Scientist Josiah Zayner is brilliant, daring, and may have incurred the wrath of more internet platforms than any person alive. Is America's most interesting person also its most censored?
It is worth noting that while Josiah Zayner was being systematically ridiculed and de-platformed by the powers that be, the timeline overlaps with the end game for "Laboratory Coat Barbie", Elizabeth Holmes, and the Theranos scam. Predictably, that dreadful individual had her dirty water carried and flatulence huffed by the same types of serious "science writers" and big financial media reporters that turn their nose up at a genuine independent thinker who, by the way and however controversial his research, actually bothered to finish his doctorate.
As someone who has suffered from ulcerative colitis for 20 years now, DIY fecal transplants are quite common in the U.S. and are approved treatment for IBD in other developed countries. No need to guess why it's not approved in the U.S. ($$ in monoclonal antibody medications you see commercial for all the time), which sucks for people like me who haven't responded to these Pharma medications. Josiah Zayner may be quite odd in his antics, but he's not wrong about fecal transplants because his exact explanation, "repopulating with good bacteria", is exactly what a GI doctor at Weil Cornell told me that he needed to do for me because I've been nuked with antibiotics for recurring c. diff. for 2 months. Finally, I will get the FMT treatment I've long needed because it is indicated for c. diff. in the U.S., thank god.
“That’s the other crazy thing,” Josiah says. “I have a PhD in this stuff from the University of Chicago. So it’s really weird when people point and say, the experts don’t like this. Technically, am I not one of the experts? Don’t I get a say?”
We're at the point where Rand Paul, an actual medical doctor, is banned by the humanities graduates at YouTube for talking about medical stuff.
“When you grow up on a farm, you have all this freedom,” he says. “We don’t have any neighbors or anyone to interact with, so we’re used to just doing what we want. And when you get to this environment were people don’t do that, you’re immediately pegged as, you know, a weirdo.”
This gets back to the Hamilton vs Jefferson differences. It is endemic. At present we have the Hamiltons (Elite Democrats and establishment Republicans) and the Jeffersons (everyone else regardless of whether they know it or not).
Hamilton distrusted popular will and believed that the federal government should wield considerable power in order steer a successful course, Jefferson placed his trust in the people as governors.
The US is a country that attracted the independent and enterprise-minded resident. Ironically it was the Jefferson view that created the creative class that invented the tools and technology now exploited by the Hamiltons to put an end to that creative independence.
The source of this dysfunction is the emergence of successful entrepreneurs driven not so much by the motivation to improve a product or service... but driven to think that they could change the world for the better, and reap the rewards commensurate with their over-inflated contribution. They are Hamilton-squared and they naturally line up with the other Hamiltons infesting all institutions of influence and power.
Ironically in his farewell address, the president that appointed Jefferson and Hamilton to his cabinet, George Washington warned that the creation of political factions, “sharpened by the spirit of revenge,” would most certainly lead to “formal and permanent despotism.”
Apparently we all failed to heed that warning. Now the Hamiltons are in power and out of control.
Zayner's sin is unforgivable. He is what Germans call a Querdenker, often mistranslated as contrarian. It means "cross-thinker," establishing a new paradigm for understanding information.
Medical bureaucrats have entire careers invested in existing paradigms, not in serving anyone's health. They are no different than other bureaucrats, wanting to preserve their position and power regardless of the cost to other people. Dr. Anthony Fauci often wears a stethoscope as part of his performance art. I seriously doubt he has actually treated a real patient in 40-plus years. He detests applied scientists (physicians trying to serve their patients' needs) because they're interested in what actually works, not in preserving the power of the bureaucrats.
Great article! Josiah shouldn't be censored at all but he is kidding himself. They aren't trying to protect us, they are trying to protect their profits and their agenda. Josiah is a genius, we need him. and he seems to grasp the foundational American ideal, we need to be free, and that includes being your own doctor.
