Let's keep in context that genetic engineering is supposed to be the miracle that will cure all diseases. And mRNA technology is supposed to create the platform to develop vaccines against emerging pandemics within weeks of sequencing the genome of the pathogen. With human population increasing and encroaching on wildlife, there is the danger that zoonoses will cross the species barrier and infect humans. Consider HIV, Ebola, H1N1 "bird flu," "swine flu," SARS-CoV-1, Zika, various types of encephalitis, etc.

Nobel Prizes have been awarded for CRISPR gene-modifying technology and for using pseudouridine in mRNA to keep it from breaking down. No one has accused these scientists; their groundbreaking contributions are applauded.

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We also know that biological warfare has been utilized for centuries and has been called the "poor man's atomic bomb." Clandestine research has been carried on for decades – by the Soviet Union, the U.K., the U.S., China and probably others. It is of course very dangerous, and agents have escaped from labs. But the forces converging on one particular person apparently have the idea that it would be very clever to have the mastermind working in the open at an American university instead of in a secret Ukrainian biolab or the Chinese military lab close to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"Case closed!" announced at least one journalist, supplying links to a couple of "smoking gun" lectures, including one billed as "The Synthetic Creation & Genetic Engineering of SARS in 2007." So, I watched them, from start to finish. I learned some things about molecular biology and awesome genetic engineering techniques.

Labs were studying coronaviruses because they were considered a likely candidate for a species-jumping pandemic. In fact, this had seemingly occurred already. One wants to know how the virus gets into human cells, replicates and causes damage. One lab altered the genome in various ways to get it to replicate in cultures of human respiratory epithelial cells. This could be called "gain-of-function" research. From this, the lab created some monoclonal antibody cocktails. Remember those, touted as treatment for a time? It also investigated what kind of vaccine might neutralize the virus.

Much of the lecture concerned what I would call "LOSS-of-function" research: how to "deoptimize" replication and attenuate pathogenesis. How can you scramble the transcription so that the short sequences needed to regulate the process don't communicate? Is it possible to develop a "universal attenuator"? That would be a hugely beneficial breakthrough.

There are three possible origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus: 1) Nature; 2) Accidental release from a lab; and 3) Deliberate release. Throughout history bad pathogens have come from Nature, perfectly adapted to a human host. But there is an "infinitesimal" probability that the sequences in SARS-CoV-2 came from Nature. Very odd – when this argument is used for Intelligent Design it is called unscientific. Yet, according to a survey of experts by the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and others, the majority believe in a natural origin. These opinions are hardly unbiased since most experts who are still employed or funded agree with the official narrative.

The virus could well have come from a lab – but which variant and which lab? There are hundreds or thousands of variants out there, and hundreds of scientists have been working on bioengineering technology. There are thousands of possibly relevant patents, including "disclosure" patents, which basically prevent someone else from obtaining a patent. Before accepting the assertion that patent #xxxx is the smoking gun, read it to be sure it isn't about gastroenteritis in pigs. Also, go to the primary source before citing articles in the literature.

The origin of COVID-19 is clearly important, as we want to prevent it from happening again. But sophisticated military intelligence would probably be required to discover exactly what happened – and what if military intelligence is complicit? What is the likelihood that the creator of a biological warfare weapon would register a patent for it?

If a heinous crime has been committed, the public is relieved to hear that the perp is in custody. But what if the suspect is innocent, and all the effort is focused on obtaining circumstantial evidence to convict him, while the real culprit is free, planning another crime?

What if the attack on one suspect is either a deliberate or an unintentional diversion from real, plainly identified and unquestionably responsible miscreants – the ones who suppressed early treatment, created exaggerated or fabricated case counts, destroyed livelihoods, enforced rigid and harmful hospital and lockdown protocols, coerced people to accept a vaccine, bribed doctors to get their patients injected, hid vaccine adverse reaction reports, or censored the truth?

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Trump still has a lot of MAGA supporters, and his poll numbers rise as our prosecution/lawfare establishment piles on charge after charge.

The authorities have no time or resources for prosecuting child trafficking, drug trafficking, taking bribes from foreign governments, instigating violent riots in America's cities, or other recognizable crimes that might come close to Democrats or their favored bureaucrats. But no obscure, century-old, never-before-enforced law will escape their attention if it might conceivably get Trump imprisoned or bankrupted.

