Cassandra Voices

Category: Science

  • The Implications of Evolution

    Evolution by natural election is the ‘greatest idea ever’ — a view which has been well set out by Julian Huxley (1961, 1964) and which I share. It is, In my view, the greatest idea as it provides a key concept to make sense of us and our world. In its essence it is simple, but breathtaking in its subtlety.

    It is accepted by biologists and by those in many other disciplines. In other words, evolution is a key ‘organising principle’ for many branches of knowledge. More than that, — as Huxley argued — an evolutionary world-view offers a coherent view of our world and our future and therefore is of fundamental importance to humankind.

    In this article I attempt to do two things: first, to set out the main features of the process of evolution by natural selection and why it is so widely accepted; second, to summarise its implications for our view of ourselves, our societies and our future.

    Of course, many excellent writers have described the workings and wonder of evolution, most notably Richard Dawkins (2009) in The Greatest Show on Earth.

    Charles Darwin in 1868.

    Not Just His Theory

    Before I discuss the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, as described by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species by Natural Selection (1859) and modified in the light of later knowledge, let me dispose of one false idea which is used to try to undermine the concept of evolution.

    ‘Theory’ does not mean that it is not accepted; it is not ‘only his theory’, as I once heard it described. In science, a tentative idea is referred to as an hypothesis or conjecture.

    ‘Theory’ means that the idea has survived repeated testing and it is now the consensus. ‘Theory’ replaces the older idea of natural ‘laws’, fixed and immutable. (In science all theories are formally tentative and liable to change in the light of new evidence.) The strength of any theory depends on three things: the rigour of the testing it survives, the number of phenomena it accounts for and the accuracy of the predictions that arise from it.

    Sea shells, Rosses Point, County Sligo, Ireland.

    Variation in Living Things

    Variation in living things is the basis of all evolution, so I want to briefly explain the sources of variation. There are two main sources: genetic variation and ‘environmental variation. Genes provide the basic instructions for the assembly and function of living things. An individual’s genetic endowment comes from their parents. Sexual reproduction involves the shuffling of the parents’ genes so that each individual gets a virtually unique combination of genes. Genes are subject to chemical changes or mutations, which may alter their function. (On average we each have about 150 genetic mutations compared to our parents.)

    The degree of genetic control varies greatly. In some conditions it approaches 100% (sickle-cell trait, blood groups), but in many other conditions hundreds or even thousands of genes are involved in a particular trait (intelligence, height). In the latter case each gene has only a minute effect on the trait. Genetic instructions are also fairly general. For example, in brain development genes ‘direct’ a particular bundle of nerve fibres to connect to a particular group of nerve cells; but which individual fibre goes to which individual cell is not specified. The precise connections during development at that local level are a matter of chance (Mitchell, 2018).

    But the ’environment’ is also a major source of variation and plays a huge part in the ultimate results of the genes. By ‘environment’ I mean the environment inside cells where genes are ‘translated’, the environment within the developing body, and also the environment in which the living creature exists. For humans this includes all life experience from family, education, illness, social interactions and everything else.

    What is Evolution?

    Evolution means the adaptive changes in living things which fit them to their environment. This is quite distinct from the development of the embryo or its voguish use for any change over time. Charles Darwin spent decades gathering evidence to support his idea of evolution by natural selection. Just like any other idea it has undergone changes to fit in with new knowledge, but Darwin’s description remains at the core of evolutionary thinking.

    Essentially, Darwin proposed five key ideas, summarised by Ernst Mayer (1991) in One Long Argument. I’ll summarise each in turn.

    Evolution/Change: Darwin had to overcome the contemporary view that the world was recently created and species were unchanging. In the 19th century it was becoming clear that the Earth is more than a few thousand years old. We can have great confidence in this idea because it is established using several completely independent measures, which all show that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old (Dawkins, 2019).

    This great age of the Earth is crucial to evolution because vast periods of time are necessary for genetic changes (mutations) to occur and for their consequences to be tested in the real world by ‘Natural Selection’. This vast expanse of time also evens out the effects of random events so that major trends can predominate. Just think of the thousands of seeds produced by a single plant: perhaps only one will end up in a spot that is suitable to allow it to reach maturity and produce offspring. Over an extended time period the best adapted to the local conditions will come to predominate. That’s how randomness works: a huge numbers of opportunities arising over long periods of time.

    During the 19th century the discovery and examination of fossils showed that some species had become extinct while others had evolved and left modern descendants. These studies also showed that different vertebrate species shared a common body plan, albeit significantly modified in some cases. For example, compare the human forelimb with that of a horse or bat. The plan is the same, but each is massively modified to adapt the animal to  its way of life (Huxley, 1863). Darwin also used evidence from the ‘artificial selection’ by animal and plant breeders of his own time, which showed that living species could change significantly at a much greater rate than could occur by chance in nature.

    Common Descent: Darwin called this ‘descent with modification’, so that offspring resemble their parents but are not identical. (Darwin had no knowledge of the mechanism of inheritance and mutation.) The genetic differences arising from mutation and genetic shuffling during sexual reproduction are the basis of evolution. Differing circumstances will favour certain genetic variants over others, leading to differential distribution of genes throughout the population.

    Descent with modification implies that all organisms come from a single common ancestor. The more closely related two species are, the more recent is their common ancestor.

    Natural Selection: Darwin inferred this from descent with modification and the fact that there are generally far more offspring than are needed for mere replacement of the population, leading to competition for resources and mates, so that over vast time spans the offspring best ‘fitted’ to their circumstance tend to survive and reproduce. In this way favourable mutations persist and become distributed through a population. This comes about by natural selection acting on variations that occur by chance.

    Natural selection is the most important element of evolutionary theory and perhaps the hardest to grasp, so I’ll present the example of the evolution of human skin colour in some detail. The earliest humans in Africa had dark skin which gave protection against strong sunlight. (Apart from sunburn, strong sun can also cause mutations which might lead to skin cancer.) In that environment dark skin clearly has an adaptive advantage. However, as human populations migrated northwards — over tens of thousands of years — darker skin became disadvantageous because it is less able to synthesise vitamin D, which requires sunlight. (Vitamin D is required for heathy bone growth.) Darker skin was no longer adaptive but had a selective disadvantage while paler skin was advantageous. In genetic terms, genes which altered  the skin to a lighter hue were favoured and became more widespread in the population as a whole. In other words, those with paler skin were better adapted to thrive and pass on their genes to the next generation.

    Species Multiply: A species is usually defined as a group of organisms that commonly interbreed and rarely, or never, interbreed with other members of related species. The simplest mechanism for forming new species is geographical isolation — by oceans or mountains for example — so that interbreeding is no longer possible and the separate populations diverge by adapting to different foods or acquiring different mating behaviours — adaptations which are inherited. Eventually the populations become so different that they can no longer interbreed, even if reunited.

    ‘Darwin’s Finches’ in the Galápagos islands are a classic example. When the Galápagos islands were formed by volcanoes they were colonised by a single species of finch from the South American mainland. They diverged over thousands of years acquiring mutations affecting, for example, beak shapes which adapted them to consume new foods. Eventually the differences were so great that they became different species incapable of interbreeding.

    Gradualism: There are no sudden leaps in evolution; new types do not suddenly arise, but are formed by the gradual accumulation of beneficial mutations and adaptations.

    ‘Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution’. Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973) American Biology Teacher, 35 (3): 125–129.]

    This summary of the main processes of evolution by natural selection shows that the workings of random processes with no purpose result in increasing levels of adaptation of living things to their environment. This is based on the fact that individuals vary and much of the variation is inherited. In competition for resources any slight advantage will be retained and spread through successive generations. In this way small changes can pile up to lead to large changes and eventually to new forms and new ways of life.

    Julian Huxley in 1922.

    The Modern Synthesis 

    In Darwin’s time there was no understanding of the mechanism of heredity which makes it all the more remarkable that he was able to take his ideas so far. Gregor Mendel first published his work in 1886 in an obscure journal and showed that heredity was in discrete units which were passed down the generations and combined in consistent ways (you can find a summary here). His revolutionary work was not rediscovered until the early years of the 20th century when the mechanisms of mutation and the spread of variant genes through populations were clarified. This work was brought together into a coherent whole by Julian Huxley (1942) in Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, generating what is sometimes called ‘Neo-Darwinism’. At that time this book was described as ‘the outstanding evolutionary treatise of the decade, perhaps the century.’

    Daniel Dennett in 2008.

    Implications of Evolution by Natural Selection: Here we explore some of the main implications of what Daniel Dennett (1995) called ‘Darwin’s dangerous idea’ for our understanding of ourselves and our world. We’ll consider the wide application pf evolutionary thinking in a variety of fields of human endeavour, then outline its impact on religion. After that we’ll look at ‘man’s place in nature’ and the special features of humans which result in our responsibility for the future evolution of ourselves and other living things on Planet Earth.

    Applications of Evolution to Different Fields of Learning. One of the tests of an idea is how widely it serves as an ‘organising principle’, helping to examine and explain a wide range of phenomena. The evolutionary principles of variation and differential survival are considered essential in many disciplines outside biology from astronomy and cosmology to philology. (Indeed, philologists, who study the origins of words and languages, were ‘early adopters’ in the 19th century and nowadays some even use genetic models to build family trees of languages.)

    In the sense that all fields of learning — indeed all human activities — are products of living things, namely humans, it is not surprising that the concept of evolution has proved so useful. It is all Biology after all (see Cultural Evolution below).

    Religions: The earliest supporters of evolution recognised that there would be conflict with religion for two main reasons. First, because of the demonstration of the extinction and change of species, contrary to the belief in a single creation of fixed species. Second, evolution by natural selection is sufficient to explain both the ever more refined adaptation of organisms to their environment and also the intricacy of structure (Dennett’s ‘engine for complexity’). Hence it removes both the need for a creator god and the argument from design which asserts that intricate structures must have had a designer.’ Hence it removes both the need for a creator god and an argument for intelligent design which asserts that intricate structures must have had a designer. Some religious groups will accept most evolutionary ideas but insist that humans are special in that they have separately and divinely created souls. We will see that humans are special, but we can account for this in purely evolutionary terms.

    ‘Man’s Place in Nature’; (The title of an 1863 book by TH Huxley, that fierce 19th-century supporter of evolution.) The principle of descent with modification leads to the idea that all living things (including humans) are related. We are not separate from nature; we are part of nature, another type of animal, descended from other animals. (The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) of all living things was about 3.9 billion years ago; the last common ancestor of the human species was about 250,000 years ago.) In evolutionary terms that makes us all practically cousins and we should strive to co-operate. As Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein (1995) wrote: ‘…remember your humanity and forget the rest…’

    Dublin, Ireland.

    Uniqueness of Humans — Cultural Evolution

    Although we are undeniably part of the living world, an animal among other animals, we are however, special — indeed unique — in that we have the most complex brains, advanced language and writing. These qualities move us out of the two slow earlier phases of evolution recognised by JS Huxley sixty years ago. The first, Inorganic phase took billions of years for the formation of stars and the larger atoms, such as iron, carbon etc. The second, Organic phase took hundreds of millions of years during which the more complex molecules were formed until eventually some could reproduce themselves. Essentially this is the forming of the first living things which increased slowly in their complexity (under the influence of natural selection) until humans appeared.

    In a few thousand years humans have evolved within Huxley’s Psychosocial phase of evolution in which change is extremely rapid: humans can rapidly transmit ideas of all kinds: technology, social structures — in short, all the cultural products of human societies. (I prefer the term cultural evolution for this process and I suspect that Huxley only called it ’psychosocial’ because he was addressing psychologists at the time.)

    Cultural evolution means that humans can understand their place in the world, determine desirable goals and set a course towards those goals. For Huxley the next great evolutionary advance will be humanity’s agreement about its ‘destiny’, based on rational scientific thought and evolutionary principles. Our understanding of cultural evolution has profound consequences for our view of ourselves because we can see that we are responsible for ourselves and our actions including their effects on other living things and on our environment. This in turn has implications for our view on the value of the individual and hence for the way we organise our societies. We will explore these aspects in the rest of this article.

    ‘Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.’ Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1981). Cosmos McDonald & Co, GB

     The Value of the Individual

    This is the great existential question for humans. An individual’s life of a few decades is as nothing on a cosmic time-scale of billions of years. In the face of this fact it is easy to feel daunted and despairing. Throughout human history many religions have addressed this question by promises of a blissful after-life or the suggestion that we are serving some supernatural being’s purpose — which is often depicted as unknowable and beyond question. Such views are unsupported by any useful evidence; they are matters of faith.

    However, the evolutionary view described above — what we may call evolutionary humanism — gives a much more optimistic perspective. On this view every individual has value precisely because we are the ‘agents of evolution’. Each individual human has the potential to contribute to the betterment of our species, all living things and our environment. The evolutionary view is supported by all the weight of modern biology, the fact of evolution and our knowledge about ourselves.

    In evolutionary humanism every individual is valued for two main reasons. First, in any evolutionary view diversity is prized in and of itself. As we have seen, diversity, or variation, is the stuff of evolution; without it evolution ceases. A population with a narrow range of possibilities and no variation is likely to become stranded by changes in the environment, unable to adapt — an evolutionary dead-end.

    Second, we cannot know what problems lie ahead of us and what skills and aptitudes will be required to survive. Happily, humans are wonderfully diverse. Every individual should be encouraged to seek personal fulfilment to the highest possible degree. This is not a recipe for hedonistic self-indulgence, but rather a strategy for fostering the widest range of skills and aptitudes as a kind of evolutionary insurance policy.

    Oslo, Norway.

    Implications for Societies

    Recall that variations in the effects of an individual’s virtually unique genetic endowment can occur during development and as a result of the ‘environment’ inside cells and the life-experience of an individual. Developmental effects are beyond our control, as is the genetic predisposition (at any given the moment). But the environment can be manipulated to produce optimum development of individuals. By environment I mean  all experiences throughout life. This includes nutrition, exposure to infection and many other factors. For humans, perhaps the most important environmental factor is education (in its broadest sense). This is where we gain much of our knowledge of the wider world and learn how to think. It is in education that there is the most potential for enhancing our super-powers of abstract thought, communication and planning our goals and working out how to get there.

    Given this knowledge of our development and an evolutionary overview which values each individual, we can get some clear pointers about how we should organise our societies for the best results on an evolutionary scale. In a society organised on the principles of evolutionary humanism, all individuals will have support and opportunities according to their needs so that they can maximise their potential. This means reducing poverty, providing efficient healthcare and the opportunities for education according to ability and attitude. As J. S. Huxley pointed out, our environment should include beauty and wonder. (George Orwell’s novel, 1984, shows how to do precisely the opposite.)

    Societies are extremely complex but evolutionary humanism provides a set of general guidelines to help work out the details at a local level. For our present purposes, it is sufficient to say that this is extremely important work and it will draw on many strands of human thought.

    Afterword: In attempting this summary of evolution and its implications, I am aware that almost every paragraph could be a topic for further detailed discussion of this fascinating and complex subject. Let the last words be those attributed by Francis Crick to Leslie Orgel: ‘Evolution is cleverer than you are.’

     Acknowledgements

    I am grateful to David McConnell and Tom Miniter for commenting on early drafts.

    References

    Bashford, A (2022). An Intimate History of Evolution: The Story of the Huxley Family. (An excellent account of JS and TH Huxley and their intellectual and personal milieux.)

    Dawkins, R (2009). The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.

    Dennett, DC (1995). Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life.

    Huxley, JS (1961). The Humanist Frame (See the essay of the same title.

    (1964). Essays of Humanist

    (Much of JS Huxley’s work is now out of print although some of it can be read online, and scanned copies are available.)

    Huxley, TH (1863). Man’s Place in Nature and Other Essays. (Often reprinted but now out of print; available in scanned versions.)

    Mayr, E (1991). One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought.

    Mitchell. K (2018) — Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Makes Us What We Are.

    Russell, B & Einstein, A (1995). The Russell-Einstein Manifesto. https://pugwash.org/1955/07/09/statement-manifesto/ [accessed 8/5/23]

    Feature Image: Fossil, Rosses Point, County Sligo, Ireland.

  • COVID-19 in Ireland: Lives Lost

    Irish Times health correspondent Paul Cullens reported on February 13, 2023 that a disturbing 1,300 patients had ‘died over the winter as a result of delays in hospital admission from emergency departments, according to an analysis of Health Service Executive data.’

    This followed a longer article by Cullen the previous Saturday exploring what is driving the deeply concerning excess death figures recorded over the previous year in Ireland and elsewhere – ‘among worst in 50 years’ according to the BBC.

    Importantly, Cullen acknowledges that COVID-19 itself ‘can only explain a fraction of the additional number of people dying.’

