WHO and Gates Foundation: Clandestine Infertility Campaigns Disguised as Tetanus Vaccines

Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda

Directed by Dr Andy Wakefield (2022)

Film Review

This short documentary reviews strong documentary evidence that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Gates Foundation conducted a clandestine campaign in Kenya from 2014-16 to sterilize by giving them tetanus vaccine adulterated with beta-HCG (human chorionic gonadatropin).[1] The apparent goal was to promote the production of anti-HCG antibodies. After taking the vaccine, numerous women suffered repeated miscarriages and found they were infertile.

The film begins by reporting on research WHO commenced in 1987 to develop an anti-fertility vaccine, in which women would be injected with beta-HCG to stimulate the production of anti-HCG antibodies.

In the 1990s a Philippine court ordered the discontinuance of WHO’s tetanus vaccination program there, after vials of tetanus vaccine were found to contain beta-HCG.[2]

When WHO tried to launch a similar campaign in Kenya in 1994, the government demanded the vaccine be tested for HCG. The Kenyan government became suspicious owing to WHO’s proposal to give all women of reproductive age five tetanus vaccines at six month intervals.[3] Prior campaigns (against neonatal tetanus only gave a single shot (conferring 10 years of immunity) and only to pregnant women.[4] Instead of agreeing to the testing, WHO abandoned the campaign.

In 2014, after a new government aggressively supported the WHO campaign, Kenya’s Catholic bishops and two Catholic doctors obtained vials of the tetanus vaccine and sent them to six independent labs for testing. Most contained beta-HCG. Under pressure, the government also ordered testing from a new lab. This time the vials from government stores (which turned out to have fake labels disguising their source) tested negative for beta-HCG. However, once again, the original vials tested positive for beta-HCG. Despite death threats and repeated break-ins the new lab refused to alter their results as ordered by the Kenyan minister of health.

Although he government accused the Catholic bishops and doctors of tampering with the tetanus vaccine vials, this would have been impossible. Lab results showed the beta-HCG was present in the form of a Tetanus Toxoid Conjugate. This means the vaccine was deliberately manufactured that way – that the HCG couldn’t have been added through vial tampering.

The government also retaliated against the doctors, by threatening to suspend their medical registration and issuing a gag order forbidden them to talk about vaccines publicly or with their patients.

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[1] The placenta produces HCG to stimulate the mother’s ovaries to produce progesterone to prepare the uterine lining. Without adequate HCG and progesterone, it’s impossible for the uterus to support a full term pregnancy.

[2] Nicaragua and Mexico also targeted all women of reproductive age with this unusual 5-dose tetanus vaccine regimen. See Baby Killing Vaccine: Is It Being Stealth Tested?

[3] Neonatal tetanus occurs when the umbilical cord is cut with unsterile instruments and the umbilical stump becomes infected. Seems to me it would have been much cheaper and easier to flood Kenya with sterilization equipment rather than mass vaccination.

[4] Coincidentally giving five shots in six months is the same protocol WHO uses with their beta-HCG antifertility vaccine.

Film can be viewed free at the following link:

Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda

Gates, Fauci and Illegal and Barbaric Experimentation on Children and Vulnerable Third World Residents

Chapter 7 of the Real Anthony Fauci focuses mainly on the illegal and barbaric studies of AIDS drugs and vaccines Fauci foisted on fourteen thousand foster children in the 1980s and 1990s. Investigations by the Associated Press, the federal Office of Human Research Protections, and the Vera Institute of Justice confirm that most of these children lacked the federally guaranteed right to refuse consent. At the Incarnation Children’s Center (ICC) in New York, children who declined to take the toxic drugs, NIAID and its Big Pharma partners arranged to surgically implant feeding tubes in their bellies to force compliance. The Vera Institute, relying mainly on New York City Administration of Child Care documents, confirms eighty children died (out of the 582 in the ICC experiment), with many others experiencing unpleasant and dangerous side effects, including reduced liver function and severe anemia.

Chapters 8-10 explore the equally brutal and unethical vaccine trials Fauci (and his buddy Bill Gates) conducted in Africa and other third world countries. One of the most troublesome aspects of this research was their failure to include placebo groups. In nearly all studies, Gates and Fauci hid the horrific side effects of the AIDS, malaria and meningitis vaccines they were testing by comparing them with other extremely toxic medications.