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Trump is a wild card. He actually got elected in 2016 without being selected by the kingmakers who pick candidates from both parties to give the illusion of a choice. The "forgotten man" – working Americans who have seen their livelihoods destroyed, their history and culture demeaned, their children's future threatened – came out to support him. His followers trusted him as a hero or even a messiah.

It appears that Trump truly does love his country, puts Americans first and has a lot of the right ideas. As he entered office, he promised to "drain the swamp."

Tragically, he failed – though he was able to show how deep and powerful the swamp (or cesspool) is. And how corrupt the Congress is. Remember, Trump started out with a Republican Congress, with the House led by Speaker Paul Ryan (previously selected to run for vice president with Mitt Romney).

Many of the good things Trump did – getting out of the destructive Paris climate accords, permitting affordable options to Obamacare and stimulating energy development, for example – were almost immediately canceled by President Biden, the champion executive order writer, or the Biden regime.

From the very start of his administration, Trump was thwarted, often by the very people he appointed. Some say he has learned many things and will get it right if he has a second chance. However, one of his character flaws appears to be inability to admit to making mistakes.

It could be that the forces trying to destroy him are terrified of a Trump second term. Or it could be that they escalate the attack, despite the increasing poll numbers, because they would rather run against him, or even see him elected, rather than someone younger, more competent and not damaged by the establishment's constant accusations.

One thing is actually better under Biden: Antifa is not terrorizing the streets – its supporters and organizers are pleased with the ongoing destruction, but they can always come back if Trump does. Also, Trump's strongest supporters are in the D.C. jail, most without trial, and some of his appointees and lawyers are fighting vicious lawfare. Supporting a political candidate has never been this dangerous in America.

Today the middle class, essential to electing officials who are not socialists, is struggling or being wiped out. Trump's COVID response is partly to blame. He disregarded the advice of competent scientists he appointed, including Scott Atlas and Paul Alexander, and let Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx give the seal of approval to lockdowns. He allowed agencies to suppress early treatments that might have controlled the epidemic and prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths. His Operation Warp Speed short-circuited prudent regulatory precautions, with serious effects that are increasingly becoming apparent. He unleashed a torrent of spending, much of it diverted to fraud, in an effort to counter the economic devastation – but fake money cannot substitute for production of goods and services.

Trump emphasizes the critical problem that something in America is broken and needs to be, and can be, fixed. The Biden regime is based on the notion that America was evil from the beginning and needs to be "fundamentally transformed," i.e., destroyed.

The presidency is important, but we must not imagine that electing a messiah will magically fix things. Americans who have means can no longer just mind their own business and stay out of the war for civilization. All our institutions have been infiltrated with anti-American ideology: politics, education, media, entertainment, professional societies, churches and corporations. It's been a long, slow march through the institutions. So far, few have fought back.

Going to a rally, wearing a hat and voting is not enough. We all need to fix whatever we can in our own world, large or small. Show up, speak up now – or forever hold your peace.

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According to a Twitter post, a 16-year-old girl complained about a naked man in the girls' locker room. When not parading around naked, he allegedly sat on a bench in a woman's bathing suit and watched the girls change. Or some would say that she did, since the person claims to identify as a woman, and therefore "she" is a woman and must be included in the girls' locker room.

The girl making the complaint, however, is to be excluded from the girls' swimming team and possibly punished in other ways. If she doesn't like to have a man staring at her while she undresses, that is her problem, and she can change somewhere else.

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Is she telling the truth or just making up a story to get attention or to harm someone? What happened to the "believe the woman" mantra from the "Me Too" days? That used the archaic exclusionary definition of "woman." Will this alleged trans woman culprit face any inconvenience?

We hear about the virtuous exclusion of people who wear MAGA hats, wrap themselves in an American flag while others wave the "Pride" flag, wear a cross, assert that there are two genders, or use the "wrong" pronouns. They can be kicked out of school, refused service at a restaurant, rejected for medical care, called vile names, denied the right to receive their diplomas at graduation, or otherwise treated like an untouchable, a pariah, or even a "terrorist." They can be excluded from polite society ("canceled"). Parents who complain about pornography in school libraries at a school board meeting might even risk arrest. Pro-life activists have even been excluded from normal life by being imprisoned.

