Infectious Myth – Alan Cassels on Selling Sickness and Disease Mongering – 03.01.16

In episode 91 David Crowe interviews Alan Cassels, a Canadian drug policy researcher at the University of Victoria, who has authored several books, and many papers and also television documentaries. He is very interested in the promotion of drugs, particularly what he calls Selling Sickness or Disease Mongering, which happens when a drug companies, and people influenced by them, create a new illness, or promote greater ‘awareness’ of a minor condition, by exaggerating its impact, and the effectiveness of the drugs that you’re likely to be prescribed if you “see your doctor” as illness advertisements always tell you to do.
Alan believes in the power of Evidence Based Medicine, and therefore supports the Cochrane Institute, which is where one of my previous guests, Peter Gotzsche works. While not perfect, it is not so influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, and therefore produces relatively unbiased recommendations.
You can learn more about this week’s guests’s work at http://AlanCassels.com

Infectious Myth – Zika Myths with Jim West – 02.23.16

Jim West discusses Zika virus with David Crowe. How the story of the virus originated. Why a virus that was never blamed for anything other than mild symptoms before was suddenly blamed for microcephaly in infants. What is microcephaly, how frequent is it normally and how is it that pesticides, vaccines and GMO mosquitoes not being considered as possible causes? You will learn a whole lot more about Zika in this episode compared with listening to or reading the fear-mongering and misdirections of the mainstream media and mainstream public health organizations like W.H.O.

“Erratum: Jim West referred to a monkey being kept in an environment of 104F. Actually it was the monkey’s body temperature. 104F is the upper range of the normal body temperature for this species, so was not even a fever.”

Infectious Myth – A Titanic Conspiracy with John Hamer – 02.16.16

Most people believe that the Titanic sank in 1912 on its maiden voyage, after hitting an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland, en-route to New York City. This show’s guest, John Hamer, doesn’t believe this, at least the part about it being the Titanic. In fact, he’s written a book about it, “Titanic’s Last Secret”. And another one about the sister ship, “RMS Olympic”. The former being fictional, and the latter being non-fiction – the facts as John Hamer sees them. John also connects the sinking of the Titanic (or maybe the Olympic) to the creation of the US Federal Reserve Bank, a private monopoly on the creation of public money.

Infectious Myth – Guns – 06.23.15

David Crowe takes aim at guns in Episode 63, particularly gun culture and the death toll from guns, in the United States and elsewhere. Motivated by the Charleston gun massacre, David investigates facts and figures behind gun deaths, and examines the evidence that lax gun laws and widespread ownership of guns increases deaths from guns.

Infectious Myth – Sexual Assault and Justice – 06.09.15

In Episode 61 David tackles the difficult subject of false claims of sexual assault. Society needs to deal seriously with the historical tragedy of male sexual violence, mostly against women, but also against other men. But recent high profile cases illustrate that false claims are a real problem and create real injustices against innocent men. David examines some prominent cases in detail and highlights some of the legal and moral issues. Although false claims of rape or sexual assault are rare, some of the cases have been so dramatic that there is a risk that they will result in over-criminalization of sexual relations. Also, society may still make women feel shame over expressing their sexual desire, and in cases when this becomes public, the shame they are made to feel may make some of them argue that the sex wasn’t consensual due to their age, consumption of alcohol, etc.

Infectious Myth – Who Gets Free Expression? – 05.19.15

In Episode 59 David discusses freedom of expression, not just freedom of speech, but even the freedom to carry a gun. David chooses examples from the new YouTube-inspired phenomenon of FHITP used to sandbag interviews by female reporters, the right to openly carry a gun, the censorship of Gary Null by KPFA in Berkeley, and the response to Seymour Hersh’s new article claiming that just about everything we’ve been told about the Osama Bin Laden raid is false.

Infectious Myth – Patricia Goodson on the Frontier of AIDS Dissent – 03.03.15

In September 2014 the journal “Frontiers in Public Health” published an article, “Questioning the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis: 30 Years of Dissent,” and a firestorm erupted. The very same day that the article came out, the author, Professor Patricia Goodson of Texas A&M University, was contacted by a vigorous defender of the HIV=AIDS dogma, and the journal launched an investigation.