Millard Fillmore White House Library

@k_lhk Why do you let Jamie Andrews lie to you like that? No one scented DDT to smell sweet to poison kids.

@k_lhk If Rachel Carson said it had been done in “Silent Spring,” you’d have a case. Carson did not. No case.

SPRAYAGE DURANT LA « PANDEMIE DE POLIO ». Le pesticide DDT sprayé avait un arôme sucré de chewing-gum, ce qui attirait les enfants. Ce produit neurotoxique était diffusé dans les quartiers au moment où l'épidémie neurologique présumée de « polio » atteignait son pic.

@k_lhk No, DDT was not scented to smell sweet. Who told you that lie, and shy did you let them?

Here’s a new hoax on DDT: Some anti-vaccine keyboard warrior said chemical companies scented DDT to smell like bubblegum, so children would try to get covered in DDT. No record of that. It would have violated pesticide rules of 1950s. Rachel Carson does not verify.

@IntegralAnswers Once you've done phase 3 and identified that a drug is safe, reliable and released, I'm not against the concept of a "phase 4" where you compare it to other therapies. But it has to be voluntary, patients must know they're being treated by a random list.

@richykirsh Exactly. Plaintiff’s attorneys and researchers have different objectives. One is in search for answers and the other, as you note, to create doubt.

5/ Finally, “new indication” does not necessarily mean an entirely untested product. It may mean extending an established vaccine to another age group, schedule or population. Existing evidence does not disappear; immunobridging or non-inferiority may then be the scientifically appropriate design. A serious assessment asks: What vaccine? Which phase and indication? What endpoints? What prior evidence? Which comparator? What sample size and follow-up? Berenson supplied none of this. He saw “not saline” and declared scandal. The scientific question is not simply, “Where is the placebo?” It is: What causal question does this control answer—and is that answer adequate for the claim being made?

4/ There is a legitimate limitation: an unrelated-vaccine control does not cleanly measure the new vaccine’s safety versus no pharmacologically active exposure. It provides comparative safety against the control vaccine. Saline provides a clearer estimate of adverse events attributable to the finished product, and WHO acknowledges that advantage. But “adjuvanted saline” is not an inert placebo either. It is an adjuvant-only control that helps separate antigen effects from adjuvant effects. FDA has said plain saline is preferable to an adjuvant-only arm⁠ when only one control is used in definitive development. fda.gov/media/134489/d… That is methodological nuance—not evidence of fraud.

3/ Why might researchers use a licensed vaccine against a different disease? For the target-disease endpoint, it remains a negative control: it contains none of the antigen being investigated and should provide no protection against the infection being counted. It can preserve blinding, match the injection-and-visit experience and give control participants a useful vaccine rather than a purposeless injection. WHO explicitly recognizes this design⁠. cdn.who.int/media/docs/def… The researchers are not testing whether two unrelated vaccines are “equivalent.” They are comparing the incidence of the target disease between randomized groups.

2/ Berenson’s claim about ordinary medicines is demonstrably false. US regulations explicitly recognize placebo, dose-comparison, no-treatment, active-treatment and historical controls as potentially valid designs for drug trials. 21 CFR §314.126⁠ ecfr.gov/current/title-… ICH E10⁠ (database.ich.org/sites/default/…) devotes an entire section to active-control trials. When an effective treatment already exists, denying it to participants merely to create a placebo group may itself be unethical.

1/ Alex Berenson says he cannot imagine even a “theoretical rationale” for vaccine trials using another vaccine rather than saline—and claims such controls are unacceptable and absent from ordinary drug trials. That is not an exposé of vaccine science. It is a misunderstanding of clinical-trial design. An inert placebo is one valid control—not the only valid control. The appropriate comparator depends on the causal question, existing evidence, study phase, endpoints and ethics.

@k_lhk That’s a poor source for a claim that someone intended to abuse children with bug poison. It’s a patently false claim. It cannot be verified.

The ICE officer who killed a man in Maine sued in late 2023 over a head injury that left him "significantly impaired" cognitively...memory loss, vertigo, couldn't finish firefighter training. Two years later ICE hands him a gun and badge? Who vetted this? Sharp judgment is life-or-death in that job. A man is dead. Explain THAT to me.

Right now, there’s a massive campaign underway to make sure Todd Blanche never becomes Attorney General. Help us make it stick. Here’s a link to urge your senators to vote no. It only takes a minute! actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-y…

This would be a huge scandal for any other president. A South Korean company challenging Commerce Department trade penalties paid Donald Trump’s holding company $2,000,000 last year. The payment came from Base Group, the lead investor in Korea Aluminium, which faced penalties after the Commerce Department found that South Korean companies were circumventing trade duties on Chinese-made aluminum. The money surfaced in Trump’s annual financial disclosure released in late June. The disclosure described it only as a nonrefundable development fee tied to a letter of intent. The Trump Organization says it relates to an unannounced golf course project. Base Group has courted the Trump family for nearly a decade. It sells Trump-branded wine in South Korea and hosted Eric Trump at its Seoul headquarters in February, where executives discussed expanding trade between the two countries. As recently as last month, the Commerce Department was weighing whether to raise tariffs further on Korea Aluminium. A preliminary review released last week sided with American aluminum companies. The agency that decides this company’s fate answers to the president. The president took $2,000,000 dollars from its largest investor. This is one payment. Trump’s holding company collected at least $125,000,000 from foreign sources last year, from more than a dozen countries. Every president in modern history stepped away from their business to avoid even the appearance of a conflict. This president kept nearly 30 ventures with foreign partners and now profits from companies whose fortunes his own government controls. This cannot be normalized. Either we will end the corruption, or the corruption will be the end of us. nytimes.com/2026/07/14/us/…

It used to be said that the business of America was business. Now the business of America is Trump. There is not a single element of US domestic reform policy that he would not abandon or betray to enrich himself, and everyone knows it.

This country is so F*cked up right now.

Mark Hertling: “It is such an abject failure, the MOU…U.S. service members are getting killed, 10,000 people in Iran are without water, the Kuwaitis oil facility up in flames…That to me seems like an abject failure of diplomacy and they should own it.” thebulwark.com/p/two-american…