    Given this is a global issue, attributing additional mortality primarily to the parlous state of emergency medicine in Ireland is a difficult argument to sustain. It could be a contributory factor, but conditions in 2022 were no different to the preceding years. For example, prior to the onset of the pandemic, in January, 2020 Cullen reported that ‘[t]he first week of the new year has been the worst ever for hospital overcrowding, according to figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation.’

    The first of Cullen’s recent articles, in particular, appears to have been written in response to high mortality being ‘attributed by some online to Covid vaccines.’ He summarises his arguments to the effect that ‘[t]his limited data does not appear to support claims of a vaccine-related rise in deaths in this age cohort.’

    He then reveals,

    While the vast majority of medical specialists we asked in recent months about claims of vaccine-induced harm say they have no cause of concern, it is fair to say a small number of doctors do, though for now they are reluctant to speak publicly.

    This reluctance among members of the Irish medical profession “to speak publicly” about adverse reactions to the vaccines should be setting off alarm bells, but what is really striking about the current coverage of elevated mortality is the detached, clinical tone.

    This contrasts starkly with the emotive way in which death, and illness, attributed to COVID-19 was reported during the period of the emergency powers (March 2020 – January 2022).

    Stalin (in)famously said the death of one man is a tragedy but the death of a million is a statistic. In Ireland during that period a single death from COVID-19 was treated as a tragedy, whereas today thousands of additional deaths only seem to be eliciting comment when vaccines are implicated.

    A Calamity?

    Over the course of the pandemic the mean age of death from COVID-19 (as of 09/08/2021) in Ireland was eighty years or older, just two years younger than the average age of death. Four in five deaths from COVID-19 had at least three medical conditions. Revealingly, CSO mortality figures through the years 2018-2020 (2018: 31,116; 2019: 31,134; 2020: 31,765) show little difference between the first year of the pandemic and preceding years.

    There remain also serious question marks over how deaths are attributed to COVID-19. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) adopted WHO guidance listing COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death when:

    confirmed by laboratory testing irrespective of severity of clinical signs or symptoms.

    diagnosed clinically or epidemiologically but laboratory testing is inconclusive or not available.

    Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan acknowledged a remarkably low threshold in April, 2020: ‘Clinically, the “index of suspicion” for the disease would be “a good deal higher” than would normally be the case for flu.’

    Even allowing for a high mortality from COVID-19 in the early part of 2021, the death toll of 33,055 for that year – after vaccines had arrived – is striking. The full set of figures for 2022 are not yet available, but the CSO say that in Quarter 2 (Q2) of 2022 there were 2,626 more deaths (39.2%) when compared with the same period in 2021. Assuming that pattern is evident throughout 2022 and beyond then perhaps we should be describing this is as a calamity.

    There is now compelling evidence of under-reporting of serious adverse harms from vaccines. However, by January, 2021 the FDA had allowed Pfizer ‘to undermine the scientific integrity of the double-blinded clinical trial’. This means we cannot easily attribute additional deaths to the vaccines. But nor can we rule out the possibility that a significant proportion of excess deaths are an unintended consequence of a treatment that is still being promoted in Ireland for infants as young as six-months-old.

    This article, however, proposes another determining cause, which is that heightened stress levels generated by lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions designed to instil fear of contracting COVID-19, and actively promoted by emanations of the state and mainstream media, are the primary cause of excess deaths in Ireland and beyond.

    Summer, 2020

    Even after case numbers and deaths had plummeted by early summer 2020, legacy Irish media remained fixated on COVID-19. Writing for the Irish Times on May 23 clinical psychologist and author Maureen Gaffney reckoned that ‘Covid-19 has scored a direct hit on our most basic psychological drives.’ She seemed oblivious to how statements such as her own that ‘the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic may have changed life more permanently’ might be further stressing out her readers.

    Yet the first wave of COVID-19 afflicted few Irish people directly. An “omni-shambolic” testing infrastructure meant it was impossible for most people to determine whether symptoms synonymous with the common cold were COVID-19 or not. Despite early evidence of the unreliability of PCR testing, almost seven hundred million euro would be spent in Ireland on testing over the course of the pandemic.

    However, so-called ‘confirmed’ cases (via PCR) appear to have served a purpose beyond diagnostics. Speaking on RTÉ in November, 2021, Dr Deirdre Robertson of the ESRI’s Behavioural Research Unit said one ‘of the biggest predictors’ of social activity has been the level of worry over the virus: ‘As cases have gone up, worry has gone up and that has changed behaviour.’

    The authorities seem to have identified a correlation between case numbers and “worry over the virus” which influenced “behaviours”. By maintaining case numbers at a sufficient level through mass testing, worries could thus be maintained.

    This perhaps explains NPHET’s almost comical resistance to antigen testing. The availability of these cheap, over-the-counter kits would eventually allow people to self-diagnose, but the results could not be used to induce fear.

    It might also be noted that after leaving his post of Chief Medical Officer, Tony Holohan took up a role with Enfer, one of the primary testing provider to the state, which earned €122.4 million in 2020.

    Irish people were subjected to unprecedented social atomisation during a first lockdown that extended into the summer of 2020 – beyond most other European countries. Public figures such as then Minister for Health Simon Harris sent out subtly misleading messages, cultivating the idea that the virus was far more deadly than it was in reality.

    Later in 2020, Fianna Fail TD Cathal Crowe referred to ‘a fatality rate at the moment in this country of 6.2% of those who contract Covid.’

    However, research by Professor John Ioannidas reveals a far lower pre-vaccination infection fatality rate, especially among non-elderly populations, than previously assumed. This is as low as 0.03% for under sixties. Notwithstanding this easily accessible information, the Irish public were reminded ad nauseum of the ‘deadly’ coronavirus by mainstream media.

    Thus, in the summer of 2020 a public address called on bathers to ‘socially’ distance at Seapoint beach in Dublin. Reinforcing the dystopian atmosphere, in July a national mask mandate was introduced, despite a longstanding consensus, confirmed in a recent meta-analysis, that these do not block the transmission of respiratory pathogens.

    This generated a distinctively modern Irish form of hysteria – often vented on social media platforms – which found fullest expression in the enraged response to Golfgate at the end of August, 2020.

    In hindsight the breaches by politicians were relatively mild. It was the hypocrisy that stung, as people recalled being denied a last visit to a loved one on their death bed. Suppressing a natural human inclination to socialise was putting people in a semi-permanent state of repressed anger.

    A nation of obsessive smart phone users was confronted by an unprecedented onslaught of information tailored to stress them out. The only ‘sensible’ opposition to the lockdown policy presented by the mainstream media came in the form of a delusional ZeroCovid movement that promised an end to lockowns by locking down more strictly.

    Best in Class

    From the outset, Irish journalists and other public figures adopted a best-in-class superiority, contrasting the chaos in Britain under Boris with the virtuous restraint of Irish people. After early prevarication, clean-cut (caretaker) Taoiseach Leo Varadkar struck the right note of gravity as he heroically re-registered as a doctor, having warned of a death toll of 85,000 in a worst-case scenario. Headline writers were uninterested in the best-case scenario.

    Mainstream Irish media hardly raised a murmur at an unconstitutional power grab by NPHET. The millions of euros poured by the government into advertising seems to have had a chilling effect, while a pliant national broadcaster was quietly bailed out by the government.

    Anyone calling for moderation was subjected to ridicule or attack; guilt by association with Qanon followers calling it a hoax, and who immediately mounted a challenge in the courts to the unprecedented restraints on liberty. Thereafter, anyone calling for moderation was branded far-right.

    Independent TD Michael McNamara bravely articulated a sceptical middle ground after chairing the Oireachtas Special Committee on the Covid Response, but to little avail. Despite their unreliability, opinion polls were often taken to represent the will of the people.

    Care Home Deaths

    While the virus had little direct effect on Europe’s youngest population, Ireland did witness the second highest proportion of care home deaths in the world during the first wave. To some extent this was a product of an understandable failure to recognise that the virus seems to have been circulating for over a year. Thus, CMO Tony Holohan ordered private care homes to re-open to visitors in early March, 2020.

    Less forgivably, testing was withdrawn at the height of the surge, and many older people were removed from hospitals, to create space for an expected onslaught of younger people that never arrived.

    The scale of care home deaths revealed longstanding neglect of older people in those setting. A Pandemic Doctor wrote despairingly:

    The airwaves and print media are bursting with opinion, analysis and occasional outrage as the crisis unfolds and consumes the institutionalised elderly. The great and the good understand and discuss, sounding wise and all-knowing. But week after week we are alone. Where is the calvary? Where are the boots on the ground? Who is going to help?

    Difficulties were exacerbated by staff shortages caused by outbreaks among workers living in crowded accommodation. One resident of a county Meath nursing home – fittingly called Kilbrew – died two weeks after being admitted to hospital with an infestation of maggots in a facial wound.

    Lost Lives

    Never before in the history of Irish media and politics had there been such unrelenting emphasis on a particular disease, generating what Maureen Gaffney described as ‘our version of the spirit of the Blitz.’ But it was fear rather than resilience that were to the fore.

    In June, 2020 RTÉ Investigates ran a two-part documentary called Inside Ireland’s Covid Battle. This stretched the war time metaphor to its limit, bringing the spectre of patients gasping for breath into living rooms around the country, to devastating effect.

    You could cut through the paranoia on streets festooned with two-metre markers and yellow-coloured public health notices. Pedestrians would take refuge on to the road to avoid a close shave with another living human being. Joggers became hate figures.

    Later in the summer of 2020, the Irish Times launched an emotive Lives Lost Series. It reads: ‘Those who have died in Ireland and among the diaspora led full and cherished lives’; the series was ‘designed to tell the stories behind the numbers.’

    These included Richard Brady, an ‘Avid Dubs fan who loved his family dearly’; Ann Hyland, who ‘wrote a children’s book, climbed the Great Wall of China, rode a camel in Morocco, jet-skied in Barbados’; and Vincent Fahy who ‘began his career with ESB ‘putting the light’ into rural areas.

    These are touching tributes to ordinary people among a generation that built Ireland as we know it, but these lives were only cherished after their deaths. It begs the question: why are additional people now dying being treated as numbers? Where are the TV cameras to witness them gasping for breath?

    The name chosen for the series ‘Lives Lost’ is also instructive. Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles is a well-know book containing short biographies of the victims of the Northern Ireland Troubles. It was adapted into a film by the same name in 2019.

    The linkage between Lives Lost and Lost Lives is surely deliberate. It conveys the impression that any death from COVID-19 was not really by natural causes, but caused by the terrifying virus.

    Over the course of the summer of 2020, the Irish public also became acquainted – via social media – with the phenomenon of Long Covid, or ‘long haulers’, through social media. This too seems to have been used to sustain worry, once many had discovered the low infection fatality rate for COVID-19. Thereafter, mainstream media, including the Irish Times and RTÉ, ran a series of articles emphasising the struggles of previously healthy individuals suffering from Long Covid.

    It is notable that no hue and cry was raised by the mainstream media when the Mater Hospital lost its fight to maintain a Long Covid clinic in late 2022.

    https://vimeo.com/426871719

    ‘We Need a Reckoning’

    Considering the calamitous excess deaths we are now witnessing, Irish society ought to be reflecting on the efficacy, and morality, of adopting the lockdown-to-vaccination policy promoted by the WHO. What Maureen Gaffney referred to as ‘Our version of the spirit of the Blitz’ may come to be regarded as the most damaging public health intervention in history – the military equivalent of turning guns on ourselves.

    In a powerful video message called ‘We Need a Reckoning’, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy describes the infliction of a two month lockdown on her country as a Crime Against Humanity causing untold suffering to millions of impoverished workers in particular. Ireland needs a reckoning too.

    In his article on excess deaths, Paul Cullen at least acknowledges that ‘many non-Covid deaths arose from the pandemic and its impact on our wider physical and mental health.’

    We are not alone. According to Eurostat in September, 2022:

    Excess mortality in the EU climbed to +16% in July 2022 from +7% in both June and May. This was the highest value on record so far in 2022, amounting to around 53 000 additional deaths in July this year compared with the monthly averages for 2016-2019.

    Throughout 2022, EuroMOMO pooled estimates of all-cause mortality for the participating European countries showed elevated excess mortality. Most shockingly there has been a clear uptick in deaths among young people, especially children under the age of fourteen.

    Source: https://www.euromomo.eu/

    Since April 2022, according to the economist Dan O’Brien, Ireland’s excess deaths have been well above the average – 15% higher than the average pre-pandemic level (circa 2,500 people over 7 months).

    That this unusual pattern of mortality should be occurring in the wake of a respiratory pandemic is particularly alarming, given these generate excess deaths. A wave of illness afflicting almost everybody at least once ought to have accelerated the deaths of a substantial proportion of those with underlying illnesses between 2020 (or earlier) and 2021, leaving behind a healthier population overall.

    Last October, ex-Taoiseach Micheal Martin told a Fianna Fáil meeting that medical experts had warned him of ‘dramatically increasing cancers because of delayed diagnoses’ linked to the impact of COVID-19 on the health service. But we know from the UK that people missed appointments out of fear of contracting the virus, not because of insufficient capacity. Moreover, there is no evidence of an increase in mortality from cancer between 2019, 2020 and 2021.

    Stress

    One indicator that the stress of lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions bear primary responsibility comes from the case of Sweden, where health authorities famously took a softer approach, declining to lockdown in March, 2020. Notably, vaccination rates are above average compared to the rest of Europe.

    Among a list of countries studied by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Scandinavian nation ranked lowest for overall cumulative excess deaths from 2020-22 at 6.8 per cent, compared to Australia (18 per cent), the UK (24.5 per cent) and the US (54.1 per cent). In Ireland and elsewhere, we may be witnessing the delayed impact of stress generated by repressive policies and fear messaging.

    In his recent book, the Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, & Healing in a Toxic Culture (2022), Gabor Maté cites illuminating research into the biopsychosocial determinants of many illnesses, including cancer, auto-immune conditions and heart disease. ‘Stress’, he says, ‘plays its incendiary role: for example through the release of inflammatory proteins into the circulation’. This inflammation is ‘a fertilizer for the development of disease.(p.94)’

    He also alerts readers to what Dr Lydia Ternoshock has described as a type C[ancer] personality. She interviewed 150 patients with melanoma and found them to be ‘excessively nice, pleasant to a fault, uncomplaining and unassertive.(p.99)’

    Maté argues that ‘repression disarms one’s ability to protect oneself from stress’, explaining:

    If you go through life being stressed while not knowing you are stressed, there is little you can do to protect yourself from the long-term physiological consequences.(p.100)

    It is also possible that near-constant stress generated by a prevailing belief that COVID-19 was going to kill or do serious harm to you played a part in the prevalence of ‘Long Covid’.

    Adam Gaffney, an assistant professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School argued for a more critical appraisal of Long Covid in 2021. Having expressed scepticism around a condition characterised by symptoms such as ‘brain fog’, he recalls being contacted by a journalist who said: ‘I’m asking as much as a person as a journalist because I’m more terrified of this syndrome than I am of death.’

    Gaffney acknowledges ‘myriad long-term effects, including physical and cognitive impairments, reduced lung function, mental health problems, and poorer quality of life’ from severe bouts of COVID-19, but cites a survey showing two-thirds of ‘long haulers’ had negative coronavirus antibody tests, and another, organised by self-identifying Long Covid patients indicating around two-thirds of those surveyed who had undergone blood testing reported negative results.

    He asserted: ‘it’s highly probable that some or many long-haulers who were never diagnosed using PCR testing in the acute phase and who also have negative antibody tests are “true negatives.”

    In other words, Gaffney argues that for many Long Covid is a disease with a strong psychological component, which Gaffney attributes to ‘skyrocketing levels of social anguish and mental emotional distress,’ referencing a paper showing that about half of people with depression also had unexplained physical symptoms.

    During COVID-19, a trusting Irish public were habituated to low intensity stress driven by constant reminders of the presence of “the virus” across media and in their day-to-day lives. Any form of rebellion against this state of affairs made one a social pariah, leading most to repress this impulse. This could have provided an ideal “fertilizer for the development of disease.”

    It now appears that both lockdowns and much vaunted vaccines had only marginal effects on preventing mortality from COVID-19. It is unsurprising, therefore, that mainstream media in Ireland is giving scant attention to the collateral damage of policies that were, with few exceptions, uncritically accepted over the course of the pandemic.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Housing: Vacancy and Dereliction

    In 1841 the population of county Leitrim stood at 155,297. By 1901, however, it had fallen  to 69,343, dropping further to 41,209 by 1951, before reaching a nadir of just 25,057 in 1996. The 2022 census records a population of 35,087 – a significant increase, but still a staggering 77% reduction on the 1841 figure.