Is it possible that all this internet censoring is just an extension of the "helicopter parenting" mentality? I would guess that many of the people making these decisions are children of that ilk. They grew up under a constant watchful eye, and protected from anything deemed dangerous. When I think of how different that was from my childhood it's striking. Zayner mentions growing up on a farm, which I'd guess, was more like my childhood - in the summer, we kids would head out shortly after waking up, and the parents might only see us once during the day, and just long enough to wolf down a sandwich at lunchtime. Today, your average suburban parent doing that would probably get arrested for child endangerment. Is it possible that those children carried all that fear of the unknown into adulthood and are now in positions of authority to act on it?
"How do we ever expect people to be able to make this choice on their own, if we never give them the information, or access to the information and say, “Here, look. Decide based on the data what you want to do.”
Precisely the point. They don't want us to do this, only what the experts decide is right for us
Barry James Marshall—Discovery of Helicobacter pylori as a Cause of Peptic Ulcer
He was mocked, shamed, and censored by the elite medical establishment for decades because he figured out that drinking milk and avoiding hot salsa wouldn't help your ulcer. It was always H. Pylori, and antibiotics would fix you right up.
Marshall was unsuccessful in developing an animal model, so he decided to experiment upon himself. In 1984, following a baseline endoscopy which showed a normal gastric mucosa, he drank a culture of the organism. Three days later he developed nausea and achlorhydria. Vomiting occurred and on day 8 a repeat endoscopy and biopsy showed marked gastritis and a positive H. pylori culture. At day 14, a third endoscopy was performed and he then began treatment with antibiotics and bismuth. He recovered promptly and thus had fulfilled Koch’s postulates for the role of H. pylori in gastritis.
I am acquainted with Josiah. I think taking down his Youtube (and every other biohacker) is wrong. No, Josiah is NOT "brilliant". Josiah is a guy who had a kid and had to do something. He has good marketing and sales skills. And he has some amazing journalist contacts. The guy is a mediocre scientist - at best.
That said, Josiah has evolved. I advised him 5 years ago he better stop injecting on stage because at that time he was selling pure bullshit that could not possibly work. He may have been quite aware it could not work. But if someone followed his directions to do this at home using his kit, that person could easily kill themselves. Josiah was pretty ignorant about immunology then. What he has picked up since, I don't know. Josiah stopped injecting on stage - instantly. And he immediately lit into another biohacker who imitated Josiah on stage, injecting himself with something. I presume he did that to differentiate himself for legal reasons.
What I told him was that I knew that a prosecutor and police would brush aside any "not for human use" disclaimers and put him away in that instance. I know this because it happened to a friend, who was then a professor at a major university. This professor give an unapproved medication (such can be oral, injectable, or absorbable), and someone died. If you don't have FDA clinical trial approval - you will get charged with a homicide. The prof was. Lost everything. In that case, I reviewed things and I do not believe the compound caused this death. It was bad luck. There are hundreds of thousands of people per year that have the cause of death in that case. The subject was in the prime age for death from this cause. But, the law looks at it alone and says the odds are tiny of it happening the same day. A jury would agree. Professor took the plea bargain.
There are VERY good reasons why the FDA has this power to regulate Matt. We see this now with people hearing about someone's friend who had, say, a brain bleed within a week of getting vaccinated and immediately thinks the brain bleed must be from vaccination. But, in the USA, there are 16,000 or so of these each year. (Japan has around 25,000 with half US population.) So, if you vaccinate half the USA, there should be around 8,000 brain bleeds in vaccinated people within a year. Divide that by 365 days in a year, and you should have around 22 people that get a brain bleed within 24 hours of vaccination. If you extend that to 7 days, you should have 153 or so.
There are things to criticize about our vaccine campaign. But Josiah is quite an ignoramus, and learning way too much by hard knocks. I am happy to help him, but he is also pretty headstrong, in the Dunning Kreuger sense of the word.
in essence, the clamp down is stopping a lot of innovation. Taibbi is correct in that exploration of "fringe" ideas is where new discoveries come from. Edison tested a great many things before he found a filament that would work in a light bulb. This kind of clamping down does in fact stifle creative innovation. There is also a kind of forceful imposition and maintenance of a rather conservative status quo, a do not step outside these lines. And as the article makes plain, there is a massive assumption that the american people are essential dumb herd animals who cannot reason and so must be protected from themselves. This kind of thinking has never worked out well in history, it won't work out well now.