Meanwhile owing to his misguided (and profitable) emphasis on vaccines, Gates managed to pressure WHO to shift billions of dollars away from more vital health-related problems, such as malnutrition, unclean water and more common illnesses, such as diarrhea and malaria.*

Kennedy also relates how US vaccine manufacturers, with Fauci’s approval, shipped millions of vaccine doses containing mercury-laden thimerosol after the US banned it in 2001. And the role of the Gates Foundation in experimenting on Africans with lethal malaria and meningitis vaccines.

The book goes on to discuss recent Gates-inspired WHO “tetanus” vaccine campaigns in Chad, Kenya, South Sudan, Sudan and Pakistan with a bizarre six monthly dosage schedule suggesting they were part of an antifertility campaign like past WHO campaigns.

Since 2017, the Gates Foundation has also engaged in a sinister campaign to administer the dangerous Depo-Provera shots in sub-Saharan Africa. Side effects include. Documented side effect of Depo-Provera include blood clots, stroke, permanent infertility, increased risk of contracting AIDS and a 200% increase in breast cancer.

Gates is also responsible for a misguided polio vaccination campaign in India which led polio cases to increase from 300 per year in 2011 to a 17-year total of polio-related paralysis in 2017.***His recent HPV vaccination campaign in India (2009-12) led to severe side effects (including paralysis, autoimmune disease, infertility and death) in one out of twenty vaccine recipient.s

At present, the Gates-contolled Global Alliance for Vaccnes, WHO and UNICEF are engaged in a conspiracy to pressure India to mandate hepatitis B vaccines in newborns (a condition in which 15,000 children must be vaccinated to prevent one death).

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*In Africa, Gates also heavily discouraged hydroxychloroquine use for malaria (preferring to emphasize newer, more expensive experimental malaria drugs and vaccines), which could have prevented 50% of malaria deaths over the last two decades.

**In the 1970s, WHO deliberately engaged in a covert African anti-fertility campaigns mass vaccinating women with six-monthly doses of tetanus vaccine laced with the antifertility hormone human chorionic gonadotropin.

***WHO declared polio eradicated in 2012, with only 21,000 cases globally.

Just to let people know I’m moving to Substack and Telegram after several readers informed me I’ve been censored from WordPress Reader feed. The link to my Substack account is https://stuartbramhall.substack.com/. The link to my Telegram channel is https://t.me/themostrevolutionaryact I’ll continue to publish on WordPress as long as I’m able, but if my blog suddenly disappears you’ll know where to find me.

Fauci’s Mismanagement of the Covid Pandemic

I have been working my way through Robert F Kennedy’s bestselling book The Real Dr Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. Eight hundred eighty eight pages long, the Kennedy’s book (which is a masterpiece) could easily be five different books. If published separately, the first would address  Fauci’s disastrous mismanagement of the Covid-19 “pandemic”; the second how Fauci (who Kennedy refers to as the J Edgar Hoover of medicine) has spent the last five decades carving out a $6 billion* bureaucratic empire; the third Fauci’s mismanagement and exploitation of the AIDS epidemic; the fourth his barbaric and illegal experiments on orphans and his (and Gates’) atrocities in Africa; and the fifth his (and Gates’) collaboration with the CIA and military intelligence to orchestrate nearly two decades of phony pandemics to launch a totalitarian coup via a phony health emergency.

The topics that interest me most concern mismanagement of Covid-19 and AIDS, his illegal experiments on American children and Africans and his (and Gates’) collaboration with the CIA and military intelligence.

Mismanaging a Pandemic

A close look at the data leaves no doubt the US is among the top three western countries for Covid deaths, a fact scrupulously concealed by the mainstream media.The table below (from page 29) gives an inkling of where the US stands in comparison to other developed countries.**

Dr Fauci’s Report Card

United States	2,107 deaths/1,000,000
Sweden	1,444 deaths/1,000,000
Iran	1,449 deaths/1,000,000
Germany	1,126 deaths/1,000,000
Cuba	650 deaths/1,000,000
Jamaica	630 deaths/1,000,000
Denmark	455 deaths/1,000,000
India	327 deaths/1,000,000
Finland	194 deaths/1,000,000
Vietnam	197 deaths/1,000,000
Norway	161 deaths/1,000,000
Japan	139 deaths/1,000,00
Pakistan	128 deaths/1,000,000
Kenya	97 deaths/1,000,000
South Korea	47 deaths/1,000,000
Congo (Brazzaville)	35 deaths/1,000,000
Hong Kong	28 deaths/1,000,000
China	3 deaths/1,000,000
Tanzania	0.86 deaths/1,000,000

Kennedy’s narrative begins by reviewing the extensive peer reviewed research documenting the total ineffectiveness of lockdowns, social distancing and masking policies. He moves on to introduce us to hundreds of doctors worldwide who were treating vulnerable Covid19 patients on an outpatient basis almost as soon as the illness was identified in China.