    No other Irish county has experienced such a dramatic decrease over that period; although all witnessed varying levels of decline apart from two Northern counties, Dublin (which experienced a 289% increase) and its adjoining counties. The Western seaboard’s demographic pattern merits comparison with the impact of European colonisation on the native populations of the Americas.

    The presence of both abandoned stone cottages and tumbledown bungalows bear witness to this long-running decline; these are nestled in a bewitching but ecologically scarred landscape of craggy mountains, gushing falls and still pristine lakes. Lough Allen, the source of the majestic Shannon, divides a mountainous north from the flatter lands of the south. A short stretch of coastline positions the county on the Wild Atlantic Way.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, according to CSO data the vacancy rate for Leitrim in 2022 was 15.5%, down from 19.9% in 2016. Indeed, Leitrim has the highest rate of vacancy of any county in Ireland, followed closely by its neighbours Roscommon and Mayo. In contrast 5.5% of Dublin properties were vacant – still an unsatisfactorily proportion given there are currently (as of February 10, 2023) just under six hundred properties available rent for all of Dublin city and county listed on daft.ie.

    There are various explanations for the stark population decline along the western seaboard since the Great Famine (1845-51), most obviously the Famine itself, but also a shift in agricultural priorities from tillage to pasture after the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1847, which brought cheaper grain to the British market.

    As John Mitchel wrote sarcastically for The Nation in 1847:

    You may be surprised to hear of a country having, at one and the same time, a “surplus produce” and a “surplus population” – too much food for its people, and too many people for its food. Your surprise arises from ignorance of the great principles of political economy. All produce that can be spared for export is, in the technical language of that science, “surplus;” and all people who cannot get profitable employment are also “surplus.”

    Pastoral agriculture depends on low labour inputs for profitability, meaning few children from any family could stay on the land. After independence, it became state policy to encourage beef and dairy exports. Since then, European subsidies have calcified an agricultural system that produces (as of 2020) just 61,800 tonnes of fruit and vegetables for the domestic market, compared to imports of 890,000 tonnes.

    It is also notable that two railway lines serving Leitrim were dissolved in the 1950s: the Cavan and Leitrim Railway running between Dromod and Belturbet with a branch from Ballinamore to Arigna; and the Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway, which ran between Enniskillen and Collooney near Sligo, taking in the north of the county, including Manorhamilton.

    Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant

    The Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant provides for a sum of up to €50,000 to refurbish a vacant property. It appears tailor-made for a significant proportion of the housing stock of Leitrim. As of February 7, 2023 there are 33 properties for sale under €100,000 in the county out of 197 according to the website daft.ie. Many appear suitable candidates for the Grant.

    In line with national trends, property prices have been rising steadily in Leitrim, albeit from a low base. Research on daft.ie indicates a 13.8% increase in the average price of property in the county over the course of 2022, the second steepest increase for any county apart from Donegal. Such a figure could be skewed by a few expensive purchases, but is a good indicator nonetheless.

    The prospect of purchasers receiving a Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant might lead vendors to apply a premium. Anyone availing of the Grant, meanwhile, must retain the property as a principal primary residence, and be a first-time buyer or qualify for the fresh start scheme.

    After receiving the Grant, if you decide to sell up or rent the property out within ten years of a successful application local authorities will claw back the Grant. If it is less than ten years, you must repay it in full; over five years, but less than ten, you have to repay 75%.

    Anyone availing of the Grant would want to be sure of their desire to live in a particular area, and of this fitting with their employment prospects. Moreover, the sum involved would hardly put a roof on many of the dilapidated properties dotted around the Irish countryside, given the current cost of building materials.

    The Grant does not apply where an individual is living in the house after the purchase. One contributor to boards.ie, who claimed to be sleeping on a mattress in a house in need of significant refurbishment, said he was denied the Grant on this ground alone, which seems unfair.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly given the onerous terms and conditions, there has been little uptake. Last year, 765 applications were made for the Grant. 105 of these were approved while another 102 were rejected. The remaining 558 are still in progress.

    One can understand a need for due diligence before pay outs are made. However, assuming the Department is insufficiently staffed to carry out numerous inspections, it is surprising to hear ads on the radio promoting the Grant. Perhaps this is simply to create the impression that a beleaguered Government is taking action on the hot topic of vacancy.

    Vacant Homes Action Plant

    On January 30 2023, Minister Darragh O’Brien launched the Vacant Homes Action Plan 2023 – 2026. In its preamble the Minister sensibly stated that the ‘most efficient home to deliver is the one which already exists’.

    The report points to Our Rural Future: Rural Development Policy 2021-2025, a Government policy launched in March 2021 that purports to provide a framework for the development of rural Ireland:

    One of its key objectives is to support the regeneration, repopulation and development of rural towns and villages to contribute to local and national economic recovery, and to enable people to live and work in a high quality environment.

    There is, however, scant evidence that Government measures are encouraging people to settle in rural Ireland, in contrast to insatiable demand for Dublin property, where almost thirty percent of the population lives. In contrast, less than 15% of the UK population inhabits London, which is generally considered disproportionate.

    The rather insipid planned actions include further budgeting for the Better Energy Homes Scheme; reference to the previously established Rural Regeneration and Development Fund; plans to harness European Regional Development Funding; and perhaps significantly a new programme for the Compulsory Purchase of vacant properties ‘for resale on the open market.’

    Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs)

    Use of CPOs is the most obvious means of addressing vacancy, as well as bringing land into use for housing and other development projects. Historically, Irish Governments have evinced a reluctance to use CPOs to generate land for housing, notably the failure to act on the recommendations of the Kenny Report (1973) recommending that local authorities should be empowered to acquire undeveloped lands at existing use value plus 25% by adopting Designated Area Schemes.

    Historically, the Courts have also generally weighed a constitutional right to property over what is, arguably, a concurrent constitutional right – flowing from a generalised Right to Life –  for citizens to secure reasonable accommodation. Father Peter McVerry has pointed to a paradox whereby a constitutional right to property is ‘being used to prevent Irish people getting their own home.’

    The Vacant Homes Action Plan is thin on ambition, merely stating that with ‘regard to compulsory purchases/acquisitions is being reviewed with a view to streamlining and consolidating the CPO process. This will arrive alongside a review of the Planning Act and the Law Reform Commission’s examination of the use of CPOs which is ongoing.’

    Although the Plan states:

    The Department in partnership with the Housing Agency will examine each local authority’s Derelict Sites Register with a view to identifying potential properties that could be brought back into use through compulsory acquisition. Local authorities will be requested to review these properties in the first instance with a view to engaging with owners.

    And that

    Under Action 19.9 of Housing for All, it was agreed that all Government Departments would examine their existing portfolio of properties and, subject to any obligations under the Public Spending Code, the Land Development Agency Act 2021 or the State Property Act 1954, would place them on the market if they were not required and may be suitable for residential housing.

    Existing Schemes

    The Plan also refers to the Ready to Build Scheme, which was launched in September, 2022:

    Under the Scheme, local authorities will make serviced sites available in towns and villages at a discount on the market value, to individual purchasers for the building of their home which will be their principal private residence. It is intended that the local authority will develop existing sites in their control or purchase sites.

    And to The Living City Initiative, a scheme of property tax incentives first enacted in the Finance Act 2013 and commenced on 5 May 2015 aimed at the regeneration of older heritage buildings in the historic inner cities of Cork, Dublin, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick and Waterford.

    The Plan acknowledges that there been a low take-up of this initiative, but points to a number of measures included in the Finance Act, 2022 aimed at accelerating uptake.

    Photo ©Daniele Idini

    Vacancy

    The Vacant Homes Action Plan also says that in Budget 2023, ‘the introduction of a Vacant Homes Tax was announced. Legislation providing for the introduction of the new tax is included in the Finance Act 2022.’

    It estimates that 57,206 (3.2%) of all Irish properties were indicated by their owners as being vacant. A property is considered vacant for the purposes of a forthcoming tax if it is in use as a dwelling for less than 30 days in a 12-month chargeable period. Owners of vacant properties are to be charged at a rate equal to three times the property’s base Local Property Tax liability for 2023, which will apply in addition to a property’s LPT charge.

    This, however, will only apply in relation to vacant properties ‘that are habitable, and therefore suitable for occupation as a dwelling.’

    The Plan also provides for important exemptions to ensure, as it puts it, ‘property owners are not unfairly charged for temporary vacancy arising from genuine reasons.’ These include recently sold properties, or those currently listed for sale or rent.

    It would seem that simply by putting up a property on the market for sale or rent – at whatever price – the penalty may be avoided. We seem to be in the realm of performative politics again, rather than substantive action.

    Photo ©Daniele Idini

    Two Categories

    There appear to be two broad categories of vacancy in Ireland. An awareness of this distinction might inform policy and the law. The existence of designated rent pressure zones already distinguishes between regions of the country.

    We may observe the first category occurring in mainly urban areas – rent pressure zones – especially Dublin and its hinterland where housing is in short supply. Here, a dominant player, or players, could collude by withdrawing accommodation from the market in order to maintain, or generate an increase in, rental income. This is especially insidious and severe penalties should be available to stamp out any suspicion of any such monopolistic practices.

    A second category of vacancy arises in a rural county such as Leitrim which has experienced historic de-population, leading to the abandonment of many houses. Draconian penalties serve little purpose here. Instead, there should be greater incentives for renovation and refurbishment. Here at least, the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant should not be restricted to principal primary residences.

    In the case of much of county Leitrim, even for people to live for a part of the year there would be a boon for retail and hospitality businesses, and could restore life to sleepy villages that have experienced emigration over many generations. For the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant to inhibit sales for a period of ten years seems prohibitively restrictive, and would likely deter many from availing of it.

    It is in the public interest for the stock of quality housing to rise through the availability of such grants. A three year restriction seems sufficient.

    A second, ‘holiday’, home would offer an opportunity for residents of built-up urban areas to undertake small scale agriculture on a part-time basis in summer retreats, as one still sees in Central and Eastern European countries where an apartment in the city is often complimented with a rural residence that includes a market garden. The availability of alternative garden space for the summer months might lead “empty-nesters” and retirees to downsize from houses into apartments.

    A sparsely populated country like Ireland ought to have available a stock of affordable housing in low density rural locations for second homes, such as is the case in Scandinavian countries.

    Game Changer?

    Policy makers need to look beyond housing itself to encourage re-population of rural Ireland, while confronting car dependency. We require a radical improvement in public transport. Extending quiet ways on treacherous roads would also allow for safer cycling. E-bikes could be a game changer for rural Ireland, permitting extended journeys for older less physically fit people, while expending far less energy than even electric cars. Buses and trains need to offer free and secure carriage for bicycles.

    Hopefully the Department of Housing is working in conjunction with the Department of Transport, following Eamon Ryan’s recent proposal for rail lines to be restored in the West, to identify areas suitable for development in rural Ireland.

    Reversing the decline in Ireland’s rural population, especially along the western seaboard, requires joined-up thinking and innovative approaches. Cheap, modular housing might be considered for new housing arrangements that depart from the conventional idea of the family home in a changing society.

    Co-operative agricultural enterprises, inspired by the tradition of the Clachan, offer the prospect of sociability and affordability, while potentially reducing greenhouse gas emissions and decreasing reliance on imported foodstuffs.

    One way to address a seemingly intractable housing crisis concentrated in the city of Dublin is surely to make other parts of the country more attractive to live in, especially in an era of remote working.

    There have been encouraging trends over recent decades along the Western seaboard, with renewed appreciation of resilient traditions and greater opportunities for adventure sports – but there is a hidden Ireland, generally at a remove from the coastline, that tends not to see benefits from tourism.

    As we approach the bicentenary of the Great Famine novel approaches to life in Ireland ought to enter the mainstream. Government should act decisively and imaginatively to encourage more people to live in counties such as Leitrim.

    Feature Image: Carrigallen, county Leitrim.

  • Interview On The Liffey

    Jonathan O’Brien of City Kayaking says they began taking litter out of the River Liffey ten years ago. In that time he’s seen a change in the river.

    City Kayaking was launched in order to offer people access to water activities in Dublin, but in the beginning there was a lot of what we used to call ‘legacy litter’ in the Liffey. It would have wildlife underneath it, or bottles would be full of barnacles. We don’t get that anymore. All the litter now comes out pretty clean, quite new. In the summer we take it out so quickly because we’re on the river so often. A McDonald’s bag will blow into the river and we’ll get it out before it’s even wet.  Whereas ten years ago people got used to looking at a lot of trash when they saw the Liffey.

    Today Jonathan pulls cans, plastic bottles and a few take away containers from the water while motoring up the river. ‘Small amounts of effort every day go a long way,’ he says.

    The presence of Styrofoam is a recurring issue. Jonathan doesn’t know where it comes from, but he says it is as common as the seagulls: ‘there’s no pattern to it. It’s just there.’

    Jonathan reckons most of the litter comes from the city itself, from along the quays, the boardwalk and new Dockland developments:

    We can very easily predict where rubbish is going to be. Daily cleanups are just part of our routine now when guiding kayaking tours. For us, removing litter is a small step to leave the river cleaner than we found it. We’re also chipping away at negative perceptions people may have of the Liffey.


    Sadly, Jonathan has encountered little expertise in Dublin City Council for managing this waterway: ‘I don’t see a department in there who are getting their teeth stuck in.’

     

    Jonathan and his colleague Jamie have also been conducting tests on behalf of Dublin City University to monitor water quality. Over the past few years they have measured elevated levels of phosphate and nitrate, which washes downstream from farms and comes locally from urban runoff.

    This nitrate and phosphate residue is invisible to people walking Dublin’s quays but Jonathan sees its effect on the river’s flora: ‘effectively it fertilises the river. Those blooms of algae grow. They grow very fast, and then they die off. And the secondary effect is that the ecosystem gets hammered.’ This he thinks is ‘a ticking bomb.’

    Nonetheless, ‘ Ireland has never had heavy industry. We’ve never had coal or steel in any significant quantities, so we’ve never had the slag and the downstream problems with that.’

    Thus, unlike major rivers in other European countries, such as the Thames the Rhine or the Seine, which have had heavy industry situated along them for centuries, the Liffey doesn’t have a long-term legacy of heavy metals or arsenic.

    Originally Jonathan’s business found it far easier to get tourists onto their kayaks than to get Dubliners on board.

    He now recognises that ‘Dubliners were always looking at the river and thinking it was filthy.’

    But drawing attention to the problem of litter was a double-edged sword:

    The last thing we needed to do was reinforce the bad reputation the Liffey had as a dirty river. There was a lot of litter, but litter in itself doesn’t make for bad water quality. It’s just litter. It’s like saying that the soil is bad because there’s rubbish on the surface. It doesn’t necessarily make sense. So we never spoke about it. We never tweeted about it. We never put pictures of it out. It’s only recently we’re kind of confident enough that the city’s attitude has changed to the water, that we can say, you know what, collectively we can clean it up.

    The COVID-19 pandemic caused an abrupt drop in tourism and City Kayaking’s business, but this period also sparked Dubliners into rediscovering the Liffey and their local green spaces. Jonathan says they’ve seen more locals showing up to go paddling and it’s a trend he wants to continue. He finds the global attitude has changed:

    The average Joe is much more environmentally aware than they used to be. They might not know exactly how to help, but they are still supportive of the idea of a sustainable environment. Floating the Liffey is an experience that brings things into focus — the beauty of nature alongside a few stray bits of litter, and our capacity to improve things. We’re not just kayaking, we’re opening minds.

    In September 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report demonstrating that water quality declined nationally between 2016-2021. This included a downgrade in the ecological status of the Liffey estuary from “satisfactory” to “moderate” due to phytoplankton, or algae blooms. 

    With thanks to Jamie Brunkow for editorial assistance.

  • Circular Economy: ‘Make-Use-Return’

    The Stone Age didn’t come to an end because they ran out of stones. Similarly, we should be building an economy where we ‘use’ resources rather than ‘use them up’. The human species must change its profligate ways, and radically reduce the level of extraction required to fuel our needs and desires.

    The economy is a part of society, and society is inextricably bound to the environment. In the living world there is no landfill; instead, materials simply flow. The waste of one species is food for another. Things grow, fade in time, and nutrients safely return to the soil. We, humans, however, generally ‘Take-Make-Dispose’.

    With increasing consumer demand, we continue to eat into finite resources and waste more and more. It begs the question: how can we turn waste into capital?

    The idea of the circular economy is move to ‘Make-Use-Return’, both in mindset and practice, and for this to become natural. A circular world economy would marry resourcefulness, design thinking for products built to last and be recyclable, retrieve raw materials, and alter current ownership models.