What is true is that the current system in the US is crumbling, it possesses many flaws that the pandemic made more apparent. American meritocracy is not working and it is not going to work. FUrther the US system is extremely corrupt when it comes both to science and medicine. I hear that sort of thing all the time: the US medicines are the safest (no they aren't but they are the most expensive) and the best (no they aren't but they are the most expensive). zayner put it quite well, other countries can (surprise) do science too! They make good stuff too! other systems and approaches work just as well as ours! the only thing ours has is monopoly control over pricing, that is it, it's why we pay more than any other people on the planet for our medicines.
And so, there is medical tourism, traveling to other countries for procedures. the elderly in my town regularly travel to mexico on a bus to buy their medicines, for about a third of what they pay here. people in this country have died because they can't afford insulin (a patent free medicine) or epipens (people are now making their own). the system itself is forcing innovation on all of us and it will try (and ultimately fail) to force us to stop.
The medicine that i needed to save my life costs one million dollars in the US, in Russia it was 12,000 dollars. it is kind of like that old jack benny joke: your money or your life, well, i will take my life and my money. and i don't really care what the FDA or the medical industry thinks i should do, not any longer. and i am not alone in that, not even close.
"Instead, it just becomes a system where you have to trust the experts and you have to trust the government. I’m like, who trusts the government? Let’s be honest. It doesn’t matter what political party you are part of. Come on!"
Most (I believe) would agree with Josiah's statement above. That said, how can someone then trust the government enough to allow an experimental vaccine to be injected into their body to save them from a virus with a mortality rate well below 1%? Governments lie when the truth fits better - but we're supposed to believe that "this time" we can trust them?? Nah....
It is worth noting that while Josiah Zayner was being systematically ridiculed and de-platformed by the powers that be, the timeline overlaps with the end game for "Laboratory Coat Barbie", Elizabeth Holmes, and the Theranos scam. Predictably, that dreadful individual had her dirty water carried and flatulence huffed by the same types of serious "science writers" and big financial media reporters that turn their nose up at a genuine independent thinker who, by the way and however controversial his research, actually bothered to finish his doctorate.
The triumph of fluff over substance.
This is why I love Taibbi. Never heard of this guy or this field but damn I'm intrigued and enthralled.
"I don’t want people playing with pathogens in their bedrooms."
Much better to play with pathogens in virus labs in China . . . where it's safer.
As someone who has suffered from ulcerative colitis for 20 years now, DIY fecal transplants are quite common in the U.S. and are approved treatment for IBD in other developed countries. No need to guess why it's not approved in the U.S. ($$ in monoclonal antibody medications you see commercial for all the time), which sucks for people like me who haven't responded to these Pharma medications. Josiah Zayner may be quite odd in his antics, but he's not wrong about fecal transplants because his exact explanation, "repopulating with good bacteria", is exactly what a GI doctor at Weil Cornell told me that he needed to do for me because I've been nuked with antibiotics for recurring c. diff. for 2 months. Finally, I will get the FMT treatment I've long needed because it is indicated for c. diff. in the U.S., thank god.
“That’s the other crazy thing,” Josiah says. “I have a PhD in this stuff from the University of Chicago. So it’s really weird when people point and say, the experts don’t like this. Technically, am I not one of the experts? Don’t I get a say?”
We're at the point where Rand Paul, an actual medical doctor, is banned by the humanities graduates at YouTube for talking about medical stuff.
“When you grow up on a farm, you have all this freedom,” he says. “We don’t have any neighbors or anyone to interact with, so we’re used to just doing what we want. And when you get to this environment were people don’t do that, you’re immediately pegged as, you know, a weirdo.”
This gets back to the Hamilton vs Jefferson differences. It is endemic. At present we have the Hamiltons (Elite Democrats and establishment Republicans) and the Jeffersons (everyone else regardless of whether they know it or not).