Studies dating back to 2004 support the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for common cold coronavirus, whereas 50 years of animal studies show ivermectin (IVM) to be effective against numerous viruses, including Zika, Dengue, yellow fever and West Nile virus. In March 2020, Chinese scientists published a pre-print of the first double blind study demonstrating HCQ’s in Covid-19. Since then, there have been more than 200 peer reviewed studies proving its effectiveness in Covid-19 and more than 60 peer reviewed studies of IVM’s effectiveness. Outside the US (and the UK and New Zealand), both are widely used in early outpatient Covid treatment. One study reveals that countries allowing patients access to HCQ have one-tenth the death rate of those that ban it.

Meanwhile Fauci, Bill Gates and WHO financed a cadre of research mercenaries to concoct nearly twenty studies – all employing fraudulent protocols – deliberately designed to discredit HCQ. Fauci, Gates and WHO simultaneously conspired to discredit IVM (which was saving hundreds of thousands of lives around the world) by rigging the review of extensive studies proving its effectiveness.

Their main motivation was a federal law barring FDA Emergency Use Authorizations for vaccines (in which both are heavily invested) where there are already effective treatments. Fauci is also heavily invested in Remdesevir, a drug far more toxic than either HCQ or IVM and about 2,000 times more expensive.

Thanks to the extreme greed of both men, roughly 15,000 patients a day have died needlessly from Covid who could have been saved with effective and inexpensive treatments.

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*The annual budget of of the federal agency Fauci runs, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is $8 billion. In addition to controlling the bulk of federal funding for virology and infectious disease research, this enables him to “punish” FDA and CDC research advisers fail to go along with the new medications and vaccines he promotes.

**For some reason, Kennedy’s table omits Great Britain and Italy, which according to his source had death rates of 2,352 and 2,450 per million, which are higher than that of the US. France, also not mentioned is 1,877 per million and Switzerland 1,491.

Just to let people know I’m moving to Substack and Telegram after several readers informed me I’ve been censored from WordPress Reader feed. The link to my Substack account is https://stuartbramhall.substack.com/. The link to my Telegram channel is https://t.me/themostrevolutionaryact I’ll continue to publish on WordPress as long as I’m able, but if my blog suddenly disappears you’ll know where to find me.

Big Pharma: Gaming the System

Big Pharma: Gaming the System

DW (2020)

Film Review

This 2020 documentary was obviously filmed pre-Covid. Although it mentions the growing tendency of Big Pharma to dictate government health policy, it makes no mention of Big Pharma’s role in pressuring WHO, the FDA, the CDC and other public health bodies to create mass hysteria over a low mortality respiratory illness, to suppress cheap and effective Covid treatments (eg Vitamin D, Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine) and to blackmail all Western governments into forcing experimental gene therapy on all their hapless populations.

It begins with the saga of hedge fund manager and convicted felon and former CEO of Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals Martin Shkrell. In 2015, Shkrell made headline new by increasing the cost of the lifesaving drug Daraprim* by 5000%. After defending his decision (to protect his shareholders) in his testimony before Congress, Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud. At present, he’s serving a seven-year prison sentence.

The film goes on to explore global class action suits against several pharmaceutical companies for suppressing studies revealing negative side effects of their drugs. One examined in detail is Depakene, an anti-epilepsy medication that causes developmental delay during pregnancy (in 40% of fetuses).

Filmmakers seem most scandalized  by the ridiculously high prices drug companies cause for life saving treatments. One example is the anti-cancer drug avastin, accidentally discovered to reverse age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Despite spending no money of their own developing this drug, Roche and Novartis immediately boosted the its price from $50 to $2000 per injection (into the eyeball) to $2,000 per injection.

The second example is the hepatitis C drug Sivaldi. Despite being developed with taxpayer funds at the National Institutes of Health, Gilead Sciences sells it for $84,000 for a three month course.

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*Pyrimethamine, sold under the brand name Daraprim among others, is a medication used with leucovorin to treat the parasite diseases toxoplasmosis and cystoisosporiasis.

The film can be seen free at https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/big-pharma-gaming-system/

 

Plandemic II – Film Review

Plandemic II

Directed by Mikki Willis (2020)

Film Review

This is an exceptionally well-made follow-the-money documentary. It’s meticulously researched, and the filmmakers continually inform viewers of their source material. The film largely focuses on documented corruption in the World Health Organization (WHO) and various federal agencies.