    We have a waste problem. Globally, we generate about 1.3 billion tons of trash per year, leading to environmental atrocities like ocean plastic pollution. This may even become a source of future conflicts, as countries search for new places to stash their trash.

    The UN International Resources Panel projects that our use of natural resources will double by 2050. A study by the OECD shows that the flow of materials through acquisition, transportation, processing, use and disposal accounts for about fifty per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.

    What is the Circular Economy?

    The European Parliament offered the following definition in 2021:

    The circular economy is a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible. In this way, the life cycle of products is extended.

    This helpful definition should make us consider how we reduce waste to a minimum, and disassemble raw materials after a product reaches the end of its life cycle.

    The World Economic Forum’s definition is more comprehensive:

    A circular economy is an industrial system that is restorative or regenerative by intention and design. It replaces the end-of-life concept with restoration, shifts towards the use of renewable energy, eliminates the use of toxic chemicals, which impair reuse and return to the biosphere, and aims for the elimination of waste through the superior design of materials, products, systems, and business.

    The challenge is to change our mindsets: how we think, behave, and consume collectively and individually.

    Can the goods of today become the resources of tomorrow? This could involve, for example, changing the way we recycle valuable alloys, polymers and metals so that they maintain their quality and continue to be useful beyond the shelf life of an individual product. It would certainly make a lot of commercial sense.

    We must move away from the ‘use and throw’ culture that operates today, consciously pivoting towards a more ‘return and renew’ approach, where products can be easily disassembled and regenerated.

    The circular economy isn’t about one manufacturer changing one product, it is about all of the interconnected companies that form our infrastructure and economy coming together.

    Therefore, across industries, the idea is to design products that can be disassembled systematically once the consumer has finished using them, re-manufacture and offer them out again.

    The focus then moves to ‘cradle to cradle’ rather than ‘cradle to grave’ and the production cost should decrease drastically. For example, in the clothing industry, instead of garments lying as waste in a landfill, clothing companies could collect them and reuse them to make new products; potentially profiting out of the waste.

    Everything is healthy food for something else. Everyday products from shoes to mattresses can be manufactured in a way that could be fully recyclable. For example, the fast-fashion brand H&M has made a commitment to use 100% sustainably sourced material.

    The circular economy is an inevitability. It is not simply about fixing a particular problem, but redesigning an entire system to address the interconnected challenges of climate change, pollution and waste.

    Sustainability vs Circular Economy

    The concept of ‘sustainability’ is often used interchangeably with the Circular Economy. This is rather misleading. Although both of the concepts address issues around decarbonization, energy transition, and the waste minimization narrative – amongst other points that include local and ‘glocal’ actions and strategies – the two concepts remain quite distinct.

    Sustainability, to a large extent, is a systems-level approach that encompasses environmental, social, and economic factors and assesses how they interact.

    We can also include the concept of the Triple Bottom Line (i.e., people, planet, profit) in the context of business organisations, and how this can contribute to the cause of sustainability.

    The concept of sustainability also helps us to evaluate the risks, trade-offs and externalities (positive or negative), from a life-cycle perspective, across the entire value chain. This is what leads to long-term system balance.

    Fundamentally, however, sustainability is an umbrella term addressing a wide range of scenarios and issues, and not only focusing on conservation, choosing eco-friendly options, or switching to renewable energy.

    Research by the MacArthur Foundation argues that sustainability does not have a singular focus on any individual part of the chain; rather the concept helps us to understand how the parts interrelate to enable effective overall outcomes.

    In other words, ‘individual parts cannot be optimized without optimizing the whole’. Thus, an electric vehicle is not sustainable if we factor in the unquantified and unaccounted for social and environmental externalities that span the lifecycle of the lithium-ion battery that powers the vehicle, from mining, processing, smelting, trade, and transportation across the globally networked supply chain to the lack of recycling and reuse options for the battery at its end-of-life.

    The Circular Economy in Action

    Certain industries have taken the lead in terms of rethinking and redesigning how they manufacture; choice of raw materials; and how they recollect products once consumers have stopped using them.

    BSH sells home appliances-as-a-service promoted reuse, repair and extend product lifecycles. It now offers a full service, delivering, installing, repairing, moving, adjusting and picking up the appliances again at the end of the contract.

    In the agriculture sector, there is growing availability of affordable bio-based solutions for recycling nutrients from agriculture. Using Hybrid Biofilter is a scalable solution that prevents nutrient leakage from fields, thereby improving local water quality. At their end-of-life, the biofilters can also be reused in several applications to release the captured nutrients back to their natural cycle.

    Similarly, Nike launched the recycled-content version of the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star series and introduced ‘exploratory footwear collection’ made from factor and post-consumer waste. At the Tokyo Olympics, the athletes representing US, France, and Brazil used Nike-sponsored uniforms made with 100 per cent recycled polyester.

    Another closely related example would be Adidas, which has rolled out fully recyclable version of the Ultraboost running shoe collection made from a single material without glue. Similar initiatives are going on in Puma and Timberland.

    Likewise, IKEA launched a buy back programme where customers can receive up to 50% of an item’s original price in the form of a store voucher. Also, unsold items are recycled or donated to local community projects.

    Philips design products for hospitals, including medical equipment such as MRIs and CT Scanners. They are currently offering trade-ins on their old equipment for a discount on new systems. The company disassembles the collected equipment, refurbishing and upgrading them to sell these again.

    This is a ‘win-win’ model since hospitals get financial returns from their older equipment, while also efficiently upgrading to the latest technology. This also addresses the e-waste recycling challenge that we face today.

    H&M, the leading fast-fashion brand, now encourages customers to return used clothing to stores, who receive discount vouchers for future purchases at the store. The company classifies the collected used clothing into a) Rewear; b) Reuse; and c) Recycle categories, and they work across partners to continue with their sustainability measures.

    Costs of the ‘Make, Use, Return’ Model

    In 2015, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation demonstrated that a circular economy could boost Europe’s resource productivity by 3 per cent by 2030, generating cost savings of €600 billion a year.

    The following are three sector specific examples:

    (a) Clothing businesses have actively taken steps towards embracing circular economy practices. Some firms in the apparels industry have formed coalitions to promote nontoxic chemicals, improve cotton farming. Others are developing standards for garments that are reused or recycled. There is great scope in investing in the development of new fibres that lower the environmental impacts of production.

    (b) Recovering the material value of bottles, from mixed recyclables or bottle-to-bottle recycling, could lead to a much higher pay out. Metals, meanwhile, are commonly extracted from tires in open backyard fires – at great cost to both human health and the environment. Aggregating tires for use as industrial fuel could increase their value almost tenfold, while crumbling them to make road-paving material yields even higher returns.

    (c) Dell has incorporated recycled plastics into its products, using the world’s largest takeback program for used electronics. Their cloud service lines provide customers with computing capabilities, while eliminating the need for physical assets, reducing costs and carbon footprints. All these practices, as mentioned above, can help companies extract additional value from leakages or waste in the production process.

    Barriers to Circularity

    A study by the World Resources Institute (WRI) identifies certain operational barriers in the functioning of the circular economy.

    Creating a changed mindset is a major challenge. Thus, for example, we use twenty times as much plastic as we did just fifty years ago. This is despite a strong push from the market to use linen as the material for shopping bags.

    Unfortunately, shoppers still choose single-use plastic bags and packages that often wind up at the bottom of the ocean. This requires a change in consumer attitude as well as a more stringent regulatory push on this matter.

    Another related aspect to this is how we understand the ‘expiry date’ of a food product. Expiration dates are designed to protect the consumer, but it is not contingent on how a particular foodstuff is stored. Thus, the expiration date on eggs in India may be labelled for pantry storage, but these will last longer when refrigerated.

    So, while an expiry date can mean that a food is inedible in certain circumstances, it may still be safe to eat while not necessarily meeting the manufacturer’s quality standards. This is currently being addressed in several markets.

    Waste management and recycling infrastructure differ from country to country, which is another difficult factor to control. For example, studies project that there could be more plastics than fish in the ocean by 2050.

    There are certain limitations in how plastics are sorted by chemical composition and cleaned of additives. Better technology can maintain quality and purity so that product manufacturers are willing to use recycled plastics.

    Once there is some incentive, companies and users will be more inclined to act responsibly. This is an area where nations can work together during international conferences on partnerships and share research and development.

    The global population is projected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, with far fewer living in poverty than today. Emerging countries such as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) have an expanding middle class – with increasing purchasing power.

    Clothing and apparel sector needs to lessen their environmental externalities by using non-toxic dyes and recycling cloth scraps.

    As discussed earlier, the ‘rental and resale’ model has to succeed against fast fashion preferences which produce far more waste. Also, with increasing demand for electric cars, lithium-ion battery manufacturers must design products with a similar mixtures of chemicals, allowing more processed recycling possibilities.

    From ‘Cradle to Cradle’

    A Harvard study reviewing the manufacturing sector, in particular the clothing and furnishing sectors, provides an understanding of the different strategies that embed a functioning circularity.

    First, the study suggests that companies should consider leasing products instead of selling them. This would retain the continuity or circularity.

    Moreover, from a stakeholder perspective, this would mean that the companies remain responsible for the products, even after consumers are finished with them.

    Xerox, for example, over the years have followed a model where they lease their printers and photocopiers to corporate clients rather than selling them. It entails after-sales and repair costs but is still more sustainable than replacing the devices after their life cycle ends.

    Since time immemorial the robes used at graduation ceremonies have been rented rather than sold. Similarly, the company ‘Rent the Runway’ also leases designer clothes for one-off events’

    The second example follows from the first: companies designing products that have a longer product life cycle. A longer life span means there are fewer repeat purchases and, at the same time, companies can leverage ‘durability’ as a competitive advantage over rivals.

    This can also give them access to new markets and price their products higher given the premium nature of the offering.

    For example, Bosch Power Tools extends the life of its used tools by remanufacturing them. This enables them to compete with cheaper products from competitors.

    Thirdly, companies can embed the recycling aspect during the product development stages and planning process. The idea here is to maximise the recoverability of materials used in products.

    For example, Adidas partners with Parley. The latter company makes textile thread using plastic waste from which Adidas manufactures its shoes and apparel. The end result is less plastic at the bottom of the ocean.

    Role of the State and Users

    In a world where approximately 3781 litres of water is used in the manufacturing of single pair of jeans, some choices are controllable.

    The question is do we want more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans? Are we going to allow nitrates and phosphates to leach from fertilised fields indefinitely?

    We urgently require innovative public-private partnerships, where companies, investors, governments and academia offer the intellectual, financial, and operational assets to solve big problems

    We also require a mindset shift to dream of ‘prosperity in a world of finite resources’, and where over a third of all food is wasted, even as the Amazon is deforested to produce more.

    We have to move to a situation where we are ‘users’ of services, rather than ‘consumers’; to pay-for-use (like we do in the Gig and Sharing economy) rather than ‘owning’ a service.

    The choice is as much individual as it is collective, as the Dalai Lama once put it: ‘if you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.’

    Feature Image: Shade-grown coffee, a form of polyculture (an example of sustainable agriculture) in imitation of natural ecosystems. Trees provide resources for the coffee plants such as shade, nutrients, and soil structure; the farmers harvest coffee and timber.

  • The Big House: Censorship of the Medical Profession in Ireland

    ’From my experience of my patients on the front line since March 2020, I estimate that between 1% and 10% of the Irish population have suffered from a serious traumatic stress disorder, depression and suicidal ideation as a direct result of the government instigated media propaganda and lockdown, which works out at between 48 000 and 480 000 people of this country. This must be seen as a national tragedy, if not a massive crime against the Irish people, perhaps the worst since the great famine..’
    Dr Gerry Waters submission to the High Court, prior to his suspension from the medical register, April 2021 as quoted in the British Medical Journal.

    Looking out upon a ‘snot-green’ sea, I wonder how our ancestors explained the emergence of the craggy rocks and pools. Today we might smile at the idea that the ebb and flow of the tide being the work of ‘spirits’ or gods of sand and stone. Yet perhaps there is a ‘spirit’ of our time? The zeitgeist; a shared belief-system that interprets our world and is the ultimate arbiter of truth itself?  Perhaps it is this ‘spirit’ that future generations might equally recognise as a thing that is drenched in myth and fallacy?

    Lately it seems that truth, like the tide, is constantly shifting. Our mute and collective response to Covid-19 policies suggests we have indeed entered a ‘Post-Truth’ era, where truth has gone the way of video and record stores, to become almost entirely subscription based.

    I was once of the belief that science served to shape and guide public opinion. I have lately come to feel that when science does not align itself with public opinion, it is dismissed as the ramblings of a madman.

    In recent years the most basic scientific principles, even the simple notion of ‘cause and effect’ have been temporarily suspended. Presently, science is in the service of the zeitgeist. It no longer informs public opinion, instead it is used as a drunk might see a lamp post; more for support than illumination.

    Newton’s Third Law…

    During and prior to Covid, Europe and Ireland, enjoyed several years of what economists call ‘quantitative easing’. In layman’s terms this means printing lots of money in order to keep people content, or at least to keep them spending.

    The world is apparently a better place when we are all spending freely. Economists call this ‘economic growth.’ Strangely the cause and effect of this simple expedient is entirely lost on most people. The countless billions that have been pumped into European economies in recent years, now means that money is worth less, which is generally referred to as inflation.

    At home, in addition to inflation, our Covid-related crises: deaths in nursing homes, suicides, mental health, missed cancer diagnoses, along with enormous political blunders, were all effectively obscured by a bonfire of some fifty billion euro.

    The light of that conflagration was bright enough to relegate our home-grown crises into the shadows of relative obscurity.

    The idea that we are experiencing inflation as a consequence of two years of fiscal dissipation is, either roundly ignored or blamed upon other crises.  One does not hear such a strange assertion on RTÉ, which itself received a significant share of that fiscal dissipation for its ‘public service’ broadcasting.

    We hear nothing about the government’s responsibility for social destruction and economic waste. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine must have come as a relief. Now the priority is that ‘Putin must go’, an idea seemingly oblivious to the fact that much of the world might have to go down with him.

    All in this together?

    As Minister for Health for the initial phase of our Covid crisis, Simon Harris stated notoriously: “Remember this is coronavirus Covid-19 – that means there have been 18 other coronaviruses and I don’t think they have actually successfully found a vaccine for any.” Less comically, both he and members of NPHET are still protected from any review into nursing home deaths.

    Nor are the main opposition parties, including Sinn Fein, blameless in respect of the temporary madness. I suspect that when they inevitably get hold of the piggy bank they are unlikely to call for any kind of revision to the narrative. We were ‘all in this together’ after all.

    Nonetheless, as inflation continues and war escalates, the appetite for truth will surely grow, albeit at a remove from the big glasshouse on Nutley Lane.

    When it is safe to speak and ask honest questions, and once the capacity for relating cause and effect returns, calls for a review of the past two years of policy might yet begin in earnest.

    Any colour as long as its black..

    Some truths seem to persist for longer than others. Scientific truths endure not because they are more precious than myth, but simply because they are (or they remain) largely inescapable.

    During the Covid years, scientific truths succumbed to a form of relativism. Thus, one could have any scientific ‘truth’, as long as it was consistent with the fear-frenzy and the dominant narrative that Covid was the only challenge our government ought to address.

    In contrast, unpopular truths became the subject of a formal and informal censorship. Science has become strangely ‘right wing’ in its obedience to pharmaceutical companies and its lack of tolerance for essential questions and contrary facts. Yet Karl Popper once argued; ‘the demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever.’

    In the presence of industry-led censorship, neither science nor democracy functions properly. Yet many people still believe that the scientific discourse is free. Sadly, unscientific views on masks, lockdowns and administering genetic vaccinations to children and pregnant women are (for the moment at least) considered to accord perfectly with the scientific evidence.

    Entire national policies were based upon a flawed epidemiology of Covid. That epidemiology was described almost everywhere in the context of ‘deaths per million’, despite Covid being from its inception a disease with a cohort-specific mortality.

    Indeed, mortality itself was defined in the context of deaths ‘with’ Covid-19 as opposed to ‘from’ Covid-19. PCR testing remains the gold standard in determining a ‘Covid case’ as opposed to detecting traces of virus in an asymptomatic individual who has recently been exposed to the virus.

    In response to Covid-19, foundational principles of science and epidemiology were turned on their heads to satiate a politically profitable narrative. Such contortions are unsustainable in the long term.

    The majority desperately feared Covid, and so an aggressive cold virus – dangerous to the elderly and infirm – became a disease almost entirely inflated by a politically inflated fear.