Hamilton distrusted popular will and believed that the federal government should wield considerable power in order steer a successful course, Jefferson placed his trust in the people as governors.
The US is a country that attracted the independent and enterprise-minded resident. Ironically it was the Jefferson view that created the creative class that invented the tools and technology now exploited by the Hamiltons to put an end to that creative independence.
The source of this dysfunction is the emergence of successful entrepreneurs driven not so much by the motivation to improve a product or service... but driven to think that they could change the world for the better, and reap the rewards commensurate with their over-inflated contribution. They are Hamilton-squared and they naturally line up with the other Hamiltons infesting all institutions of influence and power.
Ironically in his farewell address, the president that appointed Jefferson and Hamilton to his cabinet, George Washington warned that the creation of political factions, “sharpened by the spirit of revenge,” would most certainly lead to “formal and permanent despotism.”
Apparently we all failed to heed that warning. Now the Hamiltons are in power and out of control.
Zayner's sin is unforgivable. He is what Germans call a Querdenker, often mistranslated as contrarian. It means "cross-thinker," establishing a new paradigm for understanding information.
Medical bureaucrats have entire careers invested in existing paradigms, not in serving anyone's health. They are no different than other bureaucrats, wanting to preserve their position and power regardless of the cost to other people. Dr. Anthony Fauci often wears a stethoscope as part of his performance art. I seriously doubt he has actually treated a real patient in 40-plus years. He detests applied scientists (physicians trying to serve their patients' needs) because they're interested in what actually works, not in preserving the power of the bureaucrats.
Great article! Josiah shouldn't be censored at all but he is kidding himself. They aren't trying to protect us, they are trying to protect their profits and their agenda. Josiah is a genius, we need him. and he seems to grasp the foundational American ideal, we need to be free, and that includes being your own doctor.
A DIY fecal transplant?! He's a shite supremacist!
Is it possible that all this internet censoring is just an extension of the "helicopter parenting" mentality? I would guess that many of the people making these decisions are children of that ilk. They grew up under a constant watchful eye, and protected from anything deemed dangerous. When I think of how different that was from my childhood it's striking. Zayner mentions growing up on a farm, which I'd guess, was more like my childhood - in the summer, we kids would head out shortly after waking up, and the parents might only see us once during the day, and just long enough to wolf down a sandwich at lunchtime. Today, your average suburban parent doing that would probably get arrested for child endangerment. Is it possible that those children carried all that fear of the unknown into adulthood and are now in positions of authority to act on it?
"How do we ever expect people to be able to make this choice on their own, if we never give them the information, or access to the information and say, “Here, look. Decide based on the data what you want to do.”
Precisely the point. They don't want us to do this, only what the experts decide is right for us
Matt, you are a phenomenon.
Barry James Marshall—Discovery of Helicobacter pylori as a Cause of Peptic Ulcer
He was mocked, shamed, and censored by the elite medical establishment for decades because he figured out that drinking milk and avoiding hot salsa wouldn't help your ulcer. It was always H. Pylori, and antibiotics would fix you right up.
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(16)30032-5/fulltext
Marshall was unsuccessful in developing an animal model, so he decided to experiment upon himself. In 1984, following a baseline endoscopy which showed a normal gastric mucosa, he drank a culture of the organism. Three days later he developed nausea and achlorhydria. Vomiting occurred and on day 8 a repeat endoscopy and biopsy showed marked gastritis and a positive H. pylori culture. At day 14, a third endoscopy was performed and he then began treatment with antibiotics and bismuth. He recovered promptly and thus had fulfilled Koch’s postulates for the role of H. pylori in gastritis.
I am acquainted with Josiah. I think taking down his Youtube (and every other biohacker) is wrong. No, Josiah is NOT "brilliant". Josiah is a guy who had a kid and had to do something. He has good marketing and sales skills. And he has some amazing journalist contacts. The guy is a mediocre scientist - at best.