"Diversity" refers to skin color or ethnicity, not to philosophy or opinion. The categories used by the U.S. Census Bureau for diversity measurements include Hispanic, non-Hispanic White, Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, and Pacific Islander. To improve their diversity score, universities need to exclude some better qualified applicants who happen to be White or Asian in order to include more persons from the other recognized groups who may be less qualified. The U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring admissions policy based on race to be unconstitutional, some fear, may have a "chilling effect" on "racial justice."

Most of the hundreds of racial or ethnic groups in the world are excluded from the special preferences called "equity," no matter how disadvantaged they were historically or are now – e.g., Italians, Irish and Eastern Europeans.

Of course, there are people most of us would like to exclude from our lives – and from society. My list would include voyeurs, exhibitionists, child molesters, rapists, seducers and seductresses, trespassers, vandals, shoplifters, pornographers, drug and human traffickers, etc. – no matter how troubled their childhood or what race they are.

I certainly would like to exclude bullies. Not just the nasty kids who steal your lunch money, but the activists who demand that you not only include them but also approve of or even celebrate them and their behavior – no matter how immoral, dangerous, or repulsive it might be.

I want to include people who are respectful, punctual, orderly, honest, thrifty, loyal, competent, dependable and diligent – regardless of race or ethnicity. Don't you? Are these characteristics of "Whiteness"? Why isn't it "bigotry" to assume that? There are millions of non-Whites who meet or exceed these expectations for decent people in a civilized society.

I want to exclude people who are vulgar, insulting, tardy, slovenly, dishonest, wasteful, unfaithful, untrustworthy, incompetent, disruptive, or lazy. Don't you? There are millions of White people who fit that description. But it would be "discrimination" to exclude such a person if the person happened to be "diverse."

I want children to be taught virtue and honor – not grievances. I want them to create a better world – not tear down the work of their imperfect ancestors and leave us with chaos. I want them to live in a world of ordered liberty with equal treatment under the law – not a world of censorship, snitching, arbitrary rules and constant fear.

Our country is sharply divided into factions about what should be included and what excluded – what is good and what is evil. The gap appears to be unbridgeable. Ultimately, everyone will have to take sides.

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Pronouns do not define your identity or create or solve social injustice.

Using an incorrect pronoun used to get you a red mark on your essay. Today, the red mark might be considered racist – a sign of white supremacy, implying that there is a correct answer. Or it might make someone feel unsafe or excluded.

Instead, there's now a permanent Scarlet Letter, or job loss and cancellation, for not using a person's preferred pronouns, no matter how ungrammatical.

The main grammatical requirement for pronouns is that they must agree with their antecedent (the noun they stand for) in number and gender, to avoid confusion. Gender used to be just a grammatical concept. In some languages, it is mostly arbitrary and does not necessarily have anything to do with sex. "The table" is "der Tisch" (masculine) in German and "la mesa" (feminine) in Spanish.

For decades, there has been trouble over the third-person singular pronoun in English. The default option or "common gender" was masculine when the person referred to (e.g., teacher, doctor, patient) could be of either sex. As Margaret Thatcher explained, "Man embraces woman."

But feminists became outraged. Hence, all the "he or she" constructions. Instead of unobtrusively doing their job, pronouns constantly demanded attention. Then people asked why the "he" should come first; hence "she or he," or perhaps alternating use of one or the other.

Then there is the grammatical atrocity of using "they," "them," or "their" (plural) to refer to a singular noun. (Das geht durch mich wie ein Messer – that goes through me like a knife, as my German teacher used to say.) This is becoming very common even in prestigious, supposedly scholarly publications.

The increasing number of genders and made-up pronouns greatly complicates the antecedent-agreement problem. And we now have an additional problem: "misgendering."

Humans are very good at discerning sex unless extensive efforts are made to disguise it. Gender is more challenging.

There is a verb "to sex," meaning "to identify the sex of." If you are going to do genetics experiments with Drosophila (fruit flies), you need to sex the flies. If you are in the egg business, you need to sex the chicks. You don't want to waste money feeding male chicks because no rooster has ever laid an egg – although they have something to do with the process as in that song: "They're laying eggs now, just like they [the hens] used-ter, Ever since that rooster came into our yard."

So, how does one "gender" – or "misgender" someone?