    Science was annexed to supply an array of ‘facts’ to substantiate this fear and pursue the enormous wave of Covid ‘research’ funding from a strange marriage between Big Pharma and the State. Fearmongers were given seemingly unlimited time on TV and radio. In contrast, ‘contrarians’ were issued with legal threats and ongoing investigations.

    Latter Day Inquisition

    It is worth bearing in mind that science has generally co-existed with unscientific ideas. Thus, religion and science have jousted for centuries. However, when governments depend upon science to justify draconian laws and unprecedented spending; to question ‘the science’ becomes a direct challenge to the government itself.

    When governments depended on the Church for legitimacy, for anyone to question its religious tenets was a dangerous heresy, rooted out by Inquisition if necessary.

    In respect of the medical profession the government has a powerful tool to silence doctors, which is the Irish Medical Council (IMC). The Medical Regulator acts as ‘Grand Inquisitor’, answerable only to the Minister for Health.

    During the Covid crisis, anyone in my profession who openly criticised the Science associated with policy, was immediately condemned as a ‘conspiracy theorist’.

    These ‘misinformed medics’ represented, (and in most cases still represent) a ‘clear and present danger’ to public health. They were heretics were to be rooted out; removed from society like a cancerous prostate gland.

    The danger we pose is not towards public health, but rather towards the public’s understanding of the issue. The social operation is ongoing, and the IMC remains its enthusiastic surgeon.

    Enemies of the People

    It is not an easy thing for a doctor who spends the best part of his or her working life trying to solve people’s immediate problems, to be suddenly turned into a kind of pathology, and confined to the world of the anti-vaxxer and right-wing conspiracy theorist.

    Yet that is the fate of any doctor who voiced criticism of Covid-policy. We remain under formal investigations, heading towards the end-game of sanctions and potential strike-offs. The personal struggles behind these investigations are given no public attention.

    The necessity of belonging, to a society, to a fraternity of peers, even continuing to belong to one’s own family, all become tenuous when one is considered a pariah. For some, including myself, the isolation has led to a breakdown of sorts. My own ‘crash’ came in the form of simply running out of gas: facing up to the fact that my ‘gas’ is considered as a form of flatulence by most of my colleagues.

    I have worked hard at keeping my family together, and that has been as much as I can handle, finding solace in bee keeping and a polytunnel. For other colleagues and their families, the consequences have been far more devastating.

    In the mid-nineteenth century the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis suggested that surgeons were spreading disease by not washing their hands between operations. He was ostracised for his conspiratorial assertion. Ridiculed and vilified, he ended his days in a lunatic asylum.

    Irish communities draw their strengths from being close knit, but this can lead to a damaging conformity, as our history with the Catholic Church readily demonstrates. Neighbours and friends soon learn who the ‘anti-vax’ doctor is. A whisper at the school gate or a snub in the supermarket may not qualify as an assault, yet it can be just as hurtful to the spouse or daughter of a ‘dangerous’ doctor.

    There are, and were, many Irish doctors who publicly and privately rejected much of our conflicting and often, frankly, comical Covid policies. Too many to list here.

    However, the pressures brought to bear from without, and the enormous financial incentives for the majority of GPs, were sufficient to ensure that serious questions, or even discussion, in respect of policies, was cancelled from the outset. Some GPs have their bicycle clubs sponsored by Pfizer and were most keen not to bite the hand that feeds.

    https://twitter.com/theRiverField/status/1254488307054120960

    Whistleblower

    I occupy a rather unpleasant space as one of the first to speak out against ‘scientific’ polices that led to upwards of a thousand deaths in Irish nursing homes over a period of a few months in early 2020.

    I stood at bedside and watched my patients die, whilst a spouse or loved one sat crying in the car park or staring through the window outside. I struggled to obtain medicines, oxygen and PPE.  Many, if not most, deaths were the consequence of a policy of dumping untested hospital patients into nursing homes to make way for a Covid-19 ‘tsunami’ that ultimately manifested in empty makeshift hospitals and tic-toc videos of dancing medics.

    An enduring myth in respect of those who died in the nursing homes is that that the ‘tragedy’ occurred everywhere equally. Yet throughout Europe, during the first wave, the highest per capita death toll in care homes occurred in Ireland. We hold the dubious record of being second highest in the world after Canada.

    Those who complained about these deaths to the regulator, became the subject of investigation by the regulator, while those responsible are feted as heroes.

    In March of 2020, I attempted to ‘whistle blow’ on the unfolding catastrophe of incompetence, and deprivation within the nursing homes. I resigned my Ministerial appointment in the hope that the Medical Council might investigate what might be considered as criminal manslaughter.

    Yet they chose to ignore the dead and investigated me instead. In the media I found myself being dismissed as a ‘far right’, ‘conspiracy theorist’ and ‘anti-vaxxer’.

    Far right is funny, as I am proudly left and liberal in my thinking. Anti-vaxxer is even funnier, as I have given more vaccines than I have had hot dinners. But ‘funny’ is perhaps the wrong word because it conceals some of the hurt endured by own family.

    In one article in the Independent I was described as among those doctors giving ‘horse de-wormer’ to Covid patients.

    Propaganda is a powerful tool. The wild accusations came late in the pandemic and seemed designed to highlight the ‘ridiculous’ things going on outside of the general medical adherence to ‘official guidelines’.

    Dr Gerry Waters

    Other Doctors who went much further than I could have gone have suffered more than insult and isolation. They and their loved ones are more courageous, and deserving of a voice that will be heard as soon as science is liberated from the shackles of dominant interests.

    One such man is Dr Gerry Waters who adamantly refused to administer Covid-19 vaccinations to his non-vulnerable patients, and refused to refer patients for farcical PCR testing. From the start of the pandemic, he fully comprehended, who is, and who is not at risk from Covid-19.

    He recognised that masking and injecting children was ethically and scientifically wrong, and fully understood that the essential impartiality of science had been hijacked by politics and media. In a partial validation of Dr Waters’ fears, the Irish public have smelled a rat, and to date, less than 25% of eligible children have taken the vaccine. Our rather expensive over-stock (some 4 million doses) is presently being donated to Mexico and elsewhere. A mere €25 million to be added to the bonfire.

    Dr Waters stayed true to his conviction that, beyond protecting the elderly, Covid lockdown policy was socially destructive and itself seriously pathogenic.

    Doubtless, he was of the same view as a friend of mine, a former dean of medical studies at RCSI, who told me: ‘we would have been far better off, had we done nothing at all.’ Imagine what could have been done to improve the country with the billions that were wasted?

    Some Doctors in Ireland remain convinced that many people, old and young, could be alive today were it not for the inept response and draconian measures. Effectively, what began as a rallying cry to ‘protect the vulnerable’, culminated in policies that effectively threw them under the bus. Instructively, suicide statistics and missed diagnoses, for the Covid period have yet to be released.

    After speaking the truth as he saw it, Dr Waters was rapidly investigated, tried, and subsequently suspended from the medical register; deprived of a livelihood and compelled (it would seem) to live out the remainder of his days in ignominy.

    https://twitter.com/BillyRalph/status/1458052402372923392

    Resigning from my Practice

    I am somewhat pleased that I managed to avoid administering this genetic vaccine. I contend to this day that many or most GPs in Ireland haven’t the faintest clue as to what a genetic vaccine actually is, never mind how they work and what are the potential risks involved. Unlike Dr Waters I took the less courageous step of simply resigning my post, before vaccinations became part of public policy.

    For a time, I had been able to separate my practice of medicine from my convictions. Indeed, I have been doing that for years. I suspect most doctors operate with this contradiction most days, at least when we write prescriptions for medicines that many people don’t require.

    At the start of the pandemic in 2020 I could work within the guidelines; refer for testing; visit my nursing home; wear a silly mask in the supermarket. As long as I showed that I was formally participating in the farce, I was relatively safe from the regulator.

    However soon after resigning, they placed me under investigation, although they could find nothing to hang me with; except my opinion, contradicting NPHET and Professor Luke O’Neill, and a vocal stance in respect of the nursing home dead.

    A lot of people, including many of my former patients were unhappy to see me closing the practice. Yet, regardless of my practical adherence to policy, my position as an advocate of only vaccinating the vulnerable, became untenable.

    Every week I would hear from nurses, teachers, students and employees who were being threatened with dismissal unless they received the vaccine. I have never witnessed such a blatant assault on human rights. I shudder to this day when I recall how so many people were coerced and intimidated by the government, and by members of my profession.

    Formal resignation from the HSE was my only option, as long as I wished to continue working as a GP. Private GPs are not contractually obligated to vaccinate anyone. I could manage by doing private work for a friend, and out of hours work at an on-call centre.

    Formal Censorship

    To state that the IMC was satisfied with silencing whistle-blowers or making an example of Dr Waters would be a gross understatement. Almost every doctor in Ireland who refuted policy and did not resign from their post, was either fired or placed under investigation.

    Thus, Martin Feely a respected surgeon and clinical director of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group, was forced to resign; Dr Pat Morrisey a principled and dedicated GP in Adare was both fired from the board of Shannon Doc, and placed under ongoing investigation by the Medical Council.

    Offending doctors received written warnings from the then President of the Council, and others were placed under investigation for failing in their new duty to: ‘promote public health guidelines.’

    One legacy of our colonial administration is a very efficient tax system, another is the efficient censorship of heretical opinions.

    After two years as a member of the IMC I am entirely convinced that it is neither fit for purpose, nor does it have a practical leg to stand on when it comes to regulation. For the most part it makes its own work as it presides over a ‘General Register’ with little or no regulation at all.

    Thus, untrained specialists are invited to come to Ireland from almost anywhere in Europe, and practice wherever and however they see fit, without specialist training; a situation that supplies regional and rural hospitals with ‘affordable’ specialists.

    The public must suck up the consequences and the IMC keeps itself busy with the inevitable mistakes and complaints. For unqualified and untrained specialists, the back door into Ireland is through the front door of the IMC.

    How to burn a heretic..

    The most difficult consequence for a doctor who is placed under investigation by the IMC is without a doubt the process of investigation itself. I recognise this as a ‘gamekeeper who has turned poacher’.  Much of my time at the IMC was spent on the Council’s Preliminary Complaints Committee, tasked with conducting the initial investigation into complaints against doctors.

    Once entangled in the Kafkaesque web of a formal inquiry, there is no escape until the investigation is completed. In many cases this takes several years. Formal letters are sent back and forth, requesting clarifications and further information, which must be formally replied to.

    One cannot leave the country to work or volunteer abroad. One cannot easily change job, as any new or prospective employers must be informed that an investigation is ongoing. One’s professional life is essentially frozen beneath a question-mark.

    Doctors who were openly critical of the Covid response, have been under investigation for over two years now. The IMC has chosen (with the notable exception of Dr Waters) to prolong these dissections for as long as possible.

    It seems that what is important for both the government and the Council is that doctors critical of policy should remain under investigation for as long as possible. Anything he or she might say or do, any comment made whilst under investigation, can readily become part of the investigation itself.

    Moreover, to refuse to engage fully with an investigation, to refuse to reply to the regular formal correspondence, is itself grounds for an immediate suspension.

    The absurd basis of the investigation into me, is that I made an appearance at a public demonstration in 2020 and ‘may not have sanitised my hands between hand-shakes.’

    To my knowledge, all of the GPs under investigation are locked into the process based on equally frivolous grounds. The pretext for investigation is unimportant, the investigations are sufficiently punitive and sufficiently censorious, hence their protracted duration.

    Heads Above the Parapet

    Perhaps the main reason for my now coming out of ‘hiding’, to tap impotently upon my keyboard, has been recent correspondence from the IMC. Some doctors have recently been informed that the investigations will now proceed to the next level of ‘formal hearings.’

    After the IMC has finished its investigation process, it can then decide either to close the case, or proceed to a full Fitness to Practice Hearing. In this instance the doctor in question must appear before the Council’s court room, and plead a case for their continued right to earn a living. As these cases relate to a doctor’s opinion rather than any clinical practice, medical insurers have declined to pay for legal representation, and the doctor must pay for his own legal counsel.

    There is a rich irony here, in that most if not all of the doctors under investigation, have themselves lodged formal complaints with the IMC in respect of registered doctors on NPHET, for ‘unscientific policies’ or financial conflicts of interest.

    For example, several Doctors have lodged complaints against the President of the Irish College of General Practitioners in respect of his openly encouraging medical discrimination against non-vaccinated patients.

    Also, at the height of the pandemic, Leo Varadkar re-registered as a doctor, helping to ‘man the phones’ and visit halting sites to test the Travelling Community. It was all a rather vulgar PR stunt lapped up by the media with a relish normally reserved for freshly baked cake.

    However, when Dr Varadkar re-registered he became open to complaints to the IMC, along with Dr Holohan, and several other key policymakers. Without exception, not one of these complaints have been investigated. Instead, it is the doctors who lodged them who find themselves under ongoing investigations.

    At a point when Leo Varadkar was found to have been leaking sensitive and lucrative contract details to a friend in General Practice, the then President of the Medical Council was busy issuing written warnings to fellow GPs that they had an ethical duty ‘promote government policy’.

    Call for Caution

    Some doctors in Ireland felt a moral and scientific obligation to understand how Covid vaccines work prior to administering them. Many advocated caution, particularly in respect of pregnancy and young healthy children.

    My friend in Wexford is one example. A respected GP, a man of science and integrity, he vaccinated all of his elderly and vulnerable patients in keeping with HSE guidelines, but when it came to pregnant women and healthy young children he called for caution.

    He reminded colleagues of their ethical obligation to ‘first do no harm’, and made no secret of his concerns and fears. In doing so he stepped outside of the public health policy, and into the crosshairs of the IMC.

    Each IMC investigation and each insulting article in the media, along with the invective and scorn that is heaped on contrarians from within the profession itself, comes at a cost. In his case, a deep personal cost.

    The most painful barbs are the ones that are cast into one’s private life. Spouses and children are no less attached to a doctor than they are attached to any husband or wife. Even with the best will in the world no doctor can keep the ramifications of an investigation from creeping into the most intimate spaces.

    Those who objected to Covid policies are treated to daily realities that are small thorns: a neighbour looking at you with scorn; former friends crossing to the other side of the street; wives or children being subjected to insult or abuse simply because they are related to the newly christened ‘right-wing’ or ‘anti-vaxx’ doctor.

    My friend in Wexford tried hard to toe the line whilst preserving his integrity and an uncompromising commitment to the welfare of his patients. He has a family and bills to pay. Full resignation from the HSE is not a financial option for all. He tried to work within the guidelines, whilst at the same time urging caution. He continued to work, for the sake of his patients, his family, to pay his mortgage, and help his daughters get through college.

    Were he on his own and without dependants he (and probably me) might have stood tall and offered the Medical Council the two fingered salute, as Gerry Waters had courageously done.

    He (like me), tried desperately for a time to justify his position to our profession, to our colleagues, with articles, references, papers from the most esteemed of Medical Journals etc. He pointed to the lack of safety data on the vaccine during pregnancy and in children. It was to no avail. His position was akin to a lamb trying to convince a pack of wolves of the virtues of vegetarianism.

    Nonetheless, he defended his position upon an internet forum exclusive to GPs; and despite my words of caution, they tore him to pieces.

    A couple of months ago, my brave friend found himself parked in a lonely spot in Wexford. When the authorities located him, he had taken enough pills to silence the wolves forever.

    After two weeks in intensive care and a return from near death, he returned home to count his blessings, recover from his ordeal, and begin a life-long process of recovery.

    Absolute Power

    As a member of the IMC I was always intrigued at the efficacy and authority that a wealthy quango can wield. There is a sense of limitless power within the inner circle – reminiscent of a well-funded Big House – with a special relationship with the Minister.

    At the IMC there is a department devoted to briefing and monitoring the press for issues that relate to the medical profession. Before each Council meeting a member of this office addresses the Council with a summary of what is happening in the media. It runs a little bit like “…and now what it says in the papers.”

    I mention this to highlight that my friend, the Wexford GP, his near death, and the harrowing experience of his family and many of his patients, was highlighted in the national papers and the local press. Having gone missing for some days, news of his disappearance was reported in the national media.

    There can be no doubt that the Medical Council was well-briefed about his ordeal. Yet within a week or two of his discharge from hospital he (and by proxy his family) received his letter from the IMC, informing him that he has been placed under formal investigation for his failure to promote Covid vaccination policy. He now faces an impending fitness to practice hearing, whereupon it will be decided if he too will be deprived of an ability to earn a living.

    In its role as Grand Inquisitor, the Medical Council has destroyed the professional lives of many doctors, before, during and after Covid.

    In my view, Irish Medicine is as rotten as any pathology it might pretend to address. This is a rot reflecting a wider rot in our political system. Perhaps it extends deep into the zeitgeist itself.

