoon comics like Return of the Blossoming Blade and Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint were criticized for censoring the alleged depiction of finger pinching hand gestures, with opponents of the conspiracy theory describing Naver's actions as inconsistent censorship and misogynic.
=== Internet trolling ===
Critics of the finger pinching theory have focused on the impact of online communities, addressing their role in spreading rumors and encouraging online harassment against victims. Numerous authors have argued that a considerable number of theorists are exposed to male-dominated internet forums and social media. A 2021 The Hankyoreh report found that the accusations against GS25 in May 2021 came from and were subsequently spread by male-focused websites, including DC Inside, MLBpark, FMkorea, and Ruliweb. Based on its research, The Hankyoreh suggested these websites were pivotal to the backlash pattern. Other websites that some argued influenced the theorists include Namuwiki and Arcalive. SisaIN interviewed Ppuri animator regarding the 2023 MapleStory scandal and discussed how misinformation is spread through male-centric communities. Users of Namuwiki, a wiki website, compiled alleged incidents on a "misandry controversy" article; the article falsely concluded that the Ppuri incident was a conspiracy. Writing for Hankook Ilbo, Lee Hyemi argued these online communities misled their users by exaggerating the presence of now-defunct Megalia even though it was short-lived and, at its prime, didn't have nearly as many members as other active websites like Ilbe Storehouse and FMkorea.
Some commentators compared the theorists to supporters of other conspiracy theories. Semyung University professor Sim Seoktae compared the theorists to flat Earthers. Hankook Ilbo journalist In Hyeonu compared the theorists to Gamergate, which involved similar cherrypicking of information and harassment. In also compared the movement to Trumpism because of perceived neotribalism. He reported that Seoul National University professor Kim Sua suggested a counter-information campaign and to pass an anti-discrimination law. Several authors compared the finger pinching theorists to incels.
Several news media analyzed the finger pinching conspiracy theory as an online antifeminist movement in South Korea. Writers for Kyunghyang Shinmun claimed that the finger pinching theory is not an isolated incident, but a part of the ongoing antifeminist backlash movement on the South Korean internet since at least 2009. Several writers for The Hankyoreh listed nine other similar antifeminist backlashes that occurred in 2021. BBC compared the conspiracy theory to other antifeminist incidents in the country, such as when a woman was physically assaulted by a man in November 2023 because he thought she was a feminist for having short hair.
The conspiracy theory was noted for being a subject of doxing and cyberbullying. JoongAng Ilbo reported that this kind of "online lynch" must be regulated with law and punishment.
=== Politics ===
Several politicians have shown either support or objection for the conspiracy theory, sometimes conflicting within the same party. In 2021, Lee Jun-seok, an antifeminist figure and future party leader of the Reform Party, first expressed support for the theory after the GS25 incident. In 2023, he affirmed his support for the theorists after the MapleStory scandal. Ryu Ho-jeong, a self-proclaimed feminist and also future founding member of the New Reform Party, also supported the theory and criticized Ppuri. Formerly a game developer at Smilegate, Ryu argued that Ppuri had hurt other developers in the video game industry.
Other politician supporters included People Power Party member Her Eun-a and former Democratic Party member Lee Sang-heon, who both supported Nexon during the MapleStory scandal. Heo Eun-a told an interviewer that Ppuri committed antisocial behavior and instigated gender conflicts, which she believed must be penalized. When Lee Sang-heon was later informed by Kyunghyang Shinmun that Nexon's allegations had errors, he stood by his opinion and said that "the point is not a gender issue, but that there's a certain alignment buyers find uncomfortable". There were also other reports of the Democratic Party advisors publicly supporting Nexon and the conspiracy theory. Politicians who rejected the theory included Jang Hye-young, a Justice Party member. Jang criticized Lee Jun-seok and expressed sympathy to the people the theorists impacted.
In regard to the politicians' support, several argued that the theory's staying power originates from South Korean society's attempt at appeasing idaenam (a term referring to, sometimes derisively, South Korean men in their twenties). Kyunghyang Shinmun argued that the 2021 South Korean by-elections for the mayor of Seoul, where 72.5% of the male twenties supported Oh Se-hoon from the People Power Party in contrast to 22.2% for Park Young-sun from the Democratic Party, were a wake-up call for both parties, motivating politicians to shift their focus to courting idaenam. Several authors proposed that politicians stop using the gender conflict as a means to win over a certain group's votes.
=== Video game industry ===
The country's video game industry was often central to the discussion of the controversies by many authors, some of which grounded their arguments on insider testimonies, who have suspected video game companies of being involved in removing people who support feminism. Several publications claimed the finger pinching controversies are an extension of the industry-wide feminist discharge that started back in 2016. Pressian's Park Sanghyeok claimed that the industry's irresistance to the conspiracy theory stemmed from its skewed population over male demographics; according to Game Industry White Paper published by Korea Creative Content Agency, in 2022, only 19.1% of video game industry workers in South Korea were female.
The Counter-antifeminism Emergency Response Committee, founded in March 2024 as a collaborated effort to respond to antifeminism in the video game industry, claimed that they received 77 reports of shunning feminists and women within the industry from August to December 2023, of which 17 cases were workplace bullying, 9 were cyberbullying, and 7 were unfair dismissal. The organization cited numerous incidents where workers were unjustly treated or felt threatened, including: a staff who was fired after having arguments with a male worker who complained about women problems, with an executive explaining their actions were unforgivable; an interviewee who received questions from a company about Ppuri, merely days after the MapleStory scandal; and testimonies that claimed they were seen as feminists because they had short hair or didn't wear makeup for meetings.
Nexon received significant criticism for allegedly prioritizing appeasing the theorists. Insiders contacted by Segye Ilbo claimed that, when the company replaced a voice actor in July 2016 in reaction to players accusing her of radical feminism, Nexon's internal meetings concluded the action was successful in enlarging its playerbase. Segye Ilbo argued this foreshadowed Nexon's actions in the MapleStory scandal. An insider report from Kyunghyang Shinmun stated that Nexon ran a web scraping software biased toward male-dominated forums, as well as a program that rewarded community posts to form public opinion to its liking, though Nexon has denied this allegation. Kyunghyang Shinmun's Yu Seonhui cited a separate fiasco involving officially sanctioned Dungeon & Fighter convention, which predated the MapleStory scandal by a couple weeks and was seen by Yu as a precedent of the Nexon developers promoting misogyny. Prior to the event, Nexon requested its participants to submit their social media account ID, a rule that didn't exist until that year. When questioned, Nexon emphasized "user's right to know." Yu argued that Nexon's policy change coincided with the feminist blacklisting movement from finger pinching theorists, who demanded all participants' Twitter history be searched, and that Nexon made a deliberate move to enable harassment against female players. Yu also cited another incident during that time, where Nexon delisted Dungeon & Fighter YouTube promotion of a singer who supported feminism.
Korean WomenLink, a women's rights organization, performed a protest in front of Nexon headquarters as an act against the MapleStory scandal. It also sent the company a written opinion compiled from approximately ten thousand people. WomenLink was later fined ₩1,000,000 by Suwon District Court via summary order in November 2024, citing that its assembly was not reported to relevant authority beforehand. The organization appealed against the order and demanded for formal trial.
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Kim, Sooah (August 2021a). "'이대남'과 반 페미니즘 담론: '메갈 손가락 기호' 논란을 중심으로" [Men in their Twenties Angry at Feminism: Discourse Analysis of “Megal and the Finger Controversy ”] (PDF). Feminism and Korean Literature (in Korean). 53. The Academic Socity of Feminism and Korean Literature. ISSN 1229-4632 – via Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information.
2023 Game Industry White Paper. 35, Gyoyuk-gil, Naju-si, Jeollanam-do: Korea Creative Content Agency. February 29, 2024. ISBN 979-11-6677-232-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
Kim, Jinsook (September 2024a). "Calling out Feminists: Antifeminist Hijacking of Cancel Culture in South Korea". Television & New Media. 26 (1). Sage Publishing. doi:10.1177/15274764241277471. ISSN 1527-4764. | Wikipedia/Finger_pinching_conspiracy_theory |
The Feldenkrais Method (FM) is a type of movement therapy devised by Israeli Moshé Feldenkrais (1904–1984) during the mid-20th century. The method is claimed to reorganize connections between the brain and body and so improve body movement and psychological state.
There is no conclusive evidence for any medical benefits of the therapy. However, researchers do not believe FM poses serious risks.
== Description ==
The Feldenkrais Method is a type of alternative movement therapy that proponents claim can repair impaired connections between the motor cortex and the body, so benefiting the quality of body movement and improving wellbeing. Practitioners view it as a form of somatic education "that integrates the body, mind and psyche through an educational model in which a trained Feldenkrais practitioner guides a client (the ‘student’) through movements with hands-on and verbally administered cues," according to Clinical Sports Medicine.
The Feldenkrais Guild of North America claims that the Feldenkrais method allows people to "rediscover [their] innate capacity for graceful, efficient movement" and that "These improvements will often generalize to enhance functioning in other aspects of [their] life".
The Oxford Handbook of Music Performance describes FM as "an experiential learning process that uses movement and guided attention to develop and refine self-awareness." It notes that FM is "increasingly used among high-level performers, such as musicians, actors, dancers, and athletes."
Feldenkrais lessons have two types, one verbally guided and practiced in groups called Awareness Through Movement, and one hands-on and practiced one-to-one called Functional Integration. Moshé Feldenkrais wrote, "The purpose of these sensorimotor lessons is to refine one’s ability to make perceptual distinctions between movements that are easy and pleasurable and those that are strained and uncomfortable, which results in the discovery of new movement possibilities as well as potential for further improvements."
=== Five principles ===
FM operates broadly within five principles:
Learning is a process: "relies on sensory and kinesthetic information that one experiences through interactions with the environment"
Posture as dynamic equilibrium: "the ability to regain equilibrium after a large disturbance"
Exploratory versus performative movement:" the ability to make distinctions in the ease and quality of movement and to try out movements that may be unfamiliar"
Whole versus part learning: "exploring component parts of an action as well as the whole"
Repetition and variation: "introducing novelty in learning in order to expand possibilities for choice"
== Effectiveness ==
In 2015, the Australian Government's Department of Health published the results of a review of 17 natural therapies that sought to determine which would continue being covered by health insurance; the Feldenkrais Method was one of 16 therapies for which no clear evidence of effectiveness was found. Accordingly in 2017 the Australian government identified the Feldenkrais Method as a practice that would not qualify for insurance subsidy, saying this step would "ensure taxpayer funds are expended appropriately and not directed to therapies lacking evidence".
Proponents claim that the Feldenkrais Method can benefit people with several medical conditions, including children with autism spectrum disorders, and people with multiple sclerosis. However, no studies in which participants were identified as having an autism spectrum disorder or developmental disabilities have been presented to back these claims.
There is limited evidence that workplace-based use of the Feldenkrais Method may help rehabilitate people with upper limb complaints.
A 2022 report on the effectiveness of the Feldenkrais Method by the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care found a "hint" of benefit for people with Parkinson's disease, compared to a passive lecture program. Evidence for helping chronic low back pain was inconsistent. The report found no evidence for long-term benefit of FM, or benefit for other conditions. It concluded, "The question about the benefit of the Feldenkrais method in comparison with active strategies such as extensive physiotherapy generally remains open. Overall, little evidence is available. From an ethical perspective, the absence of evidence from RCTs is problematic for informed decision making but does not constitute evidence of an absent benefit. Only 2 small, ongoing RCTs of questionable relevance were identified, and therefore, the availability of evidence is not expected to change in the short term."
== Criticism ==
David Gorski has written that the Method bears similarities to faith healing, is like "glorified yoga", and that it "borders on quackery". Quackwatch places the Feldenkrais Method on its list of "Unnaturalistic methods".
== History ==
From the 1950s till his death in 1984, Feldenkrais taught in his home city of Tel Aviv. He gained recognition in part through media accounts of his work with prominent individuals, including Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
In David Kaetz's biography, Making Connections: Roots and Resonance in the Life of Moshe Feldenkrais (2007), he argues many lines of influence can be found between the Judaism of Feldenkrais's upbringing and the Feldenkrais Method – for instance, the use of paradox as a pedagogical tool.
Making Connections described Feldenkrais' approach:
Feldenkrais was critical of the appropriation of the term 'energy' to express immeasurable phenomena or to label experiences that people had trouble describing ... He was impatient when someone invoked energy in pseudoscientific 'explanations' that masked a lack of understanding. In such cases, he urged skepticism and scientific discourse. He encouraged empirical and phenomenological narratives that could lead to insights.
Beginning in the late 1950s, Feldenkrais traveled to teach in Europe and America. Several hundred people became certified Feldenkrais practitioners through trainings he held in San Francisco from 1975 to 1978 and in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 1980 to 1984.
Cybernetics, also known as dynamic systems theory, continued to influence the Feldenkrais Method in the 1990s through the work of human development researcher Esther Thelen.:1535
== See also ==
Alexander Technique
Rolfing
Yoga
Tai Chi
== References ==
== Further reading ==
=== Contemporary ===
Elgelid, Staffan; Kresge, Chrish (4 May 2021). The Feldenkrais Method: Learning Through Movement. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. ISBN 978-1-912085-70-5.
Sholl, Robert (28 January 2021). The Feldenkrais Method in Creative Practice: Dance, Music and Theatre. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-350-15839-9.
=== Classic ===
Feldenkrais, Moshe (28 June 2011). Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais. North Atlantic Books. ISBN 978-1-58394-419-6.
Feldenkrais, Moshe (23 April 2019). The Elusive Obvious: The Convergence of Movement, Neuroplasticity, and Health. North Atlantic Books. ISBN 978-1-62317-335-7.
Feldenkrais, Moshe (1990). Awareness Through Movement: Health Exercises for Personal Growth. Arkana. ISBN 978-0-14-019257-5.
== External links ==
International Feldenkrais Federation (IFF) | Wikipedia/Feldenkrais_method |
A conspiracy theory that originated in 2011 states that Canadian singer Avril Lavigne died in 2003, shortly after the release of her debut album, Let Go (2002), and was replaced by a body double named Melissa Vandella. Evidence used to support the theory include changes in Lavigne's appearance between 2003 and the present, supposed subliminal messaging in her follow-up album, Under My Skin (2004), and a photoshoot in which Lavigne has the name "Melissa" written on her hand. The theory is the subject of the BBC Sounds podcast Who Replaced Avril Lavigne?
The origins of the theory can be traced back to the 2011 Brazilian blog Avril Está Morta (transl. Avril Is Dead), which led to conversations on Internet forums sharing supposed evidence of Lavigne's replacement. The theory gained more traction in May 2017, when a Twitter user posted a thread recounting the theory. Lavigne herself has denied the theory on multiple occasions. The theory goes that Avril died by suicide because she couldn't cope with the fame.
== Origins ==
The origins of the replacement theory can be dated back to 2011, with a Brazilian blog named Avril Está Morta, or Avril Is Dead, although some sources say that the rumour dates back as far as 2005. The theory alleges that the pressures of fame, combined with the death of Lavigne's grandfather, sent her into a deep depression after the release of her 2002 debut album, Let Go, and that the singer died by suicide shortly after.
According to the conspiracy theory, a look-alike named "Melissa" was originally hired to distract paparazzi, protecting a reclusive Lavigne. It alleges that Lavigne befriended "Melissa", that shortly before the singer's supposed death her body double was taught how to sing and perform like the musician, that after Lavigne's death her record company buried the news and replaced her with "Melissa Vandella" for a continued profit, and that "Melissa" recorded all of Lavigne's future work. Much of the evidence cited in support of the conspiracy theory is the purported appearance and disappearance of various moles and other skin blemishes in pictures of Lavigne over time, as well as a promotional photoshoot in which she has the name "Melissa" written on her hand.
The conspiracy theory soon gained traction on Internet forums such as ATRL and Godlike Productions, where self-proclaimed "Avril Rangers" shared evidence. One ATRL post in 2012 suggested that the original Avril may actually be alive, using a picture of what appeared to be the singer buying cheese at a time when "new Avril" was supposedly battling Lyme disease. In addition to the changes in her appearance, the theory alleges that the title and artwork for her second album, Under My Skin, and the lyrics of songs like "My Happy Ending", "Together", and "The Best Years of Our Lives" by Evan Taubenfeld are subliminal messaging. The original blog further suggests that Melissa feels guilt over "participating in this farce", leading to the subliminal messaging.
== Rise in popularity ==
The theory began to gain traction in the United States in October 2015, when BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Broderick tweeted about Avril Está Morta. In a BuzzFeed post, Broderick cleared up his tweet on the matter, mentioning that the opening line of the original blog post admits that the theory is a hoax, and that "This blog was created to show how conspiracy theories can look true."
The death hoax saw increased prevalence in May 2017, when a high school student posted a Twitter thread alleging that Lavigne had died and been replaced in late 2003. The thread, which was retweeted over 250,000 times, cited discrepancies in the singer's face, fashion style, and handwriting as evidence of her death and replacement. The Twitter thread largely corresponds with the earlier Avril Está Morta conspiracy, except that it asserts that Under My Skin was created using pre-existing recordings of the real Lavigne.
The Twitter thread inspired an Internet meme in which users would say that a celebrity or fictional character died and was replaced, showing two pictures of the figure in question and titling it "a conspiracy theory thread".
== Response ==
The first time Lavigne was asked about the rumours was in 2014 during an interview for the Brazilian TV show Pânico na Band, during The Avril Lavigne Tour. Lavigne was asked if she had heard about online rumours claiming she "had died and was replaced by a clone", to which she replied by saying that the first time she was hearing about it was in this interview, and later added, "Well, I'm here, and I'm here in Brazil". In a video of the interview uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the TV show, it's possible to see images of the blog page Avril Está Morta responsible for starting the rumours. After the theory resurfaced globally in 2017, Lavigne addressed the rumours in a November 2017 Facebook live stream Q&A, when a fan asked whether she was dead, to which Lavigne responded, "No, I'm not dead. I'm here." She went on to say that the theory was spawned because "people are just bored and need something to talk about". The question was broached again in a November 2018 interview with Australia's KIIS 106.5. When asked about the theory, the singer responded, "Some people think that I'm not the real me, which is so weird! Like, why would they even think that?"
Radio hosts Kyle and Jackie O said that Lavigne "never actually flat out denied" that she had been replaced, and suggested that technological difficulties during the interview were a suspicious coincidence. In a 2019 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lavigne addressed the theory directly, calling it a "dumb internet rumor" and saying that she was "flabbergasted that people bought into it". Lavigne addressed the rumour once again in a 2022 interview for Galore Magazine, stating "So it's funny because everyone says I look the same, but then there's that. That doesn't make any sense. Also, how random? When people bring it up, and it's been brought up to me for like, years, that there's this conspiracy theory that I'm not me or something? I'm a clone? How did something like that get so—I don't know, it's just the weirdest rumour." The creator of the blog that originated the Avril Está Morta conspiracy has apologized and changed the whole blog post to state that Avril has not died yet, and that the blog was a way of showing how conspiracy theories may seem true.
In 2013, a separate death hoax alleged that Lavigne died in a snowboarding accident at the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort.
== See also ==
Paul is dead, a similar conspiracy theory involving Paul McCartney
Melania Trump replacement conspiracy theory
== References == | Wikipedia/Avril_Lavigne_replacement_conspiracy_theory |
The LGBTQ grooming conspiracy theory is a far-right conspiracy theory and anti-LGBTQ trope alleging that LGBTQ people, and those supportive of LGBTQ rights, are engaging in child grooming and enabling child sexual abuse. Although the belief that LGBTQ individuals are more likely to molest children has no basis in fact, this stereotype has existed for decades in the United States and Europe, dating back to before World War II.
The specific use of the term groomer as a slur to refer to LGBTQ people (particularly trans people and drag queens) became more prominent during partisan political campaigning in the 2020s, where it was often used to justify anti-LGBTQ curriculum bills. Despite originating with the far-right, the conspiracy theory regarding the supposed sexual grooming of children has been pushed by a growing number of mainstream conservatives, especially in the United States. The conspiracy theory has since spread among conservatives in other countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
The Southern Poverty Law Center characterizes this trope as an anti-LGBTQ myth. Aja Romano labels these ideas a moral panic. There is no reliable evidence that sexual minorities are more likely to abuse children. Advocates for children's rights have protested that the conspiracy theories make it difficult for survivors of childhood sexual abuse to access resources and help. LGBTQ rights organizations have condemned the use of such notions as encouraging discrimination in the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Hungary, Uganda, and elsewhere.
== Overview ==
Arising in the 1980s, the term groomer refers to child grooming and became popularized through abuse survivor advocacy, initially applying to actual criminal behavior without reference to U.S. politics. The use of groomer (or pro-groomer) to refer to LGBT people (and trans people in particular) became more prominent in the early 2020s, often in the wake of anti-LGBT curriculum bills.
As described by Vox in an April 2022 report, "Conservatives use it to imply that the LGBTQ community, their allies, and liberals more generally are pedophiles or pedophile-enablers". LGBT+ inclusive education is often targeted, with the argument that it seeks to indoctrinate children into homosexuality. Its modern usage taps into older forms of anti-LGBT+ prejudice such as the homosexual seduction theory, the acquired homosexuality theory, the Lavender Scare, and certain kinds of social contagion. Transgender people and drag queens in particular have received targeted attacks using or alluding to the trope, whereas the older theories tended to target gay men.
There is no reliable evidence that sexual minorities are more likely to abuse children. American conservatives have pushed the purported link in popular culture over multiple decades going back to the times before World War II. At the beginning of the Cold War, for example, the U.S. government sought to remove homosexuals from positions of importance during the Lavender Scare. This trope became more widespread as a result of partisan political campaigning in the 2020s. The allegation that having an LGBT identity causes or otherwise contributes to pedophilia has continued as a matter of ideological faith into the 21st century, manifesting after 2019 as the "groomer slur" in particular.
One survey by Courier Newsroom, a left-leaning think tank, found that 55 percent of likely American voters oppose the conspiracy theory, while 29 percent believe it. Results were divided greatly on the basis of political party.
== History ==
=== Origins ===
Writing at Intelligencer, columnist James Kirchick argues that the grooming conspiracy theory grew out of more generalized homophobic conspiracy theories which originated in Germany in the early 20th century, in particular the Eulenburg affair. The affair received wide publicity and is often considered the biggest domestic scandal of Imperial Germany. It led to one of the first major public discussions of homosexuality in Germany, comparable to the trial of Oscar Wilde in England.
==== 19th century ====
Scientific research began to explore the causes of homosexuality in the second half of the nineteenth century. Around 1850, French psychiatrist Claude-François Michéa and German physician Johann Ludwig Casper independently suggested that homosexuality was caused by a physical difference from heterosexuals; the exact nature of this purported physical difference became a sought-after target of medical research. At the same time, many psychiatrists believed that homosexuality was a product of environmental factors such as bad habits or seduction by older men.
==== 20th century ====
===== Interwar period: 1920s to 1930s =====
After World War I, a rise in the visibility of LGBT+ people in Germany led to an increase in the belief that there was an increase in the incidence of homosexuality among young men due to recruitment by adult gay and bisexual men. By the 1920s, backlash from psychologists and psychiatrists against tolerance of LGBT+ people in Berlin suggested that homosexuality was a social contagion. The SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps argued that 40,000 homosexuals were capable of "poisoning" two million men if left to roam free.
Susanna Cassisa argues that this panic led to efforts, in 1929, to legalize same sex activities for men, but only for those over 21, thus "enshrining in the nation's penal code the unfounded belief that gay men were seducers of youths". After the fall of the Weimar Republic, the Nazis promoted the idea that homosexuals seduced young men, permanently infecting them with homosexuality and preventing the youth from becoming fathers.
In the USSR in 1933, Article 121 was added to the entire Soviet Union criminal code, making male homosexuality a crime punishable by up to five years in prison with hard labor. Though the precise reason for Article 121 is in some dispute among historians, government statements made about the law tended to confuse homosexuality with pedophilia. The law remained intact until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union when it was repealed in 1993 by the Russian Federation.
===== Post-war period: 1945–1957 =====
In the post-war period, similar sentiments emerged in the USA; 21 states and the District of Columbia enacted laws between 1947 and 1955 which targeted gay and bisexual men as "sexual psychopaths". Many of these statutes conflated homosexuality with pedophilia.
As part of the anti-communist "Lavender Scare", the 1950 Hoey committee wrote to and interviewed medical personnel to ascertain, among other things, whether homosexual people would seduce younger men and women. The committee's final report, Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government, included the accusation that homosexuals were a risk to younger people and that, "One homosexual can pollute a Government office."
By 1952, the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, officially classified homosexuality as a "sociopathic personality disturbance." In her investigation into the Lavender Scare in Prologue Magazine, Judith Adkins claimed this framing contributed to increased persecution and prejudice in the following decades.
===== 1958–1965 =====
In 1958 to 1965, the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, which had previously fought desegregation and attempted to investigate suspected communists, targeted LGBT+ people in Florida schools, arguing they were converting children to a homosexual lifestyle. Hugh Ryan has argued that it was common for racist groups to move onto LGBT+ people, under the guise of protecting children, when their campaigns against black people failed, saying, "They realize that this works, that this is the issue that will create a 'political moral majority.'"
In 1961, the dramatic short social guidance propaganda film Boys Beware was released in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, California through Sid Davis Productions with the cooperation of the city's police department and the Inglewood Unified School District. The film was narrated by a police detective on his way to a school meeting to discuss the issue of sexual predators who attempt to lure adolescent males. It attempted to educate about an alleged danger to young boys from predatory homosexuals.
===== 1970s =====
In 1977, Anita Bryant and the Save Our Children coalition also alleged that homosexuality was harmful to children, while they were attempting to repeal an ordinance that partly banned discrimination based on sexuality. Bryant claimed "homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit ... the youth of America". Shortly afterward, the failed Briggs Initiative sought to ban gay and lesbian teachers from working in California's public schools on the premise that their sexuality would "adversely affect students". Of Bryant, Hugh Ryan said, "they've already realized that they can harness this political conservatism and attach it to religion by talking about the family."
The co-executive directors of the National Gay Task Force later wrote an ironic thank you to Bryant; claiming her "Christian crusade" had drawn attention to the plight of LGBT+ people, they said Save Our Children were "doing the 20 million lesbians and gay men in America an enormous favor: They are focusing for the public the nature of the prejudice and discrimination we face."
===== 1980s =====
By 1981, Lou Sheldon, who described homosexuality as a "deathstyle," founded the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) in the US. He suggested that grooming children was the real "homosexual agenda," saying, "They want our preschool children. [...] They want our kindergarten children. [...] They want our middle school and high school children." Sheldon later reportedly told columnist Jimmy Breslin in 1992, "Homosexuals are dangerous. They proselytize. They come to the door, and if your son answers and nobody is there to stop it, they grab the son and run off with him. They steal him. They take him away and turn him into a homosexual."
Similar sentiments were also espoused in the UK, with sex and relationships education seen as a route for LGBT+ people to groom children. In 1986, The Sun described the children's book Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin as a "vile" and "perverted" threat to British children. Of the incident, Colin Clew wrote, "To the British media, it was nothing more than a homosexual recruiting manual that sought to undermine Western civilisation as we know it."
In the run-up to the 1987 UK election, both the right-wing media and the Conservative Party had begun increasingly criticizing the Labour Party for supporting minorities such as LGBT+ people over the white, heterosexual majority. They referred to the pro-LGBT+ policies of Labour politicians and Labour-run local councils as proof they were part of a "loony left" intent on destroying British values. The Conservative election campaign featured a row of men wearing badges with slogans such as "gay pride" and "gay sports day"; underneath, the advert said, "This is Labour's camp. Do you want to live in it?" Recounting the period, writer Matthew Todd argued that, "Thatcher presided over and took advantage of the most devastatingly homophobic time in recent British history" with the help of The Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie, amounting to "a campaign of deeply unpleasant propaganda".
During a 1987 debate for Section 28, Dame Jill Knight of Collingtree said in Parliament, "Millions outside Parliament object to little children being perverted, diverted or converted from normal family life to a lifestyle which is desperately dangerous for society and extremely dangerous for them." Section 28 proposed a ban on local authorities "[promoting] the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship", and came into effect the year after Knight's speech, in 1988.
Likewise, Deirdrie Wood, Labour candidate in the 1987 Greenwich by-election, came to be known in the press as "Dreadful Deirdrie". Labour presented her as "a hard-working local woman with sensible policies", but the press portrayed her as a radical extremist by association, as an Irish Republican Army sympathiser living with a militant shop steward who was not the father of her children, and as a "hard left feminist, anti-racist and gay-rights supporter" (as one News of the World report put it) who wanted to twin London schools with Palestine Liberation Organization camps.
==== 21st century ====
===== 2000s =====
In 2009, Timothy Matthews suggested that the Frankfurt School had as one of its aims the teaching of "sex and homosexuality to children". In the article (written from an explicitly Christian right perspective) in the Catholic weekly newspaper The Wanderer, he claimed the Frankfurt School was working under the influence of Satan, to destroy the traditional Christian family using critical theory and Marcuse's concept of "polymorphous perversity", thereby encouraging homosexuality and "merging or reversing the sexes or sex roles" in order to break down the patriarchal family. In response, Andrew Woods wrote that the plot Matthews describes does not resemble the Frankfurt School so much as the alleged aims of communists in The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen.
===== 2010s =====
In 2010, after analyzing Proposition 8 voting patterns, David Fleischer (author of "The Prop. 8 Report") cited anti-LGBT+ advertising that depicted children acquiring homosexuality at school. The advert depicted a young girl encouraged by her school to marry a same-sex partner; Fleisher felt adverts such as this were instrumental in persuading parents to vote to ban same-sex marriage.
On 30 June 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill banning the "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" among minors, which prohibits the equation of same-sex and straight marital relationships. Vice News claims that many LGBT rights groups have been transformed "from being a stigmatized fringe group to full-blown enemies of the state" in Russia following the introduction of this law, and that openly homophobic and neo-Nazi groups such as Occupy Paedophilia have been described by Russian authorities as "civil movements fighting the sins of society".