It might have nothing to do with a physical characteristic and might be the opposite of the sex.

Apparently, people gender themselves. I suspect that these days even Rush Limbaugh would not be allowed to play the song with the lyrics, "I was born a woman. I didn't have no say."

People simply announce "their" pronouns on their name tags.

Long ago, the only way people might be offended by your use of pronouns was if, in talking to someone, you used the wrong second-person pronoun in a language that distinguishes by status. Did you address someone as "du" or "tu" (familiar) when you should have used "Sie" or "usted" (formal or polite)? If you were talking about someone (third person), then that person had no say about your use of pronouns and could not accuse you of trespassing on his identity. Someone calling you "sir," instead of "ma'am," was merely a faux pas, not a federal crime.

Beyond pronouns is meta-reality. Prescribers and surgeons are trying to mold bodies to conform, but self-identification is determinative. Today a person with male equipment and male proclivities must be accepted as a self-proclaimed female, even in prisons, shelters for abused women and locker rooms. Maybe you have no sympathy for female prisoners, even if they weren't formally sentenced to be caged with rapists, but what about your little girl?

Language is our tool for thinking, and even the smallest words count. Activists do not own pronouns, or English grammar, or our thoughts. They have no right to dictate our opinion of their gender or to force us to allow them access to our private spaces.

And they cannot change the reality of sex.

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Most Americans have, however, felt safe from the dreaded knock on the door from the Gestapo or the KGB, from the "show me the man and I'll find you the crime" principle of Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin's secret police chief.

Law-abiding Americans assume that since they have not assaulted or robbed anyone or deliberately disobeyed a regulation, they will never come in contact with the criminal justice system. After all, mens rea – criminal intent – is required. Americans are presumed innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and they have a right to a prompt trial before an unbiased judge and jury.

But those are constitutional rights, and our "archaic" Constitution is being rewritten. Ordinary Americans, especially doctors who prescribe pain relief, have experienced the reality of politicized prosecutions for many years. But the Russian proverb has applied: "You'll know it's true when it happens to you."

Now that a former president has been criminally charged, the sordid process is at the top of the news.

President Trump has been subjected to intensive investigation since even before he was elected. At last, Alvin Bragg, a New York district attorney who campaigned on a promise to "get Trump," has indicted him on felony charges carrying a maximum prison sentence of 136 years.

The "34 counts" consist of three misdemeanors, for which the statute of limitations has already expired. Each is then cut and pasted 11 times to match the monthly reimbursement checks to attorney Michael Cohen for payments he made to women based on alleged events two decades earlier, David Stockman explains. These three repetitive "books and records" violations include Cohen's invoice for reimbursement, its entry into the Trump Organization's general ledger and the latter's receipt of a check from Trump to cover the payments.

These minutiae are transformed into felonies by the allegation of an intent to hide another crime, which the indictment does not specify. We're supposed to find out what it is by the time of the trial. It probably has to do with an alleged dalliance with a "porn star," who signed a non-disclosure agreement, which she violated.

Neither the alleged behavior nor the payment is a crime but might be turned into one if the expenditure is thought to have aided Trump's political campaign. Progressives deplore the stigmatization of "sex work" and approve of some materials in public school libraries that are described as "pornographic" by "bigoted" parents. So, progressives shouldn't mind (and evidently don't) if their candidate is connected to such things, but Trump's base might turn against him for it.

Although Bragg's case is extremely weak, attorney Alan Dershowitz predicts that Trump will be convicted unless there is a change of venue, because of the intense hostility to Trump in the jury pool. A New York City judge would not dismiss this case "because that New York City judge's life would be over," Dershowitz states, although he thinks that a conviction would be overturned on appeal.

Trump was not subjected to a 5 a.m. arrest in his pajamas in front of cameras by a heavily armed SWAT team. Nor did the media show him doing a perp walk in handcuffs. Nor will he be held in solitary confinement in a filthy jail for two years awaiting trial. Such honors are reserved for his supporters. What a great way to drive principled people out of politics and keep them from supporting a candidate who will strongly oppose the uniparty and the deep state!

Trump's poll numbers got a big boost after the indictment. It might assure his nomination at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

So why have Democrats, the media and establishment Republicans not cried foul over this charade? Stockman writes that the deep state fears that Trump may have learned enough to actually threaten their rule should he pull a Grover Cleveland. "So there is literally nothing they will not do to keep him out of the White House."