    There is much to address in Irish medicine including inter alia our current mental health crisis, polypharmacy, corruption within the medical schools, defective specialist training schemes, deaths in nursing homes, relationship between pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, tensions between the public and private health sectors, and a general lack of regulation, but none of these seem to be of any concern to the IMC.

    When the dust settled at the end of our last national crisis, the banking regulator was ultimately recognised as being guilty of catastrophic failures in respect of its duties and obligations. I suspect that if science is ever liberated from special interests, and media is free from a particular type of agenda, history will be seen to have repeated itself yet again.

    Our teetering or collapsing system of medical care in Ireland is equally the consequence of an incompetent, and morally bankrupt, regulator.  As usual, there is no one to ‘police the police’, only a fickle public opinion, and a Minister who is as much dependent on the regulator as they are answerable to him.

    As a post-colonial society, and in the ‘spirit’ of our times, we tip the cap, with the same deference as ever to the ‘Big House’.

  • Psychedelic Eucharist

    In October 2018, I wrote an article for the Irish Medical Times entitled: ‘Acid Test-are hallucinogens finally shaking off their taboo?’ The impetus came from reading Michael Pollan’s How to Change your Mind (New York, 2018), Michael A.Lee’s Acid Dreams The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond (New York, 1985) and James Fadiman’s The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide (Maine, 2011), all of which explore the history, myths and indisputable facts around what has been, over many decades, a highly contentious subject.

    I was surprised that the Irish Medical Times deigned to publish it. After all, these are schedule 1 substances, i.e. ‘dangerous substances with no medical or scientific value’ according to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977.

    In hindsight, I consider my 2018 article naïve and anachronistic, leading the reader to believe that these substances are, for the most part, recent cultural adjuncts.

    Psychedelic Therapy – “Love is the Glue”

    The Immortality Key

    A recent award-winning book by Brian C. Murareska, The Immortality Key The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (New York, 2020) on the use of ‘mind-manifesting’ (psychedelics) or ‘god-inspiring’ (entheogens) and their use in human cultures for millennia prompts this revisionist take.

    The book explores such practices as the use of kykeon, a plant-infused wine used during the infamous, but little understood, Eleusinian Mysteries; the Vedic traditions of India in which a similar psychedelic substance called soma was consumed; and the cultures of south and central America where ayahuasca, peyote or psilocybin are still used in their religious ceremonies.

    The human desire to ‘turn on, tune in and drop out’ long predates Harvard Universities notorious Professor Timothy O’Leary, once labelled ‘America’s most dangerous man’. Although, this latter titled was supposedly bestowed on him by a President who vowed to bomb an agrarian society ‘back to the stone age’ in the name of democracy.

    What can explain a near universal desire, traversing cultures and millennia, for psychedelics? And why has its practice been vilified, persecuted and legislated against, pushing it into the underworld of crime, rather than exalting and exhibiting it as a means to transcendence and spiritual enlightenment?

    Drug use in the 1960s was portrayed by the media – with help from the CIA – as posing a threat to respectable society – middle class, consumerist values hypocritically portrayed as love of family, country and God. What it really represented was a genuine threat to production of drones for the corporate, industrial and military establishments.

    Evidence of the health benefits of these substances, if used in controlled and supervised environments, were clear, even in the 1960s. By then a thousand research papers were in print demonstrating dramatic therapeutic effects for conditions such as chronic depression, alcohol dependence and anxiety in cancer patients.

    Canadian psychiatrist Humphry Osmond obtained abstinence in 45% of his alcohol dependent patients at one year post treatment. There are no products today in the field of addiction medicine that can produce such impressive results.

    Then all studies were stopped, the substances were deemed dangerous and subsequently made illegal, even in research settings; this despite their non-addictive nature. In fact, repeated dosing has less and less of an effect.

    Yet these are drugs with an excellent safety profile, as it is almost impossible to overdose. They have clear health benefits and provide spiritual insights. Nonetheless, for over thirty years no further research was allowed to be carried out.

    Finally, in early 2000 Professor Roland Griffiths at St. John’s Hopkins University, Baltimore carried out the first of the latest wave of research using psilocybin (the active ingredient in several species of fungi, P.semilanceata, or Liberty cap mushrooms – that can be found here in Ireland).

    Now Imperial College, London and even Tallaght University Hospital have carried out research using these substances.

    What We Learn On Psychedelics

    Caveats

    Before going any further in extolling the virtues of psychoactive plants from historical, cultural or medicinal standpoints it is worth highlighting serious caveats.

    Psychoactive substances, and that includes alcohol, should not be used by those with immature brains, i.e. those under twenty-five years-of-age. Before this age the prefrontal cortex – that bit of the brain that makes you do the right thing when the right thing is the hard thing to do, according to Robert Sapolsky’s Behave: the Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (New York, 2017) – is not fully developed.

    Clearly, as witnessed in our world at large, this maturation process is not inevitable. Two essential conditions for the safe use of these substances are usually absent when young people ‘drop a tab’ washed down with a bottle of vodka on an all-night bender, with equally immature and vulnerable friends.

    These are the set (the mindset) and the setting (an appropriately supervised environment). These substances were never meant to be abused in this way. Indeed, there are so many things in our society that were never meant to be abused – love, trust, community, friendship etc.

    If we broaden out the list of psychoactives, beyond the schedule 1 substances, we do encounter substances as harmless as nutmeg, nausea-inducing fly agaric (the iconic red and white fungus of children’s storybooks), the lethal mandrake (of witch folklore) and Deadly Nightshade. Apart from shamans in Lapland drinking fly agaric laced reindeer urine, who even knows about these substances?

    So why the paternalistic need to protect society? To my mind it is part of a sinister power play between the perceived powers of good, i.e. Church and State and evil i.e. the ungovernable, the anarchistic psychonaut.

    This is of course a nonsense, fairytale for adult consumption. Those who have used and currently use psychadelics responsibly are looking for shortcuts to enlightenment by transcending the world of the everyday perceived consciousness, in order to experience the numinous.

    Anarchy

    Such aspirations are equated with anarchic ideas questioning the need for the boundaries of laws and earthly rules if one experiences transcendence.

    The question may be asked: what need is there to fritter one’s life away in meaningless work to earn valueless money to spend on vacuous consumer goods if one can experience Nirvana?

    And what need would there be for the religious authorities of the world, if one achieves direct access to the heavenly realm whilst still on earth, or if one can die before one dies?

    These very concepts bring us to the main theme of Brian C. Muraresku’s The Immortality Key, exploring various ancient traditions, over three thousand years, in which psychedelic substances were used to achieve these transcendent states.

    These were traditions and practices guided and controlled mainly by women, and they continued up until their brutal eradication by the many Inquisitions of the Catholic Church.

    These psychedelic ceremonies were disruptive because of their use of drugs by women to bypass manmade barriers to transcendence. Muraresku’s research supports The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis that implies that much of Christian and indeed Western culture has borrowed more than it wants to admit from ancient ‘barbarian’ cultures.

    Depiction of the Aztec goddess Itzpapalotl from the Codex Borgia.

    Role of Women

    The role of women as holders of sacred knowledge was systematically undermined from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, especially by the Papacy during the many Inquisitions, and also by the early Protestant churches. Tens of thousands of women were tortured and murdered because of male fears of their sacred, potentially subversive knowledge, and not because they were ‘witches’, wreaking havoc on innocent communities.

    The Church has always feared woman. Mary Magdalen should have become the first Pope ahead of Peter, and spread the word of Jesus, which required no institutions to disseminate, and no male power to dominate.

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote lucidly about the Catholic Church’s dilemma in The Brothers Karamazov. ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ a Jesuit, clearly explains to the returning Jesus why his potentially disruptive presence is unwelcome – and that his religion of personal responsibility on the path to enlightenment could negate the role of all-powerful Church.

    Today our society reflects this loss of spiritual responsibility. Those practising formal religions may read the holy books but generally take them too literally, and often live lives devoid of profound contemplation.

    Many of the flock consume religion like they consume capitalist goods, failing to question the meaning of the texts as they fail to explore the source of their cheap consumer goods surrounding them.

    Similarly, we consume products that are allegedly food, but don’t nourish us; information from media companies that doesn’t inform us; and pharmaceutical products that promise health, but perpetuate illness. All are profiting from a sick society.

    Preparation of Ayahuasca, Province of Pastaza, Ecuador.

    Full Circle

    What effect would widespread use of psychadelics achieve today? Perhaps a reduction in the level of fear in society; and less social atomisation as we move away from an increasingly locked-in and isolated world of gadgets and home deliveries.

    It could perhaps lead to greater rejection of hierarchical authority, one often based on arbitrary rules and which offer only self-serving explanations about why society should be moulded in one way as opposed to another, more intuitive, way. Psychedelics might even lead to greater self-reliance, and a more human-centred form of socialism.

    The wisdom our ancestors knew, and cherished, which, for the most part, we have arrogantly disregarded in favour of materialist theories in science, offers great insights.

    Perhaps we are coming full circle, as Bernardo Kastrup discusses in his series of essays Science Ideated: the fall of matter and the contours of the next mainstream scientific worldview (New York, 2021).

    Traditionally, science has mistakenly assumed mind and consciousness to be epiphenomena of materialism. However, having reached an impasse, especially in the science of consciousness, we require a revaluation, and perhaps greater humility towards the wisdom of Hinduism, Buddhism and the Sufi tradition of Islam, as we consider what these have to say about mind and consciousness.

    The awakening of an interest in psychedelics, both in academia and in society at large, perhaps reflects an intuitive desire to know more than science can explain, and learn more than fundamentalist religious teachings can reveal, instead validating a felt experience at a deep spiritual level.

  • Cost of Living: Digging for Victory

    Standing outside a Dublin hostelry in the drizzle, I fell into conversation with an Ulsterman who arrived with impeccable republican-socialist credentials. I assumed, this would make him sympathetic to the recently vanquished Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

    I breezily opined that the long-serving MP for Islington had been the first post-War Labour leader to challenge a neo-colonial consensus in British politics, to which I received a surprising response.

    “He’s just like the rest of them,” he said, pausing before almost spitting out the words, “the allotment,” and muttering “that’s how you can tell.”

    Only on reflection do I recognise the origin of a prejudice against anyone holding an interest in the dark arts of composting, training vines, or even the life cycle of the carrot fly.

    He echoed savage criticism of privileged do-gooders with an evangelical zeal for horticulture, from that most quintessential of English writers, George Orwell.

    Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall

    ‘food-crank’

    In The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) Orwell dismissed a certain type of socialist ‘food-crank’, ‘sandal-wearer’, ‘fruit-juice drinker’ as ‘a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcass; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity.’

    He maintained: ‘The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots.’ But added, revealingly: ‘the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food.’

    Orwell articulated an enduring English working class aversion to a New Age paternalism, which my Republican-Socialist interlocuter outside the pub appeared to share.

    Well-intentioned, but often tone deaf, efforts to instil passion for horticulture continues to emanate from aristocratic scions such as Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. His Dorset estate became a TV showcase for sustainable gastronomy in a country more renowned for mushy peas and fried batter, washed down with Irn-bru.

    There is, however, a curmudgeonly quality to Orwell’s critique, reflected in a stated preference for Anglo-Saxon words over those of French or Classical origins in ‘The Politics of the English Language’. In England, and not only among working class, plain food, as well as plain words, are generally preferred over anything sophisticated, complex or, worst of all, French.

    However, in my view, Corbyn comes from an honourable lineage of Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: genuine social reformers that secured parliamentary approval through the 1908 Small Holdings and Allotments Act. This brought 1,500,000 plots into cultivation by 1918, thereby ensuring a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables in many metropolitan districts.

    It also led to a wide diffusion of gardening skills, which became a valuable resource during World War II when, denied of imports, the population was urged to Dig for Victory, with impressive results.

    Nonetheless, what Orwell acknowledged as “the peculiar evil” of working class people turning their noses up at healthy produce suggests early industrialisation of food production in Britain – particularly the preponderance of refined sugar – had a lasting effect on the British pallet, and sadly the Irish one too.

    In England today organic is a by-word for posh, and unaffordable: “not for the likes of you and me.”

    Sadly, reflecting the colonial experience, Irish tastes are often just as blinkered. This is apparent in a lasting aversion to cultivating fruit and vegetables, which has informed the state’s agricultural priorities since independence.

    Today just one percent of all Irish farms now produce vegetables – for reasons I explore.

    Irish Food

    Notably, the celebration of specifically ‘Irish’ food did not figure prominently among Irish nationalist at the end of the nineteenth century. Crucially, with the inception of the state, agriculture was identified as a primary source of export revenue.

    This perpetuated a pattern of development that can be traced to the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, when a reduction in the price of grain on the British market created economic conditions in Ireland favouring raising cattle for export, often ‘on the hoof’.

    The potato has long been identified with the Irish people, but it has not become a cherished foodstuff in the same way rice is to the Japanese for example. Early nationalists were more concerned with promoting self-sufficiency in wheat. Moreover, the Great Famine remains a relatively unexplored trauma, at least in terms of the Irish relationship with food, and the land.

    Tony Kiely describes Dublin working- class meals in the 1950s as follows: ‘Family diets were very basic, consisting in the main of bread, tea, oatmeal, cocoa, potatoes, cabbage, herrings and pairings of cheap meat pieces for stews and soups .…’ While: ‘Bread was both a staple, and a constant companion at all meals.’[i]

    Anthony Farmar suggests that an absolute rule among the Irish middle class in the 1960s was never to talk about food: ‘to enjoy eating as such was unbecoming to a serious person’. He quotes an American commentator who claimed cooking in Ireland was ‘a necessary chore rather than an artistic ceremony, and that in restaurants “‘nine out of ten ordered steak every time with nine out of ten ordering chips with it.”’[ii]

    Among the post-Great Famine diaspora, there is little evidence of recreation of native dishes. Panikos Panayi claims that in Britain: ‘Irish food did not have enough distinction from that of the ethnic majority to warrant the opening of specifically designated food shops.’[iii]

    Regarding nineteenth-century Irish-American immigrants, Hasia R. Diner reveals: ‘They rarely talked about food, neither did they sing about it, nor did it contribute to community institutions and rituals.’[iv]

    Self-consciously Irish recipe books emerged only after independence. Most Irish nationalists did not view eating distinctively Irish food as an important cultural marker, except perhaps when it came to eating bread made from home-grown wheat.

    Thus, in a pamphlet addressed to the women of Ireland, the writer and Irish language activist Mary Butler crafted a list of fifteen ways in which to foster authentic Irishness in their homes. Revealingly, ‘no traditional recipes, foodways, food names, or food practices as instruments for building Irish identity were included.’[v]

    Image (c) Daniele Idini.

    Aping the English

    According to Benedict Anderson, ‘by the second decade of the nineteenth century if not earlier a model of the independent nation state was available for pirating.’[vi]

    This is important in the Irish context as the model most readily available was English or British nationalism, a society that prized letters and sporting prowess, and in which a native culinary tradition had been ‘decapitated’[vii] by the end of the nineteenth century.

    In 1880 the surgeon and polymath Sir Henry Thompson observed:

    On questioning the average middle-class Englishman as to the nature of his food, the all but universal answer is, ‘My living is plain, always roast and boiled’—words which but too clearly indicate the dreary monotony, not to say unwholesomeness, of his daily food; while they furthermore express his satisfaction, such as it is, that he is no luxurious feeder.[viii]

    The disinterest exhibited by the English in cookery and the discussion of food was compounded by the nutritional impoverishment of the working class.

    Sidney Mintz estimates that by 1900 nearly one-fifth of average caloric intake came in the form of refined sugar, which was mainly consumed in tea or jam.[ix] Apart from being nutritionally deficient, this diet lacked variety and bred conservatism as older traditions of food preparation yielded to bland industrial products.

    With no sophisticated models of food consumption to compete against, the Irish cultural elite was not drawn to food as an expression of identity; unlike Italians, for example, situated within the domineering cultural orbit of French cuisine.

    An Irish Peasant Family Discovering the Blight of their Store by Cork artist Daniel MacDonald, c. 1847

    Poverty

    This was compounded by the virtual extinction of many traditional foods as a result of poverty and changes in agricultural production in the wake of the Agricultural Revolution.