Since 2019, protesters have targeted drag queen story hour events at public facilities and private venues, often accusing performers and organizers of trying expose children to sexualized content. This included a petition by almost 100,000 Christians to the American Library Association, calling for the cancellation of drag queen story hour events.
===== 2020s =====
In the United Kingdom, the conspiracy theory began to be popularized within the gender-critical movement around 2020. That year, anti-transgender activist Graham Linehan was banned from Twitter after he began to use OK groomer as a term of abuse against those who criticized his activism. The term OK groomer originated in 2020 as a play on OK boomer.
The groomer trope was also used by the pressure group Transgender Trend in material it sent to schools in order to oppose the advice provided by LGBT+ charities such as Stonewall. In March 2020, The Times columnist Janice Turner accused the charity Mermaids, which offers support for trans youth, of grooming for introducing an exit button on their website in response to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
The conspiracy has been used by the far-right in the UK, including Tommy Robinson, according to Hope not Hate, but it has also entered mainstream conservative discourse. Self-described "reactionary feminist" Mary Harrington, a contributing editor at UnHerd, defended the term groomer and denounced "preschool porn evangelism".
In 2022, the groomer slur, and OK groomer in particular, became popular among Americans who also supported Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' controversial curriculum law, commonly called the "Don't Say Gay" law by its critics. Proponents of the Florida law and others like it, which seek to curtail or diminish LGBT-inclusive content in classrooms, have described those opposed to the law as "groomers". For example, The American Conservative's senior editor Rod Dreher labeled the Walt Disney Company's opposition to the Florida law as "pervy" in his article "Disney Goes Groomer".
Research from the Harvard Law School's Cyber Law Clinic, tracking use of the phrase OK groomer on Twitter, noted that its use began to surge in early 2022, reaching a peak of 7,959 mentions on 29 March of that year, one day after the Florida bill became law.
=== Popularization ===
In the United States, the popularization of the term has been linked to Christopher Rufo, who tweeted about "winning the language war", and James A. Lindsay in August 2021.
Following the Wi Spa controversy in July 2021, Julia Serano noted a rise in false accusations of grooming directed towards transgender people, saying that it appeared as if there was a movement to "lay the foundation for just smearing all trans people as child sexual predators".
Libs of TikTok (LoTT) also slurs LGBT people, supporters of LGBT youth, and those who teach about sexuality as "groomers". In 2021, LoTT made false claims that the Trevor Project was a "grooming organization" and that Chasten Buttigieg was "grooming kids". LoTT creator Chaya Raichik said on the Tucker Carlson Today show that LGBT people "Want to groom kids. They're recruiting."
The conspiracy theory then moved into the American conservative mainstream, with a number of high-profile cases of its use in Spring 2022, including its use by members of the Republican Party. On February 24, the right-wing The Heritage Foundation issued a tweet stating that the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act "protects young children from sexual grooming". During the debate over the act, Christina Pushaw, press secretary to the state's governor Ron DeSantis, tweeted that anyone who opposes the act was "probably a groomer".
In April 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene referred to the Democratic Party as "the party of killing babies, grooming and transitioning children, and pro-pedophile politics". Also that month, a group of far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists held a demonstration at Disney World in which they accused Disney of grooming. Disney has been the focus of several other uses of the conspiracy – Jim Banks and 19 other members of the Republican Study Committee published a letter to Disney accusing the corporation of "purposefully influencing small children with its political and sexual agenda".
Gays Against Groomers (GAG) formed in June 2022. They are an American anti-LGBT organization with a large presence on social media platforms and frequent promotion on right-wing media networks. The Anti-Defamation League stated that "GAG peddles dangerous and misleading narratives about the LGBTQ+ community, focusing on false allegations of 'grooming' by drag performers".
Since then, numerous right wing pundits have described the behavior of parents and teachers who support minors in their transgender identities as grooming, and the term groomer has widely been used by conservative media and politicians who want to denounce the LGBT community and its allies by implying that they are pedophiles or pedophile-enablers. Slate Magazine later described the word grooming as "the buzzword of the season".
In March 2022, Fox News host Laura Ingraham claimed that schools were becoming "grooming centers for gender identity radicals", dedicating an entire segment of her show to the topic a couple of weeks later. In April 2022, the left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters published a study stating that within a three-week period spanning from March 17 to April 6, Fox News ran 170 segments on trans people, throughout which the network "repeatedly invoked the long-debunked myth that trans people pose a threat to minors and seek to groom them".
In June 2022, members of the far-right group Proud Boys disrupted a Drag Queen Story Hour at San Lorenzo Library in California, shouting insults like "groomer".
In August 2022, a joint report published by the American Human Rights Campaign and the British Center for Countering Digital Hate revealed that the 500 most influential hateful "grooming" tweets were seen 72 million times, and it also stated that "grooming" tweets from just ten influential sources were seen 48 million times. It also revealed that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, had accepted up to $24,987 for advertisements which pushed the grooming conspiracy theory. The advertisements had been served to users over 2.1 million times, and Twitter, despite saying that groomer slurs were violations of its hate speech policy, failed to act on 99% of tweets which were reported as such. The report also recorded a 406% increase in the use of tweets associating members of the LGBT community with being "groomers", "pedophiles", and "predators" following the passage of Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act, called the "Don't Say Gay Law" by its critics.
Also in August 2022, Jamestown, Michigan voted to defund Patmos Library, the town's only public library, over accusations of "grooming" children and promoting an "LGBTQ ideology".
In January 2023, Emma Nicholson, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne wrote to Tate Britain to complain about a proposed Drag Queen Story Hour event, saying drag was "adult sexualised entertainment" and that the event was propaganda for "queer ideology". When the event took place, in February, white nationalist hate group Patriotic Alternative led 30 people in demonstrating outside Tate Britain. The protesters held signs saying "groom dogs not children"; they were opposed by Stand Up to Racism. The protest turned violent with one protestor arrested for making racially aggravated comments to a police officer.
In March 2023, three protesters disrupted drag performer Medulla Oblongata's storytime reading session at the Avondale Library in Auckland, New Zealand. The reading session was part of "Pride Fest Out West", which involved dancing, songs, and stories told by a drag performer. In response, Police trespassed the protesters. Auckland Council official Darryl Soljan linked the protest to international media coverage of anti-LGBT opponents in the United States accusing drag performers and the LGBT community of grooming children and pedophilia.
Also in March, a show called CabaBabaRave for mothers and infants was forced to be canceled after footage of performers was shared on social media by conservative pages. CabaBabaRave's website, Instagram, and Facebook pages were also forced to be made private. Organizers claimed that the footage was being shared out of context and infants are unable to comprehend the performances and the shows are not different from other R-rated movie shows.
A March 2023 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that tweets on Twitter linking LGBT people to "grooming" have increased by 119 percent since Elon Musk purchased the social media platform in October 2022.
A May 2023 poll by Gallup found that only 41 percent of Republicans think that same-sex relations are morally acceptable, a 15 percent drop from 2022, while Democratic approval of same-sex relations also fell from 85 percent in 2022 to 79 percent in 2023. Independent voters, on the other hand, have remained steady in their approval of same-sex relations. Business Insider noted that "The sharp drop in support among some Americans follows an especially aggressive year of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and politics", including false allegations of "grooming".
The "groomer" conspiracy theory has also been noted as instrumental in motivating Uganda's "kill the gays" bill, after American evangelists including Scott Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge allegedly held a three-day seminar called "Exposing the Truth Behind Homosexuality and the Homosexual Agenda" in the country.
== Reception ==
Reddit, TikTok, Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) and formerly Twitter (prior to Elon Musk's buyout of the company) have said that using groomer as a slur against LGBT people violates their policies. R.G. Cravens of California Polytechnic State University has described the conspiracy as "completely, patently false".
According to Bryn Nelson in Scientific American, conspiracy theories based on pedophilia use disgust as a form of "stochastic terrorism", that incites audiences already primed for violence to target the subjects of those conspiracy theories.
Vox argued that the rhetoric which is used by proponents of the grooming conspiracy theory is similar to the rhetoric which was used by proponents of older conspiracy theories like the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and QAnon: "grooming accusations aren't concerned with making sense; they're about stirring up fear, anger, and hysteria — which is why they sound exactly like the kinds of fringe conspiracy theories that have been around for centuries. The new pedophile conspiracy rhetoric is essentially the same as all the old pedophile conspiracy rhetoric."
Kristen Mark of the University of Minnesota Medical School has described the conspiracy as "a tool to create hysteria and to create a social panic", calling it "frankly inaccurate". Emily Johnson of Ball State University has also described it as a moral panic, saying that there is "no better moral panic than a moral panic centered on potential harm to children".
Alejandra Caraballo of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society has described it as "an attempt at the dehumanization and delegitimization of queer people's identities by associating them with pedophilia", adding that "when you start labeling groups with that, the calls for violence are inevitable." Jenifer McGuire, a professor in the department of family social science at the University of Minnesota, said that the grooming conspiracy theory comes "from an underlying desire to separate people who are different and to characterize them as less than or as evil. So it's a new form of homophobia and transphobia — or it's maybe the same old form but with new language."
The Canadian Anti-Hate Network has stated that trans people are "slandered the same way homosexual men were slandered in the 70s, and for the same reason: to deny them safety and equal rights", adding that "the far-right and their fellow travellers in the so-called Gender Critical or Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist movements use the exact same tropes in a bid to deny equal rights to trans persons." Florence Ashley, a professor at the University of Toronto, has stated that the conspiracy theory's focus on LGBT people in general and its focus on trans people in particular is being used to radicalize public opinion towards the far-right, comparing it to the great replacement conspiracy theory.
The Associated Press described the conspiracy theory as "another volley in the [United States'] ongoing culture wars, during which conservative lawmakers have also opposed the teaching of 'critical race theory' and proposed bills requiring schools to post all course materials online so parents can review them." In 2022, its stylebook stated: "Some people use the word groom or variants of it to falsely liken LGBTQ people's interactions with children, or education about LGBTQ issues, to the actions of child molesters. Do not quote people using the term in this context without clearly stating it is untrue."
Charles T. Moran, President of the Log Cabin Republicans, called the conspiracy theory a "subtle subterfuge that gays are pedophiles", adding that "I will take flak from people that this is reinforcing a trope that is not beneficial for anybody who's gay in public life."
=== Lawsuits ===
A school librarian in Louisiana has filed a lawsuit alleging defamation by Facebook pages that falsely accused her of pedophilia. She also received online harassment and a death threat.
In 2023, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that the word "groomer" is a slur when used to attack LGBT people and drag performers, and is therefore not protected speech under anti-SLAPP laws.
On 25 April 2024, British actor Laurence Fox was ordered to pay £180,000 in damages for libelling former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and former RuPaul's Drag Race contestant Crystal as "paedophiles" on X. The judge accepted evidence that his comments were "distinctively homophobic" and said they were "gross, groundless and indefensible".
=== Public opinion ===
In a 1970 poll, 70% of Americans surveyed believed that homosexuals posed a risk to children because of molestation.
By 1999, the belief that homosexuals were most likely to abuse children was only endorsed by 19% of heterosexual men and 10% of heterosexual women.
An April 2022 survey by the think tank Data for Progress found that 55% of likely voters rejected the label that "teachers and parents that support discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in school are groomers" and only 29% of likely voters supported it. Broken down by party support, the survey found that 45% of likely Republican voters believe the label, contrasted to 29% of Independent voters and 15% of Democratic voters. American Jewish community related publication The Forward criticized the implications of this finding, noting the interconnected histories between hatred against Jews and against LGBT people, due to both groups being accused of corrupting children.
== Harm done to children through conspiracy theories ==
Civil society organizations fighting on behalf of children's rights in the U.S. have expressed alarm over how right-wing efforts to use the physical and psychological abuse of minors as a partisan political matter damages efforts against child maltreatment, particularly regarding victims of child sexual abuse.
In an interview with Phys.org, Laura Palumbo, the communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), commented that "[m]any survivors may not even have disclosed (their experience) to their own friends, family and loved ones because of the shame and stigma that they face." She added, "And then to see that their stories are being tossed around by others to make a point about an unrelated issue does have a harmful impact". Jenny Coleman, the director of Stop It Now!, also expressed frustration. She remarked, "It feels like child sex abuse prevention is being hijacked by people to fit an agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with preventing child sexual abuse."
== See also ==
2020s anti-LGBT movement in the United States
Acquired homosexuality
Alt-right movement
Anti-LGBT rhetoric
Drag panic
Gay agenda
Homosexual seduction
LGBT chemicals conspiracy theory
21st-century anti-trans movement in the United Kingdom
Alt-right
Anti-gender movement
Homophobia
LGBTQ history in the United States
LGBTQ rights in the United States
LGBTQ rights opposition in the United States
Transphobia in the United States
Transgender genocide
Parental rights movement
== Notes ==
== References == | Wikipedia/LGBTQ_grooming_conspiracy_theory |
Lymphotherapy (lymphatic physiotherapy) is a method by which pressure applied on specific lymph nodes alters lymphatic response. Proponents state it can be used for lymphedema and breast cancer.
== History ==
Lymphotherapy was first suggested in 1918 by Dr. S. Artault de Vevey in the Paris Therapeutic Society as a treatment for infectious diseases, though it had many fans as well as opponents. This treatment was popular in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s. Currently, lymphotherapy practice has been documented in complementary and alternative medicine.
== Effects ==
Complete decongestive lymphatic physiotherapy demands substantial time and effort from patients to maintain the benefits; treatments are not always well-accepted, and patients may suffer from a deterioration in quality of life or develop enhanced anxiety. Sudden loss of bowel control was reported, especially with lymphatic physiotherapy applied on the lymph nodes in the lower back.
== See also ==
Manual lymphatic drainage
== References ==
== Further reading ==
"Legal Aspects". Research Council for Complementary Medicine. Archived from the original on 21 April 2010.
Lymphotherapy on Adeli Eesti OÜ | Wikipedia/Lymphotherapy |
The Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) is a form of intervention directed at young children that display early signs of being on the autism spectrum proposed by American psychiatrists Sally J. Rogers and Geraldine Dawson. It is intended to help children improve development traits as early as possible so as to narrow or close the gaps in capabilities between the individual and their peers.
== Development ==
The American psychiatrists Sally J. Rogers and Geraldine Dawson began developing the Early Start Denver Model during the 1980s. While working at the University of Colorado, in Denver, Rogers provided what was first called the "play school model" of intervention which was applied to children in preschool during their regular play activities. The model was founded in Piaget's theory of cognitive development and came to be described by Rogers and Dawson as the Denver Model.
In 2010, the two researchers published Early Start Denver Model for Young Children with Autism: Promoting Language, Learning, and Engagement, in which the ESDM is manualized and described in detail. It is generally cited to be directed towards children between 12 and 48 months of age, and is closely related to Applied behavior analysis, influencing and being influenced by this field of work.
== Description ==
The ESDM is aimed at using "joint activity routines" that explore the child's natural interests to explore their learning potential, shaping everyday activities between the child and their caregivers to maximize their development potential according to the child's assessment.
Rogers and Dawson describe the core features of the ESDM as:
an interdisciplinary team that implements a developmental curriculum addressing all domains;
focus on interpersonal engagement;
development of fluent, reciprocal, and spontaneous imitation of gestures, facial movements and expressions, and object use;
emphasis on both nonverbal and verbal communication development;
focus on cognitive aspects of play carried out within dyadic play routines;
partnership with parents.
=== Assessment ===
The intervention begins with measuring the child's skill levels in language, social skills, imitation, cognition, play, and motor and self-help skills. The assessment serves as a baseline for future reassessments, which are rerun every 12 weeks, and a model of it is presented in Rogers and Dawson's 2010 book, being called the ESDM Curriculum Checklist.
=== Intervention plan ===
Results from the first assessment are used to draw an intervention plan, which describes the activities to be performed with the child by the parents and therapists. An interdisciplinary team oversees the progress and readjusts the plan with every new 12-week assessment. The parents are also trained (or "coached") and play a role in the program, taking on some of the activities in the child's intervention plan or, in some cases, conducting it all together.
Among the domains focused on by the intervention plan are of particular importance: imitation, nonverbal communication (including joint attention), verbal communication, social development (including emotion sharing), and play.
== Efficacy ==
Several studies have been published in an effort to assess its efficacy in mitigating the developmental delays in young children diagnosed with autism. Research of this kind is inherently complex, since it involves comparing groups receiving different types of treatment and it is ethically questionable to set aside a control group that would receive no treatment; therefore it is challenging to perform the objective measurement of treatment effects.
Rogers and Dawson have performed different trials of their methods. They published, with 6 other authors, a randomized controlled trial in 2012 that younger age and longer hours of weekly intervention hours positively correlate with improvements in most variables measured by the method. They followed up with a study published in 2015 where they tried to gauge the method's long-term efficacy by examining children at 6 years of age, 2 years after the ESDM had ended. By comparing one group that had received traditional methods of treatment with another group receiving the ESDM treatment starting at between 18 and 30 months of age, they found no significant differences between the groups in core autism symptoms immediately after treatment ended (at 4 years of age); the ESDM group did show, however, significant improvements in core autism symptoms after 2 years, implying that the benefits of the treatment at a younger age affect developmental traits that only become noticeable in later stages of development. This was the first study that analyzed the efficacy of ESDM treatment starting at an age younger than 30 months.
Meta-analyses and systematic reviews have shown that the ESDM is promising. A meta-analysis of 12 individual studies with a total of 640 children published in 2020 concluded that, compared to control groups receiving traditional forms of treatment, children receiving the ESDM showed significant improvements in cognition and language abilities (G-test numbers of 0.412 and 0.408, respectively). A separate meta-analysis using 11 studies described as high-quality randomized controlled trials analyzed results in four major domains related to ASD (autism symptoms, language, cognition, and social communication). The study found that children receiving the ESDM showed significant improvements in the cognition (g = 0.28), autism symptoms (g = 0.27), and language (g = 0.29) domains.
== Usage in countries ==
The diagnosis of autism has undergone significant changes in recent decades, which means the forms of treatment have also changed. Therefore, countries have incorporated treatment options in heterogeneous ways, meaning that the Denver Model has been adopted with different intensities throughout the world. The list below presents a brief description of how each country's healthcare system (public or private) deal with this form of treatment:
=== Australia ===
The National Disability Insurance Scheme of the Australian government recognizes the ESDM as a form of "naturalistic developmental behavioural intervention" with enough scientific evidence to support it, and will cover the costs of treatment and parent-training sessions if the child is eligible for this type of treatment.
=== Brazil ===
The Agência Nacional de Saúde Suplementar (ANS), Brazil's regulating body for private healthcare plan providers, recognizes different forms of ASD within the scope of pervasive developmental disorders. It lists ESDM as one of the forms of treatment that should be taken into consideration by healthcare providers for children with developmental disorders. Since July 1, 2022, healthcare providers are obligated to provide the form of treatment prescribed by the child's doctor, and this includes the ESDM.
=== France ===
Since 2012, the Haute Autorité de Santé of France recognizes ESDM's efficacy and recommends that public healthcare institutions consider it as one of their options when treating children with ASD.
=== United States ===
All 50 states in the USA have legislation requiring the coverage of autism spectrum treatments by private health insurance companies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) includes the ESDM as a developmental approach in the treatment of ASD.
A study of applying the ESDM at an early age was conducted to assess the cost-effectiveness of applying the ESDM at an early age rather than using the traditional methods of treatment at later stages. The study indicates that the average increased cost of treatment at younger ages was significantly smaller than the total savings in treatments at older ages, with children needing fewer sessions of ABA/EIBI, occupational, physical and speech therapy services.
== References == | Wikipedia/Early_Start_Denver_Model |
The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH; synonymous with interplanetary aircraft ) proposes that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being physical spacecraft occupied by intelligent extraterrestrial organisms (non-human aliens) from other planets, or probes designed by extraterrestrials.
== Usage of the term ==
The term extraterrestrial hypothesis in printed material was used by Janine and Jacques Vallée in their 1966 book. It was used in a publication by French engineer Aimé Michel in 1967, by James E. McDonald in March 1968 and again by McDonald and James Harder in July 1968. Skeptic Philip J. Klass used it in his 1968 book UFOs--Identified. Some UFO historians credit Edward Condon c.1969 with popularizing the term and its abbreviation "ETH."
== Chronology ==
Although the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) as a phrase is a comparatively new concept, one which owes much to the flying saucer sightings of the 1940s–1960s, its origins can be traced back to a number of earlier events, such as the now-discredited Martian canals and ancient Martian civilization promoted by astronomer Percival Lowell, popular culture including the writings of H. G. Wells and fellow science fiction pioneers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, who likewise wrote of Martian civilizations, and even to the works of figures such as the Swedish philosopher, mystic and scientist Emanuel Swedenborg, who promoted a variety of unconventional views that linked other worlds to the afterlife.
In the early part of the twentieth century, Charles Fort collected accounts of anomalous physical phenomena from newspapers and scientific journals, including many reports of extraordinary aerial objects. These were published in 1919 in The Book of the Damned. In this and two subsequent books, New Lands (1923) and Lo! (1931), Fort theorized that visitors from other worlds were observing Earth. Fort's reports of aerial phenomena were frequently cited in American newspapers when the UFO phenomenon first attracted widespread media attention in June and July 1947.
The modern ETH—specifically, the implicit linking of unidentified aircraft and lights in the sky to alien life—took root during the late 1940s and took its current form during the 1950s. It drew on pseudoscience, as well as popular culture. Unlike earlier speculation of extraterrestrial life, interest in the ETH was also bolstered by many unexplained sightings investigated by the U.S. government and governments of other countries, as well as private civilian groups, such as NICAP and APRO.
=== Historical reports and speculation ===
A news article published November 25, 1896 retells (Colonel H.G. Shaw) of an experience of "strange beings" and "an immense airship" en route from Lodi California. Shaw concluded the beings were infact from Mars. Amongst other reports of "airships" from November 1896 (including December) - 1897 (only mid-March - April): containing people (sometimes with a dog, listening to music, landing to make repairs), the Dallas Morning News reported of April 17, 1897 in Aurora, Texas: an airship "much nearer the earth than ever before" destroyed in a crash, the consequently dead occupant subsequently described by a United States signal service office as “a native of the planet Mars”. Later, there was a more international airship wave from 1909-1912. An example of an extraterrestrial explanation at the time was a 1909 letter to a New Zealand newspaper suggesting "atomic powered spaceships from Mars."
=== Early science fiction ===
H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, published April 1897, is a story of alien invasion by craft from Mars. From the 1920s, the idea of alien visitation in space ships was commonplace in popular comic strips and radio and movie serials, such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. In particular, the Flash Gordon serials have the Earth being attacked from space by alien meteors, ray beams, and biological weapons. In 1938, a radio broadcast version of The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles, using a contemporary setting for H. G. Wells' Martian invasion, created some public panic in the United States.
=== The 1947 flying saucer wave in America ===
On June 24, 1947, at about 3:00 p.m. local time, pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine unidentified disk-shaped aircraft flying near Mount Rainier. When no aircraft emerged that seemed to account for what he had seen, Arnold quickly considered the possibility of the objects being extraterrestrial. On July 7, 1947, two stories came out where Arnold was raising the topic of possible extraterrestrial origins, both as his opinion and those who had written to him. In an Associated Press story, Arnold said he had received quantities of fan mail eager to help solve the mystery. Some of them "suggested the discs were visitations from another planet."
When the 1947 flying saucer wave hit the United States, there was much speculation in the newspapers about what they might be in news stories, columns, editorials, and letters to the editor. For example, on July 10, U.S. Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho commented, "I almost wish the flying saucers would turn out to be space ships from another planet," because the possibility of hostility "would unify the people of the earth as nothing else could." On July 8, R. DeWitt Miller was quoted by UP saying that the saucers had been seen since the early nineteenth century. If the present discs weren't secret Army weapons, he suggested they could be vehicles from Mars, or other planets, or maybe even "things out of other dimensions of time and space." Other articles brought up the work of Charles Fort, who earlier in the twentieth century had documented numerous reports of unidentified flying objects that had been written up in newspapers and scientific journals.
Even if people thought the saucers were real, most were generally unwilling to leap to the conclusion that they were extraterrestrial in origin. Various popular theories began to quickly proliferate in press articles, such as secret military projects, Russian spy devices, hoaxes, optical illusions, and mass hysteria. According to journalist Edward R. Murrow, the ETH as a serious explanation for "flying saucers" did not earn widespread attention until about 18 months after Arnold's sighting.
These attitudes seem to be reflected in the results of the first U.S. poll of public UFO perceptions released by Gallup on August 14, 1947. The term "flying saucer" was familiar to 90% of the respondents. As to what people thought explained them, the poll further showed, that most people either held no opinion or refused to answer the question (33%), or generally believed that there was a mundane explanation. 29% thought they were optical illusions, mirages, or imagination; 15% a U.S. secret weapon; 10% a hoax; 3% a "weather forecasting device"; 1% of Soviet origin, and 9% had "other explanations," including fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, secret commercial aircraft, or phenomena related to atomic testing.
=== Evolution of public opinion ===
The early 1950s also saw a number of movies depicting flying saucers and aliens, including The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), and Forbidden Planet (1956). A poll published in Popular Science magazine in August 1951 reported that of the respondents who self-reported as UFO witnesses, 52% believed that they had seen a man-made aircraft, while only 4% believed that they had seen an alien craft; an additional 28% were uncertain, with more than half of these stating they believed they were either man-made aircraft, or "visitors from afar." By 1957, 25% of Americans responded that they either believed, or were willing to believe in the ETH, while 53% responded that they were not. 22% reported that they were uncertain.
A Roper poll in 2002 reported that 56% of respondents thought UFOs were real, with 48% believing that UFOs had visited Earth.
=== Religion ===
Hunt describes the Aetherius Society founded by George King in 1955 as "probably the first and certainly the most enduring UFO cult".
=== NASA ===
In June 2021, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that he had directed NASA scientists to investigate Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. During an interview at the University of Virginia, Bill Nelson explored the possibility that UAP could represent extraterrestrial technology.
NASA scientist Ravi Kopparapu advocates studying UAP. We need to frame the current UAP/UFO question with the same level of active inquiry, one involving experts from academia in disciplines including astronomy, meteorology and physics, as well as industry and government professionals with knowledge of military aircraft, remote sensing from the ground and satellite observations. Participants would need to be agnostic toward any specific explanations with a primary goal of collecting enough data — including visual, infrared, radar and other possible observations — to eventually allow us to deduce the identity of such UAP. Following this agnostic approach, and relying upon sound scientific and peer-reviewed methods, would go a long way toward lifting the taboo in mainstream science.
In August 2021, at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Aviation, Kopparapu presented a paper from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 134th Meeting General Symposium that supported ETH. Kopparapu stated he and his colleagues found the paper "perfectly credible".
=== Private or government studies ===
Other private or government studies, some secret, have concluded in favor of the ET hypothesis, or have had members who disagreed in contravention with official conclusions reached by the committees and agencies to which they belonged. The following are examples of sources that have focused specifically on the topic:
A 1948 Top Secret USAF Europe document (at right) states that Swedish air intelligence informed them that at least some of their investigators into the ghost rockets and flying saucers concluded they possibly had extraterrestrial origins.
West Germany, in conjunction with other European countries, conducted a secret study from 1951 to 1954, also concluding that UFOs were extraterrestrial. This study was revealed by German rocketry pioneer Hermann Oberth, who headed the study and who also made many public statements supporting the ETH in succeeding years. At the study's conclusion in 1954, Oberth declared: "These objects (UFOs) are conceived and directed by intelligent beings of a very high order. They do not originate in our solar system, perhaps not in our galaxy." Soon afterwards, in an October 24, 1954, article in The American Weekly, Oberth wrote: "It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system. I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our earth for centuries..."
The CIA started their own internal scientific review the following day. Some CIA scientists were also seriously considering the ETH. An early memo from August was very skeptical, but also added: "...as long as a series of reports remains 'unexplainable' (interplanetary aspects and alien origin not being thoroughly excluded from consideration) caution requires that intelligence continue coverage of the subject." A report from later that month was similarly skeptical, but nevertheless concluded: "...sightings of UFOs reported at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge, at a time when the background radiation count had risen inexplicably. Here we run out of even 'blue yonder' explanations that might be tenable, and we still are left with numbers of incredible reports from credible observers." A December 1952 memo from the Assistant CIA Director of Scientific Intelligence (O/SI) was much more urgent: "...the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention. Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of U.S. defense installation [sic] are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles." Some of the memos also made it clear, that CIA interest in the subject was not to be made public, partly in fear of possible public panic. (Good, 331–335)
Extraterrestrial "believers" within Project Blue Book included Major Dewey Fournet, in charge of the engineering analysis of UFO motion, who later became a board member on the civilian UFO organization NICAP. Blue Book director Edward J. Ruppelt privately commented on other firm "pro-UFO" members in the USAF investigations, including some Pentagon generals, such as Charles P. Cabell, USAF Chief of Air Intelligence, who, angry at the inaction and debunkery of Project Grudge, dissolved it in 1951, established Project Blue Book in its place, and made Ruppelt director. In 1953, Cabell became deputy director of the CIA. Another defector from the official Air Force party line was consultant J. Allen Hynek, who started out as a staunch skeptic. After 20 years of investigation, he changed positions and generally supported the ETH. He became the most publicly known UFO advocate scientist in the 1970s and 1980s.
The first CIA Director, Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, stated in a signed statement to Congress, also reported in The New York Times (February 28, 1960): "It is time for the truth to be brought out... Behind the scenes high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. However, through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense... I urge immediate Congressional action to reduce the dangers from secrecy about unidentified flying objects." In 1962, in his letter of resignation from NICAP, he told director Donald Keyhoe, "I know the UFOs are not U.S. or Soviet devices. All we can do now is wait for some actions by the UFOs."
In 1967, Greek physicist Paul Santorini, a Manhattan Project scientist, publicly stated that a 1947 Greek government investigation into the European Ghost rockets of 1946 under his lead quickly concluded that they were not missiles. Santorini claimed the investigation was then quashed by military officials from the U.S., who knew them to be extraterrestrial, because there was no defense against the advanced technology and they feared widespread panic should the results become public.