Perhaps the Left wants Trump to win the primary, keeping out a younger person without the baggage, especially baggage from the COVID debacle. Other indictments may come down; lawfare and other attacks will continue; and electoral fraud has not been fixed, so Trump could well lose. Bragg's actions might stem from pure hatred, without strategic considerations. In any event, the theatrics are drowning out concerns such as deteriorating foreign policy and the destruction of the dollar.

Whether you love Trump or hate him, the weaponization and politicization of the criminal justice system and the shredding of the Constitution affects you, too.

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Oh, you can't get to heaven with powder and paint
Cuz it makes you look like what you ain't …

It appears that the heaviest makeup users are trans women and drag queens.

Not all women use makeup. Whether or not they "put on their face," few women are mistaken for a man. The reason for the cosmetics is not to be recognized as a woman – that occurs automatically – but to look more attractive … to men.

The LGBTQ++ movement seems to think that womanhood means coloring your face and your nails, exposing cleavage, wearing long hair and a short skirt, and cramming your feet into spike heels or other painful shoes in an effort to make your big male feet look smaller. What devotion to stereotypes!

The plea of transgenders is to be recognized and appreciated for "who they really are" – even if that is who they really aren't. They pose as heartbroken when a parent grieves the loss of a son and fails to recognize and celebrate the "transitioned" daughter.

The whole concept of a transition is bogus. A person of one sex does not turn into one of the opposite sex, either suddenly or gradually. One can only remove characteristic male or female features, say, by shaving the Adam's apple or amputating breasts; inducing changes such as a deep voice or beard or breast development with cross-sex hormones; or trying to surgically mimic anatomic parts of the opposite sex.

One can transition from being strong to being weaker, as happens over a period of months when a male soldier identifies as female. There is an awkward period when he has trouble meeting male physical requirements as his testosterone levels fall, but is not considered sufficiently feminized to qualify under female criteria. To be blunt, this could be called iatrogenic crippling. It is highly unlikely that our foreign adversaries are deliberately handicapping the troops ours might have to fight.

The essence of being male or female is deep within every cell and every organ. Most people can reliably recognize the sex of a person walking toward them from too far away to see the features. Men walk differently. The pubic angle in their pelvis is about 90 degrees, in contrast to 120 degrees in the female, an angle that accommodates the birth canal. The femoral-tibial angle varies accordingly.

Men act differently. They may say they are one of the girls in the locker room, even if 6 feet, 2 inches tall, but, as described by the teammates of Lia Thomas, they might act like voyeurs or exhibitionists. Men enjoy ogling women's bodies. Knowing that, daddies don't want men showering with their daughters.

How can a man "know" that he thinks like a woman – or like any other human being? There is no Vulcan mind meld outside of "Star Trek."

Men and women tend to have different interests and aptitudes, with much overlap. But a girl who likes to play with trucks is still not a boy. As the symbol shows, there's a bit of yin in the yang and yang in the yin, but you can't turn one into the other. They are opposites but interconnected.

Some adults with gender dysphoria are evidently living successfully as a member of the opposite sex. They have had elaborate, expensive plastic surgery and expert medical management of their hormones and health complications. Persons who do not know them intimately may not suspect what sex they really are. Though such treatment may help some deeply troubled patients cope, surgery does not cure delusional thinking.

Heavy makeup is a vain, superficial attempt to cover up reality. Powerful hormones can unleash real, deeper problems. One of the only two lone female school shooters in U.S. history, killing six innocents this week, used the pronouns he/him. Will we ever learn how much testosterone this angry, suicidal person was given? Will we blame the person who sold the gun – or deadly transgender and rage-inciting ideology and the $5 billion industry that prescribes mind-altering therapy to mentally ill patients?

Happiness depends on accepting who you are – not on trying to force others to pretend that you are what you really aren't.

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Thousands of patients have defied the experts and taken HCQ anyway. Now, a patient who obtained a prescription from a telehealth doctor has died. His family is suing the doctor, and the case is getting prominent media coverage.