That said, Josiah has evolved. I advised him 5 years ago he better stop injecting on stage because at that time he was selling pure bullshit that could not possibly work. He may have been quite aware it could not work. But if someone followed his directions to do this at home using his kit, that person could easily kill themselves. Josiah was pretty ignorant about immunology then. What he has picked up since, I don't know. Josiah stopped injecting on stage - instantly. And he immediately lit into another biohacker who imitated Josiah on stage, injecting himself with something. I presume he did that to differentiate himself for legal reasons.
What I told him was that I knew that a prosecutor and police would brush aside any "not for human use" disclaimers and put him away in that instance. I know this because it happened to a friend, who was then a professor at a major university. This professor give an unapproved medication (such can be oral, injectable, or absorbable), and someone died. If you don't have FDA clinical trial approval - you will get charged with a homicide. The prof was. Lost everything. In that case, I reviewed things and I do not believe the compound caused this death. It was bad luck. There are hundreds of thousands of people per year that have the cause of death in that case. The subject was in the prime age for death from this cause. But, the law looks at it alone and says the odds are tiny of it happening the same day. A jury would agree. Professor took the plea bargain.
There are VERY good reasons why the FDA has this power to regulate Matt. We see this now with people hearing about someone's friend who had, say, a brain bleed within a week of getting vaccinated and immediately thinks the brain bleed must be from vaccination. But, in the USA, there are 16,000 or so of these each year. (Japan has around 25,000 with half US population.) So, if you vaccinate half the USA, there should be around 8,000 brain bleeds in vaccinated people within a year. Divide that by 365 days in a year, and you should have around 22 people that get a brain bleed within 24 hours of vaccination. If you extend that to 7 days, you should have 153 or so.
There are things to criticize about our vaccine campaign. But Josiah is quite an ignoramus, and learning way too much by hard knocks. I am happy to help him, but he is also pretty headstrong, in the Dunning Kreuger sense of the word.
in essence, the clamp down is stopping a lot of innovation. Taibbi is correct in that exploration of "fringe" ideas is where new discoveries come from. Edison tested a great many things before he found a filament that would work in a light bulb. This kind of clamping down does in fact stifle creative innovation. There is also a kind of forceful imposition and maintenance of a rather conservative status quo, a do not step outside these lines. And as the article makes plain, there is a massive assumption that the american people are essential dumb herd animals who cannot reason and so must be protected from themselves. This kind of thinking has never worked out well in history, it won't work out well now.
What is true is that the current system in the US is crumbling, it possesses many flaws that the pandemic made more apparent. American meritocracy is not working and it is not going to work. FUrther the US system is extremely corrupt when it comes both to science and medicine. I hear that sort of thing all the time: the US medicines are the safest (no they aren't but they are the most expensive) and the best (no they aren't but they are the most expensive). zayner put it quite well, other countries can (surprise) do science too! They make good stuff too! other systems and approaches work just as well as ours! the only thing ours has is monopoly control over pricing, that is it, it's why we pay more than any other people on the planet for our medicines.
And so, there is medical tourism, traveling to other countries for procedures. the elderly in my town regularly travel to mexico on a bus to buy their medicines, for about a third of what they pay here. people in this country have died because they can't afford insulin (a patent free medicine) or epipens (people are now making their own). the system itself is forcing innovation on all of us and it will try (and ultimately fail) to force us to stop.
The medicine that i needed to save my life costs one million dollars in the US, in Russia it was 12,000 dollars. it is kind of like that old jack benny joke: your money or your life, well, i will take my life and my money. and i don't really care what the FDA or the medical industry thinks i should do, not any longer. and i am not alone in that, not even close.
"Instead, it just becomes a system where you have to trust the experts and you have to trust the government. I’m like, who trusts the government? Let’s be honest. It doesn’t matter what political party you are part of. Come on!"
Most (I believe) would agree with Josiah's statement above. That said, how can someone then trust the government enough to allow an experimental vaccine to be injected into their body to save them from a virus with a mortality rate well below 1%? Governments lie when the truth fits better - but we're supposed to believe that "this time" we can trust them?? Nah....