Although the 1968 Condon Report came to a negative conclusion (written by Condon), it is known that many members of the study strongly disagreed with Condon's methods and biases. Most quit the project in disgust, or were fired for insubordination. A few became ETH supporters. Perhaps the best known example is David Saunders, who in his 1968 book UFOs? Yes lambasted Condon for extreme bias, and for ignoring or misrepresenting critical evidence. Saunders wrote: "It is clear... that the sightings have been going on for too long to explain in terms of straightforward terrestrial intelligence. It's in this sense that ETI (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) stands as the 'least implausible' explanation of 'real UFOs'."
In 1999, the private French COMETA report (written primarily by military defense analysts) stated the conclusion regarding UFO phenomena, that a "single hypothesis sufficiently takes into account the facts and, for the most part, only calls for present-day science. It is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitors." The report noted issues with formulating the extraterrestrial hypothesis, likening its study to the study of meteorites, but concluded, that although it was far from the best scientific hypothesis, "strong presumptions exist in its favour". The report also concludes, that the studies it presents, "demonstrate the almost certain physical reality of completely unknown flying objects with remarkable flight performances and noiselessness, apparently operated by intelligent [beings] ... Secret craft definitely of earthly origins (drones, stealth aircraft, etc.) can only explain a minority of cases. If we go back far enough in time, we clearly perceive the limits of this explanation."
Jean-Jacques Velasco, the head of the official French UFO investigation SEPRA, wrote a book in 2005, saying, that 14% of the 5800 cases studied by SEPRA were 'utterly inexplicable and extraterrestrial' in origin. However, the CNES own report says 28% of sightings remain unidentified. Yves Sillard, the head of the new official French UFO investigation GEIPAN and former head of French space agency CNES, echoes Velasco's comments and adds, that the United States 'is guilty of covering up this information.' However, this is not the official public posture of SEPRA, CNES, or the French government. (The CNES placed their 5,800 case files on the Internet starting March 2007.)
== Critical responses and positions of the ETH ==
People have had a long-standing curiosity about extraterrestrial life. Aliens are the subject of numerous urban legends, including claims that they have long been present on earth or that they may be able to assist humans in resolving certain issues. Despite these myths, the truth is that there is no scientific proof to back up these assertions, hence we cannot declare with certainty whether or not aliens exist. In spite of ardent believers that various UFO sightings are verifiable evidence for the ET hypothesis, no rigorous analysis has ever concluded as much.
=== U.S. military investigation and debunkery ===
On July 9, Army Air Forces Intelligence began a secret study of the best saucer reports, including that of Arnold's. A follow-up study by the Air Materiel Command intelligence and engineering departments at Wright Field, Ohio led to the formation of the U.S. Air Force's Project Sign at the end of 1947, the first official U.S. military UFO study.
In 1948, Project Sign concluded without endorsing any unified explanation for all UFO reports, and the ETH was rejected by USAF Chief of Staff General Hoyt Vandenberg, citing a lack of physical evidence. Vandenberg dismantled Project Sign, and with this official policy in place, subsequent public Air Force reports concluded, that there was insufficient evidence to warrant further investigation of UFOs.
In 1952, Life Magazine published "Have We Visitors From Space?" which popularized the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis and is thought to have triggered the 1952 UFO flap. Immediately following the great UFO wave of 1952 and the military debunking of radar and visual sightings, plus jet interceptions over Washington, D.C. in August, the CIA's Office of Scientific Investigation took particular interest in UFOs. Though the ETH was mentioned, it was generally given little credence. However, others within the CIA, such as the Psychological Strategy Board, were more concerned about how an unfriendly power such as the Soviet Union might use UFOs for psychological warfare purposes, exploit the gullibility of the public for the sensational, and clog intelligence channels. Under a directive from the National Security Council to review the problem, in January 1953, the CIA organized the Robertson Panel, a group of scientists who quickly reviewed the Blue Book's best evidence, including motion pictures and an engineering report that concluded that the performance characteristics were beyond that of earthly craft. After two days' review, all cases were claimed to have conventional explanations. An official policy of public debunkery was recommended using the mass media and authority figures in order to influence public opinion and reduce the number of UFO reports.
=== Involvement of scientists ===
The scientific community has shown very little support for the ETH, and has largely accepted the explanation that reports of UFOs are the result of people misinterpreting common objects or phenomena, or are the work of hoaxers. Professor Stephen Hawking has expressed skepticism about the ETH. In a 1969 lecture, U.S. astrophysicist Carl Sagan said:
"The idea of benign or hostile space aliens from other planets visiting the Earth [is clearly] an emotional idea. There are two sorts of self-deception here: either accepting the idea of extraterrestrial visitation by space aliens in the face of very meager evidence because we want it to be true; or rejecting such an idea out of hand, in the absence of sufficient evidence, because we don't want it to be true. Each of these extremes is a serious impediment to the study of UFOs."
Similarly, British astrophysicist Peter A. Sturrock wrote
"for many years, discussions of the UFO issue have remained narrowly polarized between advocates and adversaries of a single theory, namely the extraterrestrial hypothesis ... this fixation on the ETH has narrowed and impoverished the debate, precluding an examination of other possible theories for the phenomenon."
An informal poll done by Sturrock in 1973 of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics members found that about 10% of them believed that UFOs were vehicles from outer space. In another poll conducted in 1977, Sturrock asked members of the American Astronomical Society to assign probabilities to eight possible explanations for UFOs. The results were:
The primary scientific arguments against ETH were summarized by astronomer and UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek during a presentation at the 1983 MUFON Symposium, where he outlined seven key reasons why he could not accept the ETH.
Failure of sophisticated surveillance systems to detect incoming or outgoing UFOs
Gravitational and atmospheric considerations
Statistical considerations
Elusive, evasive and absurd behavior of UFOs and their occupants
Isolation of the UFO phenomenon in time and space: the Cheshire Cat effect
The space unworthiness of UFOs
The problem of astronomical distances
Hynek argued that:
Despite worldwide radar systems and Earth-orbiting satellites, UFOs are alleged to flit in and out of the atmosphere, leaving little to no evidence.
Space aliens are alleged to be overwhelmingly humanoid, and are allegedly able to exist on Earth without much difficulty often lacking "space suits", even though extra-solar planets would likely have different atmospheres, biospheres, gravity and other factors, and extraterrestrial life would likely be very different from Earthly life.
The number of reported UFOs and of purported encounters with UFO-inhabitants outstrips the number of expeditions that an alien civilization (or civilizations) could statistically be expected to mount.
The behavior of extraterrestrials reported during alleged abductions is often inconsistent and irrational.
UFOs are isolated in time and space: like the Cheshire Cat, they seem to appear and disappear at will, leaving only vague, ambiguous and mocking evidence of their presence
Reported UFOs are often far too small to support a crew traveling through space, and their reported flight behavior is often not representative of a craft under intelligent control (erratic flight patterns, sudden course changes).
The distance between planets makes interstellar travel impractical, particularly because of the amount of energy that would be required for interstellar travel using conventional means, (According to a NASA estimate, it would take 7×1019 joules of energy to send the then-current Space Shuttle on a one-way 50-year journey to the nearest star, an enormous amount of energy) and because of the level of technology that would be required to circumvent conventional energy/fuel/speed limitations using exotic means, such as Einstein-Rosen Bridges as ways to shorten distances from point A to point B. (see Faster-than-light travel).
According to the personal assessment of Hynek at the time, points 1 through 6 could be argued, but point 7 represented an "insurmountable" barrier to the validity of the ETH.
=== NASA ===
NASA frequently fields questions in regard to the ETH and UFOs. As of 2006, its official standpoint was that ETH has a lack of empirical evidence.
"no one has ever found a single artifact, or any other convincing evidence for such alien visits". David Morrison.
"As far as I know, no claims of UFOs as being alien craft have any validity -- the claims are without substance, and certainly not proved". David Morrison
Despite public interest, up until 2021, NASA had considered the study of ETH to be irrelevant to its work because of the number of false leads that a study would provide, and the limited amount of usable scientific data that it would yield.
=== CIA ===
The CIA organized the January 1953 Robertson Panel of scientists to debunk the data collected by the Air Force's Project Blue Book. This included an engineering analysis of UFO maneuvers by Blue Book (including a motion picture film analysis by Naval scientists) that had concluded UFOs were under intelligent control and likely extraterrestrial.
=== Official White House position ===
In November 2011, the White House released an official response to two petitions asking the U.S. government to acknowledge formally that aliens have visited Earth and to disclose any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. According to the response, "The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race." Also, according to the response, there is "no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye." The response further noted that efforts, like SETI, the Kepler space telescope and the NASA Mars rover, continue looking for signs of life. The response noted "the odds are pretty high" that there may be life on other planets but "the odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones—are extremely small, given the distances involved."
== Counter critique of the official position: Conspiracy theories ==
A frequent concept in ufology and popular culture is that the true extent of information about UFOs is being suppressed by some form of conspiracy of silence, or by an official cover-up that is acting to conceal information.
In 1968, American engineer James Harder argued that significant evidence existed to prove UFOs "beyond reasonable doubt," but that the evidence had been suppressed and largely neglected by scientists and the general public, thus preventing sound conclusions from being reached on the ETH.
"Over the past 20 years a vast amount of evidence has been accumulating that bears on the existence of UFOs. Most of this is little known to the general public or to most scientists. But on the basis of the data and ordinary rules of evidence, as would be applied in civil or criminal courts, the physical reality of UFOs has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt." J A Harder
A survey carried out by Industrial Research magazine in 1971 showed that more Americans believed the government was concealing information about UFOs (76%) than believed in the existence of UFOs (54%), or in ETH itself (32%).
On the History Channel UFO Hunters episode "The NASA Files" (2008), Former NASA astronauts have commented; Gordon Cooper wrote that NASA and the government "swept these and other sightings under the rug". Brian O'Leary stated "some of my fellow astronauts and scientists astronauts that did go up and who have observed things, very clearly, they were told - not to report it".
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links == | Wikipedia/Extraterrestrial_hypothesis |
Sensory integration therapy (SIT) was developed in the 1970 to treat children with sensory processing disorder (sometimes called sensory integrative dysfunction). Sensory Integration Therapy is based on A. Jean Ayres's Sensory Integration Theory, which proposes that sensory-processing is linked to emotional regulation, learning, behavior, and participation in daily life. Sensory integration is the process of organizing sensations from the body and environmental stimuli.
== Theoretical concept ==
A. Jean Ayres, an occupational therapist, developed SIT in the 1970s. The theory describes the following:
How the neurological process of processing and integrating sensory information from the body and the environment contribute to emotional regulation, learning, behavior, and participation in daily life.
Empirically derived disorders of sensory integration.
Intervention approaches and strategies for sensory input.
Sensory integration theory is used to explain why individuals behave in particular ways, plan intervention to ameliorate particular difficulties, and predict how behavior will change as a result of intervention. Dr. Ayres defines sensory integration as the organization of an individual's senses for use. The brain’s ability to organize sensations supports a person in moving, learning, and reacting to situations appropriately.
Individuals with sensory-processing difficulties often experience delayed or impeded typical behaviors and functioning as a result of interferences in neurological processing and integration of sensory inputs. Sensory dysfunction affects the neurological processing of sensory information and sensory systems which causes negative impacts on learning and development. Ayres Sensory Integration (ASI) highlights the critical influence that sensory-processing has on a child's growth and development. It contributes to the understanding of how sensation affects learning, social-emotional development, and neurophysiological processes, such as motor performance, attention, and arousal.
ASI has been studied by different professions on diverse levels, such as by occupational therapists and researchers as a foundation for occupational performance and participation, and by psychologists on a cellular level as multi-sensory integration.
As an intervention approach, it is used as "a clinical frame of reference for the assessment and treatment of people who have functional disorders in sensory processing".
== Practice ==
Individuals with sensory processing disorder or sensory integrative dysfunction experience problems with their sensory systems, also known as basic senses of touch, smell, hearing, taste, sight, body coordination, and movement against gravity. They might also experience difficulties in movement, coordination, and sensing where one's body is in a given space, also known as proprioception. Each individual sensory system has specific receptors or cells within the body that deliver messages to the brain. These receptors are located in specific parts of the body - gustatory/taste (mouth), olfactory/smell (nose), visual (eye), auditory (ear), and vestibular (inner ear). Other receptors are spread throughout the body - tactile (skin) and proprioception (muscles and joints).
Sensory Integration Therapy, also known as sensory-based treatments or interventions, are designed to provide sensory activities or experiences to help individuals respond better to environmental stimuli (i.e., sensory input). The main goal and priority for the use of sensory integration therapies is to improve internal sensory processing, improve self-regulation, develop adaptive functioning skills, and to help the child successfully become participate in daily life experiences and activities. Sensory-based interventions or activities are structured and individualized per each child's specific individual needs. They range from passive activities (i.e., wearing a weighted vest, weighted blanket, receiving hugs, playing with shaving cream) to active activities (i.e., spinning around, jumping on a trampoline, running, climbing, walking on patterned blocks).
According to proponents of sensory integration therapy, sensory integrative dysfunction is a common disorder for individuals with neurological learning disabilities such as an autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and sensory modulation dysfunction.
Occupational therapists are uniquely equipped to practice Ayres Sensory Integration (ASI) or Occupational Therapy Sensory Integration (OT-SI). During sessions, activities are presented to both challenge capabilities and assist and regulating a child (Parham & Mailloux, 2015). Activities are often specially tailored to meet individual needs. The goal of these sessions is to assist a child in gaining competence in participating in everyday activities in settings such as school, home and extra curriculars. Active participation is emphasized in order to maxims gains and learning. Children who require more structure are given modified activities that continue to offer freedom of choice in order to foster self-direction (Parham & Mailloux,2015).
== Evidence and Effectiveness ==
While sensory-based interventions are highly advocated for, there continues to be a lack of empirical support. There is disagreement over their therapeutic worth, largely due to problems with methodology and confusion of terms and conflation with similar and related approaches.
Ayres' theory of sensory integration is frequently critiqued. Emerging evidence with improved methodology, the development of a Fidelity Measure and increasing focus of resources on areas of practice that might not typically attract medical research funding, means that the much needed evidence for Ayres SI is now emerging. Since much of the effects of sensory based interventions are hard to quantify and measure, this is why it seems there is not much evidence for it.
Hume and colleagues support the use of Ayres’ Sensory Integration (ASI), making the case for why review of science and evidence should be ongoing.The current report updates and extends the work on evidence-based, focused intervention practices begun with an initial review of the literature from 1997 to 2007 (Odom et al. 2010a, b) and extended through a second report that covered the literature from 1990 to 2011 (Wong et al. 2015); extending this systematic review through 2017 added 567 articles to the review. As the intervention literature has provided more empirical information and as practices have evolved, some of the classifications required reconceptualization and revision of previous definitions. In an active research area, knowledge does not stand still, and in fact, identification of EBPs should be dynamic, reflecting the growth of knowledge across time (Biglan and Ogden 2019).In their article they clearly state the importance of clearly defining what sensory integration therapy is and what it is not; helping to clarify and delineate the clinical practice reported in their article, from other related approaches based on Ayres’ SI theory. It is important to note that Sensory Integration refers explicitly to the classical sensory integration model developed by Jean Ayres (2005) and not to a variety of interventions that address sensory issues but have been found to be unsupported (Case-Smith et al. 2015; Watling and Hauer 2015).
== History ==
In the 1950s, Anna Jean Ayres, an occupational therapist and psychologist, developed the theory and framework of sensory integration. Her book Sensory Integration and the Child, first published in the 1970s, was a means of helping families, therapists, and educators of children with sensory-processing difficulties and sensory processing disorders to better organize and improve self-regulation of body and environmental sensory inputs.
Ayres' approach has proliferated among therapy and educational professionals over the past several decades. It has been met with some resistance within the occupational therapy profession and in other disciplines.
== See also ==
Multisensory integration
Music therapy
Occupational science
Occupational therapy
Sensory processing
Sensory overload
Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation
== References == | Wikipedia/Sensory_integration_therapy |
Functional medicine (FM) is a form of alternative medicine that encompasses many unproven and disproven methods and treatments. At its essence, it is a rebranding of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and as such is pseudoscientific, and has been described as a form of quackery.
In the United States, FM practices have been ruled ineligible for course credits by the American Academy of Family Physicians because of concerns they may be harmful.
Functional medicine was created by Jeffrey Bland, who founded The Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) in the early 1990s as part of one of his companies, HealthComm. IFM, which promotes functional medicine, became a registered non-profit in 2001. Mark Hyman became an IFM board member and prominent promoter.
== Description ==
David Gorski has written that FM is not well-defined and performs "expensive and generally unnecessary tests". Gorski says FM's vagueness is a deliberate tactic that makes functional medicine difficult to challenge.
Proponents of functional medicine oppose established medical knowledge and reject its models, instead adopting a model of disease based on the notion of "antecedents", "triggers", and "mediators". These are meant to correspond to the underlying causes of health issues, the immediate causes, and the particular characteristics of a person's illness. A functional medicine practitioner devises a "matrix" from these factors to serve as the basis for treatment.
Treatments, practices, and concepts are generally not supported by medical evidence. Jonathan Stea writes that functional medicine, integrative medicine, and CAM "are marketing terms designed to confuse patients, promote pseudoscience, and sow distrust in mainstream medicine."
== Reception ==
FM practitioners claim to diagnose and treat conditions that have been found by research studies not to exist, such as adrenal fatigue and numerous imbalances in body chemistry. For instance, contrary to scientific evidence, Joe Pizzorno, a major figure in FM, claimed that 25% of people in the United States have heavy metal poisoning and need to undergo detoxification. Many scientists state that such detox supplements are a waste of time and money. Detox has been also called "mass delusion".
In 2014, the American Academy of Family Physicians withdrew course credits for functional medicine courses, having identified some of its treatments as "harmful and dangerous". In 2018, it partly lifted the ban, but only to allow overview classes, not to teach its practice.
The opening of centers for functional medicine at the Cleveland Clinic and George Washington University was described by David Gorski as an "unfortunate" example of quackery infiltrating academic medical centers.
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Gorski, David (April 14, 2014). "Bill and Hillary Clinton go woo with Dr. Mark Hyman and 'functional medicine'". Science-Based Medicine. | Wikipedia/Functional_medicine |
Some conspiracy theories contend that the collapse of the World Trade Center was caused not solely by the airliner crash damage that occurred as part of the September 11 attacks and the resulting fire damage but also by explosives installed in the buildings in advance. Controlled demolition theories make up a major component of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Early advocates such as physicist Steven E. Jones, architect Richard Gage, software engineer Jim Hoffman, and theologian David Ray Griffin proposed that the aircraft impacts and resulting fires themselves alone could not have weakened the buildings sufficiently to initiate the catastrophic collapse and that the buildings would have neither collapsed completely nor at the speeds they did without additional energy involved to weaken their structures.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the magazine Popular Mechanics examined and rejected these theories. Specialists in structural mechanics and structural engineering accept the model of a fire-induced, gravity-driven collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, an explanation that does not involve the use of explosives. NIST "found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to Sept. 11, 2001." Professors Zdeněk Bažant of Northwestern University, Thomas Eagar of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and James Quintiere of the University of Maryland have also dismissed the controlled-demolition conspiracy theory.
In 2006, Jones suggested that thermite or super-thermite may have been used by government insiders with access to such materials and to the buildings themselves to demolish the buildings. In April 2009, Jones, Dane Niels H. Harrit and seven other authors published a paper in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, causing the editor, Prof. Marie-Paule Pileni, to resign as she accused the publisher of printing it without her knowledge; this article was titled 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe', and stated that they had found evidence of nano-thermite in samples of the dust that was produced during the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. NIST responded that there was no "clear chain of custody" to prove that the four samples of dust came from the WTC site. Jones invited NIST to conduct its own studies using its own known "chain of custody" dust, but NIST did not investigate.
== History ==
The controlled demolition conspiracy theories were first suggested in September 2001. Eric Hufschmid's book, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack, in which the controlled demolition theory is explicitly advocated, was published in September 2002. David Ray Griffin and Steven E. Jones are the best known advocates of the theory. Griffin's book The New Pearl Harbor, published in 2004, has become a reference work for the 9/11 Truth movement. In the same year, Griffin published the book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, in which he argues that flaws in the commission's report amounts to a cover-up by government officials and says that the Bush administration was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Steven E. Jones has been another voice of the proponents of demolition theories. In 2006, he published the paper "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?". On September 7, 2006, Brigham Young University placed Jones on paid leave citing the "increasingly speculative and accusatory nature" of his statements, pending an official review of his actions. Six weeks later, Jones retired from the university. The structural engineering faculty at the university issued a statement which said that they "do not support the hypotheses of Professor Jones".
In its final report, NIST stated that it "found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to Sept. 11, 2001. NIST also did not find any evidence that missiles were fired at or hit the towers. Instead, photographs and videos from several angles clearly show that the collapse initiated at the fire and impact floors and that the collapse progressed from the initiating floors downward until the dust clouds obscured the view" and posted an FAQ about related issues on its website in August 2006. Allegations of controlled demolition have been found to be devoid of scientific merit by mainstream engineering scholarship. The magazine Popular Mechanics also found the theories lacked scientific support in its special report "Debunking the 9/11 Myths".
Articles, letters and comments by controlled demolition advocates have been published in scientific and engineering journals. In April 2008, a letter titled "Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction," was published by Steven E. Jones, Frank Legge, Kevin Ryan, Anthony Szamboti and James Gourley in The Open Civil Engineering Journal. A few months later, in July 2008, an article titled "Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials," was published by Ryan, Gourley and Jones in the Environmentalist. Later that same year, in October 2008, the Journal of Engineering Mechanics published a comment by chemical engineer and attorney James R. Gourley, in which he describes what he considered fundamental errors in a 2007 paper on the mechanics of progressive collapse by Bažant and Verdure. In the same issue, Bažant and Le rebutted Gourley's arguments, finding his criticisms scientifically incorrect. They suggested future critics should "become acquainted with the relevant material from an appropriate textbook on structural mechanics" or risk "misleading and wrongly influencing the public with incorrect information."
In April 2009, Danish chemist Niels H. Harrit, of the University of Copenhagen, and eight other authors published a paper in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, titled, "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe." The paper concludes that chips consisting of unreacted and partially reacted super-thermite, or nano-thermite, appear to be present in samples of the dust. The editor in chief of the publication subsequently resigned.
Internet websites and videos have contributed to the growth of the movement of individuals supporting the theory that planted explosives destroyed the World Trade Center. The website of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth cites the membership of over 2,400 architects and engineers. The controlled demolition theory often includes allegations that U.S. government insiders planned and / or participated in the destruction of the WTC in order to justify the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. The theory features prominently in popular entertainment type movies, such as Loose Change, as well as documentaries such as 9/11: Blueprint for Truth, by San Francisco-area architect Richard Gage.
While mainstream press has a significant history of dismissing conspiracy theories (i.e., in 2006, the magazine New York reported that a "new generation of conspiracy theorists is at work on a secret history of New York's most terrible day."), the theory has been supported by a number of popular actors, musicians and politicians, including Charlie Sheen, Willie Nelson, former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura, talkshow host Rosie O'Donnell, and actors Ed Asner and Daniel Sunjata.
== Propositions and hypotheses ==
=== Main towers ===
On September 11, the North Tower (1 WTC) was hit by American Airlines Flight 11 and the South Tower (2 WTC) was hit by United Airlines Flight 175, both Boeing 767 aircraft. The South Tower collapsed 56 minutes after the impact, and the North Tower collapsed 102 minutes after. An investigation by NIST concluded that the collapse was caused by a combination of damage to support columns and fire insulation from the aircraft impacts and the weakening of columns and floors by jet fuel ignited fires. NIST also found "no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to September 11, 2001".
Jones, among others, points to many descriptions by individuals working on the WTC rubble pile suggesting the presence of molten steel in the pile and a stream of molten metal that poured out of the South Tower before it collapsed as evidence of temperatures beyond those produced by the fire. Jones has argued that the molten metal may have been elemental iron, a product of a thermite reaction. Jones and other researchers analyzed samples of dust from the World Trade Center buildings and reported their findings for evidence of nano-thermite in the dust. Jones informed NIST of his findings and NIST responded that there was no "clear chain of custody" proving that the dust indeed came from the WTC site. Jones invited NIST to conduct its own studies with dust under custody of NIST itself, but NIST has not done so.
NIST found that the condition of the steel in the wreckage of the towers does not provide conclusive information on the condition of the building before the collapse and concluded that the material coming from the South Tower was molten aluminum from the plane, which would have melted at lower temperatures than steel. NIST also pointed out that cutting through the vertical columns would require planting an enormous amount of explosives inconspicuously in highly secured buildings, then igniting it remotely while keeping it in contact with the columns. The Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center performed a test with conventional thermite and was unable to cut a vertical column, despite the column being much smaller than those used in the World Trade Center. Jones and others have responded that they do not believe that thermite was used, but rather a form of thermite called nano-thermite, a nanoenergetic material developed for military use, propellants, explosives, or pyrotechnics. Historically, explosive applications for traditional thermites have been limited by their relatively slow energy release rates. But because nano-thermites are created from reactant particles with proximities approaching the atomic scale, energy release rates are far improved.
The NIST report provides an analysis of the structural response of the building only up to the point where collapse begins, and asserts that the enormous kinetic energy transferred by the falling part of the building makes progressive collapse inevitable once an initial collapse occurs. A paper by Zdeněk Bažant indicates that once collapse began, the kinetic energy imparted by a falling upper section onto the floor below was an order of magnitude greater than that which the lower section could support.
Engineers who have investigated the collapses generally agree that controlled demolition is not required to understand the structural response of the buildings. While the top of one of the towers did tilt significantly, it could not ultimately have fallen into the street, they argue, because any such tilting would place sufficient stress on the lower story (acting as a pivot) that it would collapse long before the top had sufficiently shifted its center of gravity. Indeed, they argue, there is very little difference between progressive collapse with or without explosives in terms of the resistance that the structures could provide after collapse began. Controlled demolition of a building to code requires weeks of preparation, including laying large quantities of explosive and cutting through beams, which would have rendered the building highly dangerous and which would have to be done without attracting the attention of the thousands of people who worked in the building. Controlled demolition is traditionally done from the bottom of buildings rather than the top, although there are exceptions depending on structural design. There is little dispute that the collapse started high up at the point where the aircraft struck. Furthermore, any explosives would have to withstand the impact of the airliners.
Members of the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth have collected eyewitness accounts of flashes and loud explosions immediately before the fall. Eyewitnesses have repeatedly reported of explosions happening before the collapse of the WTC towers, and the organization "International Center for 9/11 Studies" has published videos obtained from NIST, together with indications about when such explosions could be heard. There are many types of loud sharp noises that are not caused by explosives, and seismographic records of the collapse do not show evidence of explosions. Jones and others have argued that horizontal puffs of smoke seen during the collapse of the towers would indicate that the towers had been brought down by controlled explosions. NIST attributes these puffs to air pressure, created by the decreasing volume of the falling building above, traveling down elevator shafts and exiting from the open elevator shaft doors on lower levels.
In September 2011, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who holds a PhD in Transportation Engineering and Planning, said that it would have been impossible for two jetliners to bring down the towers simply by hitting them and that some kind of planned explosion must have taken place. Al-Qaida sharply criticized Ahmadinejad in their English-language publication, Inspire, calling his assertions "a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence".
=== 7 World Trade Center ===
Proponents of World Trade Center controlled demolition theories allege that 7 World Trade Center—a 47-story skyscraper that stood across Vesey Street north of the main part of the World Trade Center site—was intentionally destroyed with explosives. Unlike the Twin Towers, 7 World Trade Center was not hit by a plane, although it was hit by debris from the Twin Towers and was damaged by fires which burned for seven hours, until it collapsed completely at about 5:20 p.m. on the evening of September 11 (a new building has been erected on the site of the old and opened in May 2006). Several videos of the collapse event exist in the public domain, thus enabling comparative analysis from different angles of perspective. Proponents typically say the collapse of 7 World Trade Center was not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report and that the federal body charged with investigating the event, NIST, required seven years to conduct its investigation and issue a report.
In November 2010, Fox News reporter Geraldo Rivera hosted members of a television ad campaign called "BuildingWhat?", a series of commercials in which 9/11 family members ask questions about 7 World Trade Center and call for an investigation into its collapse. Rivera called the television ads "not so easy to dismiss as those demonstrators were," and stated that, "If explosives were involved, that would mean the most obnoxious protesters in recent years ... were right." Days later, Rivera appeared on the program Freedom Watch with legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano on the Fox Business Network to discuss the BuildingWhat? TV ad campaign. Napolitano stated, "It's hard for me to believe that [7 World Trade Center] came down by itself. I was gratified to see Geraldo Rivera investigating it."
Some proponents of World Trade Center controlled demolition theories suggest that 7 WTC was demolished because it may have served as an operational center for the demolition of the Twin Towers, while others suggest that government insiders may have wanted to destroy key files held in the building pertaining to corporate fraud. The WTC buildings housed dozens of federal, state and local government agencies. According to a statement reported by the BBC, Loose Change film producer Dylan Avery thinks the destruction of the building was suspicious because it housed some unusual tenants, including a clandestine CIA office on the 25th floor, an outpost of the U.S. Secret Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and New York City's emergency command center. The former chief counter-terrorism adviser to the President, Richard Clarke, does not think that 7 WTC is mysterious, and said that anyone could have rented floor space in the building.
No other steel frame high rise has ever before collapsed because of a fire, although there have been previous cases of collapses or partial collapses of smaller steel buildings due to fire. However, the ability of such a building to be completely destroyed by fire would be demonstrated by the collapse of the Plasco Building in Tehran in 2017 and the Wilton Paes de Almeida Building in São Paulo, Brazil, the following year. In addition, NIST claims debris ejected during the collapse of 1 WTC caused significant structural damage in 7 WTC before the fire.