I am not acquainted with the physician, Dr. Medina Culver. Some people seem to disapprove of her because she has long hair, a flamboyant personality and a large following on social media, none of which seem relevant or newsworthy to me. Neither does her membership in America's Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) – which is also being sued for allegedly promoting the drug improperly.

The plain facts are that the patient had a telemed appointment with Dr. Culver in August 2021, at which time Dr. Culver reportedly prescribed hydroxychloroquine and/or ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment or "preventative therapy." Dr. Culver never performed a physical examination of Mr. Parker – it was a telemed visit, remember.

According to the lawsuit, the patient developed cold-like symptoms in late January 2022. His body was found Feb 3, 2022. The Washoe County, Nevada, coroner listed the cause of death as "sudden in the setting of therapeutic use of hydroxychloroquine."

The news article does not report whether the patient took the HCQ that had been prescribed six months earlier, whether he had COVID, whether he took any other drugs, or what he died of. Nevertheless, a retired medical school professor was able to opine that the patient's death might have been prevented "if Dr. Culver had performed a more thorough evaluation including a physical exam to evaluate his heart function, a blood pressure measurement, and an EKG to ensure he did not have an abnormality" – six months earlier.

The dreaded EKG abnormality that can occur with HCQ or numerous other medications, including erythromycin and related drugs (e.g., Z-pak), Cipro and related drugs, and a long list of psychotherapeutic drugs, is a prolonged QT interval. That's a delayed repolarization of the conduction system. A premature beat falling in a vulnerable spot could trigger a dangerous arrhythmia called torsades de pointes. The number of cases of this rhythm reported in seriously ill hospitalized COVID patients who received HCQ? Zero.

Do doctors screen patients for congenital prolonged QT before prescribing any of these drugs? They do not. Or do they do periodic EKGs during therapy? That would probably be disallowed as "unnecessary."

The retired professor made the oft-repeated statement that the FDA has not specifically approved HCQ for COVID. It has also not approved the indications for which one out of five doctors' prescriptions are written. Once approved for safety, as HCQ was in 1955, doctors are free to use a drug for any indication for which they believe it is useful. If a drug company wants to advertise that use, it can spend years and millions of dollars to get it approved. Approval doesn't make the drug safe – listen to the long list of adverse effects in the TV ads.

HCQ has been used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, is available without prescription in many places and is safer than many over-the-counter drugs such as Tylenol.

Telehealth is touted as a great answer to physician shortages and difficult access to care – despite the inability to do a physical examination. Unless it involves an "off-label" prescription for COVID.

People die, often after taking a treatment. If it happens after a COVID vaccine, correlation doesn't prove causality, and beware of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc ("after this, therefore because of this") logical fallacy. But different rules apply to early, officially disparaged COVID treatment.

More than 1 million U.S. deaths have been attributed to COVID. Very few of those patients probably received early treatment with a repurposed drug. More than 34,000 deaths have been reported in association with COVID vaccines, but causation has not been proved.

Finally, someone is suing because a patient was given HCQ or ivermectin, instead of because a hospital denied a patient ivermectin. Doctors who prescribe a potentially life-saving drug despite vilification by authorities, hospitals and medical associations had better take notice: malpractice attorneys may target you. Ditto for entities that organize telehealth services and/or provide favorable information on a repurposed drug.

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But will he be on the playing field again? Hamlin appears to have escaped serious, permanent injury – but what will his cardiologist say about the risk of a recurrence?

Some were quick to diagnose commotio cordis from the impact to his chest when he tackled another player, but others dismissed the possibility. It might be rare, even unprecedented in football, but one can't prove it to be impossible.

So, what to do now?

First, we should recognize that sudden death is not a new phenomenon. The unexpected sudden death that affects an apparently healthy individual is a nightmarish threat that has accompanied mankind throughout history. The first recorded instance may have occurred in ancient Egypt between 2625-2475 B.C. Hippocrates, who lived in the fourth century B.C., gave a general description of sudden cardiac death (SCD) in his Aphorisms II, 41. Scientific understanding of SCD began in the 19th century when British physiologist John A. MacWilliam first proposed a rational electrophysiological hypothesis as the most likely explanation.

Leading cardiology experts consider SCD to be "one of the most challenging tasks in Cardiology." This calamity is not as rare as the conventional wisdom would like us to believe. It is estimated that it may account for 15-20% of deaths in Western countries and is a cause of the majority of deaths due to cardiovascular factors. The risk is higher in competitive athletes (about 1 in 7,000), but the absolute number of cases is higher in recreational sports. No contact is required.