    David Dickson ‘suspects that much of what is today regarded as traditional Irish cuisine—soda bread, barm brack, boxty, champ, colcannon etc—’ was only developed in the nineteenth century ‘in the kitchens of the solid farming class.’[x]

    During the Famine, those unaffected by starvation bore witness to suffering on a scale that is hard for those of us living in contemporary Ireland to fathom. Joseph Lee likens its effects to the Jewish experience of the Holocaust and explores a psychological legacy:

    They will have seen corpses, if not in their own dwellings, then on the roads and in the ditches. Many are likely to have felt a degree of guilt, of the type that often afflicts survivors of tragedies, not only of the Holocaust, but of events like earthquakes and mining catastrophes. Why did you survive when others in your family did not? A sense of guilt can simmer below the surface, to perhaps breakout in uncontrollable and, to uncomprehending outside observers, in apparently inexplicable ways.[xi]

    Crawford and Clarkson concur, suggesting that survivors carried psychological scars and that their physical and intellectual developments were stunted.[xii]

    Image (c) Daniele Idini.

    Alternative Crops

    The dominance of the market generated a snobbery directed against foraged foods, which according to Louse M. Cullen acquired a ‘stigma.’[xiii]

    Kevin Myers once mused in his Irishman’s Diary that: ‘It’s almost as if those who live on the land here are culturally and emotionally disengaged from its essence as a living thing.’[xiv]

    The impact of colonisation cannot be overlooked. According to John Feehan: ‘it seems more than likely that the loss of the Gaelic tradition of farming was accompanied by a decline in the lore of wild plants and animals as food or medicine.’[xv]

    Furthermore, the absence of a native ‘improving’ gentry, especially after the Act of Union in 1801, limited experimentation in and demand for ‘alternative’ crops: fruit and vegetables varieties with limited market value.

    By the eve of the Great Famine three million (out of a population of eight million) were living on a mere one million acres of land, which represented just 5% of a the total acreage of 20 million.’[xvi] It is remarkable that until the blight arrived, without modern machinery or chemicals, so many were able to subsist on such small plots .

    Moore Hall, County Mayo.

    Lack of Variety

    Writing in 1971, Rosemary Fennel bemoaned the demise of country markets, saying a ‘frequent complaint in Ireland is the lack of variety of in vegetables for sale and the high prices charged.’[xvii] Media coverage of the subject of food in the form of recipes, reviews and features only really took off in the 1990s.

    It may be that the enduring absence of alternative agriculture and gastronomy owes something to the rejection of the ‘Big House’ in whose walled gardens, orchards and hothouses horticultural experimentation had occurred prior to independence, which precipitated the departure of a significant proportion of what remained of the landlord class.

    In an independent state dominated by a petit -bourgeois farmer class, the Big House, was despised. In 1944 the Minister for Lands Sean Moylan condemned them as ‘tombstones of a departed aristocracy’ remarking ‘the sooner they go down the better. They are no use.’[xviii] More recently Nuala O’Faolain admitted: ‘We cannot, or at least I cannot, look at the Big House without some degree of rage.’[xix]

    Certainly, since independence the focus of the state has been on securing export revenue from agricultural produce. In her history, Mary Daly argues that ‘it is evident that the Department [of Agriculture] has traditionally looked at agricultural matters from the perspective of the producer rather than the consumer.’ She cautions that the identity of interests between farmers and the Irish nation ‘does not necessarily apply on issues such as food policy, or the environment.’[xx]

    Securing land has never been easy. Frank Mitchell and Michael Ryan observed in 1997: ‘In Ireland it is still next to impossible to rent land on a lease of sufficient length to make improvements and where land can be bought it is often in small parcels at too high a price.’[xxi]

    The Irish Breakfast Roll.

    Changing Habits of a Lifetime

    Pierre Bourdieu claims that ‘it is probably in tastes in food that one would find the strongest and most indelible mark of infant learning.’[xxii] Developing a taste for brown bread and carrots perhaps does not come easily if white bread and jam have been childhood staples.

    One way to bring about a shift in Irish tastes could be through increased participation in small scale agriculture. This might lead to wider agricultural reforms, as people gain an appreciation of seasonality and even terroir ­– the unique flavour imparted by the growing environment.

    A gastronomic awakening could lead to the cultivation of gardens across suburban and rural Ireland, and in more built-up areas public allotments – yes “allotments” – ought to be developed, but this will require state intervention.

    More public land should be set aside for allotments given the importance of consuming sufficient fresh fruit and vegetables in our diets; not to mention the potentially huge savings if people were able to grow more of their own. Recall that on the eve of the Great Famine three million were subsisting on a mere one million acres of land!

    My own district of Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown, which contains vast under-utilised parklands has just two public allotment sites available for a population of over two hundred thousand. One at Goatstown with 136 plots and another in Shankhill with 95 plots. Unsurprisingly, both are over-subscribed.

    Meanwhile in the more congested Dublin City Council region, where there is still ample public land availabe, some zoned Z9 for Lands/Green Network, there are nine, again over-subscribed, sites.

    Until there is an adequate distribution of land, horticulture will remain a privilege of property owners with gardens. This has important implications for the endurance of the perception that fresh fruit and vegetables are ‘posh’ food.

    [i] Tony Kiely, “We managed”: reflections on the culinary practices of Dublin’s working class poor in the 1950s’, in Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Eamon Maher (eds) Tickling the palate, gastronomy in Irish literature and culture (Oxford, 2014), p.108.

    [ii] Anthony Farmar, Privileged lives: a social history of middle class Ireland 1882-1989, (Dublin, 1989), p.180-2

    [iii] Panikos Panayi, The multicultural history of British food (London, 2008), p.43.

    [iv] Hasia R. Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish foodways in the age of migration. (Cambridge, 2002), p.114.

    [v] Ibid, p.84.

    [vi] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, (London, 1991), p.81.

    [vii] Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Taste: eating and taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the present (Oxford, 1996) p.214.

    [viii] Ibid, p.296.

    [ix] Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: the place of sugar in modern history, (New York and London, 1985) p.6

    [x] David Dickson, ‘The potato and the Irish diet before the Great Famine’, in Cormac Ó Grada (ed.), Famine 150 commemorative lecture series (Dublin, 1997), p.19.

    [xi] Joseph Lee, ‘The Famine in Irish history’, in Cormac Ó Grada (ed.), Famine 150 commemorative lecture series (Dublin, 1997), pp.168-9

    [xii] Leslie Clarkson and Margaret Crawford, Feast and Famine, (Oxford, 2001), p.134.

    [xiii] Louse M. Cullen, The Emergence of Modern Ireland 1600-1900 (London, 1981), p.173

    [xiv] Irish Times, 30 January 2001.

    [xv] John Feehan, Farming in Ireland, (Dublin, 2003), p.201.

    [xvi] Raymond Crotty, Irish Agricultural Production: Its Volume and Structure, (Cork, 1966), p.63

    [xvii] Rosemary Fennell, ‘The domestic market for Irish agricultural produce’, in Baillie and Sheehy, Irish agriculture in a changing world, p.106.

    [xviii] Terence Dooley, ‘The Big House and Famine memory: Strokestown Park House’, in Crawley, Smith and Murphy, Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, p.625.

    [xix] Ibid, p.628.

    [xx] Mary Daly, The First Department: a history of the Department of Agriculture, (Dublin, 2002), p.428

    [xxi] Frank Mitchell and Michael Ryan, Reading the Irish Landscape (Dublin, 1997), p.356

    [xxii] Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste, trans. by Richard Nice, (London, 2010), p.71.

  • Covid-19 Absurdities

    Foremost among Utopian absurdities, we had the false promise of ZeroCovid. This continues to inflict untold damage on millions of lives and livelihoods that have been lost along the mystical path to salvation.

    Although the ZeroCovid leaders identified themselves with logic and rationality, the fanciful idea of every country excluding an influenza-like virus appears to have been a hangover from Judeo-Christian eschatology, which purports to save human beings from themselves.

    Other Utopian modern ideologies including Communism, Nazism and even neoconservatism, adopt a similar schema, wherein a vanguard elite guides the flock to safety.

    The nonsense started before the ZeroCovid concept grew legs, as China, the source of our slave-produced consumer goods, provided carefully choreographed footage demonstrating how instantaneous death ensued after infection with the deadly pox. All dutifully conveyed by compromised media.

    That China also runs concentration camps for the Uyghur Muslim minority, and harvests organs for transplantation from healthy executed prisoners was ignored. The West adopted a lockdown policy that represented the onset of another, dystopian Cultural Revolution.

    The WHO advised the West that lockdowns were essential. This advice arrived despite the 2019 WHO pandemic preparedness document containing no such recommendation. China then supplied genetic sequences they happened to have lying around to dodgy German academics to create the PCR test, which is a research tool not a diagnostic test.

    Weren’t we so lucky that the Wuhan Institute of virology is located near the alleged ground zero? It just so happened to be doing gain of function research on bat corona viruses in conjunction with the Americans.

    Herd Immunity

    Initially there were sensible discussions – including from the U.K.’s chief scientific officer Patrick Vallance – around herd immunity, the limited lethality of corona viruses in general, and the potentially disastrous effects of shutting down entire societies.

    Sweden, then a bastion of social democracy, held on to its rational faculties. Sadly, the government of no other major Western democracy seriously weighed up the effects on society of its public health policy. In an atmosphere of acute hysteria some governments acted against the advice of their health authorities.

    Resistance to drastic measures broke down once the Italians began singing to the world from their balconies, and army trucks were filmed removing dozens of bodies from hospital morgues. Strange how film crews always seem to know when to turn up to capture such footage.

    In what was the final twist of the thumb screw, our old friend Professor Reliable Data from Imperial College pulled scary figures from a dark orifice and waved it in the face of sceptics. Bear in mind, the same guy had predicted in 2005 that up to one hundred and fifty million people could die from bird flu. In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009.

    Despite the reasoned arguments of Nobel laureate Professor Michael Levitt, which few were able to read or hear, the British and others opted for the doom-laden scenario.

    T-Shock

    Meanwhile, on our own benighted little island of Ireland, beloved of Big Pharma and Big Tech, T-Shock Varadkar took to the podium to address the nation in our solemn hour, as the spectre of a common cold virus loomed on the horizon. Paraphrasing Winston Churchill’s World War II speech, he told the nation ‘this is the calm before the storm…’ before opining that there could be up to 85,000 deaths.

    Severe limits were placed on our freedom to roam freely and meet one another, as if we faced the impending Blitzkreig. He asked us to perform the unlikely feat of ‘coming together as a nation by staying apart.’

    Ironically, the wellbeing of the nation had become the central focus for a right-wing government, as individual needs and desires were cast aside, apparently for the common good. A country that had racked up vast personal and household debt worshipping at the altar of Mammon was expected to do a U-turn and become altruistic. But beneath the surface snouts were in the trough.

    For the first time in the history of infectious diseases the entire global population, healthy and infirm, would now be forced to quarantine, as apparently we could be asymptomatically-ill, or healthy-sick.

    Staying apart from each other meant no visits to elderly relatives, because grandchildren might kill their grannies. Children might even infect one another with a disease less likely to kill than being struck by a fork of lightning.

    Naturally outdoor sports and music events would have to be prohibited too. After all, they wouldn’t want people to be discussing the bullshit over a few pints. And finally, most small and medium sized businesses were to be closed down, regardless of the long-term effects.

    Well not all small businesses. Off licences, fast food outlets and supermarkets would still be open. These however are usually staffed by low skilled, low-wage earners. Young and expendable in other words.

    The propertied middle class would stay at home, protected from the menace of infection behind computer screens, home deliveries and A-rated houses. These were the civil servants, tech workers, teachers, and professional classes.

    This ‘Zoomocracy’ would ‘stay safe’, while boosting the profits of Messrs Bezos, Gates, Dorsey, Zuckerberg et al. Somehow the top ten wealthiest men in the world managed to double their wealth in the midst of the biggest international crisis since World War II. It would make you wonder who was really in control.

    Garda Checks

    We were treated to the daily sight of embarrassed members of the Gardai stopping ordinary citizens on their way to shops enquiring as to the purpose of their journeys.

    Other brave fellows formed road blocks at entry points to beaches or mountain trails. A particularly bizarre incident took place one Sunday near the tiny Cavan village of Mullahoran, when the only four roads leading to the Catholic church were blocked by garda cars preventing parishioners accessing their place of worship.

    The terror was augmented by the obscene nightly roll call of death and pestilence, which had the desired effect on the majority. Those who didn’t succumb to the fear were subjected to ridicule, or simply starved of the oxygen of publicity. Dissenters were forced to resign from their jobs.

    Throughout, we were repeatedly assured as to its deadliness, yet the median age of death was eighty-two years of age. The true figures for the numbers who died of (not with!) this virus will never be known.

    Paradoxically, despite the elevated risk of those over eighty years of age dying from COVID-19, their family doctors were advised that they didn’t need to see their patients.

    There were simply no treatments available. This despite Professor Didier Raoult from Marseille, Professor Paul Marek from Virginia and Professor Peter McCullough from Texas successfully repurposing drugs. The advice for the Irish patient was to take two paracetamol and at the first tinge of blue call an ambulance. Primum non nocere, my arse.

    https://twitter.com/BillyRalph/status/1458052402372923392

    Psychological Torture

    Fear, like any stimulus exhausts itself, so using the support and advice from various purveyors of psychological tortures, such as Susan Michie, governments introduced curveballs to confuse the population even further. We couldn’t have people waking up and smelling the bullshit when they reflected on how many in their social circles had actually died of this deadly virus, relative to an average influenza season.

    ‘The New Normal’ was a term coined by very shady unelected people and repeated ad nauseum by some equally shady elected individuals.

    Once measures designed to ‘open up’ society were introduced we were treated to the infamous €9-45 minute meal and a pint. No meal, no pint. Then we had the restricted purchasing within supermarkets – crisps and condoms, but no socks or Nerf guns.

    Then came the masks, for almost every setting, including eventually, primary schools. Lone occupants of cars and swimmers at the Forty Foot and even people out picking blackberries in the remotest parts of Ireland weren’t excused.

    All of this imported from totalitarian China! And woe betide anyone not wearing their badge of allegiance. These untermensch were jostled by shopping centre security guards, refused access to medical care and even arrested, regardless of their age. And in the final entry in this sorry list, jailed.

    Having endured the relentless propaganda, lockdowns, masks, social isolation, endless hours of Netflix, nourished on the finest delicacies from Dominoes and McDonalds, the vast majority of the country’s wage slaves were simply dying to become commuters and patrons of the country’s pubs, cafes and restaurants once again.

    Safety First…

    So, when the experimental mRNA gene therapy, also known as the Covid vaccine, became available the population had been primed. Primed by the most successful advertising campaign in history, a global conformity Edward Bernays and his admirer Joseph Goebbels could have only dreamed of achieving.

    That ‘vaccine’ is the gift that keeps on giving – to its manufacturers. If Bill Gates’s wish comes true all seven billion humans on the planet will receive it.

    It is so safe that one manufacturer persuaded a court that its supporting data should be hidden away from prying eyes for seventy-five years. Nonetheless, the post-mortem in the peer reviewed literature is revealing serious adverse reactions.

    We heard from many sources including our own resident expert Professor Luke O’Neill that the vaccine was a game changer, while potential conflicts of interest were never disclosed or discussed during the extended time he spent on air.

    Other worthies such as dear old Joe Biden advised that you would not catch the virus, it would stop the transmission of the virus, and even stop hospitalisations and deaths.

    Fast forward a few months and you can catch the virus, you can transmit it, you can end up in hospital and die despite two, three or even four shots of this miracle medicine.

    Worst of all, we now can’t have an open scientific debate because the truth might get in the way of the vast profit potential for the manufacturers how inept our so-called experts really are, and how venal politicians in so-called democracies became as they made light of civil liberties.

    Medical Profession

    Today in Ireland, most of the medical profession are reluctant to acknowledge the damage inflicted on societies by their gullible and myopic approach of shutting down society, and they most certainly do not want to kill the golden goose, especially in general practice.

    No heed is taken of the CDC-VAERS data, Eudravigilance, WHO’s own reporting, the Yellow Card system in the UK, the up to 40% rise in life insurance pay outs in some European countries; resistance to exposing drug trial data to public scrutiny.

    A company that previously paid out the largest health care fraud settlement and the largest criminal fine is now making billions in profits.

    No heed is taken of the meteoric rise in the careers of so-called celebrity scientists and doctors whose integrity and ethics were dispensed with at the first whiff of the profits on show.

    Contrast this with some real academics and scientists whose careers have been badly damaged by retaining their integrity; for example Professor Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University, Professor Martin Kuldorff of Harvard, Professor Jay Bhattacharya and Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford, and Professor Peter McCullough of Texas A&M.

    This latter group called for the availability of early treatments, focused protection of the vulnerable, but for society to function as normal to limit unintended damage. They also advocated for judicious not widespread use of an experimental product, avoiding children and pregnant women in particular, and most importantly preserving scientific debate.