BBC News reported the collapse of 7 WTC twenty minutes before it actually fell. The BBC has stated that many news sources were reporting the imminent collapse of 7 WTC on the day of the attacks. Jane Standley, the reporter who announced the collapse prematurely, called it a "very small and very honest mistake" caused by her thinking on her feet after being confronted with a report she had no way of checking.
In the PBS documentary America Rebuilds, which aired in September 2002, Larry Silverstein, the owner of 7 WTC and leaseholder and insurance policy holder for the remainder of the WTC complex, recalled a discussion with the fire department in which doubts about containing the fires were expressed. Silverstein recalled saying, "We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it". "They made that decision to pull", he recalled, "and we watched the building collapse." Silverstein issued a statement that it was the firefighting team, not the building, that was to be pulled, contradicting theorists' allegation that "pull" was used in a demolition-related sense.
==== NIST report ====
In 2002, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began a general investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center but soon made a decision to focus first on the collapse of the Twin Towers. A draft version of its final report on the collapse of 7 WTC was released in August 2008. The agency has blamed the slowness of this investigation on the complexity of the computer model it used, which simulated the collapse from the moment it begins all the way to the ground; and NIST says the time taken on the investigation into 7 WTC is comparable to the time taken to investigate an aircraft crash. The agency also says another 80 boxes of documents related to 7 WTC were found and had to be analyzed. These delays fueled suspicion among those already questioning the validity of the September 11 attacks that the agency was struggling to come up with a plausible conclusion.
NIST released its final report on the collapse of 7 World Trade Center on November 20, 2008. Investigators used videos, photographs and building design documents to come to their conclusions. The investigation could not include physical evidence as the materials from the building lacked characteristics allowing them to be positively identified and were therefore disposed of prior to the initiation of the investigation. The report concluded that the building's collapse was due to the effects of the fires which burned for almost seven hours. The fatal blow to the building came when the 13th floor collapsed, weakening a critical steel support column that led to catastrophic failure, and extreme heat caused some steel beams to lose strength, causing further failures throughout the buildings until the entire structure succumbed. Also cited as a factor was the collapse of the nearby towers, which broke the city water main, leaving the sprinkler system in the bottom half of the building without water.
NIST considered the possibility that 7 WTC was brought down with explosives and concluded that a blast event did not occur, that the "use of thermite [...] to sever columns in 7 WTC on 9/11/01 was unlikely". The investigation cited as evidence the claim that no blast was audible on recordings of the collapse and that no blast was reported by witnesses, stating that it would have been audible at a level of 130-140 decibels at a distance of half a mile. Demolition proponents say eyewitnesses repeatedly reported explosions happening before the collapse of the towers, and have published videos obtained from NIST, together with indications about when such explosions could be heard in support of the sounds of explosions before collapse.
NIST also concluded that it is unlikely that the quantities of thermite needed could have been carried into the building undetected. Demolition advocates have responded that they do not claim that thermite was used, but rather that nano-thermite, far more powerful than thermite, was used. Finally, the NIST investigated and ruled out the theory that fires from the large amount of diesel fuel stored in the building caused the collapse.
==== UAF study ====
University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Professor of Civil Engineering J. Leroy Hulsey subsequently led a 4-year (2015–2019) investigation funded by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth titled "A Structural Reevaluation of the Collapse of World Trade Center 7", taking advantage of the improvement in computing resources since NIST's study. The UAF provides a 256 GB downloadable file that contains "All input data, results data, and simulations that were used or generated during this study." Hulsey's group concluded in their final report: The principal conclusion of our study is that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and private engineering firms that studied the collapse. The secondary conclusion of our study is that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.
== Criticism ==
The American Society of Civil Engineers Structural Engineering Institute issued a statement calling for further discussion of NIST's recommendations, and Britain's Institution of Structural Engineers published a statement in May 2002 welcoming the FEMA report, noting that the report expressed similar views to those held by its group of professionals.
Following the publication of Jones' paper "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?" Brigham Young University responded to Jones' "increasingly speculative and accusatory" statements by placing him on paid leave, and thereby stripping him of two classes, in September 2006, pending a review of his statements and research. Six weeks later, Jones retired from the university. The structural engineering faculty at the university issued a statement which said that they "do not support the hypotheses of Professor Jones". On September 22, 2005, Jones gave a seminar on his hypotheses to a group of his colleagues from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at BYU. According to Jones, all but one of his colleagues agreed after the seminar that an investigation was in order and the lone dissenter came to agreement with Jones' suggestions the next day.
Northwestern University Professor of Civil Engineering Zdeněk Bažant, who was the first to offer a published peer-reviewed theory of the collapses, wrote "a few outsiders claiming a conspiracy with planted explosives" as an exception. Bažant and Verdure trace such "strange ideas" to a "mistaken impression" that safety margins in design would make the collapses impossible. One of the effects of a more detailed modeling of the progressive collapse, they say, could be to "dispel the myth of planted explosives". Indeed, Bažant and Verdure have proposed examining data from controlled demolitions in order to better model the progressive collapse of the towers, suggesting that progressive collapse and controlled demolition are not two separate modes of failure (as the controlled-demolition conspiracy theory assumes).
Thomas Eagar, a professor of materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also dismissed the controlled-demolition conspiracy theory. Eagar remarked, "These people (in the 9/11 truth movement) use the 'reverse scientific method.' They determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn't fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion."
Regarding Jones' theory that nanothermite was used to bring down the towers, and the assertion that thermite and nanothermite composites were found in the dust and debris were found following the collapse of the three buildings, which was considered to be evidence that explosives brought down the buildings, Brent Blanchard, author of "A History of Explosive Demolition in America", states that questions about the viability of Jones' theories remain unanswered, such as the fact that no demolition personnel noticed any telltale signs of thermite during the eight months of debris removal following the towers' collapse. Blanchard also stated that a verifiable chain of possession needs to be established for the tested beams, which did not occur with the beams Jones tested, raising questions of whether the metal pieces tested could have been cut away from the debris pile with acetylene torches, shears, or other potentially contaminated equipment while on site, or exposed to trace amounts of thermite or other compounds while being handled, while in storage, or while being transferred from Ground Zero to memorial sites. Dave Thomas of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, noting that the residue in question was claimed to be thermitic because of its iron oxide and aluminum composition, pointed out that these substances are found in many items common to the towers. Thomas stated that in order to cut through a vertical steel beam, special high-temperature containment must be added to prevent the molten iron from dropping down, and that the thermite reaction is too slow for it to be practically used in building demolition. Thomas pointed out that when Jesse Ventura hired New Mexico Tech to conduct a demonstration showing nanothermite slicing through a large steel beam, the nanothermite produced copious flame and smoke but no damage to the beam, even though it was in a horizontal, and therefore optimal, position.
Preparing a building for a controlled demolition takes considerable time and effort. The tower walls would have had to be opened on dozens of floors. Thousands of pounds of explosives, fuses and ignition mechanisms would need to be sneaked past security and placed in the towers without the tens of thousands of people working in the World Trade Center noticing. Referring to a conversation with Stuart Vyse, a professor of psychology, an article in the Hartford Advocate asks, "How many hundreds of people would you need to acquire the explosives, plant them in the buildings, arrange for the airplanes to crash [...] and, perhaps most implausibly of all, never breathe a single word of this conspiracy?"
World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein said, "Hopefully this thorough report puts to rest the various 9/11 conspiracy theories, which dishonor the men and women who lost their lives on that terrible day." Upon presentation of the NIST's detailed report on the failure of Bldg. 7, Richard Gage, leader of the group Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth said, "How much longer do we have to endure the coverup of how Building 7 was destroyed?" in which Dr. S. Shyam Sunder, the lead NIST investigator said he could not explain why the skepticism would not die. "I am really not a psychologist," he said. "Our job was to come up with the best science."
James Quintiere, professor of fire protection engineering at the University of Maryland, who does not believe explosives brought down the towers, questioned how the agency came to its conclusions, remarking, "They don't have the expertise on explosives," though he adds that NIST wasted time employing outside experts to consider it.
== References ==
== External links ==
FEMA World Trade Center Building Performance Study
NIST and the World Trade Center
9/11 Commission Report
Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy theories and Controlled Demolition Myths
Journal of Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
Debunk 9/11 Myths, a Guide to 9/11 Facts, Myths, and Theories at the Wayback Machine (archived January 7, 2009)
Answering the questions of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
Journal of 9/11 Studies | Wikipedia/World_Trade_Center_controlled_demolition_conspiracy_theories |
A conspiracy theory exists which asserts that the conservative Cardinal Giuseppe Siri (then the Archbishop of Genoa) was elected pope in the 1958 papal conclave, taking the papal name Pope Gregory XVII, but that his election was suppressed. Siri did not associate himself with this idea.
Exponents of this theory claim that a prolonged emission of white smoke on the first day of balloting at the conclave indicated the election of Siri but that threats applied from outside the conclave caused his election to be reversed, allowing Pope John XXIII to be elected two days later. The source of the threats has been variously identified as Jews and Freemasons, or the Soviet Union. Adherents of the theory say that the election of John XXIII was invalid. They regard him and his successors as imposters and antipopes.
== 1958 conclave ==
On 25 October 1958, 51 cardinals entered the papal conclave, which was held to elect a successor to Pope Pius XII. Cardinal Siri, then 52 years old, was considered a strong candidate in the election. Siri was viewed then, and throughout his life, as staunchly conservative. At 11:53 a.m. on the morning of 26 October, the first day of balloting, white smoke was seen coming from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, a traditional signal to the crowds in the square outside that a pope has been elected. It was followed after a few minutes by black smoke. The Italian radio network and the Italian news agency had to retract their initial reports that a pope had been elected. At 5:53 p.m., white smoke again appeared to come from the chimney, and this time it did not quickly turn black. At 6 p.m., after the smoke had continued white for several minutes, Vatican Radio told the world: "The smoke is white... There is absolutely no doubt. A Pope has been elected." After about half an hour, the smoke turned black, indicating that there was no result. Vatican Radio corrected its report. The New York Times reported: "The crowd lingered for more than a half hour, apparently hoping against hope that a new Pope would appear." The paper further reported that problems getting the straw to catch fire likely caused the morning’s problem and added: "The second signal was misunderstood because it came well after nightfall. The smoke was lighted from below by a spotlight, which made black appear white."
The official responsible for arrangements outside the conclave notified the cardinals that the colour of the smoke had been misread and provided them with "smoke torches from a fireworks factory". The third day's four ballots again failed to select a pope and there was no confusion about the colour of the smoke. On the afternoon of the next day, 28 October, white smoke signalled the election of a pope. On their eleventh ballot the conclave had elected Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, who took the name John XXIII.
While considered a favourite for election before the conclave, Siri did not feature in the early voting, and ultimately was never in the running. He was thought too young at 52; a long pontificate would have been anticipated, and this was allegedly felt to be undesirable because a long pontificate would have prevented other cardinals who wanted to be elected pope from having the chance of being elected.
== History of the theory ==
Sometime in the late 1980s, an American traditionalist Catholic named Gary Giuffré began to expound the belief that Siri was the true pope, and that he was being held against his will in Rome. According to Giuffré and supporters of the theory, the white smoke that was seen on 26 October 1958 did indeed mean that a pope had been elected, and that pope was Siri, but he was forced to surrender the papacy in the face of dire threats from outside the conclave (Giuffré wrote in 2015 that the threat was that Rome would be destroyed with a nuclear weapon). With the electors unsure of how to proceed, Roncalli, who they claim was a Freemason, supposedly offered himself as a compromise with the promise that he would call a synod soon after his election to regularize the unusual situation. Roncalli was elected as John XXIII instead of Siri. The theory further claims that a similar process occurred at the 1963 papal conclave that followed John XXIII's death. Once again white smoke was seen indicating that Siri had been elected, and again it turned black, and under threats from outside the conclave a different cardinal was elected, Giovanni Montini, who took the name Paul VI. During this conclave, it was alleged that the threats of terrible retribution if Siri were elected were passed into the conclave by the B'nai B'rith, working on behalf of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy.
The assertion that Siri's 1963 election had been set aside after the intervention of the B'nai B'rith was contained in an article written in 1986 by Louis Hubert Remy in the French publication Sous la Bannière and translated into English in 1987 for Dan Jones's newsletter The Sangre de Cristo Newsnotes. That article made no mention of the 1958 conclave.
In his apocalyptic 1990 book The Keys of This Blood, Irish-American Catholic priest Malachi Martin said that in the 1963 conclave Siri received sufficient votes for election but refused it. According to Martin, the reason was that he believed that "only thus could foreseen possibilities of grave danger be avoided—but whether harm to the Church, his family, or to him personally, is not clear", and Siri's refusal followed a conversation on the subject of Siri's candidacy between a member of the conclave and somebody outside it, who was "an emissary of an internationally based organisation". In a 1997 interview on the radio programme Steel on Steel, hosted by John Loefller, Martin claimed that Siri had also obtained a majority of votes in the August 1978 papal conclave but that he had received a written note after his election threatening him and his family with death should he accept. Followers of the theory recognize him as "Gregory XVII", and also refer to him as "the Red Pope".
In his 2003 book The Vatican Exposed, Paul L. Williams claimed that United States State Department documents confirmed that Siri had been elected pope in 1958 as Gregory XVII. According to Williams, the election was quashed not by a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy but by fear of the Soviet Union. He argued that Roncalli was known as the "pink priest" because of his ties with both the French and Italian Communist parties, while Siri was "rabidly anti-Communist". Siri received the requisite number of votes on the third ballot and was elected as Gregory XVII but "the French cardinals annulled the results, claiming that the election would cause widespread riots and the assassination of several prominent bishops behind the Iron Curtain." It was then decided to elect Cardinal Federico Tedeschini but as he was too ill, Roncalli was elected instead. Williams cited "Department of State secret dispatch, 'John XXIII,' issue date: November 20, 1958, declassified: November 11, 1974" and "Department of State secret file, 'Cardinal Siri,' issue date: April 10, 1961, declassified: February 28, 1994" in support of his claims. In subsequent editions, the references were changed to simply "F.B.I. source".
== Significance ==
Traditionalist Catholics oppose the liturgical changes and perceived modernist theological positions resulting from the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which many of them see as a heretical council. Sedevacantists are a minority group within traditionalist Catholicism who maintain that none of the popes from John XXIII (who called the council) onward were true popes, and that therefore the papal seat is vacant (Latin: sede vacante). The idea that John XXIII and Paul VI were not true popes but antipopes is neatly explained by the Siri theory: if Siri was elected in 1958, then the election of John, and therefore of all his successors, was invalid. The Catholic magazine Inside the Vatican has referred to adherents of the Siri theory as "sede impeditists", meaning that they believe there was a true pope but that he was "impeded" by outside forces from taking his office. The magazine estimated that the theory was believed "by hundreds, perhaps thousands of people around the world".
== Siri's later career ==
Siri is not recorded as ever having made reference to the theory, and there was not any mention of it in his New York Times obituary, in the biography written by Raimondo Spiazzi, or in a speech given by Giulio Andreotti on the centenary of Siri's birth in 2006. He was appointed president of the Italian Episcopal Conference by John XXIII in 1959, and remained in the post under Paul VI until 1964. He sat on the Board of Presidency of the Second Vatican Council from 1963 until its close in 1965. He was a candidate for pope in the 1978 conclave that followed the death of Paul VI, where he is thought to have led in the early ballots before being overtaken by Albino Luciani (John Paul I), and again two months later in the October 1978 papal conclave, where he is also thought to have come within a few votes of election. He was Archbishop of Genoa from 1946 to 1987, and at the time of his retirement he was "the last remaining active cardinal named by Pope Pius XII".
== See also ==
Benevacantism
== References == | Wikipedia/Papal_election_of_Giuseppe_Siri_theory |
The Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory is an unproven conspiracy theory alleging that U.S. government officials had advance knowledge of Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Starting from shortly after the attack, there has been debate as to what extent the United States was caught off guard, and how much and when American officials knew of Japanese plans for an attack. Several writers, including journalist Robert Stinnett, retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Robert Alfred Theobald, and Harry Elmer Barnes, have argued that various parties high in the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom knew of the attack in advance and may even have let it happen or encouraged it in order to ensure America’s entry into the European theater of World War II via a Japanese–American war started at "the back door", despite the fact Germany and Italy were not obliged to assist Japan in the event of aggression against another power.
The Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory is rejected by most historians as a fringe theory, citing several key discrepancies and reliance on dubious sources.
== Ten official U.S. inquiries ==
In September 1944, John T. Flynn, a co-founder of the non-interventionist America First Committee, launched a Pearl Harbor counter-narrative when he published a 46-page booklet entitled The Truth about Pearl Harbor, arguing that Roosevelt and his inner circle had been plotting to provoke the Japanese into an attack on the U.S. and thus provide a reason to enter the war since January 1941. Flynn was a political opponent of Roosevelt, and had strongly criticized him for both his domestic and foreign policies. In 1944, a congressional investigation conducted by both major political parties provided little by way of vindication for his assertions, despite Flynn being chief investigator.
The U.S. government made nine official inquiries into the attack between 1941 and 1946, and a tenth in 1995. They included an inquiry by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox (1941); the Roberts Commission (1941–42); the Hart Inquiry (1944); the Army Pearl Harbor Board (1944); the Naval Court of Inquiry (1944); the Hewitt investigation; the Clarke investigation; the Congressional Inquiry (Pearl Harbor Committee; 1945–46); a top-secret inquiry by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, authorized by Congress and carried out by Henry Clausen (the Clausen Inquiry; 1946); and the Thurmond-Spence hearing, in April 1995, which produced the Dorn Report. The inquiries reported incompetence, underestimation, and misapprehension of Japanese capabilities and intentions; problems resulting from excessive secrecy about cryptography; division of responsibility between Army and Navy (and lack of consultation between them); and lack of adequate manpower for intelligence (analysis, collection, processing).
Investigators prior to Clausen did not have the security clearance necessary to receive the most sensitive information, as Brigadier General Henry D. Russell had been appointed guardian of the pre-war decrypts, and he alone held the combination to the storage safe. Clausen claimed, in spite of Secretary Stimson having given him a letter informing witnesses he had the necessary clearances to require their cooperation, he was repeatedly lied to until he produced copies of top secret decrypts, thus proving he indeed had the proper clearance.
Stimson's report to Congress, based on Clausen's work, was limited due to secrecy concerns, largely about cryptography. A more complete account was not made publicly available until the mid-1980s, and not published until 1992 as Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement. Reaction to the 1992 publication has varied. Some regard it as a valuable addition to understanding the events, while one historian noted Clausen did not speak to General Walter Short, Army commander at Pearl Harbor during the attack, and called Clausen's investigation "notoriously unreliable" in several respects.
== Diplomatic situation ==
Some authors argue that President Roosevelt was actively provoking Japan in the weeks prior to the Pearl Harbor attack. These authors assert that Roosevelt was imminently expecting and seeking war, but wanted Japan to take the first overtly aggressive action.
=== Statements by high-ranking officials ===
One perspective is given by Rear Admiral Frank Edmund Beatty Jr., who at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack was an aide to the Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and was very close to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's inner circle, remarked that:
Prior to December 7, it was evident even to me... that we were pushing Japan into a corner. I believed that it was the desire of President Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Churchill that we get into the war, as they felt the Allies could not win without us and all our efforts to cause the Germans to declare war on us failed; the conditions we imposed upon Japan—to get out of China, for example—were so severe that we knew that nation could not accept them. We were forcing her so severely that we could have known that she would react toward the United States. All her preparations in a military way — and we knew their over-all import — pointed that way.
Another "eyewitness viewpoint" akin to Beatty's is provided by Roosevelt's administrative assistant at the time of Pearl Harbor, Jonathan Daniels; it was a comment about FDR's reaction to the attack – "The blow was heavier than he had hoped it would necessarily be. ... But the risks paid off; even the loss was worth the price. ..."
"Ten days before the attack on Pearl Harbor", Henry L. Stimson, United States Secretary of War at the time, "entered in his diary the famous and much-argued statement – that he had met with President Roosevelt to discuss the evidence of impending hostilities with Japan, and the question was 'how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.'" However Stimson, in reviewing his diary after the war, recalled that the commanders at Pearl Harbor had been warned of the possibility of attack, and that the poor state of readiness that the attack had revealed was a surprise to him:[Yet] General Short had been told the two essential facts: 1) a war with Japan is threatening, 2) hostile action by Japan is possible at any moment. Given these two facts, both of which were stated without equivocation in the message of Nov. 27, the outpost commander should be on the alert to make his fight ...
To cluster his airplanes in such groups and positions that in an emergency they could not take the air for several hours, and to keep his antiaircraft ammunition so stored that it could not be promptly and immediately available, and to use his best reconnaissance system, radar, only for a very small fraction of the day and night, in my opinion betrayed a misconception of his real duty which was almost beyond belief. ...
Robert Stinnett's Day of Deceit suggests a memorandum prepared by Commander McCollum was central to U.S. policy in the immediate pre-war period. Stinnett claims the memo suggests only a direct attack on U.S. interests would sway the American public (or Congress) to favor direct involvement in the European war, specifically in support of the British. An attack by Japan would not, could not, aid Britain. Although the memo was passed to Captains Walter Anderson and Dudley Knox, two of Roosevelt's military advisors, on October 7, 1940, there is no evidence to suggest Roosevelt ever saw it, while Stinnett's claims of evidence he did is nonexistent. Moreover, although Anderson and Knox offered eight specific plans to aggrieve the Japanese Empire and added, "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better," of the eight "plans" (actions to be taken) offered in the memo, many if not all were implemented, but there is considerable doubt the McCollum memo was the inspiration. Nonetheless, in Day of Deceit Stinnett claims all action items were implemented. Yet there were numerous instances of members of the Roosevelt Administration insisting on not provoking Japan. Mark Parillo, in his essay The United States in the Pacific, wrote, "[t]hese theories tend to founder on the logic of the situation. Had Roosevelt and other members of his administration known of the attack in advance, they would have been foolish to sacrifice one of the major instruments needed to win the war just to get the United States into it." Furthermore, on November 5, 1941, in a joint memo, Stark, CNO, and Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, warned, "if Japan be defeated and Germany remain undefeated, decision will still not have been reached.... War between the United States and Japan should be avoided...." Additionally, in a November 21, 1941, memo, Brigadier Leonard T. Gerow, head of Army War Plans, stated, "one of our present major objectives [is] the avoidance of war with Japan...[and to] insure continuance of material assistance to the British." He concluded, "[I]t is of grave importance to our war effort in Europe..." Furthermore, Churchill himself, in a May 15, 1940, telegram, said he hoped a U.S. commitment to aid Britain would "quiet" Japan, following with a October 4 message requesting a USN courtesy visit to Singapore aimed at "preventing the spreading of the war" And Stark's own Plan Dog expressly stated, "Any strength that we might send to the Far East would...reduce the force of our blows against Germany..." Roosevelt could scarcely have been ignorant of Stark's views, and war with Japan was clearly contrary to Roosevelt's express wish to aid Britain.
Oliver Lyttelton, the British Minister of War Production, said, "... Japan was provoked into attacking the Americans at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history ever to say that America was forced into the war. Everyone knows where American sympathies were. It is incorrect to say that America was truly neutral even before America came into the war on an all-out basis." How this demonstrates anything with regard to Japan is unclear. Rather, it refers to other aid to Britain. Lend-Lease, enacted in March 1941, informally declared the end of American neutrality in favor of the Allies by agreeing to supply Allied nations with war materials. In addition, Roosevelt authorized a so-called Neutrality Patrol, which would protect the merchantmen of one nation, namely Britain, from attack by another, Germany. This made shipping legitimate target of attack by submarine. Furthermore, Roosevelt ordered U.S. destroyers to report U-boats, then later authorized them to "shoot on sight". This made the U.S. a de facto belligerent. None was the act of a disinterested neutral, while all are unquestionably of assistance to Britain.
When considering information like this as a point for or against, the reader must keep in mind questions such as: was this official privy to information about the U.S. government? Did he have communications with high-level administration figures such as President Roosevelt or Ambassador Joseph Grew? Is this just a strongly held personal opinion? Or were there measures justifying this view? If Britain, did, indeed know and chose to conceal, "withholding this vital intelligence only ran the risk of losing American trust", and with it any further American aid, which would be reduced after the attack in any event.
There is also a claim, first asserted in John Toland's Infamy, that ONI knew about Japanese carrier movements. Toland cited entries from the diary of Rear Admiral J. E. Meijer Ranneft of the Dutch Navy for December 2 and 6. Ranneft attended briefings at ONI on these dates. According to Toland, Ranneft wrote that he was told by ONI that two Japanese carriers were northwest of Honolulu. However, the diary uses the Dutch abbreviation beW, meaning "westerly", contradicting Toland's claim. Nor did any other persons present at the briefings report hearing Toland's version. In their reviews of Infamy, David Kahn and John C. Zimmerman suggested Ranneft's reference was to carriers near the Marshall Islands. Toland has made other conflicting and incorrect claims about the diary during lectures at the Holocaust denial organization the Institute for Historical Review.
The diary states at 02:00 (6-12-41) Turner fears a sudden Japanese attack on Manila. At 14:00 the diary states "Everyone present on O.N.I. I speak to Director Admiral Wilkinson, Captain MacCollum, Lt. Cdr. Kramer ... They show me – on my request – the place of the 2 carriers (see 2–12–41) West of Honolulu. I ask what the idea is of these carriers on that place. The answer was: 'perhaps in connection with Japanese rapports [sic] on eventual American actions'. There is not one of ours who speaks about a possible air attack on Honolulu. I myself did not think of it because I believed everyone on Honolulu to be 100% on the alert, as everyone here on O.N.I. There prevails a tense state of mind at O.N.I." These diary entries are provided (in Dutch) in the photo section in George Victor's The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable.
CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow had a dinner appointment at the White House on December 7. Because of the attack he and his wife only ate with Mrs. Roosevelt, but the president asked Murrow to stay afterwards. As he waited outside the Oval Office, Murrow observed government and military officials entering and leaving. He wrote after the war:
There was ample opportunity to observe at close range the bearing and expression of Mr. Stimson, Colonel Knox, and Secretary Hull. If they were not surprised by the news from Pearl Harbor, then that group of elderly men were putting on a performance which would have excited the admiration of any experienced actor. … It may be that the degree of the disaster had appalled them and that they had known for some time…. But I could not believe it then and I cannot do so now. There was amazement and anger written large on most of the faces.
One historian has written, however, that when Murrow met Roosevelt with William J. Donovan of the OSS that night, while the magnitude of the destruction at Pearl Harbor horrified the president, Roosevelt seemed slightly less surprised by the attack than the other men. According to Murrow, the president told him, "Maybe you think [the attack] didn't surprise us!" He said later, "I believed him", and thought that he might have been asked to stay as a witness. When allegations of Roosevelt's foreknowledge appeared after the war, John Gunther asked Murrow about the meeting. Murrow reportedly responded the full story would pay for his son's college education and "if you think I'm going to give it to you, you're out of your mind". Murrow did not write the story, however, before his death.
British-Australian author Jesse Fink asserts in his 2023 biography of MI6 intelligence officer Dick Ellis that Roosevelt knew an attack would be forthcoming. Ellis helped William Donovan set up the Office of Strategic Services and was deputy to William Stephenson at British Security Co-ordination.
In Fink's book, The Eagle in the Mirror, Ellis is quoted as saying: ‘[Stephenson] was convinced from the information that was reaching him that this attack was imminent, and through Jimmy Roosevelt, President Roosevelt’s son, he passed this information to the President. Now whether the President at that time had other information which corroborated this... it’s impossible to say.'
=== McCollum memo ===
On October 7, 1940, Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum of the Office of Naval Intelligence submitted a memo to Navy Captains Walter S. Anderson and Dudley Knox, which details eight actions which might have the effect of provoking Japan into attacking the United States. The memo remained classified until 1994 and contains the notable line, "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better."
Sections 9 and 10 of the memo are said by Gore Vidal to be the "smoking gun" revealed in Stinnett's book, suggesting it was central to the high-level plan to lure the Japanese into an attack. Evidence the memo or derivative works actually reached President Roosevelt, senior administration officials, or the highest levels of U.S. Navy command, is circumstantial, at best.
=== Roosevelt's desire for war with Germany ===
Theorists challenging the traditional view that Pearl Harbor was a surprise repeatedly note that Roosevelt wanted the U.S. to intervene in the war against Germany, though he did not say so officially. A basic understanding of the political situation of 1941 precludes any possibility the public wanted war. Thomas Fleming argued President Roosevelt wished for Germany or Japan to strike the first blow, but did not expect the United States to be hit as severely as it was in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
An attack by Japan on the U.S. could not guarantee the U.S. would declare war on Germany. After such an attack, American public anger would be directed at Japan, not Germany, just as happened. The Tripartite Pact (Germany, Italy, Japan) called for each to aid another in defense; Japan could not reasonably claim America had attacked Japan if she struck first. For instance, Germany had been at war with the UK since 1939, and with the USSR since June 1941, without Japanese assistance. There had been a serious, if low-level, naval war going on in the Atlantic between Germany and the U.S. since summer of 1941, as well. On October 17 a U-boat torpedoed a U.S. destroyer, USS Kearny, inflicting severe damage and killing eleven crewmen. Two weeks after the attack on the Kearny, a submarine sank an American destroyer, USS Reuben James, killing 115 sailors. Nevertheless, it was only Hitler's declaration of war on December 11, unforced by treaty, that brought the U.S. into the European war.
Clausen and Lee's Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement reproduces a Purple message, dated November 29, 1941, from the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin to Tokyo. A closing paragraph reads, "... He (Ribbentrop) also said that if Japan were to go to war with America, Germany would, of course, join in immediately, and Hitler's intention was that there should be absolutely no question of Germany making a separate peace with England. ..."
While theorists who challenge the conventional view that the attack was a surprise treat this as a guarantee to join after Japan's attack, it can as easily be taken as a guarantee to come to Japan's aid, as Germany had done for Italy in Libya.