Because of its importance and frequency, one might assume that research into causes and prevention would be very well-funded. But for every year of healthy life lost, the National Institutes of Health invests only $7 in research on SCD, versus $284 for diabetes, $89 for stroke and $53 for ischemic heart disease. And things are getting worse: Allocations from NIH to research cardiac arrest have decreased from $35.4 million to $28.5 million during the past decade. The $40 million spent in 2015 out of the NIH's $21.2 billion budget amounted to less than 0.2%.

Among the many reasons for neglecting the funding was the public's surprising lack of awareness about the importance of cardiac arrests.

Cases like Hamlin's, however, may be the stimulus for very important research. It is not only that the spectacular collapse of an NFL star or other celebrity attracts a lot of sensational media coverage. It's not just the individual tragedies. The actual number of cases is increasing at such a disturbing rate that the public is finally noticing it.

A surge of adrenalin with extraordinary exertion may trigger the fatal rhythm disorder. A surge of hormones just before awakening might explain how young people die in their beds. But what makes the heart's electrical system more irritable?

The current spike in reports of SCD just happens to coincide with push to get everybody injected with COVID-19 vaccines. Although your vaccination status must be made known to ticket takers at a concert, it seems to be too sensitive to include in news reports on sudden cardiac death.

What can impair your heart's electrical system? The differential diagnosis includes trauma, a congenital (birth) defect, infection, inflammation, autoimmune damage, toxic effect and drug effect. Damage from the spike protein that COVID injections cause your body to make, and/or the immune response to it, is a plausible mechanism. How to demonstrate it? Patients who die should have an autopsy, with tissue preserved for tests, such as histopathological staining or chemical analysis for toxins, that may become available later. An autopsy should be standard in all unexpected deaths, but is rarely done, for financial reasons. This should be a priority for SCD research funding.

With today's electronic health records, it should be possible to collate massive data on exposures. Americans are ingesting enormous amounts of drugs, both illegal and prescription. They also receive an unprecedented number of vaccines. The COVID products are so different that some say they should not be called vaccines. However, all vaccines affect the immune system, by design. Immunology is extremely complex, varies greatly in individuals and is not well understood.

Instead of speculating about climate change, gas stoves, minuscule increases in dust particles in the air, 5G, plastic bottles, etc., let's try to find an answer to an age-old but dramatically increasing problem.

Daran Hamlin was saved by immediate, excellent medical care and an automatic external defibrillator. These are not available to most patients who have SCD. We need to prevent the occurrence, but first we need to know the cause.

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There is an outpouring of sympathy for this young man and his family, suddenly struck by a terrible tragedy. And also a flood of social media posts from both sides of the political narrative: It must have been the COVID shot, or the "safe and effective" COVID shot had nothing to do with it.

People are learning from well-polished presentations about commotio cordis, an extremely rare event. A sudden impact to the chest throws the heart into a fatal rhythm disturbance. Classically, it occurs in young boys not wearing protective gear who get hit in the chest with a baseball or similar projectile traveling around 40 mph – not an older, well-protected football players. Still, Hamlin did get hit in the chest.

By now, people have noticed that a lot of athletes have been collapsing on the field, and a high percentage of them die. Many are not even engaged in contact sports. Sudden death when engaged in strenuous activity that triggers a surge of adrenalin is not new. Certain congenital heart conditions, such as hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, predispose to it, and aspiring athletes should be carefully screened for this. There are also several possibilities for which screening is not ordinarily done.

Is sudden death occurring more commonly, or is it just getting more attention?

One may also ask whether it is more common in persons who have had COVID shots. This is extremely hard to answer when almost all have gotten the shot because most athletes are not allowed to play if they haven't. Strenuous exertion in persons who get the shot or the placebo was not part of the clinical trials.

Myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) has been recognized as an adverse side effect. It is said to be "rare and mild." We do not know how many asymptomatic cases might be causing scarring in the heart that might predispose to rhythm problems – we don't screen for it.

While people are genuinely sympathetic to Hamlin, they are also probably asking: What about me, or my husband, son, or brother? Or the NFL might be wondering, what about the future of football? Or the future of the organizations that have mandated the shots? Are they protected from liability, as the manufacturers are? Under federal law, the shots are supposed to be voluntary, with informed consent about possible adverse effects.