    Instead, we got lockdowns and restrictions on civil liberties, no early treatments, and a coercive vaccination campaign straight form the CCP playbook.

    Feature Image is a still from RTE’s Claire Byrne Live of Professor Luke O’Neil trying ‘Zorbing’.

  • COVID-19: Torches of Freedom

    ‘Harold Evans used to say that an investigation only really began to count once the readers – and even the journalists – were bored with it’
    Alan Rusbridger: who broke the news?

    In New York city on Easter Sunday 1929, in a premeditated move, a group of women brought the annual parade to a halt and proceeded to light up cigarettes. In a choreographed response, the tobacco industry, guided by the legendary Edward Bernays, re-branded cigarettes ‘Torches of Freedom’.

    This manipulated scandal had the desired effect of connecting smoking cigarettes with female empowerment. Within a few years, a woman’s ‘right’ to smoke had largely been conceded. Effectively doubling its market, the tobacco industry laughed all the way to the bank.

    Such an apparently spontaneous public spectacle is arguably the gold standard in advertising, wherein an avant-garde movement is associated with a product or service – all while the consumer is blissfully unaware. Importantly, radical or even rebellious social groups often inform mainstream taste, as with the popularity of so-called ‘ghetto styles’.

    This article explores how the pharmaceutical industry, in league with technology corporations and so-called stakeholder capitalism – which entails giving corporations more power over society and democratic institutions less – successfully associated global support for universal vaccine uptake against COVID-19 with a ‘left-wing’ political outlook, infused with youthful idealism.

    In particular, global Black Lives Matter demonstrations appear to have been harnessed – without the consent of organisers – to popularise the use of face masks, which became the enduring global symbol of the pandemic. The fretful atmosphere these inculcated offered a chilling reminder that COVID-19 was constantly in our midst.

    This arrived despite an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in April, 2020 dismissing calls for widespread masking as ‘a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic’. That same month the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine referred to 14 trials on the use of masks vs. no masks, saying these ‘showed no effect in either healthcare workers or in community settings’. Thereafter, even experts who questioned their efficacy were censored on social media.

    Masks were supposed to play an equivalent role to the assumed purpose of vaccines: protecting others. They were made – and in some cases remain – compulsory in many settings in numerous states, foreshadowing similar laws enforcing vaccine compliance. In essence, the vaccine would set us free from an obligation to wear masks.

    Summer, 2020

    By the summer of 2020, with case numbers plummeting, many were wondering whether COVID-19 had become an endemic, seasonal respiratory infection. We learnt that France’s first known case was in December, 2019. Later, it was discovered to have been circulating in Italy from September, 2019 and in Spain from as far back as March, 2019, apparently without overwhelming medical systems.

    But a whole industry had been waiting for a pandemic to occur, with the incentive of producing a vaccine for global use and, seemingly, an architecture of surveillance that had been publicly discussed from the outset. In contrast to the Swine Flu debacle, this opportunity would not be lost.

    Moreover, it was being reported that PCR testing was inflating case counts (and thus mortality statistics) through false positive results. Publicity stunts that generated a wave of global hysteria were by then appearing increasingly absurd. Meanwhile, extraordinary predictions for mortality, suggesting we were contending with a challenge equivalent to the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1919 were proving seriously wide of the mark.

    Spanish Influenza caused approximately 75 million deaths, whereas COVID-19 may have been responsible for a global death toll of 6 million, the vast majority of whom were beyond average life expectancy, at a time when the global population was about five times that of 1919.

    Indeed, the early spike in deaths from (or with) COVID-19 in some countries can be attributed to hospitals transferring sick older patients into care homes, where outbreaks followed and only basic medical care was available.

    The ‘Scientific’ Advice Changes…

    After a period of social isolation brought about by unprecedented stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, there were no significant outbreaks of COVID-19 in the wake of large and often disorderly Black Lives Matters demonstrations triggered by the brutal murder of George Floyd on May 25.

    In response, some outlets claimed protestors’ use of face masks had prevented outbreaks. However, most of those in evidence were cotton fabric, which health agencies now acknowledge to be next to useless. Furthermore, masks had been worn as a defence against tear gas, or in order to preserve anonymity prior to COVID-19, as the feature image for this article from 2014 demonstrates.

    Whatever the purpose, an impression was created of ‘caring’ mask-clad protestors demanding racial justice around the world. Subsequently, Joe Biden’s own lawyers helped Whole Food workers mount a legal challenge to allow them to wear Black Lives Matters-branded facemasks while on the job. More revolutionary aspirations – including to disband the police – were conveniently ignored by lockdown-enthusiasts who craved enforcement.

    Circumstantial evidence suggests that demonstrations were seized on by an alliance of vested interests that exert control over a swathe of media, new and old.

    The role of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation appears pivotal. The Foundation is the second-largest contributor to the WHO budget, and put over $10 billion into universities in 2020 as well as at least $250 million into journalism in the first half of 2020 alone.

    Unprompted by the publication of any scientific study, the WHO changed its advice on wearing masks on June 5, 2020 shortly after the Black Lives Matters demonstrations. Most national health agencies – long subject to regulatory capture – followed suit, although a few countries declined to alter long-standing advice.

    In the U.S., NIAID director Dr Anthony Fauci claimed he had previously told a white lie to the effect that wearing a mask offered no protection in order to prevent a run on stocks. But emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal he was giving the same advice in private — against mask use.

    Manipulation of mortality statistics can also be traced to a WHO document from April, 2020 entitled ‘International Guidelines for Certification and Classification (Coding) of COVID-19 as Cause of Death’. This set out strict new rules for the registration of COVID-19 deaths that differed fundamentally from registration for other causes.

    The guidelines define a COVID-19 mortality as ‘a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness, in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease (e.g. trauma).’

    The achievement of universal vaccine uptake – no matter how limited its usefulness – offered dizzying possibilities to the super-rich intent on engineering a new world order, which was openly being referred to as the Great Reset.

    Political Identification

    There was also a direct political purpose for stoking fears around COVID-19, which goes some way towards explaining the involvement of actors beyond the pharmaceutical sector. Application of ‘the science’ against COVID-19 would undermine right-wing Populist movements around the world, which had been to the fore in challenging globalisation – alongside chauvinistically asserting national and religious identities.

    The political quiescence of the radical left in a period of authoritarian lockdowns led by rapacious global corporations arrived following the defeats of Bernie Sanders in the U.S. and Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K., and a concomitant decline in investigative journalism. Fresh from seriously undermining Corbyn with bogus charges of antisemitism, the once-progressive Guardian became a leading conduit for fearmongering coverage of COVID-19. It now provides fawning interviews with Bill Gates, whose Foundation subsidises the newspaper.

    Nonetheless, in the era of the internet political allegiances retain a tribal dimension that can be exploited. Thus, at the outset of the pandemic when lockdowns were first mooted many identifying as left-wing assumed that in ‘following the science’ and/or ‘listening to the experts’ they would be preventing the medical system from collapsing.

    But as the Greek socialist Panagiotis Sotiris put it: ‘What is missing here is something that used to be one of the main traits of the radical left, namely, an insistence that science and technology are not neutral.’

    In fact, from the outset there were huge divisions, and arguments, in the scientific community over the efficacy of lockdowns, masks and vaccine passports. But these debates were largely concealed from public view through online censorship of authoritative academic sources.

    2020 was also the year of the U.S. Presidential election during which the Democrats used the pandemic as a weapon against incumbent Populist President Donald Trump, who actively antagonised those identifying as left-wing.

    In order to defeat Trump, the Democrat establishment seems to have entered a Faustian Pact with Big Tech, ‘stakeholder capitalism’ and Big Pharma.

    One still hears partisan support for vaccines against COVID-19 being expressed by those identifying as left-wing. Most seem oblivious to the world’s ten richest men doubling their fortunes during the period, while the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fell; besides the enrichment of pharmaceutical companies.

    It is axiomatic that young people are drawn to idealistic ‘left-wing’ ideas – any man who is not a socialist at age twenty has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist at age forty has no head. This was also the cohort that would be most difficult to persuade to take a vaccine.

    Therefore, apart from allaying individual health concerns, taking a COVID-19 vaccine was sold as an exercise in civic virtue. Hold outs were decried as selfish and put other people’s lives at risk, even unAmerican, while ‘anti-vaxxers’ were portrayed by a prominent (however hypocritical) left-wing ideologue Fintan O’Toole as a motley crew of ‘egoists, paranoiacs and fascists.’

    Generally ignored in this coverage is in that in the U.S. vaccination rates lagged among people of colour, and that leaders of the Black Lives Matters movement were steadfastly opposed to vaccine passports.

    ‘We Realised We Could’

    In a revealing interview with The Times Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, whose unpeer-reviewed paper in March, 2020 proved pivotal – ‘due to the professor’s WHO ties’ – to the introduction of lockdowns in the U.K. and elsewhere, revealed amazement at the influence he wielded. After the British government followed Chinese policy in introducing a lockdown he observed: ‘It’s a communist, one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought. And then Italy did it. And we realised we could.’

    “Getting away” with imposing lockdowns – that appear to be causing ongoing excess deaths – was predicated on the assumption that a vaccine, or vaccines, against COVID-19 would be invented within eighteen months or longer.

    A subsidised vaccine against COVID-19 would be all the more lucrative if it was not simply a one-off treatment, and as long as states were offering a captive market, through coercion if necessary.

    It also represented a unique opportunity to trial new technologies. Unsurprising, the industry, and their supporters, were highly resistant to any suggestion of a safe, off-patent treatment being used instead.

    Since the nineteenth century, the pharmaceutical industry has been implicated in a host of scandals, including the recent opioid epidemic. Oliver Wendell Holmes, dean of Harvard Medical School concluded in 1860 that ‘if the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the seas, it would be all the better for mankind – and the worse for the fishes.’

    Moreover, in a history charting advances in longevity, The Changing Body (2012), Floud et al argue that ‘it would be easy to exaggerate the importance of scientific medicine when one considers that much of the decline in the mortality associated with infectious diseases predated the introduction of effective medical measures to deal with it.’

    Of course medications such as antibiotics continue to save many lives, but as David Healy put it ‘we are living off scientific capital accumulated in an earlier age.’

    Peter C. Gøtzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre has argued that the industry’s conduct today closely resembles organized crime syndicates. He wrote perceptively: ‘Drugs always cause harm. If they didn’t, they would be inert and therefore unable to give any benefit.’

    A recently published work entitled The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine: Exposing the crisis of credibility in clinical research (2020) by Jon Jureidini and Leemon B. McHenry argues:

    Pharmaceutical spin doctors are the contemporary counterparts of the sophists of fifth century Greece. The essence of sophistry is to shape public opinion by skilful mastery of persuasive speaking without regard for any considerations of truth. Pharmaceutical marketing is a form of sophistry, whereby the serious attempt to discover efficacy or safety in medicine is subjugated to the goal of promotion. Medical rhetoric has usurped medical science – an embarrassment in an age allegedly devoted to evidence-based medicine (p.126).

    Qualitatively Different

    Attitudes to the COVID-19 vaccines were also scaffolded on tried and tested paediatric vaccines against common infectious diseases such as measles. Parents are encouraged to vaccinate their kids not just for their own sake, but for the sake of all children.

    The COVID-19 vaccines were, however, from the outset qualitatively different to most traditional vaccines, which generally produce a herd immunity that diminishes childhood morbidity – and even mortality – from infectious diseases, notwithstanding at times spurious claims of adverse reactions.

    All COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ produced so far are qualitatively different to most – with rare exceptions – traditional vaccines that are designed to prevent an infection from occurring.

    At the very least, one would have expected the trials to determine whether a COVID-19 vaccine would seriously diminish illness; yet as British Medical Journal associate editor Peter Doshi observed in October, 2020: ‘The world has bet the farm on vaccines as the solution to the pandemic, but the trials are not focused on answering the questions many might assume they are.’

    He continued:

    None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.

    Moreover, the companies were busy covering their tracks, meaning efficacy, and long-term safety data, would be difficult to determine. In January, 2021, Peter Doshi and Donald Light in the Scientific American objected to the undermining of ‘the scientific integrity of the double-blinded clinical trial the company—and other companies—have been conducting, before statistically valid information can be gathered on how effectively the vaccines prevent hospitalizations, intensive care admissions or deaths.’

    This came after Pfizer pleaded an ‘ethical responsibility’ to unblind its trial and offer the vaccine to those who received a placebo. Yet Doshi and Light argue that ‘there was another way to make an unapproved vaccine available to those who need it without undermining a trial. It’s called “expanded access.” Expanded access enables any clinician to apply on behalf of their patient to the FDA for a drug or vaccine not yet approved. The FDA almost always approves it quickly.’

    The information in the public domain was easily manipulated by servile media. In April, 2021 a Lancet article by Ollario et al referred to the ‘elephant (not) in the room’, wherein vaccine efficacy was being reported overwhelmingly in terms of a relative risk reduction. This gives percentages of around 95% efficacy, whereas the absolute risk reduction of developing a serious illness was in the region of just 1%.

    Importantly, relative risk reduction only considers ‘participants who could benefit from the vaccine, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a vaccine, considers the whole population.’

    Peter Doshi has since publicly argued these ‘products which everyone calls MRNA vaccines are qualitatively different from standard vaccines.’

    Whistleblower

    In November, 2021, Paul D. Thacker in the British Medical Journal brought to light a whistleblower’s account of poor practices at a contract research company carrying out Pfizer’s trials. Brook Jackson raised questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight which, once again, gained little or no traction in mainstream ‘progressive’ media.

    The real scandal is that often coercive attempts to persuade the entire adult – and in many cases child – population was not based on a cost-benefit analysis.

    Recently, a peer reviewed article in Vaccine – the premier journal for vaccine research – found the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with a 16% higher risk of serious adverse events.

    The study was limited to an analysis of trial data the companies had submitted to the FDA and did not evaluate the vaccines’ overall harm-benefit. The authors argue that

    The excess risk of serious adverse events found in our study points to the need for formal harm-benefit analyses, particularly those that are stratified according to risk of serious COVID-19 outcomes. These analyses will require public release of participant level datasets.

    A young, healthy person faces a vanishing risk of hospitalisation from COVID-19.

    However, throughout the pandemic industry-aligned ‘fact checking’ initiatives served to undermine scientific integrity. The tactic of so-called fact checkers is to highlight absurd claims from random sources that serve to undermine informed criticism of the lockdown-mask-vaccine policy.

    Apart from its political ramification, the vaccine was, and is, a cash cow. It is instructive that the AstraZeneca vaccine, which in an apparent appeal to left wing sentiment was to be sold ‘at cost’, never received U.S. authorisation, and the manufacturers have since announced that it will be sold for a profit.

    The failure to interrogate vested interests reflects a serious decline in contemporary journalism, especially from publications previously associated with progressive viewpoints, many of which now depend on philanthro-capitalist handouts. We have reached an absurd juncture where a centibillionaire such as Bill Gates is attacked for being ‘left-wing’.

    Sell to Anyone

    The COVID-19 pandemic realised former Merck CEO’s Henry Gadsden dream of making drugs for healthy people, which Merck would be able to ‘sell to anyone’, as he candidly revealed to Fortune magazine in the 1970s.

    This could not have been achieved without the active collaboration of technology corporations and stakeholder capitalism in an era of surveillance capitalism. The censorship and disinformation used to bring the world to a halt in 2020, and beyond, represents a unique attack on democracy and worked to the benefit of a global financial elite.

    As Jon Jureidini and Leemon B. McHenry anticipated ‘the ideal of an open, democratic society is threatened by an oligarchy of corporations’ (p.23).

    However, at least much of the evidence that was used to permit coercion is slowly being decoded by investigative journalists such as Paul D. Thacker and research scientists of the calibre of Peter Doshi. We can remain optimistic that the truth will eventually out, at least on the margins, despite continued social media censorship.

    Nonetheless, the willing dissemination of disinformation in once-reputable publications has been increasingly normalised. Thus, the first and enduring casualty of the war in Ukraine has been the truth.

    On September 10, 2022 the Guardian reported that ‘the much-publicised Ukrainian southern offensive was a disinformation campaign to distract Russia from the real one being prepared in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s special forces have said.’ Strikingly, the authors do not refer to the Guardian previously publicising that disinformation.

    COVID-19 generated a conveyor belt of disinformation that has cast doubt over the reliability of contemporary journalism, and revealed how medico-scientific discourse can be captured by vested interests. It is vital for the future of humanity, as we confront environmental challenges, warfare and crushing poverty that scientific rigour, coupled with values that can be traced to Aristotle, are reasserted.

    Feature Image: Black Lives Matter demonstration in Oakland, California, December 2014.