== Assertions that Japanese codes had already been broken ==
U.S. signals intelligence in 1941 was both impressively advanced and uneven. In 1929, the U.S. MI-8 cryptographic operation in New York City was shut down by Henry Stimson (Hoover's newly appointed Secretary of State), citing "ethical considerations", which inspired its former director, Herbert Yardley, to write a 1931 book, The American Black Chamber, about its successes in breaking other nations' crypto traffic. Most countries responded promptly by changing (and generally improving) their ciphers and codes, forcing other nations to start over in reading their signals. The Japanese were no exception.
Nevertheless, U.S. cryptanalytic work continued after Stimson's action in two separate efforts: the Army's Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) crypto group, OP-20-G. Cryptanalytic work was kept secret to such an extent, however, that major commands such as the 14th Naval District at Pearl Harbor were prohibited from working on codebreaking by Admiral Kelly Turner.
By late 1941, those organizations had broken several Japanese ciphers, such as J19 and PA-K2, called Tsu and Oite respectively by the Japanese. The highest security diplomatic code, dubbed Purple by the U.S., had been broken, but American cryptanalysts had made little progress against the IJN's current Kaigun Ango Sho D (Naval Code D, called AN-1 by the U.S.; JN-25 after March 1942).
In addition, there was a perennial shortage of manpower, thanks to penury on one hand and the perception of intelligence as a low-value career path on the other. Translators were over-worked, cryptanalysts were in short supply, and staffs were generally stressed. In 1942, "Not every cryptogram was decoded. Japanese traffic was too heavy for the undermanned Combat Intelligence Unit." Furthermore, there were difficulties retaining good intelligence officers and trained linguists; most did not remain on the job for the extended periods necessary to become truly professional. For career reasons, nearly all wanted to return to more standard assignments. However, concerning the manning levels, "... just prior to World War II, [the US] had some 700 people engaged in the effort and [was], in fact, obviously having some successes." Of these, 85% were tasked to decryption and 50% to translation efforts against IJN codes. The nature and degree of these successes has led to great confusion among non-specialists. Furthermore, OP-20-GY "analysts relied as much on summary reports as on the actual intercepted messages."
The U.S. was also given decrypted messages by Dutch (NEI) intelligence, who like the others in the British–Dutch–U.S. agreement to share the cryptographic load, shared information with allies. However, the U.S. refused to do likewise. This was, at least in part, due to fears of compromise; sharing even between the US Navy and Army was restricted (e.g see Central Bureau). The eventual flow of intercepted and decrypted information was tightly and capriciously controlled. At times, even President Roosevelt did not receive all information from code-breaking activities. There were fears of compromise as a result of poor security after a memo dealing with Magic was found in the desk of Brigadier General Edwin M. (Pa) Watson, the President's military aide.
=== Purple ===
The Japanese code dubbed "Purple", which was used by the Japanese Foreign Office and only for diplomatic (but not for military) messages, was broken by Army cryptographers in 1940. A 14-part message using this code, sent from Japan to its embassy in Washington, was decoded in Washington on December 6 and 7. The message, which made plain the Japanese intention to break off diplomatic relations with the United States, was to be delivered by the Japanese ambassador at 1 p.m. Washington time (dawn in the Pacific). The SIS decoded the first 13 parts of the message, but did not decode the 14th part of the message until it was too late. Colonel Rufus S. Bratton, then serving as Chief of the Far Eastern Section of G-2 (intelligence), was responsible for receiving and distributing Magic intercepts to senior military and government officials. In Bratton's view, the 14-part message by itself merely signaled a break in diplomatic relations, which appeared to be inevitable anyway. Others saw it differently: Roosevelt, upon reviewing just the first 13-parts (and without part 14 or the 1 p.m. delivery requirement) declared "this means war", and when Marshall was given the intercept on the morning of December 7, ordered a warning message sent to American bases in the area, including Hawaii. Due to atmospheric transmission conditions the message was sent out via Western Union over its undersea cable rather than over the military radio channels; the message was not received until the attack was already underway.
The claim no pre-attack IJN message expressly mentioned Pearl Harbor is perhaps true. The claims that no Purple traffic pointed to Pearl Harbor may also be true, as the Japanese Foreign Office was not well thought of by the military and during this period was routinely excluded from sensitive or secret material, including war planning. It is also possible any such intercepts were not translated until after the attack, or indeed, after the war ended; some messages were not. In both instances, all traffic from these pre-attack intercepts has not yet been declassified and released to the public domain. Hence, any such claims are now indeterminate, pending a fuller accounting.
Additionally, no decrypts have come to light of JN-25B traffic with any intelligence value prior to Pearl Harbor, and certainly no such has been identified. Such breaks as recorded by authors W. J. Holmes and Clay Blair Jr., were into the additive tables, which was a required second step of three (see above). The first 100 JN-25 decrypts from all sources in date/time order of translation have been released, and are available in the National Archives. The first JN-25B decrypt was in fact by HYPO (Hawaii) on January 8, 1942 (numbered #1 up JN-25B RG38 CNSG Library, Box 22, 3222/82 NA CP). The first 25 decrypts were very short messages or partial decrypts of marginal intelligence value. As Whitlock stated, "The reason that not one single JN-25 decrypt made prior to Pearl Harbor has ever been found or declassified is not due to any insidious cover-up... it is due quite simply to the fact that no such decrypt ever existed. It simply was not within the realm of our combined cryptologic capability to produce a usable decrypt at that particular juncture."
=== JN-25 ===
The JN-25 superencrypted code, and its cryptanalysis by the US, is one of the most debated portions of Pearl Harbor lore. JN-25 is the U.S. Navy's last of several names for the cryptosystem of the Imperial Japanese Navy, sometimes referred to as Naval Code D. Other names used for it include five-numeral, 5Num, five-digit, five-figure, AN (JN-25 Able), and AN-1 (JN-25 Baker), and so on.
Superenciphered codes of this sort were widely used and were the state of the art in practical cryptography at the time. JN-25 was very similar in principle to the British "Naval Cypher No. 3", known to have been broken by Germany during World War II.
Once it was realized what sort of cryptosystem JN-25 was, how to attempt breaking into it was known. Stinnett notes the existence of a USN handbook for attacks on such a system, produced by OP-20-G. Even so, breaking any such code was not easy in actual practice. It took much effort and time, not least in accumulating sufficient 'cryptanalytic depth' in intercepted messages prior to the outbreak of hostilities when IJN radio traffic increased abruptly and substantially; prior to December 7, 1941, IJN radio traffic was limited, since the IJN played only a minor role in the war against China and therefore was only rarely required to send unencrypted radio messages whatever the highest level crypto system might have been; thus, most Japanese encrypted broadcast military radio traffic was Army traffic associated with the land operations in China, none of which used IJN cryptography (also, interception of IJN traffic off China would have been spotty at best). Rather oddly however, the official history of GYP-1 shows nearly 45,000 IJN messages intercepted during the period from June 1, 1941, until December 4, 1941.
Breaking a superencrypted cipher like JN-25 was a three-step process: (a) determining the "indicator" method to establish the starting point within the additive cipher, (b) stripping away the superencryption to expose the bare code, and then (c) breaking the code itself. When JN-25 was first detected and recognized, such intercepted messages as were interceptable were collected (at assorted intercept stations around the Pacific by the Navy) in an attempt to accumulate sufficient depth to attempt to strip away the superencryption. Success at doing so was termed by the cryptographers a 'break' into the system. Such a break did not always produce a cleartext version of the intercepted message; only a break in the third phase could do so. Only after breaking the underlying code (another difficult process) would the message be available, and even then its meaning—in an intelligence sense—might be less than fully clear.
When a new edition was released, the cryptographers were forced to start again. The original JN-25A system replaced the 'Blue' code (as Americans called it), and used five-digit numbers, each divisible by three (and so usable as a quick, and somewhat reliable, error check, as well as something of a 'crib' to cryptanalysts), giving a total of 33,334 legal code values. To make it harder to crack a code value, meaningless additives (from a large table or book of five-digit numbers) were added arithmetically to each five-digit cipher element. JN-25B superseded the first release of JN-25 at the start of December 1940. JN-25B had 55,000 valid words, and while it initially used the same additive list, this was soon changed and the cryptanalysts found themselves entirely locked out again.
Over the years, various claims have been made as to the progress made decrypting this system, and arguments made over when it was readable (in whole or part). Lt. "Honest John" Leitwiler, Commander of Station CAST, the Philippines, stated in November 1941 that his staff could "walk right across" the number columns of the coded messages. He is frequently quoted in support of claims JN-25 was then mostly readable. This comment, however, refers not to the message itself but to the superenciphering additives and referred to the ease of attacking the code using a new method for discovery of additive values.
The November 16, 1941, letter to L.W. Parks (OP-20-GY) sent by Leitwiler states, "We have stopped work on the period 1 February to 31 July as we have all we can do to keep up with the current period. We are reading enough current traffic to keep two translators very busy." Another document, Exhibit No. 151 (Memoranda from Captain L. F. Safford) from the Hewitt Inquiry has a copy of the U.S. Navy message OPNAV-242239 'Evaluation of Messages of November 26, 1941' which has in part: '1. Reference (a) advised that Com 16 intercepts were considered most reliable and requested Com 16 to evaluate reports on Japanese naval movements and send dispatch to OPNAV, info CINCPAC. Com 16's estimates were more reliable than Com 14's, not only because of better radio interception, but because Com 16 was currently reading messages in the Japanese Fleet Cryptographic System ("5-number code" or "JN25") and was exchanging technical information and Japanese-to-English translations with the British unit (the Far East Combined Bureau) then at Singapore. Lt. Cdr. Arthur H. McCollum was aware of this, and it may have been part of his thinking when he drafted the McCollum memo. Duane L. Whitlock, traffic analyst at CAST, was not aware before the attack IJN movement traffic code was being read. "Reading" in this context means being able to see the underlying code groups, not breaking out the messages into usable plaintext. The Hewitt Inquiry document also states, "The "5 numeral system" (JN-25B) yielded no information which would arouse even a suspicion of the Pearl Harbor raid, either before or afterward."
Detailed month by month progress reports have shown no reason to believe any JN-25B messages were fully decrypted before the start of the war. Tallied results for September, October, and November reveal roughly 3,800 code groups (out of 55,000, about 7%) had been recovered by the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. In all, the U.S. intercepted 26,581 messages in naval or related systems, not counting PURPLE, between September and December 1941 alone.
So convinced were U.S. Navy planners Japan could only stage a single operation at a time, after intercepts indicated a Japanese buildup for operations in the Dutch East Indies, for more than two weeks (between November 1 and 17), no JN-25 message not relating to that expected operation was even examined for intelligence value.
== Japanese intelligence ==
Japanese espionage against Pearl Harbor involved at least two Abwehr agents. One of them, Otto Kuhn, was a sleeper agent living in Hawaii with his family. Kuhn was incompetent and there is no evidence he provided information of value. The other, Yugoslavian businessman Duško Popov, was a double agent, working for the XX Committee of MI5. In August 1941, he was sent by the Abwehr to the U.S., with an assignment list that included specific questions about military facilities in Oahu, including Pearl Harbor. Although British Security Coordination introduced Popov to the FBI, the Americans seem to have paid little attention. It is possible that previous propaganda and forged or unreliable intelligence contributed to J. Edgar Hoover's dismissing Popov's interest in Pearl Harbor as unimportant. There is nothing to show his assignment list was passed on to military intelligence, nor was he allowed to visit Hawaii. Popov later asserted his list was a clear warning of the attack, ignored by the bungling FBI. The questions in his list were rambling and general, and in no way pointed to air attack on Pearl Harbor. Prange considered Popov's claim overblown, and argued the notorious questionnaire was a product of Abwehr thoroughness.
The Japanese navy realized that Kuhn was incompetent, but the issues were greater than that, and they concluded using non-Japanese for this kind of role was not a good idea to start with. In the two years before the attack, the FBI had caught an effort by Itaru Tachibana to send a ex-sailor named Alva Blake to Pearl Harbor to gather information, and they also had had their longer term agent Frederick Rutland spend two weeks looking around Hawaii.
The net was someone Japanese was needed, so at the comparatively late date of March 1941, IJN intelligence sent an undercover officer, Takeo Yoshikawa. The consulate had reported to IJN Intelligence for years, and Yoshikawa increased the rate of reports after his arrival. (Sometimes called a "master spy", he was in fact quite young, and his reports not infrequently contained errors.) Pearl Harbor base security was so lax Yoshikawa had no difficulty obtaining access, even taking the Navy's own harbor tourboat. (Even had he not, hills overlooking the Harbor were perfect for observation or photography, and were freely accessible.) Some of his information, and presumably other material from the Consulate, was hand-delivered to IJN intelligence officers aboard Japanese commercial vessels calling at Hawaii prior to the War; at least one is known to have been deliberately routed to Hawaii for this purpose during the summer. Most, however, seem to have been transmitted to Tokyo, almost certainly via cable (the usual communication method with Tokyo). Many of those messages were intercepted and decrypted by the U.S.; most were evaluated as routine intelligence gathering all nations do about potential opponents, rather than evidence of an active attack plan. None of those currently known, including those decrypted after the attack when there was finally time to return to those remaining undecrypted, explicitly stated anything about an attack on Pearl Harbor.
In November 1941, advertisements for a new board game called The Deadly Double appeared in American magazines. These ads later drew suspicion for possibly containing coded messages, for unknown agents, giving advance notice of the Pearl Harbor attack. The ads were headlined "Achtung, Warning, Alerte!" and showed an air raid shelter and a pair of white and black dice which, despite being six-sided, carried the figures 12, 24, and XX, and 5, 7, and 0, respectively. It was suggested that these could possibly be interpreted as giving warning of an air raid on day "7" of month "12" at approximate latitude coordinate "20" (Roman numeral "XX"). The board game was an actual product with sets sold during this time.
== Detection of Japanese radio transmissions en route ==
=== Alleged detection by SS Lurline ===
There are claims that, as the Kido Butai (the Striking Force) steamed toward Hawaii, radio signals were detected that alerted U.S. intelligence to the imminent attack. For instance, the Matson liner SS Lurline, heading from San Francisco to Hawaii on its regular route, is said to have heard and plotted, via "relative bearings", unusual radio traffic in a telegraphic code very different from International Morse which persisted for several days, and came from signal source(s) moving in an easterly direction, not from shore stations—possibly the approaching Japanese fleet. There are numerous Morse Code standards including those for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Greek. To the experienced radio operator, each has a unique and identifiable pattern. For example, kana, International Morse, and "Continental" Morse all have a specific rhythmic sound to the "dit" and "dah" combinations. This is how Lurline's radiomen, Leslie Grogan, a U.S. Navy reserve officer in naval communications, and with decades of maritime service in the Pacific identified the mooted signal source as Japanese and not, say, Russian.
There are several problems with this analysis. Surviving officers from the Japanese ships state there was no radio traffic to have been overheard by anyone: their radio operators had been left in Japan to send fake traffic, and all radio transmitters aboard the ships (even those in the airplanes) were physically disabled to prevent any inadvertent or unauthorized broadcast.
The Kido Butai was constantly receiving intelligence and diplomatic updates. Regardless of whether the Kido Butai broke radio silence and transmitted, there was a great deal of radio traffic picked up by its antennas. In that time period, it was known for a radio signal to reflect from the ionosphere (an atmospheric layer); ionospheric skip could result in its reception hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Receiving antennas were sometimes detected passively 'rebroadcasting' signals that reached them at much lower amplitudes, sufficiently low that the phenomenon was not of practical importance, nor even of much significance. Some have argued that, since the Kido Butai contained a large number of possible receiving antennas, it is conceivable the task force did not break radio silence but was detected anyway.
Such detection would not have helped the Americans track the Japanese fleet. A radio direction finder (DF or RDF) from that time period reported compass direction without reference to distance. (Moreover, it was common for the receiving stations to report erroneous reciprocal bearings.) To locate the source, a plotter needed two such detections taken from two separate stations to triangulate and find the target. If the target was moving, the detections must be close to one another in time. To plot the task force's course with certainty, at least four such detections must have been made in proper time-pairs, and the information analyzed in light of further information received by other means. This complex set of requirements did not occur; if the Kido Butai was detected, it was not tracked.
The original records of Lurline surrendered to Lt. Cmdr. George W. Pease, 14th Naval District in Honolulu, have disappeared. Neither Lurline's log, nor the reports to the Navy or Coast Guard by Grogan in Hawaii have been found. Thus no contemporaneously written evidence of what was recorded aboard Lurline is now available. Grogan commented on a signal source "moving" eastward in the North Pacific over several days as shown via "relative bearings" which then "bunched up" and stopped moving. However, the directions given by Grogan in a recreation of the logbook for the Matson Line were 18 and 44° off from known strike force positions and instead pointed towards Japan. According to author Jacobsen, Japanese commercial shipping vessels are the likely source. A re-discovered personal report written by Grogan after the radio log had been passed to the 13th Naval District, dated December 10, 1941, and titled "Record for Posterity", also does not support claims of Kido Butai broadcasting.
=== Other alleged detections ===
The contention that "low-powered" radio (such as VHF or what the U.S. Navy called TBS, or talk between ships), might have been used, and detected, is contradicted as impossible due to the tremendous distances involved and when contact was lost, it was routinely presumed it was because low-powered radio and land line were being used. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for specific RDF reports remain wanting. "A more critical analysis of the source documentation shows that not one single radio direction finder bearing, much less any locating "fix," was obtained on any Kido Butai unit or command during its transit from Saeki Bay, Kyushu to Hitokappu Bay and thence on to Hawaii. By removing this fallacious lynchpin propping up such claims of Kido Butai radio transmissions, the attendant suspected conspiracy tumbles down like a house of cards."
One suggested example of a Kido Butai transmission is the November 30, 1941, COMSUM14 report in which Rochefort mentioned a "tactical" circuit heard calling "marus". (a term often used for commercial vessels or non-combat units). Further, the perspective of U.S. naval intelligence at the time was, "... The significance of the term, 'tactical circuit' is that the vessel itself, that is Akagi, was using its own radio to call up the other vessels directly rather than work them through shore stations via the broadcast method which was the common practice in Japanese communications. The working of the Akagi with the Marus, indicated that she was making arrangements for fuel or some administrative function, since a carrier would rarely address a maru."
=== Japanese radio silence ===
According to a 1942 Japanese after action report, "In order to keep strict radio silence, steps such as taking off fuses in the circuit, and holding and sealing the keys were taken. During the operation, the strict radio silence was perfectly carried out... The Kido Butai used the radio instruments for the first time on the day of the attack since they had been fixed at the base approximately twenty days before and proved they worked well. Paper flaps had been inserted between key points of some transmitters on board Akagi to keep the strictest radio silence..." Commander Genda, who helped plan the attack, stated, "We kept absolute radio silence." For two weeks before the attack, the ships of Kido Butai used flag and light signals (semaphore and blinker), which were sufficient since task force members remained in line of sight for the entire transit time. Kazuyoshi Kochi, the communications officer for Hiei, dismantled vital transmitter parts and kept them in a box that he used as a pillow to prevent Hiei from making any radio transmissions until the attack commenced. Lieutenant Commander Chuichi Yoshioka, communications officer of the flagship, Akagi, said he did not recall any ship sending a radio message before the attack. Furthermore, Captain Kijiro, in charge of the Kido Butai's three screening submarines, stated nothing of interest happened on the way to Hawaii, presumably including signals received from the supposedly radio silent Kido Butai. Vice Admiral Ryūnosuke Kusaka stated, "It is needless to say that the strictest radio silence was ordered to be maintained in every ship of the Task Force. To keep radio silence was easy to say, but not so easy to maintain." There is nothing in the Japanese logs or after action report indicating that radio silence was broken until after the attack. Kusaka worried about this when it was briefly broken on the way home.
The appendix to the war-initiating operational order is also often debated. The message of November 25, 1941, from CinC Combined Fleet (Yamamoto) to All Flagships stated, "Ships of the Combined Fleet will observe radio communications procedure as follows: 1. Except in extreme emergency the Main Force and its attached force will cease communicating. 2. Other forces are at the discretion of their respective commanders. 3. Supply ships, repair ships, hospital ships, etc., will report directly to parties concerned." Furthermore, "In accordance with this Imperial Operational Order, the CinC of the Combined Fleet issued his operational order ... The Task Force then drew up its own operational order, which was given for the first time to the whole force at Hitokappu Bay... In paragraph four of the appendix to that document, the especially secret Strike Force was specifically directed to 'maintain strict radio silence from the time of their departure from the Inland Sea. Their communications will be handled entirely on the general broadcast communications net.'" In addition, Genda recalled, in a 1947 interview, Kido Butai's communications officer issuing this order, with the task force to rely (as might be expected) on flag and blinker.
== Radio deception measures ==
The Japanese practiced radio deception. Susumu Ishiguru, intelligence and communications officer for Carrier Division Two, stated, "Every day false communications emanated from Kyushu at the same time and same wavelength as during the training period." Because of this, Commander Joseph Rochefort of Hawaii Signals Intelligence concluded that the First Air Fleet remained in home waters for routine training. The ships left their own regular wireless operators behind to carry on "routine" radio traffic. Captain Sadatoshi Tomioka stated, "The main force in the Inland Sea and the land-based air units carried out deceptive communications to indicate the carriers were training in the Kyushu area." The main Japanese naval bases (Yokosuka, Kure, and Sasebo) all engaged in considerable radio deception. Analysis of the bearings from Navy DF stations account for claimed breaks of radio silence, and when plotted, the bearings point to Japanese naval bases, not where the Kido Butai actually was. On November 26, CAST reported all Japan's aircraft carriers were at their home bases.
Rochefort, with Huckins and Williams, states there were no dummy messages used at any time throughout 1941 and no effort by the Japanese to use serious deception.
When asked after the attack just how he knew where Akagi was, Rochefort (who commanded HYPO at the time) said he recognized her "same ham-fisted" radio operators. (The Japanese contend that radio operators were left behind as part of the deception operation.) The critical DF-tracked radio transmissions show bearings that could have not come from the strike force. Emissions monitored from CAST, or CAST's report Akagi was off Okinawa on December 8, 1941, are examples, though some transmissions continue to be debated.
To deceive radio eavesdroppers, IJN Settsu commanded by Captain Chiaki Matsuda sailed from Taiwan to the Philippines simulating radio traffic for all six fleet carriers of the 1st Air Fleet and two other light carriers.
== U.S. contact with Japanese submarines ==
A Japanese two-man "midget" submarine, one of five eventually discovered, was detected at 0342 in the sea lanes leading to Pearl Harbor, and sunk by the destroyer Ward outside the harbor entrance at 0645, just over an hour before the main Japanese air attack commenced. The detection of the submarine might have provided enough notice for the Americans to disperse aircraft and launch reconnaissance aircraft, however, the process of encoding the message and sending it from Ward's radio shack took valuable time, and the decoding process at CINCPACFLT would have added to the delay. It has been argued that the failure to investigate more thoroughly the threat of more midget subs saved Enterprise. If she had been correctly directed, she might have run into the six-carrier Japanese strike force.
After the attack, the search for the attack force was concentrated south of Pearl Harbor, continuing the confusion and ineffectiveness of the American response.
== Allied intelligence ==
Locally, Naval Intelligence in Hawaii had been tapping telephones at the Japanese Consulate before the 7th. Among much routine traffic was overheard a most peculiar discussion of flowers in a call to Tokyo (the significance of which is still publicly opaque and which was discounted in Hawaii at the time), but the Navy's tap was discovered and removed in the first week of December. The local FBI field office was informed of neither the tap nor its removal; the local FBI Agent in charge later claimed he would have had installed one of his own had he known the Navy's had been disconnected.
Throughout 1941, the U.S., Britain, and the Netherlands collected considerable evidence suggesting Japan was planning some new military venture. The Japanese attack on the U.S. in December was essentially a side operation to the main Japanese thrust to the South against Malaya and the Philippines—many more resources, especially Imperial Army resources, were devoted to these attacks as compared to Pearl Harbor. Many in the Japanese military (both Army and Navy) had disagreed with Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's idea of attacking the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor when it was first proposed in early 1941, and remained reluctant after the Navy approved planning and training for an attack beginning in spring 1941, and through the highest level Imperial Conferences in September and November which first approved it as policy (allocation of resources, preparation for execution), and then authorized the attack. The Japanese focus on Southeast Asia was quite accurately reflected in U.S. intelligence assessments; there were warnings of attacks against Thailand (the Kra Peninsula), Malaya, French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies (Davao-Weigo Line), the Philippines, even Russia. Pearl Harbor was not mentioned. In fact, when the final part of the "14-Part Message" (also called the "one o'clock message") crossed Kramer's desk, he cross-referenced the time (per usual practice, not the brainwave often portrayed) and tried to connect the timing to a Japanese convoy (the Thai invasion force) recently detected by Admiral Hart in the Philippines.
The U.S. Navy was aware of the traditional planning of the Imperial Japanese Navy for war with the U.S., as maintained throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. The Japanese made no secret of it, and in the 1930s American radio intelligence gave U.S. war planners considerable insight in Japanese naval exercises. These plans presumed there would be a large decisive battle between Japanese and U.S. battleships, but this would be fought near Japan, after the numerical superiority of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (assured by the Washington Naval Treaty, and still taken as given) was whittled down by primarily night attacks by light forces, such as destroyers and submarines. This strategy expected the Japanese fleet to take a defensive posture, awaiting U.S. attack, and it was confirmed by the Japanese Navy staff only three weeks before Pearl Harbor. In the 1920s, the decisive battle was supposed to happen near the Ryukyu islands; in 1940 it was expected to occur in the central Pacific, near the Marshall islands. War Plan Orange reflected this in its own planning for an advance across the Pacific. Yamamoto's decision to shift the focus of the confrontation with the U.S. as far east as Pearl Harbor, and to use his aircraft carriers to cripple the American battleships, was a radical enough departure from previous doctrine to leave analysts in the dark.
There had been a specific claim of a plan for an attack on Pearl Harbor from the Peruvian Ambassador to Japan in early 1941. (The source of this intelligence was traced to the Ambassador's Japanese cook. It was treated with skepticism, and properly so, given the nascent state of planning for the attack at the time and the unreliability of the source.) Since Yamamoto had not yet decided to even argue for an attack on Pearl Harbor, discounting Ambassador Grew's report to Washington in early 1941 was quite sensible. Later reports from a Korean labor organization also seem to have been regarded as unlikely, though they may have had better grounding in actual IJN actions. In August 1941, British Intelligence, MI6, dispatched its agent Duško Popov, code name Tricycle, to Washington to alert the FBI about German requests for detailed intelligence about defenses at Pearl Harbor, indicating that the request had come from Japan. Popov further revealed that the Japanese had requested detailed information about the British attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto. For whatever reason, the FBI took no action.
=== British advance knowledge and withholding claims ===
Several authors have controversially claimed that Winston Churchill had significant advance knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor but intentionally chose not to share this information with the Americans in order to secure their participation in the war. These authors allege that Churchill knew that the Japanese were planning an imminent attack against the United States by mid-November 1941. They furthermore claim that Churchill knew that the Japanese fleet was leaving port on November 26, 1941, to an unknown destination. Finally, they claim that on December 2, British intelligence intercepted Admiral Yamamoto's signal indicating December 7 as the day of an attack.
One story from author Constantine Fitzgibbon claimed that a letter received from Victor Cavendish-Bentinck stated that Britain's JIC met and discussed at length the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. From a Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee session of December 5, 1941 it was stated "We knew that they changed course. I remember presiding over a J.I.C. meeting and being told that a Japanese fleet was sailing in the direction of Hawaii, asking 'Have we informed our transatlantic brethren?' and receiving an affirmative reply." However the author was incorrect. There was no session on December 5 nor was Pearl Harbor discussed when they did meet on December 3.
== Official U.S. war warnings ==
In late November 1941, both the U.S. Navy and Army sent explicit warnings of war with Japan to all Pacific commands. On November 27 Washington sent a final alert to Pacific American military commanders, such as the message sent to Admiral Kimmel at Pearl Harbor, which read in part: "This dispatch is to be considered a war warning...an aggression move by Japan is expected within the next days." Although these plainly stated the high probability of imminent war with Japan, and instructed recipients to be accordingly on alert for war, they did not mention the likelihood of an attack on Pearl Harbor itself, instead focusing on the Far East. Washington forwarded none of the raw intelligence it had, and little of its intelligence estimates (after analysis), to commanders in Hawaii, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter C. Short. Washington did not solicit their views about likelihood of war or Hawaiian special concerns. Washington's war warning messages have also been criticized by some (e.g., the U.S. Army Pearl Harbor Board – "Do/Don't Messages") as containing "conflicting and imprecise" language.
Since the Army was officially responsible for the security of the Pearl Harbor facilities and Hawaiian defense generally, and so of the Navy's ships while in port, Army actions are of particular interest. Short reported to Washington he had increased his alert level (but his earlier change in meaning for those levels was not understood in Washington and led to misunderstanding there about what he was really doing). In addition, Short's main concern was sabotage from fifth columnists (expected to precede the outbreak of war for decades preceding the attack), which accounts for his orders that Army Air Corps planes be parked close together near the center of the airfields. There seems to have been no increased Army urgency about getting its existing radar equipment properly integrated with the local command and control in the year it had been available and operational in Hawaii before the attack. Leisurely radar training continued and the recently organized early warning center was left minimally staffed. Anti-aircraft guns remained in a state of low readiness, with ammunition in secured lockers. Neither Army long-range bombers nor Navy PBYs were used effectively, remaining on a peacetime maintenance and use schedule. Short evidently failed to understand he had the responsibility to defend the fleet. In Short's defense, it should be noted he had training responsibilities to meet, and the best patrol aircraft, B-17s and B-24s, were in demand in the Philippines and Britain, both of which had higher priority (he wanted at least 180 heavy bombers, but already had 35 B-17s, and was getting 12 more).