And what should we do now? Hamlin's family deserves a diagnosis. Everybody wishes him full recovery, but if he tragically dies, he should have a forensic autopsy, looking for inflammation in the heart muscle and preserving tissue for tests such as immunohistologic staining that might become available later.

What about the other players? There should be automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) immediately available on the field. If we were serious about avoiding future tragedies in case the COVID shots just might play a role, one might consider the following:

• Suspend further injections until damage from the shots can be ruled out (some countries such as Denmark do not recommend compulsory shots in young men).

• Sideline players for two weeks if they do get an injection.

• Perform cardiac MRIs looking for scars in all players.

• Demand a study that screens a large population of vaccine recipients with cardiac enzymes (troponins), ultrasound, and MRI to check for inflammation.

Which, after all, is more important: the hearts of our people, or the profits of the vaccine purveyors? Instead of guessing, or siding with one narrative or the other, let's get an answer to the question with objective study, using our most sophisticated diagnostic tools.

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Humans have an enormous capacity to see no evil.

Holocaust denial might have been more excusable had the deaths been scattered and seemingly random, not concentrated in a vilified ethnic group, and had they resembled natural death. Sudden death occurs, doctors might say, as some did in my residency program: "We see this from time to time."

Some who knew full well that Jews were being murdered rationalized it by calling it an essential public health measure, claiming that Jews were the source of the dread typhus epidemic.

We of course are not like them, and nothing could be as evil as the Nazi Holocaust. But consider the possibility that a genuine epidemic might rationalize public health measures that (inadvertently, we presume) lead to death. One is not supposed to blame officials or question their policies. Instead, we blame the disease on noncompliant people, deny them medical care and even hope that they die.

Bodies are in fact accumulating, though not concentrated in an identifiable location. But we are in denial even about the occurrence of excess deaths.

I sent to a few thousand people a dispatch that linked to data from Germany's National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), which insures 72 million lives. It showed a startling increase (1,000% or more!) in sudden, unexpected deaths in Germany after COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out. KBV denies a causal relationship to vaccination. The cause for the deaths is unknown, but it is not COVID-19. Authorities have not yet done appropriate studies to investigate a possible vaccine connection. Mainstream media did not attend a press event where data analyst Tom Lausen presented the figures, which he calls a "risk signal."

Someone posted a link to my dispatch on LinkedIn. It was rapidly removed. And so, with no warning, was this person's account, which had 200 postings and 16,000 followers. All down the Memory Hole.

Financial analyst Edward Dowd presented figures showing an 18% increase in excess deaths across all age groups in Australia, an unprecedented insurance catastrophe. The legacy media? Silent.

Even raw numbers from actuaries vanish. But where are the bodies?

Many were cremated. Most were disposed of without autopsy. Hospitals and medical examiners don't like to do autopsies – insurance doesn't pay, and few families can pay a $5,000 cost out of pocket. The results in any event could be attributed to natural causes. An autopsy of journalist Grant Wahl's body revealed a ruptured aortic aneurysm. His widow said: "It's just one of these things that had been likely brewing for years, and for whatever reason it happened at this point in time." She also said: "His death was unrelated to vaccination status." Quite possibly true. But she did not say what his vaccination status was. (Wahl had been vaccinated and had received at least one booster.) Dr. Peter McCullough advises patients with prior aortic abnormalities to avoid COVID-19 vaccination because of potential damage from spike protein.

An alternative to an autopsy might be to do an MRI scan and preserve samples of tissue like liver or heart for tests that might become available later.

As it stands, we have an epidemic called Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS). Statistics on the full extent are being suppressed. One prominent physician told me he had never heard of it. The cause is not known, and few dare to suggest a connection with the mass vaccination campaign.

What we urgently need is a neutral scientific inquiry that is not politicized. The typhus epidemic showed that this is possible. Even Germans (aside from some murderous Nazis) became allies of their mortal enemies in the war against typhus-spreading lice. Using apolitical scientific analysis of the objective evidence, Nazis, Soviets, Americans, British and all Allies used virtually the same methods of prevention and treatment of epidemic typhus.

Why isn't that happening in America?

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