Little was done to prepare for air attack. Inter-service rivalries between Kimmel and Short did not improve the situation. In particular, most intelligence information was sent to Kimmel, assuming he would relay it to Short, and vice versa; this assumption was honored mostly in the breach. Hawaii did not have a Purple cipher machine (although, by agreement at the highest levels between U.S. and UK cryptographic establishments, four had been delivered to the British by October 1941), so Hawaii remained dependent on Washington for intelligence from that (militarily limited) source. However, since Short had no liaison with Kimmel's intelligence staff, he was usually left out of the loop. Henry Clausen reported the war warnings could not be more precise because Washington could not risk Japan guessing the U.S. was reading important parts of their traffic (most importantly Purple), as well as because neither was cleared to receive Purple.
One major point often omitted from the debate (though Costello covers it thoroughly) is the Philippines, where MacArthur, unlike Kimmel or Short, had complete access to all decrypted Purple and JN-25 traffic CAST could provide (indeed, Stinnet quotes Whitlock to that effect), and was nevertheless caught unprepared and with all planes on the ground, nine hours after the Pearl Harbor attack. Caidin and Blair also raise the issue.
Although it has been argued that there was sufficient intelligence at the time to give commanders at Pearl Harbor a greater level of alert, some factors may take on unambiguous meaning not clear at the time, lost in what Roberta Wohlstetter in her masterful examination of the situation called "noise", "scattered amid the dross of many thousands of other intelligence bits, some of which just as convincingly pointed to a Japanese attack on the Panama Canal."
== Role of American carriers ==
None of the three U.S. Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers were in Pearl Harbor when the attack came. This has been alleged by some to suggest potential advance knowledge of the attack by those in charge of their disposition; with the carriers away so as to save them (the most valuable ships) from attack.
In fact, the two carriers then operating with the Pacific Fleet, Enterprise and Lexington, were on missions to deliver fighters to Wake and Midway Islands, which were intended in part to protect the route used by planes (including B-17s) bound for the Philippines (the third, Saratoga, was in routine refit in Puget Sound, at the Bremerton shipyard). At the time of the attack, Enterprise was about 200 mi (170 nmi; 320 km) west of Pearl Harbor, heading back. In fact, Enterprise had been scheduled to be back on December 6, but was delayed by weather. A new arrival estimate put her arrival at Pearl around 07:00, almost an hour before the attack, but she was, for unspecified reasons, also unable to make that schedule.
Furthermore, at the time, aircraft carriers were classified as fleet scouting elements, and hence relatively expendable. They were not capital ships. The most important vessels in naval planning even as late as Pearl Harbor were battleships (per the Mahan doctrine followed by both the U.S. and Japanese navies at the time). Carriers became the Navy's most important ships only following the attack.
At the time, naval establishments all over the world regarded battleships, not carriers, as the most powerful and significant elements of naval power. Had the U.S. wanted to preserve its key assets from attack, it would almost certainly have focused on protecting battleships. It was the attack on Pearl Harbor itself that first helped vault the carrier ahead of the battleship in importance. The attack demonstrated the carrier's unprecedented ability to attack the enemy at a great distance, with great force and surprise. The U.S. would turn this ability against Japan. Elimination of battleships from the Pacific Fleet forced the Americans to rely on carriers for offensive operations.
== Lack of court-martial ==
Another issue in the debate is the fact neither Admiral Kimmel nor General Short ever faced court martial. It is alleged this was to avoid disclosing information showing the U.S. had advanced knowledge of the attack. When asked, "Will historians know more later?", Kimmel replied, "' ... I'll tell you what I believe. I think that most of the incriminating records have been destroyed. ... I doubt if the truth will ever emerge.' ..." From Vice Admiral Libby, "I will go to my grave convinced that FDR ordered Pearl Harbor to let happen.
He must have known." It could also be the case that this was done to avoid disclosing the fact that Japanese codes were being read, given that there was a war on.
== Unreleased classified information ==
Part of the controversy of the debate centers on the state of documents pertaining to the attack. There are some related to Pearl Harbor which have not yet been made public. Some may no longer exist, as many documents were destroyed early during the war due to fears of an impending Japanese invasion of Hawaii. Still others are partial and mutilated.
Conflicting stories regarding FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests for the source materials used, e.g., Sheet Number 94644, or materials available at the National Archives are also common among the debate. However, much information has been said to have been automatically destroyed under a destruction of classified information policy during the war itself. Various authors have nevertheless continued to bring classified Pearl Harbor materials to light via FOIA.
For instance, Sheet No. 94644 derives from its reference in the FOIA-released Japanese Navy Movement Reports of Station H in November 1941. Entries for November 28, 1941, have several more items of interest, each being a "movement code" message (indicating ship movements or movement orders), with specific details given by associated Sheet Numbers. Examples are: Sheet No. 94069 has information on "KASUGA MARU" – this being hand-written (Kasuga Maru was later converted to CVE Taiyo); Sheet No. 94630 is associated with IJN oiler Shiriya (detailed to the Midway Neutralization Force, with destroyers Ushio and Sazanami, not the Kido Butai); and finally for Sheet No. 94644 there is another hand-written remark "FAF using Akagi xtmr" (First Air Fleet using Akagi's transmitter). It is known that the movement reports were largely readable at the time.
These three documents (Sheet Numbers 94069, 94630, and 94644) are examples of materials which yet, even after decades and numerous specific FOIA requests, have not been declassified fully and made available to the public. Sheet Number 94644, for example, noted as coming from Akagi's transmitter and as being a "movement code" report, would have likely contained a reported position.
=== Forgeries ===
A purported transcript of a conversation between Roosevelt and Churchill in late November 1941 was analyzed and determined to be fake. There are claims about these conversations; much of this is based on fictional documents, often cited as "Roll T-175" at the National Archives. There is no Roll T-175; NARA does not use that terminology.
== See also ==
September 11 attacks advance-knowledge conspiracy theories
Coventry Blitz#Coventry and Ultra
Dick Ellis
Pacific War
Battle of Port Arthur
Battle between HMAS Sydney and German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran
Winds Code
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Sources ==
Kahn, David (1967). The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (1st ed.). New York: Macmillan.
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Pearl Harbor: Henry Stimson's View. Time Magazine, April 1, 1946
Closing the Book on Pearl Harbor – Stephen Budiansky on OP-20-G's progress breaking JN-25 from its appearance in 1939 to 12.7.41. In part a response to Stinnett's (and others') claims of major JN-25 breaks prior to the Attack.
Communism at Pearl Harbor: how the communists helped to bring on Pearl Harbor and open up Asia to communization – Anthony Kubek's article proposes that the Russians maneuvered the U.S. into war.
Day of Deceit – The Truth About Pearl Harbor Archived June 27, 2004, at the Wayback Machine. An Interview with Robert Stinnett and WWII Vet O'Kelly McCluskey.
Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor? No!: The story of the U. S. Navy's efforts on JN-25B – Excellent in depth article illustrating the problems with Stinnett and Wilford's claims regarding JN-25.
Rebuttal of Robert Stinnett's "Day of Deceit" with extensive, updated citations by Rear Admiral Richard E. Young, USN (Ret)
The Independent Institute: Pearl Harbor Archive – Mostly a Stinnett site, but also has Pearl Harbor articles, debates, interviews, transcripts, book reviews, books, and Pearl Harbor documents
The Myths of Pearl Harbor – Extensive site debunking claims of advance knowledge of the attack.
Japan Strikes: 1941. By William H. Honan. American Heritage, December 1970, volume 22, issue 1. In 1925 (sixteen years before Pearl Harbor) the English naval expert Hector Charles Bywater uncannily prophesied in detail the war in the Pacific, in his book The Great Pacific War.
Pearl Harbor Inset: In the Wake of the Prophet. Frank Pierce Young's article about Bywater and his book.
Beverly Hills Spy. by Ronald Drabkin, Biography of the Japanese Spy Frederick Rutland and his efforts to warn the US and Britain about the coming attack.
Pearl Harbor: The Controversy Continues. By Sheldon Richman. The Future of Freedom Foundation, December 1991. Article on foreknowledge as well as steps that might have provoked Japan
"How Roosevelt Attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor. National Archives | Wikipedia/Pearl_Harbor_advance-knowledge_conspiracy_theory |
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is a South African HIV/AIDS activist organisation which was co-founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid background of its founder. TAC has been credited with forcing the reluctant government of former South African President Thabo Mbeki to begin making antiretroviral drugs available to South Africans.
== Founding ==
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) was launched on 10 December 1998, International Human Rights Day. Zackie Achmat, whom The New Yorker calls "the most important dissident in the country since Nelson Mandela", joined with a group of ten other activists to found the group after anti-apartheid gay rights activist Simon Nkoli died from AIDS even as highly active antiretroviral therapy was available to wealthy South Africans. Shortly thereafter, prompted by the murder of HIV-positive activist Gugu Dlamini, HIV-positive and HIV-negative members of the new group began wearing the group's now-famous T-shirts with the words "HIV Positive" printed boldly in front, a strategy inspired by the apocryphal story of the Danish king wearing the yellow star marking Jews under Nazi occupation. Achmat also became famous for his pledge to not take antiretroviral medicines until all South Africans could obtain them.
Quickly outgrowing its start among a small group of Cape Town activists, a number of whom had political roots in the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC, TAC became a much more broadly based group, with chapters in many regions of the nation and a largely black and poor constituency. The group campaigns for greater access to HIV treatment for all South Africans by raising public awareness and understanding about issues surrounding the availability, affordability and use of HIV treatments.
The Treatment Action Campaign produces Equal Treatment, a magazine dedicated to HIV and health issues.
== Suing the government ==
The TAC first confronted the South African government for not ensuring that mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) prevention was available to pregnant mothers. It won this case on the basis of the South African constitutional guarantee of the right to health care, and the government was ordered to provide MTCT programs in public clinics. TAC also assisted the government by defending it in the case brought against the government by the pharmaceutical industry. TAC entered the case as an amicus curiae, submitting a brief in favour of the government's position. Although the withdrawal of the pharmaceutical companies from this case resulted in a government victory, the government showed no interest in providing access to the generic antiretroviral medications that its victory allowed.
Indeed, far from embracing their common victory against the patent rights of multinational companies who were not making affordable drugs available, President Thabo Mbeki began promoting the AIDS denialist view that HIV might not cause AIDS, and that AIDS medications were more toxic than helpful, inviting foreign AIDS denialists to advise his government.
== Campaign for access to antiretrovirals ==
According to TAC's founder, two million South Africans died prematurely of AIDS during the term of former President Mbeki, and many of these deaths could have been prevented by timely implementation of access to anti-HIV drugs.
Following their legal victories, and facing continuing refusal by the government to make antiretrovirals available, TAC began a campaign for universal access to AIDS treatment through the public health system. In a national congress in 2002, the group decided to confront the government on this issue, first enacting a thousands-strong march on Parliament in February 2003, and then beginning a civil disobedience campaign in March 2003. After assurances from people within the government that a treatment plan would be forthcoming, TAC suspended its civil disobedience campaign.
In the summer of 2003, TAC obtained and leaked an internally circulated government report showing that treatment would be cost-effective by reducing costly hospitalisations within the public-sector health system; however, the government did not endorse the report and condemned the leak. In August 2003, at its next annual congress, TAC voted to resume civil disobedience. TAC members also voted to recommend that Achmat take his medications, which he agreed he would do. At the same time, TAC began a Treatment Project to distribute medications to its activists and to other community members.
Shortly after the Congress, and before the civil disobedience campaign resumed, the Cabinet voted to begin roll-out of antiretroviral access through public-sector health clinics. In the South African system, the Cabinet can overrule the President, and it appeared to have done so in this case.
Although the Cabinet voted to reaffirm that South African AIDS policy is based on the evidence that HIV causes AIDS, former President Thabo Mbeki continued to support the AIDS denialist position, as did his Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. The Minister of Health put special emphasis on nutrition as an alternative to antiretroviral treatment. As the top health official of South Africa, she was a particular target of TAC activism. Tshabalala-Msimang was removed as Health Minister in September 2008 after President Mbeki left office, a move hailed by the Treatment Action Campaign.
Although antiretroviral access is now official policy, its implementation has been spotty. TAC continues to protest and sue the government (working with the AIDS Law Project) in order to continue to influence the speed of and approach to the rollout.
== 2006 IAS Conference and the Global Day of Action ==
At the XVI International AIDS Society Conference in Toronto, 13–18 August 2006, TAC had a significant presence. Many TAC staff presented in seminars and chaired sessions, most prominently TAC Secretary Sipho Mthathi and Treasurer Mark Heywood. Heywood was a panelist in a plenary session co-chaired by CNN's Sanjay Gupta entitled "Time to Deliver: The Price of Inaction". Towards the end of the session, supporters of TAC, many of whom were wearing the distinctive "HIV POSITIVE" T-shirts, took to the stage behind the panel and silently held placards containing messages such as "Fire Manto", in reference to the Health Minister, who was in attendance.
TAC members and supporters also took over the South African government's booth in the exhibitor's area. The booth contained bowls of lemons and garlic, which the Health Minister has claimed contribute to fighting HIV. TAC members passed around these items mockingly, and toyi-toyied inside the booth, attracting attention to the South African government's expenditure on the elaborate booth and lack of corresponding commitment to the national treatment plan.
During the conference's closing ceremonies, United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis pointed out the failure of South Africa's response to HIV/AIDS, calling their actions more "[more] worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state." He also announced that earlier in the morning, Zackie Achmat and 44 others had been arrested for occupying provincial offices in Cape Town in protest of government's failure to treat prisoners with anti-retrovirals, and in particular the recent death of one plaintiff in the legal case against the government on this matter.
After the conclusion of the conference, TAC declared a Global Day of Action for Thursday, 24 August 2006. Protests and marches were held in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and China by TAC supporters and sympathisers. In South Africa, police used pepper spray on protesters at the Department of Correctional Services building in central Cape Town, though no one was seriously hurt. Similar protests in Gauteng, Eastern Cape, Limpopo, and KwaZulu-Natal were not met with violence. Over 2000 people took part in the demonstrations. The TAC's objective was to deliver its five demands, which include the convening of a national meeting and plan for the HIV/AIDS crisis, the dismissal of the Health Minister, the immediate treatment of prisoners, respect for the rule of law and the Constitution, and the building of a people's health service.
== Support ==
The TAC has received support from many sectors of South African society, including Supreme Court Justice Edwin Cameron, former President Nelson Mandela, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Njongonkulu Ndungane, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). In August 2006, U.S. President Barack Obama, then a Senator, visited TAC's Khayelitsha office and met with then TAC chairperson Zackie Achmat. During his visit, Obama emphasised the importance of HIV testing and urged the South African government to "awake" from AIDS denialism.
TAC is supported by Ashoka, a nonprofit organisation that promotes social entrepreneurship.
== Solidarity ==
TAC has worked with and shown solidarity with a number of organisations and movements. This includes the Social Justice Coalition, the Anti-Eviction Campaign, the AIDS Law Project and COSATU. In October 2009, TAC issued a statement of Solidarity with Abahlali baseMjondolo condemning the attacks by ANC members on Kennedy Road informal settlement.
== See also ==
HIV/AIDS denialism
Quackdown
=== Sister organisations ===
Equal Education
Social Justice Coalition
== References ==
== External links ==
Treatment Action Campaign
Academic report on TAC from Centre for Civil Society | Wikipedia/Treatment_Action_Campaign |
An HIV vaccine is a potential vaccine that could be either a preventive vaccine or a therapeutic vaccine, which means it would either protect individuals from being infected with HIV or treat HIV-infected individuals. It is thought that an HIV vaccine could either induce an immune response against HIV (active vaccination approach) or consist of preformed antibodies against HIV (passive vaccination approach).
Two active vaccine regimens, studied in the RV 144 and Imbokodo trials, showed they can prevent HIV in some individuals; however, the protection was in relatively few individuals, and was not long lasting. For these reasons, no HIV vaccines have been licensed for the market yet.
== Difficulties in development ==
In 1984, after it was confirmed that HIV caused AIDS, the United States Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler declared that a vaccine would be available within two years. However, priming the adaptive immune system to recognize the viral envelope proteins did not prevent HIV acquisition.
Many factors make the development of an HIV vaccine different from other classic vaccines (as of 1996):
Classic vaccines mimic natural immunity against reinfection as seen in individuals recovered from infection; there are few recovered AIDS patients.
Most vaccines protect against disease, not against infection; HIV infection may remain latent for long periods before causing AIDS.
Most effective vaccines are whole-killed or live-attenuated organisms; killed HIV-1 does not retain antigenicity and the use of a live retrovirus vaccine raises safety issues.
=== HIV structure ===
The epitopes of the viral envelope are more variable than those of many other viruses. Furthermore, the functionally important epitopes of the gp120 protein are masked by glycosylation, trimerisation and receptor-induced conformational changes making it difficult to block with neutralizing antibodies.
The ineffectiveness of previously developed vaccines primarily stems from two related factors:
First, HIV is highly mutable. Because of the virus's ability to rapidly respond to selective pressures imposed by the immune system, the population of virus in an infected individual typically evolves so that it can evade the two major arms of the adaptive immune system; humoral (antibody-mediated) and cellular (mediated by T cells) immunity.
Second, HIV isolates are themselves highly variable. HIV can be categorized into multiple subtypes with a high degree of genetic divergence. Therefore, the immune responses raised by any vaccine need to be broad enough to account for this variability. Any vaccine that lacks this breadth is unlikely to be effective.
The difficulties in stimulating a reliable antibody response has led to the attempts to develop a vaccine that stimulates a response by cytotoxic T-lymphocytes.
Another response to the challenge has been to create a single peptide that contains the least variable components of all the known HIV strains.
It had been observed that a few, but not all, HIV-infected individuals naturally produce broadly neutralizing antibodies (BNAbs) which keep the virus suppressed, and these people remain asymptomatic for decades. Since the 2010s a core candidate is VRC01 and similar BNAbs, as they have been found in multiple unrelated people. These antibodies mimic CD4 and compete for the conserved CD4 binding site. These antibodies all share a germline origin in the VH chain, where only a few human alleles of the IVIG1-2 gene are able to produce such an antibody. Env is a protein on the HIV surface that enables to infect cells. Env extends from the surface of the HIV virus particle. The spike-shaped protein is "trimeric" — with 3 identical molecules, each with a cap-like region called glycoprotein 120 (gp120) and a stem called glycoprotein 41 (gp41) that anchors Env in the viral membrane. Only the functional portions of Env remain constant, but these are generally hidden from the immune system by the molecule's structure. X-ray analyses and low-resolution electron microscopy have revealed the overall architecture and some critical features of Env. But higher resolution imaging of the overall protein structure has been elusive because of its complex, delicate structure. Three new papers use stabilized forms of Env to gain a clearer picture of the intact trimer. An NCI research team led by Dr. Sriram Subramaniam used cryo-electron microscopy to examine the Env structure. The study appeared on October 23, 2013, in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.
=== Animal model ===
The typical animal model for vaccine research is the monkey, often the macaque. Monkeys can be infected with SIV or the chimeric SHIV for research purposes. However, the well-proven route of trying to induce neutralizing antibodies by vaccination has stalled because of the great difficulty in stimulating antibodies that neutralise heterologous primary HIV isolates. Some vaccines based on the virus envelope have protected chimpanzees or macaques from homologous virus challenge, but in clinical trials, humans who were immunised with similar constructs became infected after later exposure to HIV-1.
There are some differences between SIV and HIV that may introduce challenges in the use of an animal model. The animal model can be extremely useful but at times controversial.
There is a new animal model strongly resembling that of HIV in humans. Generalized immune activation as a direct result of activated CD4+ T cell killing - performed in mice allows new ways of testing HIV behaviour.
NIAID-funded SIV research has shown that challenging monkeys with a cytomegalovirus (CMV)-based SIV vaccine results in containment of virus. Typically, virus replication and dissemination occurs within days after infection, whereas vaccine-induced T cell activation and recruitment to sites of viral replication take weeks. Researchers hypothesized that vaccines designed to maintain activated effector memory T cells might impair viral replication at its earliest stage.
Specific vaccines may also need specialized animal models. For example, vaccines designed to produce VRC01-type antibodies require human-like VH alleles to be present. For organisms like mice, the human allele must be inserted into their genome to produce a useful mimic. Murines are also experimental animals in AIDS and also murine AIDS and human AIDS are similar. Immunological analysis and genetic studies reveal resistant gene(s) in the H-2 complex of mice, an indication that genetic differences in mice could modify features of HIV disease. The defective murine leukemia virus is the major etiologic agent of MAIDS, which seems to be able to induce disease in the absence of virus replication. Target cell proliferation and oligoclonal expansion are induced by the virus, which suggests repressed immunity seen in mice thus referred to as paraneoplastic syndrome. This is further supported by the good response(s) of MAIDS mice to antineoplastic agents. This animal model is useful in demonstrating the emergence of novel hypotheses about AIDS, including the roles of defective HIV and HIV replication in the progression of the disease, and also the importance of identifying the HIV targeted cells in vivo.
== Clinical trials ==
Several vaccine candidates are in varying phases of clinical trials.
=== Phase I ===
Most initial approaches have focused on the HIV envelope protein. At least thirteen different gp120 and gp160 envelope candidates have been evaluated, in the US predominantly through the AIDS Vaccine Evaluation Group. Most research focused on gp120 rather than gp41/gp160, as the latter is generally more difficult to produce and did not initially offer any clear advantage over gp120 forms. Overall, they have been safe and immunogenic in diverse populations, have induced neutralizing antibody in nearly 100% recipients, but rarely induced CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL). Mammalian derived envelope preparations have been better inducers of neutralizing antibody than candidates produced in yeast and bacteria. Although the vaccination process involved many repeated "booster" injections, it was challenging to induce and maintain the high anti-gp120 antibody titers necessary to have any hope of neutralizing an HIV exposure.
The availability of several recombinant canarypox vectors has provided interesting results that may prove to be generalizable to other viral vectors. Increasing the complexity of the canarypox vectors by including more genes/epitopes has increased the percent of volunteers that have detectable CTL to a greater extent than did increase the dose of the viral vector. CTLs from volunteers were able to kill peripheral blood mononuclear cells infected with primary isolates of HIV, suggesting that induced CTLs could have biological significance. Besides, cells from at least some volunteers were able to kill cells infected with HIV from other clades, though the pattern of recognition was not uniform among volunteers. The canarypox vector is the first candidate HIV vaccine that has induced cross-clade functional CTL responses. The first phase I trial of the candidate vaccine in Africa was launched early in 1999 with Ugandan volunteers. The study determined the extent to which Ugandan volunteers have CTL that are active against the subtypes of HIV prevalent in Uganda, A and D. In 2015, a Phase I trial called HVTN 100 in South Africa tested the combination of a canarypox vector ALVAC and a gp120 protein adapted for the subtype C HIV common in sub-Saharan Africa, with the MF59 adjuvant. Those who received the vaccine regimen produced strong immune responses early on and the regimen was safe.
Other strategies that have progressed to phase I trials in uninfected persons include peptides, lipopeptides, DNA, an attenuated Salmonella vector, p24, etc. Specifically, candidate vaccines that induce one or more of the following are being sought:
neutralizing antibodies active against a broad range of HIV primary isolates;
cytotoxic T cell responses in a vast majority of recipients;
strong mucosal immune responses.
In 2011, researchers in National Biotech Centre in Madrid unveiled data from the Phase I clinical trial of their new vaccine, MVA-B. The vaccine induced an immunological response in 92% of the healthy subjects.
In 2016, results were published of the first Phase I human clinical trial of a killed whole-HIV-1 vaccine, SAV001. HIV used in the vaccine was chemically and physically deadened through radiation. The trial, conducted in Canada in 2012, demonstrated a good safety profile and elicited antibodies to HIV-1. According to Dr. Chil-Yong Kang of Western University's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry in Canada, the developer of this vaccine, antibodies against gp120 and p24 increased to 8-fold and 64-fold, respectively after vaccination.
The VRC01 line of research produced an "eOD-GT8" antigen which specifically exposes the CD4 binding site for immunization, refined over time to expose less of the other sites. As it turns out that most (but not all) humans do have the required alleles, the problem shifted to the method of delivery. In 2021, after promising results in tests with mice and primates, scientists announced that they plan to conduct a Phase 1 trial of an mRNA vaccine against HIV if a further developed (via their 'env–gag VLP mRNA platform' which contains eOD-GT8) vaccine is confirmed safe and effective. On January 17, 2022 IAVI and Moderna launched a phase I trial of a HIV vaccine with mRNA technology. On March 14, 2022 the National Institutes of Health reported that it had launched a "clinical trial of three mRNA HIV vaccines". The phase one trial is expected to conclude July 2023.
=== Phase II ===
Preventive HIV vaccines
A recombinant Adenovirus-5 HIV vaccine (called V520) was tested in two Phase 2b studies, Phambili and STEP. On December 13, 2004, recruitment began for the STEP study, a 3,000-participant phase II clinical trial of a novel HIV vaccine, at sites in North America, South America, the Caribbean and Australia. The trial was co-funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. Merck developed V520 to stimulate HIV-specific cellular immunity, which prompts the body to produce T cells that kill HIV-infected cells. In previous smaller trials, this vaccine was found to be safe, because of the lack of adverse effects on the participants. The vaccine showed induced cellular immune responses against HIV in more than half of volunteers. V520 contains a weakened adenovirus that serves as a carrier for three subtype B HIV genes (gag, pol and nef). Subtype B is the most prevalent HIV subtype in the regions of the study sites. Adenoviruses are among the main causes of upper respiratory tract ailments such as the common cold. Because the vaccine contains only three HIV genes housed in a weakened adenovirus, study participants cannot become infected with HIV or get a respiratory infection from the vaccine. It was announced in September 2007 that the trial for V520 would be stopped after it determined that vaccination with V520 appeared associated with an increased risk of HIV infection in some recipients. The foremost issue facing the recombinant adenovirus that was used is the high prevalence of the adenovirus-specific antibodies as a result of prior exposure to adenovirus. Adenovirus vectors and many other viral vectors currently used in HIV vaccines will induce a rapid memory immune response against the vector. This results in an impediment to the development of a T cell response against the inserted antigen (HIV antigens) The results of the trial prompted the reexamination of vaccine development strategies.
HVTN 505, a Phase IIb study, was launched in 2009 but halted in 2013 due to meeting requirements of futility.
Potential broadly neutralizing antibodies have been cloned in the laboratory (monoclonal antibodies) and are being tested in passive vaccination clinical trials. In May 2016, there was the launch of the Antibody Mediated Prevention (AMP) trials (HVTN 703 and HVTN 704), the first phase IIb trials of a monoclonal antibody for HIV prevention. HVTN 703 and HVTN 704 found that the VRC01 monoclonal antibody, which targets the CD4 binding site, was not able to prevent HIV acquisition.
In 2017, Janssen and the HVTN launched the phase IIb trial called HVTN 705/Imbokodo, testing the mosaic vector vaccine Ad26.Mos4.HIV and the aluminum phosphate-adjuvanted Clade C gp140 vaccines which are designed to prevent infection of all HIV subtypes around the world. In 2021 the NIH announced that the Imbokodo Phase 2b study did not provide statistically significant reduction in HIV infection.
In 2019, Terevac-VIH, a vaccine from Cuba, was determined to have passed the first stage of clinical trials after two years and move to the second stage of development.
Therapeutic HIV vaccines
Biosantech developed a therapeutic vaccine called Tat Oyi, which targets the tat protein of HIV. It was tested in France in a double-blind Phase I/II trial with 48 HIV-positive patients who had reached viral suppression on Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy and then stopped antiretrovirals after getting the intradermal Tat Oyi vaccine.
=== Phase III ===
Preventive HIV vaccines
There have been no passive preventive HIV vaccines to reach Phase III yet, but some active preventive HIV vaccine candidates have entered Phase III.
In February 2003, VaxGen announced that their AIDSVAX B/E vaccine was a failure in North America as there was not a statistically significant reduction of HIV infection within the study population.
AIDSVAX B/E was a component, along with ALVAC, of the RV 144 vaccine trial in Thailand that showed partial efficacy in preventing HIV. The AIDSVAX B/E and ALVAC vaccines targeted the gp120 part of the HIV envelope. The study involved 16,395 participants who did not have HIV infection, 8197 of whom were given treatment consisting of two experimental vaccines targeting HIV types B and E that are prevalent in Thailand, while 8198 were given a placebo. The participants were tested for HIV every six months for three years. After three years, the vaccine group had HIV infection rates reduced by about 30% compared with those in the placebo group. However, after taking into account the seven people who already had HIV before getting vaccinated (two in the placebo group, five in the vaccine group) the difference was 26%. It was discovered that participants receiving vaccines in the RV 144 trial who produced IgG antibodies against the V2 loop of the HIV outer envelope were 43% less likely to become infected than those who did not, while IgA production was associated with a 54% greater risk of infection than those who did not produce the antibodies (but not worse than placebo). Viruses collected from vaccinated participants had mutations in the V2 region. Tests of a vaccine for SIV in monkeys found greater resistance to SIV in animals producing antibodies against this region. Therefore, further research is expected to focus on creating vaccines designed to provoke an IgG reaction against the V2 loop.
In 2020, the phase IIb-III trial HVTN 702/"Uhambo" found that ALVAC/gp120/MF59 vaccinations were safe, and caused no harm, but had no efficacy in HIV prevention in South Africa. Vaccinations with the Uhambo vaccine regimen began late 2016 and stopped early 2020.
In 2020, the Ad26.Mos4.HIV plus adjuvanted clade C gp140 vaccine regimen entered a phase III trial called HVTN 706/"Mosaico". The regimen is a combination of an adenovirus vector vaccine engineered against multiple global strains of HIV, and a protein vaccine. The trial was ended in January 2023 due to ineffectiveness.
Therapeutic HIV vaccines
No therapeutic HIV vaccine candidates have reached phase 3 testing yet.
== Economics ==
A July 2012 report of the HIV Vaccines & Microbicides Resource Tracking Working Group estimates that $845 million was invested in HIV vaccine research in 2011.
Economic issues with developing an HIV vaccine include the need for advance purchase commitment (or advance market commitments) because after an AIDS vaccine has been developed, governments and NGOs may be able to bid the price down to marginal cost.
== Classification of possible vaccines ==
Theoretically, any possible HIV vaccine must inhibit or stop the HIV virion replication cycle. The targets of a vaccine could be the following stages of the HIV virion cycle:
Stage I. Free state
Stage II. Attachment
Stage III. Penetration
Stage IV. Uncoating
Stage V. Replication
Stage VI. Assembling
Stage VII. Releasing
Therefore, the following list comprises the current possible approaches for an HIV vaccine:
=== Filtering virions from blood (Stage I) ===
Biological, chemical and/or physical approaches for removing the HIV virions from the blood.
=== Approaches to catching the virion (Stage I-III, VI, VII) ===
Phagocytosis of the HIV virions.
Chemical or organically based capture (creation of any skin or additional membrane around the virion) of HIV virions
Chemical or organic attachments to the virion
=== Approaches to destroying or damaging the virion or its parts (Stage I-VII) ===
Here, "damage" means inhibiting or stopping the ability of virion to process any of the Phase II-VII. Here are the different classification of methods:
By nature of method:
Physical methods (Stage I-VII)
Chemical and biological methods (Stage I-VII)
By damaging target of the HIV virion structure:
Damaging the Docking Glycoprotein gp120 (Stage I-III, VI, VII)
Damaging the Transmembrane Glycoprotein gp41 (Stage I-III, VI, VII)
Damaging the virion matrix (Stage I-III, VI, VII)
Damaging the virion Capsid (Stage I-III, VI, VII)
Damaging the Reverse Transcriptase (Stage I-VII)
Damaging the RNA (Stage I-VII)
=== Blocking replication (Stage V) ===
Insertion into blood chemical or organic compounds which binds to the gp120. Hypothetically, it can be pieces of the CD4 cell membranes with receptors. Any chemical and organic alternative (with the ability to bind the gp120) of these receptors also can be used.
Insertion into blood chemical or organic compounds which binds to the receptors of the CD4 cells.
=== Biological, chemical or physical approaches to inhibit the process of phases ===
Biological, chemical or physical approach to inhibit the Attachment, Penetration, Uncoating, Integration, Replication, Assembling and/or Releasing.
=== Inhibiting the functionality of infected cells (Stage VI-VII) ===
Inhibiting the life functions of infected cells:
Inhibiting the metabolism of infected cells
Inhibiting the energy exchange of infected cells
== Future work ==
There have been reports that HIV patients coinfected with GB virus C (GBV-C), also called hepatitis G virus, can survive longer than those without GBV-C, but the patients may be different in other ways. GBV-C is potentially useful in the future development of an HIV vaccine.
Live attenuated vaccines are highly successful against polio, rotavirus and measles, but have not been tested against HIV in humans. Reversion to live virus has been a theoretical safety concern that has to date prevented clinical development of a live attenuated HIV-1 vaccine. Scientists are researching novel strategies to develop a non-virulent live attenuated HIV-1 vaccine. For example, a genetically modified form of HIV has been created in which the virus's codons (a sequence of three nucleotides that form genetic code) are manipulated to rely on an unnatural amino acid for proper protein translation, which allows it to replicate. Because this amino acid is foreign to the human body, the virus cannot reproduce. Recent evidence suggests using universal CAR NK cells against HIV
=== ECB 46 ===
It seems that Ecb 46 can functionally cure Hiv-1 and Hiv-2 through kick and kill strategy.
== See also ==
Cabotegravir
COVID-19 vaccine
HIV Vaccine Trials Network
World AIDS Vaccine Day
== References ==
== External links ==
Vaccine Research Center (VRC)- Information concerning Preventive HIV vaccine research studies
NIAID HIV vaccine site (DAIDS)
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI)
International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI)
AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC)
U.S. Military HIV Research Program (MHRP)
Investigation of first candidate vaccine
HIV.gov - The U.S. Federal Domestic HIV/AIDS Resource
HIVtest.org - Find an HIV testing site near you
Bit by Bit, Scientists Gain Ground on AIDS - The New York Times, March 8, 2019
Treatment Action Group | Wikipedia/HIV_vaccine |
Sexually transmitted infections in the pornography industry deals with the occupational safety and health hazard of contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs) by workers in the sex industry.
Since the 1980s many cases of pornographic performers contracting HIV/AIDS have been reported. However, since the mid-2000s strict adherence to rigorous STI testing, and limiting sexual contact with only fellow tested performers has halted the spread of HIV and other STIs in the industry.
== Types of STIs ==
Because pornographic film making involves unsimulated sex, often without condoms, pornographic actors are particularly vulnerable to various sexually transmitted infections; especially HPV, Zika fever, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV/AIDS.
Experts suggest there are a total number of thirty-five infections and diseases that can be transmitted sexually.
== HIV cases ==
=== 1980s and 1990s ===
According to former pornographic actress Shelley Lubben, a 1980s outbreak of HIV led to the death of 27 porn stars between 1985 and 1992, including Wade Nichols (who died in 1985), John Holmes (1988), Marc Stevens (1989), and Al Parker (1992). When Nichols died in 1985, his fellow porn star Ron Jeremy denied that Nichols' death was AIDS-related.: 406 Stevens died of AIDS: 405 in 1989, aged 46. Parker died in 1992 from complications of AIDS, aged 40.
In February 1986, Holmes was diagnosed as HIV-positive. Six months previously, he had tested negative. During the summer of 1986, Holmes, knowing his HIV status, agreed to perform in two pornographic films to be filmed in Italy, without informing the producers of his HIV status. Performers in one film, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empress, were Ilona "Cicciolina" Staller, who later became a member of the Italian parliament, Tracey Adams, Christoph Clark, and Amber Lynn. Performers in the other film, The Devil In Mr. Holmes, were Adams, Lynn, Karin Schubert, and Marina Hedman. Subsequently, it was revealed that Holmes had consciously chosen not to reveal his HIV status to his producers or co-stars before engaging in unprotected sex for the filming. As his health failed, Holmes disingenuously attributed his condition to colon cancer and first confided that he had AIDS in January 1987. He died from AIDS-related complications on March 13, 1988, aged 43.
Marc Wallice, a known IV drug user, tested positive for HIV in 1998. On April 30, 1998, he was diagnosed by Adult Industry Medical (AIM) as HIV positive. It was alleged that he had hidden his HIV positive status for two years, with rumors that he accomplished this by using fake blood work through several HIV testing cycles to continue working. This speculation has been disputed and investigated using Wallice's tests, but it has not been doubted that during this period Wallice infected seven women on the set: Brooke Ashley, Tricia Devereaux, Caroline, Nena Cherry, Jordan McKnight, Barbara Doll, and Kimberly Jade.
=== 2000s ===
After three years of no reported HIV-issues within the industry, in April 2004, AIM diagnosed Darren James as being HIV-positive. It was concluded that James had been infected while engaging in unprotected anal sex with Brazilian actress Bianca Biaggi during a scene for the video Split That Booty 2 in Rio de Janeiro. AIM initiated an urgent search for other potentially infected performers. It was discovered that three actresses who had worked with James shortly after his return to the United States had also become infected. These were Canadians Lara Roxx and Miss Arroyo, and Czech-born Jessica Dee.
The heterosexual segment of the porn industry voluntarily shut down for 30 days (a 60-day moratorium was originally announced but it was lifted early) while it tried to deal with the situation. Darren James, Jessica Dee, and Lara Roxx were barred from further production of sexually explicit content. About 60 actors who had had contact with James or Roxx were barred from working until HIV tests were completed and they were declared HIV negative. A further estimated 130 actors who had had contact with James were tested and received an HIV-negative result. A total of five actors were diagnosed with the virus by the end of the moratorium: one male and four females, including one transgender woman named Jennifer.
In June 2009, AIM reported that a female adult entertainer had tested positive, though it was believed that transmission occurred in her private life. LA County Public Health claimed that there had been 16 "unreported" HIV cases in the adult film industry. The AIM Healthcare Foundation claimed those cases did not involve actors in production companies that followed their testing protocols and included members of the general public who used AIM Healthcare testing services or individuals attempting to work in the porn industry who never were able to obtain employment in adult films because of their failure to provide proof of negative status for HIV or other STIs.
=== 2010s ===
On October 12, 2010, AIM reported that an actor or actress had been infected with HIV. The name and gender of the person was not released to the public. Vivid Entertainment and Wicked Pictures were the first companies to announce a production shutdown. Although Wicked Pictures allow some performers to wear condoms, the company shut down to wait for the quarantine list. Several other porn studios shut down as a preventive measure. At the time, no other performers tested HIV positive.
In December, the HIV positive performer was identified as Derrick Burts. Burts had worked in both heterosexual and gay pornography. Despite contracting gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis, Burts continued taking part in unprotected sex in films before quitting once he was diagnosed as being HIV positive. He was informed by the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation that he had contracted the disease, which according to Burts, he received on a set outside the AIM system, while having oral sex scene with another "HIV positive male actor".
In June 2013, a gay male performer tested positive for HIV in a routine FSC-conducted blood test. The anonymous performer had previously worked exclusively on condom-only movies. FSC determined that the infection did not take place on-set.
In August 2013, an adult female performer, Cameron Bay, tested HIV positive. In response, FSC organized an industry wide moratorium from August 21 to August 27. On September 4, Rod Daily, Cameron Bay's ex-boyfriend, announced he had also tested HIV positive. Two days later, a third anonymous female performer tested positive prompting FSC to organize a second moratorium from September 6 to September 20. All three infections were found to have taken place off-set.
Rumors surfaced of a fourth HIV positive test during September but they were never substantiated.
In December 2013, a male porn actor tested HIV positive, leading FSC to halt production for one week. This infection was also determined to have taken place off-set.
== Testing and clinics ==
The Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation (AIM Healthcare or AIM) was founded in 1998, and helped to set up a monitoring system for the pornographic film industry in the United States, and pornographic film actors were required to be tested for HIV, chlamydia and gonorrhea every 30 days, and twice a year for hepatitis, syphilis and HSV. However AIM closed all its operations in May 2011, forcing the industry to look for other mechanisms for supporting and enforcing regular testing. The gap was filled by the Free Speech Coalition, which set up the Adult Production Health and Safety Services (APHSS) system, now known as Performer Availability Screening Services (PASS). Since 2011, STI testing for straight pornographic performers is being monitored by them.
Apart from taking necessary precautions like PrEP, performers are tested every fourteen days for HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, hepatitis B and C and trichomoniasis. According to PASS, there has not be an on-set transmission of HIV on a regulated set since 2004. The industry considers the testing method to be a viable practice for safer sex. Canadian doctor and HIV/AIDS specialist Dr. Allan Ronald, who did groundbreaking studies on the transmission of STIs, said there's no doubt about the efficiency of the testing method, but he felt a little uncomfortable, "because it’s giving the wrong message — that you can have multiple sex partners without condoms — but I can’t say it doesn’t work.
Pornographic actress Nina Hartley, stated that the time required for shooting a scene can be very long, and usage of condoms will be uncomfortable, as it causes friction burn, and opens up lesions in the genital mucosa. Advocating the testing method for performers, Hartley said, "Testing works for us, and condoms work for outsiders." Other female performers have also opposed the use of condoms at work. Citing the fact that chances for performers in the industry to contract HIV are much lower compared to sexually active persons outside the industry, they have vehemently opposed Measure B regulations which made the use of condoms mandatory in pornographic films. Their usage has been called an occupational hazard because of the breakage issues, causation of micro-tears, swelling, and yeast infections; which together all made them more susceptible for STIs.
=== Limitations and criticism ===
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends screening for Herpes only in symptomatic cases, most STI tests do not include screening for either HSV-1 or HSV-2 strain unless specifically ordered by the physician. Meanwhile, asymptomatic persons positive for the virus can transmit it sexually.
Porn actors are not tested for HPV either. A test for HPV isn't normally included in a standard STI screening for people under 30, as many of the HPV strains clear on their own. It's however recommend once for every five years in people above 30.
== Legislation ==
=== Regulations to limit the spread of HIV Virus ===
Due to this limited outbreak, the California State government considered regulating the industry. Some proposed to mandate the wearing of condoms during sexually explicit scenes. Industry insiders say this would ruin sales of their wares since the unprotected content is one of the selling points of some of their films. They say the wearing of condoms ruins the sexual fantasies of many viewers. Insiders say that such regulation would force the industry underground, out of California or overseas where it would be more prone to health risks for performers. The non-profit Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation (AIM Healthcare) worked with the government, to develop policies that both the industry and the government would find acceptable.
=== 2012 ballot measure in Los Angeles ===
In the 2012 election, voters in Los Angeles were presented with Measure B ("Safer Sex In the Adult Film Industry Act") with the following text:
Shall an ordinance be adopted requiring producers of adult films to obtain a County public health permit, to require adult film performers to use condoms while engaged in sex acts, to provide proof of blood borne pathogen training course, to post permit and notices to performers, and making violations of the ordinance subject to civil fines and criminal charges?
Proponents of the measure claimed pornography performers were significantly more likely to acquire HIV than the general population and that they are generally not given health insurance by their employers and so the tax payer would foot the bill for HIV treatment. Opponents claimed it to be a waste of tax dollars because of existing stringent HIV testing protocols and because nobody has contracted HIV on set since 2004 in the United States.
The adult film industry members claimed that the industry monitors itself, and people will not watch scenes with condoms. The measure passed with 56% voting for and 44% voting against. FSC said it will appeal the law on constitutional grounds.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation tried several times to have California's Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health's Appeals Board force companies in the pornography industry to treat actors and actresses as employees subject to occupational safety and health regulation; in a 2014 case brought against Treasure Island Media an administrative judge found that the company did have to comply with regulations.
== See also ==
Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation (AIM)
AIDS Healthcare Foundation
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Sources cited ==
== Further reading ==
Grudzen, Corita R.; Elliott, Marc N.; Kerndt, Peter R.; Schuster, Mark A.; Brook, Robert H.; Gelberg, Lillian (April 2009). "Condom Use and High-Risk Sexual Acts in Adult Films: A Comparison of Heterosexual and Homosexual Films". American Journal of Public Health. 99 Suppl 1 (S1): S152–6. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2007.127035. PMC 2724941. PMID 19218178. | Wikipedia/Sexually_transmitted_infections_in_the_pornography_industry |
Following infection with HIV-1, the rate of clinical disease progression varies between individuals. Factors such as host susceptibility, genetics and immune function, health care and co-infections as well as viral genetic variability may affect the rate of progression to the point of needing to take medication in order not to develop AIDS.
== Rapid progressors ==
A small percentage of HIV-infected individuals rapidly progress to AIDS if they fail to take the medication within four years after primary HIV-infection and are termed Rapid Progressors (RP). Indeed, some individuals have been known to progress to AIDS and death within a year after primo-infection. Rapid progression was originally thought to be continent specific, as some studies reported that disease progression is more rapid in Africa, but others have contested this view.
== Long term non-progressors ==
Another subset of individuals who are persistently infected with HIV-1, but show no signs of disease progression for over 12 years and remain asymptomatic are classified as Long Term Non-Progressors (LTNP). In these individuals, it seems that HIV-infection has been halted with regard to disease progression over an extended period of time. However, the term LTNP is a misnomer as that progression towards AIDS can occur even after 15 years of stable infection. LTNP are not a homogeneous group regarding both viral load and specific immune responses against HIV-1. Some LTNPs are infected with HIV that inefficiently replicates whilst others are infected with HIV that is virally fit and replicates normally, but the infected individual has had a strong and broad set of HIV-specific humoral and cell-mediated responses that seems to delay the progression to AIDS. In some cohorts, individuals who experience signs of progression, but whose clinical and laboratory parameters remain stable over long periods of time, are classified as Long Term Survivors (LTS).
== Highly exposed persistently seronegative ==
There is another, smaller percentage of individuals who have been recently identified. These are called Highly Exposed Persistently Seronegative (HEPS). This is a small group of individuals and has been observed only in a group of uninfected HIV-negative sex workers in Kenya and in The Gambia. When these individuals' PBMCs are stimulated with HIV-1 peptides, they have lymphoproliferative activity and have HIV-1 specific CD8+ CTL activity suggesting that transient infection may have occurred. This does not occur in unexposed individuals. What is interesting, is that the CTL epitope specificity differs between HEPS and HIV positive individuals, and in HEPS, the maintenance of responses appears to be dependent upon persistent exposure to HIV.
== Prediction of progression rates ==
During the initial weeks after HIV infection, qualitative differences in the cell-mediated immune response are observed that correlate with different disease progression rates (i.e., rapid progression to WHO stage 4 and the rapid loss of CD4+ T cell levels versus normal to slow progression to WHO stage 4 and the maintenance of CD4+ T cell counts above 500/μL). The appearance of HIV-1-specific CD8+ cytotoxic T cells (CTLs) early after primo-infection has been correlated with the control of HIV-1 viremia. The virus which escapes this CTL response have been found to have mutations in specific CTL epitopes. Individuals with a broad expansion of the V-beta chain of the T cell receptor of CD8+ T cells during primo-infection appear to have low levels of virus six to twelve months later, which is predictive of relatively slow disease progression. In contrast, individuals with an expansion of only a single subset of the V-beta chain of the CD8+ T cells are not able to control HIV levels over time, and thus have high viral loads six to twelve months later. LTNP’s have also been shown to have a vigorous proliferation of circulating activated HIV-1-specific CD4+ T cell and CTL response against multiple epitopes with no detectable broadly cross-reactive neutralizing antibodies in the setting of an extremely low viral load. However, a few reports have correlated the presence of antibodies against Tat in LTNP status.
== HIV subtype variation and effect on progression rates ==
The HIV-1 subtype that an individual becomes infected with can be a major factor in the rate of progression from sero-conversion to AIDS. Individuals infected with subtypes C, D and G are 8 times more likely to develop AIDS than individuals infected with subtype A. In Uganda, where subtypes A and D are most prevalent, subtype D is associated with faster disease progression compared with subtype A. Age has also been shown to be a major factor in determining survival and the rate of disease progression, with individuals over 40 years of age at sero-conversion being associated with rapid progression.
== Host genetic susceptibility ==
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released findings that genes influence susceptibility to HIV infection and progression to AIDS. HIV enters cells through an interaction with both CD4 and a chemokine receptor of the 7 transmembrane family. They first reviewed the role of genes in encoding chemokine receptors (CCR5 and CCR2) and chemokines (SDF-1). While CCR5 has multiple variants in its coding region, the deletion of a 32-bp segment results in a nonfunctional receptor, thus preventing HIV entry; two copies of this gene provide strong protection against HIV infection, although the protection is not absolute. This allele is found in around 10% of Europeans but is rare in Africans and Asians. Multiple studies of HIV-infected persons have shown that the presence of one copy of this mutation, named CCR5-Δ32 (CCR5 delta 32) delays progression to the condition of AIDS by about 2 years.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) has funded research studies to learn more about this genetic mutation. In such research, NIH has found that there exist genetic tests that can determine if a person has this mutation. Implications of a genetic test may in the future allow clinicians to change treatment for the HIV infection according to the genetic makeup of an individual, Currently there exist several at-home tests for the CCR5 mutation in individuals; however, they are not diagnostic tests.
A relatively new class of drugs for HIV treatment relies on the genetic makeup of the individual. Entry inhibitors bind to the CCR5 protein to block HIV from binding to the CD4 cell.
== The effect of co-infections on progression rates ==
Coinfections or immunizations may enhance viral replication by inducing a response and activation of the immune system. This activation facilitates the three key stages of the viral life cycle: entry to the cell; reverse transcription and proviral transcription. Chemokine receptors are vital for the entry of HIV into cells. The expression of these receptors is inducible by immune activation caused by infection or immunization, thus augmenting the number of cells that can be infected by HIV-1. Both reverse transcription of the HIV-1 genome and the rate of transcription of proviral DNA rely upon the activation state of the cell and are less likely to be successful in quiescent cells. In activated cells, there is an increase in the cytoplasmic concentrations of mediators required for reverse transcription of the HIV genome. Activated cells also release IFN-alpha which acts on an autocrine and paracrine loop that up-regulates the levels of physiologically active NF-kappa B which activates host cell genes as well as the HIV-1 LTR. The impact of co-infections by micro-organisms such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis can be important in disease progression, particularly for those who have a high prevalence of chronic and recurrent acute infections and poor access to medical care. Often, survival depends upon the initial AIDS-defining illness. Co-infection with DNA viruses such as HTLV-1, herpes simplex virus-2, varicella zoster virus, and cytomegalovirus may enhance proviral DNA transcription and thus viral load as they may encode proteins that can trans-activate the expression of the HIV-1 pro-viral DNA. Frequent exposure to helminth infections, which are endemic in Africa, activates individual immune systems, thereby shifting the cytokine balance away from an initial Th1 cell response against viruses and bacteria which would occur in the uninfected person to a less protective T helper 0/2-type response. HIV-1 also promotes a Th1 to Th0 shift and replicates preferentially in Th2 and Th0 cells. This makes the host more susceptible to and less able to cope with infection with HIV-1, viruses and some types of bacteria. Ironically, exposure to dengue virus seems to slow HIV progression rates temporarily.
== See also ==
CCR5
== References ==
== External links ==
"Gene Variation May Raise Risk of H.I.V., Study Finds" from The New York Times, 2008 | Wikipedia/HIV_disease_progression_rates |
The HIV vaccine is a combination antiretroviral vaccine that protects people who are HIV-negative and at high risk of infection from HIV infection.
According to the WHO, "every minute, one person in the world dies from AIDS-related causes."
According to a UN report, there are about 39.9 million people living with HIV in the world, and 9.3 million (almost a quarter) are still not receiving life-saving treatment.
The report states that if countries "take decisive action" to ensure funding and protect the rights of every person to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS, the number of people living with HIV and requiring lifelong treatment is projected to fall to 29 million by 2050. However, if no such action is taken, the number of people requiring lifelong treatment will increase to 46 million.
== Vaccine for HIV prevention ==
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first injectable HIV prevention drug for adults and adolescents, which only needs to be taken every two months to provide a higher level of protection than pre-exposure prophylaxis pills. The pills are designed to be highly effective, and are 99% effective against HIV.
In order for these drugs to remain effective, they must be taken daily, which places certain restrictions on the people taking them. There is also the psychological discomfort of having to be reminded of the disease every day.
Apretude is developed by ViiV Healthcare.
Apretude is an injectable suspension with extended release of the antiviral drug cabotegravir. Unlike cabotegravir in tablet form, Apretude must be administered via intramuscular injection every two months, with the first two doses administered at a shorter interval of one month.
== Pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV ==
Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) is an antiretroviral drug that protects HIV-negative people who are at risk of contracting HIV through sexual contact, when prescribed by a doctor.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued new recommendations for the use of the injectable long-acting cabotegravir (CAB-LA) as a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV. The CAB-LA regimen involves two initial doses of the drug 4 weeks apart, followed by maintenance injections every 8 weeks.
Long-acting injectable cabotegravir (CAB-LA) is a long-acting injectable drug of the integrase strand transfer inhibitor class (antiretroviral drugs) that can be prescribed to adults weighing at least 35 kg. CAB-LA is used to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted HIV-1 infection for intramuscular injection.
== Post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV ==
Current HIV treatment methods involve daily administration of antiretroviral tablets that prevent the spread of the infection in the body. However, this regimen imposes limitations on patients themselves, as they may forget and skip taking their medication, which increases the risk of HIV developing drug resistance.
To reduce the frequency of medication administration for HIV patients, pharmaceutical company ViiV Healthcare has developed an injectable drug called Cabenuva. It consists of two drugs: rilpivirine and cabotegravir. The drugs are delivered together but in separate vials, as they must be administered as separate injections. To be effective, these drugs must be administered once a month.
== See also ==
HIV Vaccine Trials Network
AIDSVAX
AIDS vaccine
HIV Vaccine development
== References == | Wikipedia/HIV_Vaccine |
The current staging system for HIV infection in children was developed in 2005 and builds upon the staging system in place since 1987. A child is defined as someone under the age of 15. This staging system also requires the presence of HIV infection: HIV antibody for children aged 18 months or more; virological or p24 antigen positive test if aged under 18 months.
== Clinical Stage 1 ==
Asymptomatic
Persistent generalized lymphadenopathy
== Clinical Stage 2 ==
Hepatosplenomegaly
Papular pruritic eruptions
Seborrhoeic dermatitis
Extensive human papillomavirus infection
Extensive molluscum contagiosum
Fungal nail infections
Recurrent oral ulcerations
Lineal gingival erythema (LGE)
Angular cheilitis
Parotid enlargement
Herpes zoster
Recurrent or chronic RTIs (otitis media, otorrhoea, sinusitis)
== Clinical Stage 3 ==
Conditions where a presumptive diagnosis can be made on the basis of clinical signs or simple investigations:
Moderate unexplained malnutrition not adequately responding to standard therapy
Unexplained persistent diarrhoea (14 days or more)
Unexplained persistent fever (intermittent or constant, for longer than one month)
Oral candidiasis (outside neonatal period)
Oral hairy leukoplakia
Acute necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis/periodontitis
Pulmonary TB
Severe recurrent presumed bacterial pneumonia
Conditions where confirmatory diagnostic testing is necessary:
Chronic HIV-associated lung disease including bronchiectasis
Lymphoid interstitial pneumonitis (LIP)
Unexplained anaemia (<80g/L), and or neutropenia (<1000/μL) and or thrombocytopenia (<50 000/μL) for more than one month
== Clinical Stage 4 ==
Conditions where a presumptive diagnosis can be made based on clinical signs or simple investigations:
Unexplained severe wasting or severe malnutrition not adequately responding to standard therapy
Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia
Recurrent severe presumed bacterial infections (e.g. empyema, pyomyositis, bone or joint infection, meningitis, but excluding pneumonia)
Chronic herpes simplex infection; (orolabial or cutaneous of more than one month's duration)
Extrapulmonary Tuberculosis
Kaposi’s sarcoma
Oesophageal candidiasis
Central nervous system toxoplasmosis (outside the neonatal period)
HIV encephalopathy
The presumptive criteria are designed for use where access to confirmatory diagnostic testing for HIV infection by means of virological testing (usually nucleic acid testing, NAT) or P24 antigen testing for infants and children aged under 18 months is not readily available.
Conditions where confirmatory diagnostic testing is necessary:
HCMV infection (CMV retinitis or infection of organs other than liver, spleen, or lymph nodes; onset at age one month or more)
Extrapulmonary cryptococcosis including meningitis
Any disseminated endemic mycosis (e.g. extrapulmonary histoplasmosis, coccidioidomycosis, penicilliosis)
Cryptosporidiosis
Isosporiasis
Disseminated non-tuberculous mycobacteria infection
Candida of trachea, bronchi or lungs
Visceral herpes simplex infection
Acquired HIV-associated rectal fistula
Cerebral or B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma
Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML)
HIV-associated cardiomyopathy or HIV-associated nephropathy
== References ==
"WHO Case Definitions of HIV for Surveillance and Revised Clinical Staging and Immunological Classification of HIV-Related Disease in Adults and Children" (PDF). World Health Organization. 2007. Retrieved 9 July 2019. | Wikipedia/WHO_Disease_Staging_System_for_HIV_Infection_and_Disease_in_Children |
WHO Disease Staging System for HIV Infection and Disease in Adults and Adolescents was first produced in 1990 by the World Health Organization and updated in September 2005. It is an approach for use in resource limited settings and is widely used in Africa and Asia and has been a useful research tool in studies of progression to symptomatic HIV disease.
Following infection with HIV, the rate of clinical disease progression varies enormously between individuals. Many factors such as host susceptibility and immune function, health care and co-infections, as well as factors relating to the viral strain may affect the rate of clinical disease progression.
== Revised World Health Organization (WHO) Clinical Staging of HIV/AIDS For Adults and Adolescents (2005) ==
(This is the interim African Region version for persons aged 15 years or more who have had a positive HIV antibody test or other laboratory evidence of HIV infection)
(The United Nations defines adolescents as persons aged 10−19 years but for surveillance purposes, the category of adults and adolescents comprises people aged 15 years and over)
=== Primary HIV infection ===
Asymptomatic
Acute retroviral syndrome
=== Clinical stage 1 ===
Asymptomatic
Persistent generalized lymphadenopathy
=== Clinical stage 2 ===
Moderate and unexplained weight loss (<10% of presumed or measured body weight)
Recurrent respiratory tract infections (such as sinusitis, bronchitis, otitis media, pharyngitis)
Herpes zoster
Recurrent oral ulcerations
Papular pruritic eruptions
Angular cheilitis
Seborrhoeic dermatitis
Onychomycosis (fungal nail infections)
=== Clinical stage 3 ===
Conditions where a presumptive diagnosis can be made on the basis of clinical signs or simple investigations
Unexplained chronic diarrhoea for longer than one month
Unexplained persistent fever (intermittent or constant for longer than one month)
Severe weight loss (>10% of presumed or measured body weight)
Oral candidiasis
Oral hairy leukoplakia
Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) diagnosed in last two years
Severe presumed bacterial infections (e.g. pneumonia, empyema, meningitis, bacteraemia, pyomyositis, bone or joint infection)
Acute necrotizing ulcerative stomatitis, gingivitis or periodontitis
Conditions where confirmatory diagnostic testing is necessary
Unexplained anaemia (< 80 g/L), and or neutropenia (<500/μl) and or thrombocytopenia (<50 000/ μl) for more than one month
=== Clinical stage 4 ===
Conditions where a presumptive diagnosis can be made on the basis of clinical signs or simple investigations
HIV wasting syndrome
Pneumocystis pneumonia
Recurrent severe or radiological bacterial pneumonia
Chronic herpes simplex infection (orolabial, genital or anorectal of more than one month's duration)
Esophageal candidiasis
Extrapulmonary tuberculosis
Kaposi's sarcoma
Central nervous system toxoplasmosis
HIV encephalopathy
Conditions where confirmatory diagnostic testing is necessary
Extrapulmonary cryptococcosis including meningitis
Disseminated non-tuberculous mycobacteria infection
Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy
Candida of trachea, bronchi or lungs
Cryptosporidiosis
Isosporiasis
Visceral herpes simplex infection
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection (retinitis or of an organ other than the liver, spleen or lymph nodes)
Any disseminated mycosis (e.g. histoplasmosis, coccidioidomycosis, penicilliosis)
Recurrent non-typhoidal salmonella sepsis
Lymphoma (cerebral or B cell non-Hodgkin)
Invasive cervical carcinoma
Visceral leishmaniasis
== Original proposal in 1990 ==
=== Clinical Stage I ===
Asymptomatic
Generalised lymphadenopathy
In some cases symptoms similar to those of cold flue would be manifested.
Performance scale: 1: asymptomatic, normal activity.
=== Clinical Stage II ===
Weight loss, < 10% of body weight
Minor mucocutaneous manifestations (seborrheic dermatitis, prurigo, fungal nail infections, recurrent oral ulcerations, angular cheilitis)
Herpes zoster within the last five years
Recurrent upper respiratory tract infections (i.e. bacterial sinusitis)
And/or performance scale 2: symptomatic, normal activity.
=== Clinical Stage III ===
Weight loss, > 10% of body weight
Unexplained chronic diarrhoea > 1 month
Unexplained prolonged fever (intermittent or constant), > 1 month
Oral [candidiasis] ([thrush])
Oral hairy leucoplakia
Pulmonary tuberculosis
Severe bacterial infections (i.e. pneumonia, pyomyositis)
And/or performance scale 3: bedridden < 50% of the day during last month.
=== Clinical Stage IV ===
The declaration of AIDS
HIV wasting syndrome *
Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia
Toxoplasmosis of the brain
Cryptosporidiosis with diarrhoea > 1 month
Cryptococcosis, extrapulmonary
Cytomegalovirus disease of an organ other than liver, spleen or lymph node (ex: retinitis)
Herpes simplex virus infection, mucocutaneous (>1 month) or visceral
Progressive multifocal leucoencephalopathy
Any disseminated endemic mycosis
Candidiasis of esophagus, trachea, bronchi
Atypical mycobacteriosis, disseminated or lungs
Non-typhoid Salmonella septicemia
Extrapulmonary tuberculosis
Lymphoma
Kaposi's sarcoma
HIV encephalopathy **
And/or performance scale 4: bedridden > 50% of the day during last month.
(*) HIV wasting syndrome: weight loss of > 10% of body weight, plus either unexplained chronic diarrhoea (> 1 month) or chronic weakness and unexplained prolonged fever (> 1 month).
(**) HIV encephalopathy: clinical findings of disabling cognitive and/or motor dysfunction interfering with activities of daily living, progressing over weeks to months, in the absence of a concurrent illness or condition other than HIV infection which could explain the findings.
== References == | Wikipedia/WHO_Disease_Staging_System_for_HIV_Infection_and_Disease_in_Adults_and_Adolescents |
WHO Disease Staging System for HIV Infection and Disease was first produced in 1990 by the World Health Organization and updated in 2007. It is an approach for use in resource limited settings and is widely used in Africa and Asia and has been a useful research tool in studies of progression to symptomatic HIV disease. Most of these conditions are opportunistic infections that are easily treated in healthy people. The staging system is different for adults and adolescents and children.
Stage I: HIV disease is asymptomatic and not categorized as AIDS.
Stage II: include minor mucocutaneous manifestations and recurrent upper respiratory tract infections.
Stage III: includes unexplained chronic diarrhea for longer than a month, severe bacterial infections and pulmonary tuberculosis.
Stage IV: includes toxoplasmosis of the brain, candidiasis of the esophagus, trachea, bronchi or lungs and Kaposi's sarcoma; these diseases are used as indicators of AIDS.
== Notes == | Wikipedia/WHO_disease_staging_system_for_HIV_infection_and_disease |
AIDS-defining clinical conditions (also known as AIDS-defining illnesses or AIDS-defining diseases) is the list of diseases published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that are associated with AIDS and used worldwide as a guideline for AIDS diagnosis. CDC exclusively uses the term AIDS-defining clinical conditions, but the other terms remain in common use.
This list governs the US government's classification of HIV disease. This is to allow the government to handle epidemic statistics and define who receives US government assistance. However, considerable variation exists in the relative risk of death following different AIDS-defining clinical conditions.
== Definition ==
According to the CDC definition, a patient has AIDS if they are infected with HIV and have either:
a CD4+ T-cell count below 200 cells/μL
a CD4+ T-cell percentage of total lymphocytes of less than 14%
or one of the defining illnesses.
A patient presenting one of the above conditions but with laboratory evidence against HIV infection is not normally considered to have AIDS, but an AIDS diagnosis may be given if the patient has had Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia, and has not:
undergone high-dose corticoid therapy or other immunosuppressive/cytotoxic therapy in the three months before the onset of the indicator disease
been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, lymphocytic leukemia, multiple myeloma, or any cancer of lymphoreticular or histiocytic tissue, or angioimmunoblastic lymphoadenopathy
or been diagnosed with a genetic immunodeficiency syndrome atypical of HIV infection, such as one involving hypogammaglobulinemia.
== Defining illnesses ==
=== 2008 definition ===
Are the following:
Candidiasis of bronchi, trachea, or lungs
Candidiasis esophageal
Coccidioidomycosis, disseminated or extrapulmonary
Cryptococcosis, extrapulmonary
Cryptosporidiosis, chronic intestinal for longer than 1 month
Cytomegalovirus disease (other than liver, spleen or lymph nodes)
Cytomegalovirus retinitis (with loss of vision)
Encephalopathy (HIV-related)
Herpes simplex: chronic ulcer(s) (for more than 1 month); or bronchitis, pneumonitis, or esophagitis
Histoplasmosis, disseminated or extrapulmonary
Isosporiasis, chronic intestinal (for more than 1 month)
Kaposi's sarcoma
Lymphoma, Burkitt's
Lymphoma, immunoblastic (or equivalent term)
Lymphoma, primary, of brain
Mycobacterium avium complex or Mycobacterium kansasii, disseminated or extrapulmonary
Mycobacterium, other species, disseminated or extrapulmonary
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, any site (extrapulmonary)
Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (formerly Pneumocystis carinii)
Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy
Salmonella sepsis (recurrent)
Toxoplasmosis of the brain
Tuberculosis, disseminated
Wasting syndrome due to HIV
=== Added in 1993 ===
Cervical cancer (invasive)
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, any site (pulmonary)
Pneumonia (recurrent)
=== Children < 13 years ===
Additional conditions are included for children younger than 13:
Bacterial infections, multiple or recurrent
Lymphoid interstitial pneumonia or pulmonary lymphoid hyperplasia complex
== History ==
In 1993, the CDC added pulmonary tuberculosis, recurrent pneumonia and invasive cervical cancer to the list of clinical conditions in the AIDS surveillance case definition published in 1987 and expanded the AIDS surveillance case definition to include all HIV-infected persons with CD4+ T-lymphocyte counts of fewer than 200 cells/μL or a CD4+ percentage of less than 14. Outside the US, however, diagnosis with a listed opportunistic infection is still required.
It has been suggested that other conditions (such as penicilliosis) should be included in other countries.
== Common Defining Conditions ==
=== Kaposi's Sarcoma ===
Kaposi's Sarcoma (KS) is an extremely common disease that arises in AIDS patients and HIV-infected individuals. The condition is characterized by large purple lesions on the skin and mouth. KS presents itself differently for everyone affected by it, and its symptoms and progression varies from person to person as well. There are four different populations that are at risk for KS, all of which are caused by infection with human herpesvirus 8. In the United States, almost every case of Kaposi's Sarcoma is indirectly caused by HIV infection. The disease is the most common among male homosexuals, presumably because human herpesvirus 8 exists with the most prevalence within this population.
The remaining types of KS are known as Classic (Mediterranean), Endemic (African), and Transplant-related Kaposi's Sarcoma. Classic KS is common in regions of the Middle East, where herpesvirus 8 is fairly prevalent. KS occurrences in these regions are mainly found in older men, which is thought to be due to the natural decline of the immune system's strength when we age. Endemic KS presents itself the same way, but is a result of many people in certain regions of Africa being infected with human herpesvirus 8. In contrast to older men being affected in Classical infections, Endemic KS mainly affects young children, as the virus is transferred from mother to child via saliva. The final type of KS, transplant-related, is theoretically capable of manifesting in anyone. Transplant patients must take very strong immunosuppressant drugs to ensure that the body does not reject their new heart, liver, etc. However, a consequence of this is, of course, that their immune system becomes quite weak, and therefore very susceptible to infections. In a similar manner to how HIV contributes to KS, transplant patients are also at high risk for it, especially if the transplant was performed in a country where human herpesvirus 8 is endemic. In recent years, however, incidences of Kaposi's sarcoma in the United States have dwindled so much that physicians today often fail to consider it as a possibility when making diagnoses.
=== Toxoplasmosis ===
In the central nervous system, the most common AIDS-defining condition is toxoplasmosis. Caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, toxoplasmosis in HIV-infected patients mainly presents as encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, but can take other forms as well, such as inflammation of the retinas or lungs. Toxoplasma, like most parasites, carries out its infection in distinct stages of life. Strangely enough, while many tissues can harbor the parasite, it is only capable of reproducing sexually in cats. Cats are carriers of the oocyst- the infective form of Toxoplasma Gondii. Once these oocysts have entered a human, they can differentiate into their next stage of life, the tachyzoite. These cells can invade our own, rapidly divide by means of binary fission, lose our cells, and travel throughout our bodies. As a result of the immune response that this invasion causes, the tachyzoites become dormant, forming cysts called bradyzoites that are commonly found in the brain and skeletal muscle. In immunocompromised patients, such as those with HIV, the infection becomes much more deadly, as without a consistent or strong enough immune response following bradyzoite formation, tachyzoites can escape from the cysts, facilitating further systemic infection and inflammation. In physiologically typical individuals, the infection will generally be taken care of by the immune system, rarely causing any actual illness. In fact, it is estimated that in some areas of the world, more than sixty percent of people have been exposed to the Toxoplasma parasite in their lifetime. HIV patients, on the other hand, often suffer from intense pain, difficulty seeing and breathing, or partial blindness due to toxoplasmosis as a result of an insufficient immune response.
== References ==
== External links ==
"AIDSinfo - Testing HIV Positive – Do I Have AIDS?". 21 February 2007. Archived from the original on 2007-02-21. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
Petruckevitch, A.; Amo, J.; Phillips, A. N.; Johnson, A. M.; Stephenson, J.; Desmond, N.; Hanscheid, T.; Low, N.; Newell, A.; Obasi, A.; Paine, K.; Pym, A.; Theodore, C.; De Cock, K. M. (1998). "Disease progression and survival following specific AIDS-defining conditions: A retrospective cohort study of 2048 HIV-infected persons in London". AIDS. 12 (9): 1007–1013. doi:10.1097/00002030-199809000-00007. PMID 9662196. S2CID 30366460. | Wikipedia/AIDS-defining_clinical_condition |
The HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) is a non-profit organization which connects physicians and scientists with activists and community educators for the purpose of conducting clinical trials seeking a safe and effective HIV vaccine. Collaboratively, researchers and laypeople review potential vaccines for safety, immune response, and efficacy. The HVTN is a network for testing vaccines, and while its members may also work in vaccine development for other entities, the mission of the HVTN does not include vaccine design.
The HVTN is the only HIV vaccine research network sponsored by the American government. It also manages the only large-scale HIV vaccine research trial network in Africa. The HVTN collaborates with the Division of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (DAIDS). Funding comes from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and National Institutes of Health, which oversee DAIDS. HVTN is headquartered at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The vaccines being tested come from various producers, both commercial and non-profit.
== Community involvement ==
Typically, researchers conduct clinical research on human subjects by asking volunteers to give informed consent to participate in an experiment by taking drugs that have not always been proven safe or effective in humans, though their safety has been tested (usually in animals) prior to any human trials. At the HVTN, many current vaccine studies are using products with a safety record that has been established in previous human trials.
The Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki, and the Belmont Report are legal documents written in layman's terms which local governments use to model their laws for establishing rules for conducting clinical trials, and all contemporary clinical trials of international worth follow all the rules set by these precedents.
However, HIV vaccine research requires more than just these protections, and because of this, from the inception of their research the HVTN has instituted a "community advisory board" (CAB) system in addition to the usual controls. The CAB is similar to an Institutional Review Board (IRB) in that the researchers facilitate the granting of public data to both entities, but the difference is that the IRB consists of a professional ethics committee and the CAB consists of any community member who wants to supervise the safety, ethics, efficacy, or any other aspect of the research.
The researchers of the HVTN deemed the creation of the CAB necessary for HIV vaccine research when it has not been necessary for other clinical research because the HIV epidemic is especially urgent, new research techniques are available now that did not exist before recent major advances in genetic engineering, the public is generally overly-willing to volunteer to receive experimental vaccines for this cause, and yet the educational infrastructure already in place to disseminate information about the inherent risk in participating in vaccine research is lacking in society. For too many reasons, there is no precedent for research of this sort on this scale, and without integrating educational programs about this research into existing community institutions, the HVTN simply could not educate people to the required level to make such a fast-moving, expensive, inherently non-commercial research project possible.
== African HIV vaccine trials ==
In 2003 the HVTN partnered with Harvard University in establishing a small-scale vaccine trials unit in Botswana. A major reason for this project was gathering data about the HIV prevalence in Africa and assessing the feasibility of getting grassroots support for vaccine trials.
In 2007 the HVTN started the first large-scale HIV vaccine trials in Africa, called HVTN 503/Phambili, with financial assistance from the SA Aids Vaccine Initiative. Phambili was halted in 2007 due to its similarity to the ineffective vaccine used in the American STEP study.
In 2011, the HVTN collaborated with South African researcher Glenda Gray on a trial called HVTN 097 which is the only study outside Thailand to test the pox-protein vaccine regimen that had been found to be partially efficacious in the RV144 trial.
Since 2016, the HVTN is collaborating with African researchers and communities on multiple HIV vaccine efficacy trials in Africa, including HVTN 702 which tests a pox-protein vaccine regimen, HVTN 703 (AMP) which tests passive immunisation, and HVTN 705 (Imbokodo) Archived 2018-07-24 at the Wayback Machine which tests a global antigen vaccine. On August 31, 2021, Johnson & Johnson announced the results of the primary analysis of the Imbokodo study showing that the vaccine did not provide sufficient protection against HIV in the cohort of young women enrolled in the trial. Based on these results, the study was discontinued.
== American HIV vaccine trials ==
HVTN 502/ STEP was the name for a double-blind randomized controlled trial conducted in the US and managed by the HVTN. It was thoroughly reviewed when more participants in the experimental group contracted HIV than participants in the control group. The vaccine contained no HIV and no one could have contracted HIV from the vaccine, but there was intense discussion as to whether the vaccine could have increased anyone's risk of contracting HIV. Because the study was stopped early, it probably will never be possible to determine why more participants in the experimental group contracted HIV, but various theories have been proposed.
In October 2009, the HVTN began a clinical trial in the USA called HVTN 505. HVTN 505 tested whether two vaccines, a DNA plasmid vaccine plus a recombinant adenovirus type 5 vector vaccine (DNA/rAd5), could prevent HIV. The vaccines were developed for HIV subtypes A, B and C by the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In April 2013, the data and safety monitoring board recommended stopping vaccinations because there was no evidence that the vaccines could prevent people from getting HIV. The vaccines could also not treat HIV. The vaccines were, however, found to be safe and well tolerated.
In 2019, Johnson & Johnson announced that its subsidiary, Janssen Vaccines, would launch a Phase 3 clinical trial of a mosaic-based HIV vaccine candidate under the trial name HVTN 706/HPX3002/MOSAICO with a target enrollment of 3800 participants for 55 clinical sites in Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Spain, and the United States. The focus of MOSAICO is high-risk men who have sex with men and transgender people, with results expected in 2023.
== See also ==
World AIDS Vaccine Day
Julie McElrath
HIV Vaccine
HIV Vaccine development
== References ==
== External links ==
HIV Vaccine Trials Network
Hope Takes Action
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Division of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, NIH | Wikipedia/HIV_Vaccine_Trials_Network |
The cost of HIV treatment is a complicated issue with an extremely wide range of costs due to varying factors such as the type of antiretroviral therapy and the country in which the treatment is administered. The first line therapy of HIV, or the initial antiretroviral drug regimen for an HIV-infected patient, is generally cheaper than subsequent second-line or third-line therapies. There is also a great variability of drug prices among low, middle, and high income countries. In general, low-income countries have the lowest cost of antiretroviral therapy, while middle- and high-income tend to have considerably higher costs. Certain prices of HIV drugs may be high and difficult to afford due to patent barriers on antiretroviral drugs and slow regulatory approval for drugs, which may lead to indirect consequences such as greater HIV drug resistance and an increased number of opportunistic infections. Government and activist movements have taken efforts to limit the price of HIV drugs.
In 2019 the government of India reported that it was supplying 2/3 of drugs for HIV treatment.
== Antiretroviral treatment costs ==
Drug companies market their antiretroviral drugs at different prices depending the type of drug and the target consumers. The cost of HIV treatment for first-line therapy has generally been lowest due to the availability of generic drugs designed for such treatment. If patients develop complications or resistance to first line therapy drugs, they may need to proceed to second-line or third-line therapy to successfully limit the HIV infection. Because there is a smaller market for such drug treatments, patients must often rely on considerably more expensive originators, or brand name drugs that were first approved for the market, to receive sufficient treatment. The costs of HIV treatment also tend to be cheaper in low-income countries as opposed to middle- and high-income countries, which may be attributed to the differences in price deals between governments and HIV drug companies. Low, middle, and high income countries are categorized according to the World Bank Atlas method, in which low-income countries had a GNI (gross national income) per capita of $995 or less in 2017, lower middle-income countries had a GNI per capita ranging from $996 to $3,895, upper middle-income countries had a GNI per capita ranging from $3,896 and $12,055, and high-income countries had a GNI per capita greater than or equal to $12,056.
=== First-line treatment ===
The first-line treatment is generally given to patients as an initial antiretroviral therapy and is the cheapest of the stages of treatments. The first-line antiretroviral drug treatment as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) involves TDF (tenofovir), 3TC (lamivudine) or FTC (emtricitabine), and EFV (efavirenz) or dolutegravir (DTG).
==== Low-income countries ====
There have been considerable reductions in the prices of first-line treatments over several years in low-income countries, which may be due to the increased market competition among producers driving them to bring generic drug prices down. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a US government initiative concentrated on curbing HIV infections in low-income, developing nations, estimated that first-line antiretroviral drug prices were reduced by 15% from 2004 to 2009 for their programs. In 2014, PEPFAR calculated the estimated mean total cost per patient-year of treatment in the programs, including financial and in-kind contributions from all sources (including partner governments and other bilateral and multilateral donors), is $757 and that in low-income and lower middle-income countries, the mean cost per patient year of treatment when taking into account all sources of support is $645. PEPFAR calculated that their share of the cost for first-line treatment was $286 per patient per year, a considerable price reduction from its 2003 price of $1100 per patient per year. According to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), from 2014 to 2016, the prices of first-line antiretroviral drug treatment was cut down by roughly 30%, with the price for a recommended first-line regimen as low as $100 per patient per year. In 2018, the preferred first-line treatment of the fixed dose combination (FDC) TLD was available at $75 per patient per year.
==== Middle- and high-income countries ====
In middle- and high-income countries, the cost of first-line HIV treatment has been considerably greater than that of low-income countries. Middle- and high-income countries often have not been able import and use generic first-line drugs, which have caused them to resort to more expensive originator drugs. This can amount to considerably greater drug costs; for example, the 2016 generic drug price for TDF/FTC/EFV was $100 per patient per year, while the originator price for the same treatment was as high as $1033. Furthermore, the price of originator drug costs have tended to remain static, rendering it difficult to obtain price reductions. High-income countries have had issues involving expensive patented antiretroviral drugs; for example, in 2016 the TDF/FTV/EFV treatment was approximately $30,000 per patient per year in the US, whereas the generic medication only costed $100 per patient per year.
=== Second- and third-line treatment ===
For patients who failed first-line therapy, it may be necessary to transfer to second-line therapy in order to suppress HIV viral loads, and for patients who fail second-line therapy, it may be necessary transfer to third-line therapy. The failure rate of first-line antiretroviral regimen has been estimated to be approximately 15%, indicating that a portion of patients receiving antiretroviral drug treatment may need to switch to second- or third-line therapy. Switching to either of the therapies often involve a leap in prices; moving from first-line to second-line treatment may mean a nearly threefold increase in cost, and moving from second-line to third-line treatment may mean a nearly seven-fold increase in cost (eighteen-fold increase from first-line). Furthermore, countries often spend disproportionally on treatment by providing third-line regimens. In Morocco, the cost of treating 20 people with third-line treatment ($20,400 per patient per year) was comparable to the cost of treating 1700 people with first-line treatment ($240 per patient per year).
==== Low-income countries ====
According to PEPFAR in 2014, the average cost of second-line treatment was $657 versus the average cost for first-line treatment of $286. Despite the price jump from first-line to second-line treatment, second-line treatment costs have shown a pattern of decline for both originator and generic drugs. In 2016, AZT/3TC and ATV/r were the cheapest generic second-line drugs at a cost of $286 per patient per year, an 11% decrease from 2014. The WHO recommended the boosted protease inhibitors ATV/r and LPV/r for second-line treatments, but LPV/r has generally been more expensive. Third-line regimens reflect an even greater rise in costs, where the lowest price for a third-line treatment in 2016 was $1,859 per patient per year.
==== Middle- and high-income countries ====
Middle- and high-income countries have paid considerably higher prices relative to low-income countries for second- and third-line regimens. For example, the 2013 cost of LPV/r in second-line treatment in both Argentina ($2,570 per patient per year) and Mexico ($2,511 per patient per year) was over twelve-fold that of the price of LPV/r in South Africa ($204 per patient per year), and the 2014 cost of LPV/r in Malaysia was even greater (>$3,500 per patient per year). For third-line treatments, middle- and high-income countries have also faced challenges of expensive drug prices. In the US, the cost of third-line treatment was 41% greater than the cost of first-line treatment, at respective prices of $40,804 per patient per year and $28,861 per patient per year in 2013.
== High prices of HIV treatment ==
The high cost of certain antiretroviral drugs, especially those of middle- and high-income countries, has been a pressing issue which stemmed from a variety of factors and may have adverse and unintended consequences. Despite government and activist efforts to limit the price of HIV drugs, they have still often remained at unaffordable prices due to reasons such as patent barriers on antiretroviral drugs and slow regulatory approval. This may have indirect consequences including greater HIV drug resistance and an increased number of opportunistic infections. Various activist groups and movements have striven to overcome barriers of affordable drug prices and administer drugs in cost-effective manners, effectively reducing the prices of antiretroviral therapy to a considerable degree.
=== Reasons for high antiretroviral therapy prices ===
Many countries have had strict patent protections on originator drug brands, excluding these nations from various voluntary license agreements and often rendering them unable to attain antiretroviral drugs at affordable prices. For example, the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) has actively worked with the drug industry to license drug products and bring them to more affordable prices with a wider range of access. However, because MPP drug licenses were often prohibited from violating active patents of various countries, they were unable to provide the cheaper generic drugs and negotiated licenses to such nations. The countries of Belarus, China, Malaysia and Kazakhstan have been prevented from obtaining generic DTG, a WHO recommended first-line antiretroviral therapy, due to their exclusion from MPP licenses. As such, the price of DTG in Belarus was $2190 per patient per year as opposed to $61 per patient per year from generic drug companies (2018). The United States has provided first-line TDF/FTC/EFV treatment as a patented, brand name drug (Atripla), which have caused their treatment costs (approximately $30,000 per patient per year) to be considerably higher than generic drug treatments ($100 per patient per year) (2016). Brazilian Health Minister Jose Serra announced in 2001 that his government could find no way to pay for the cost of patented HIV drugs, and would produce Hoffmann-La Roche's nelfinavir in violation of international patent laws in order to provide affordable HIV treatment for their citizens. Second- and third-line antiretroviral drugs have been even more susceptible to increased prices from patented drugs due to a lack of generic drug providers. For example, the biopharmaceutical company AbbVie charged $740 per patient per year for second-line LPV/r in middle- and high-income countries and $231 per patient per year in low-income countries (2016).
Excessive patent protection may also be attributed to evergreening, or methods to extend patents that are about to expire. Drug companies may extend patents well beyond their original expiration date by making slight modifications to their drug, preventing antiretroviral drugs from attaining reduced prices. For example, GSK added a secondary patent for abacavir (ABC) with only minor changes and was able to effectively extend its patent of the drug by eight years in Ukraine. As such, the price of ABC in Ukraine has been as high as $277.40 per patient per year while other countries with the equivalent generic drug offered them at $123.42 per patient per year (2016). The brand name drug Truvada, which provides the WHO recommended treatment of TDF/FTC, has also been able to extend its original patent expiry year of 2017 to 2026 through minor modifications to the drug.
Delayed processes in patent approval may also be a barrier to lower HIV treatment costs. Especially for third-line drugs, slow regulatory approval can limit the market of antiretroviral drugs available, leading to originator companies providing sole-source products and gaining nearly complete control of drug prices. Slow regularly approval may often be attributed to data and market exclusivity rules, which are intended to protect clinical data submitted for patent approval and prevent other competitors from entering the market, respectively. For example, originator brands have 8 years of data exclusivity and 2 years of market exclusivity in Europe, which has allowed Gilead Sciences to have exclusivity on treatments of TDF, TDF/FTC, and TDF/FTC/EFV for 10 years each, preventing other marketing during this time.
=== Consequences of high antiretroviral therapy costs ===
Some consequences of high antiretroviral drug prices include greater occurrences of HIV resistance and an increase in the number of opportunistic infections. Patients may have financial difficulties obtaining access to expensive drugs, resulting in greater difficulties in adhering to recommended drug regimens for adequate viral suppression. For example, the lack of cheap and easily accessible generic pediatric DTG has contributed to inadequate nevirapine-based treatments in 40% of children who followed an HIV treatment regimen. With suboptimal adherence to treatment, there is an increased risk of HIV drug resistance in which the previously used treatment would no longer adequately suppress the HIV infection. The detection for HIV resistance can also be difficult and expensive as well, rendering lower-middle income countries unable to have access to various resistance tests and identifying resistant patients for treatment switches. HIV patients who have already developed resistance to first-line treatment are often barred from overcoming their resistance due to the difficulty in obtaining second- or third-line treatments, which can be several times more expensive than first-line treatment.
In individuals infected with HIV, they may also have a weakened immune system, rendering them more susceptible to opportunistic infections such as invasive cervical cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma, and tuberculosis. The high price of antiretroviral drugs may act as a barrier to HIV treatment, thereby increasing the likelihood of developing an opportunistic infection. Taking the recommended drug regimen for HIV is particularly useful in the prevention and treatment costly opportunistic infections. For example, antiretroviral therapy has been able to assist in the prevention of tuberculosis, pneumocystis pneumonia, Kaposi sarcoma, and severe bacterial infections, and may be useful in treating tuberculosis.
=== Activism to reduce antiretroviral therapy costs ===
Throughout the past decade, there have been activist movements that have influenced the procurement lower HIV drug prices at greater accessibility. In 2000, the cost for first-line treatment was over $10,000 per patient per year, and nearly two decades later in 2018, the cost has decreased to as low as $75 per patient per year.
In 1987, AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was the first international organization designed to advocate for people with HIV. On September 14, 1989, members of ACT UP protested at the New York Stock Exchange over the Burroughs Wellcome's setting a price of US$10,000 per year for AZT, which was the only effective treatment for HIV discovered and was unaffordable to many HIV positive persons. Several days later in response to the protest the company lowered the price of AZT to $6,400 per patient per year, a 20% reduction.
In 1997, the South African government attempted to make legal amendments to import patented HIV drugs at more affordable prices due to their severe inaccessibility in developed countries. In response, 39 pharmaceutical companies filed a class action lawsuit. The lawsuit would eventually be dropped years later in 2001 due to public backlash. The government's legal challenge was an important case which brought attention and urgency to the issue of unaffordable antiretroviral therapy, spurring greater activism in reducing HIV drug prices.
In 1999 at the United Nations in Geneva, AIDS activists proposed compulsory licensing for antiretroviral drugs, which would enable other non-patent holders to produce the drugs at lower market costs. The idea of taking legal measures to limit the price of HIV treatment continued to spread globally. In 1998, Brazil was the first developing nation to implement a national HIV-reduction program which produced generic versions of originator drugs, allowing consumers to purchase antiretroviral drugs at prices that were on average 79% lower than the market price before. In 2000, the Treatment Action Campaign of the International AIDS Conference in Durban prioritized increasing access to antiretroviral drugs and created the Global March for Treatment. Later on that year, a global summit in Okinawa, Japan, founded the Global Fund to optimize international funding for curbing HIV and other diseases.
In response to rising public pressures, pharmaceutical companies began to sell antiretroviral drugs at discounted prices through the Accelerating Access Initiative; however, even at the discounted prices the brand name drugs still were not as affordable as their generic counterparts. In 2001, India released a generic antiretroviral drug treatment for $350 per patient per year at a time when the originator version would have cost approximately $1000 per patient per year. This great price difference demonstrated the possibility of considerably more affordable antiretroviral drug costs to the public, prompting greater widespread activism. That same year at the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference, the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS agreement and public health was adopted, emphasizing that nations should not be hindered by intellectual property rights when promoting public health.
In 2003, HIV/AIDS was officially declared a global health emergency by the WHO, and for the next several years, with the combined effort and funding from organizations such as national governments, the Global Fund, and PEPFAR, the cost of HIV treatment was able to decline and accessibility to generic drug brands increased, especially in developing nations. In 2010, the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) was founded for the purpose of negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to reduce drug prices for treatment of HIV as well as other diseases, allowing countries who are part of the agreement to further offer reduced drug prices to consumers.
== References == | Wikipedia/Cost_of_HIV_treatment |
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