One of the film’s principal narrators is a Wall Street analyst who specializes in patent research. In 2003, he discovered the US patent office had granted coronavirus patents to various federal employees performing federally funded coronavirus research. Dr Fauci (of The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease) was one, along with several CDC researchers.

In 1980, Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act, which allows federal employees to patent and privately profit from federally funded research.

However what’s most curious about these patents is that it’s illegal to patent nature. This means these coronaviruses had to be genetically modified in some way to qualify for patent protection. When questions were raised about these patents in 2013, the National Institutes of Health ended coronavirus research funding and the Obama administration offshored US coronavirus research to Wuhan China.

When WHO first declared a coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, numerous scientists (including Luc Montainger, who won a 2008 Nobel Prize for isolating the AIDS virus) came forward with additional evidence that COVID19 was genetically manipulated for biological warfare purposes. Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia all acted quickly to prevent this information from gaining traction on the Internet – Google by rigging their search algorithms, Facebook by either banning relevant posts or overshadowing them with fact checking messaging, and Wikileaks by allowing political donors to edit compromising entries.

Later research questioning the value of face masks and social distancing, which was initially at the top of most Google searches, also totally disappeared in their search engine.

Other valuable information presented in the film relates to Bill Gates’ role (through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) as the single largest funder of both the WHO and the CDC. Both agencies receive half their funding from private sources, both charitable organizations (like the Gates, Clinton and Epstein Foundations) and the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture vaccines

The film also looks Event 201 in October 2019, a rehearsal for the COVID19 lockdown, and a prior pandemic rehearsal in 2018. Although both Gates and Fauci predicted the COVID19 pandemic more than a year in advance, neither used their immense wealth and prestige to ensure an adequate supply of masks, gloves, visors and ventilators, to ensure safe, timely and effective treatment for all who needed it.

My favorite part of the film features Bill Gates testifying in the antitrust suit the Justice Department filed against Microsoft in 1998. It was largely as a result of this case that Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO in 2000, shifting his focus to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His foundation significantly benefits Gates’ personal investment in vaccines production. Gates, who calls his investment in vaccines “the best investment I ever made,” credits them with a 20 to 1 return.

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*Foundation founded by the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

View the film free at

 

Plandemic – Indoctornation World Premiere

The Politics of Asbestos: Banned in EU, But Not China, Russia, Brazil or US

Deadly Asbestos

DW (2019)

Film Review

This documentary is about the international asbestos industry and its aggressive penetration of developing countries following the EU’s decision to ban it in 1998. The first study linking asbestos to lung cancer and mesothelioma was published in 1964. Asbestos also causes a chronic (eventually fatal) lung condition known as asbestosis. Sadly, as with smoking and lead poisoning, it took decades of sustained organizing to get western governments to acknowledge the fatal health consequences of asbestos exposure. The US enacted a “partial ban” on asbestos in 1989.*

Because mesothelioma can result from a brief single exposure to asbestos fibers, EPA rules regarding asbestos removal from old buildings are far more stringent. In fact, an entire industry has evolved around asbestos removal.**

The filmmakers focus primarily on the Belgian asbestos manufacturer Etex-Eternit (aka Everest) and its expansion into India in the 1990s. India has been a primary industry target of the industry, owing to its lax regulation of asbestos manufacture, use and disposal.

Asbestos sheets are sold widely in India for use as walls and roofs in makeshift shacks. Over 100,000 Indians develop asbestosis annually.

India has more than 50 asbestos manufacturing plants. Filmmakers visit an asbestos factory Everest built in 1995 and sold to an Indian family in 2002. In addition to filming a 600,000 square meter asbestos waste dump, they also visit a makeshift clinic treating thousands of local residents for asbestos-related problems. They also talk with Indian lawyers and activists who are bringing a lawsuit against Everest in Belgium.

The film concludes by looking at World Health Organization efforts to institute a global ban on asbestos. Brazil, China, and Russia, which still mine asbestos, continue to vociferously block the ban.

Last year, the Trump EPA approved new rules that soften regulations against asbestos use in the US.  In response, one Russian asbestos manufacturer now proudly displays features Trump’s image on all their products.

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* History of EPA asbestos regulation

• 1989 Partial Ban on the manufacture, import, processing, and distribution of some asbestos-containing products. EPA also banned new uses of asbestos which prevent new asbestos products from entering the marketplace after August 25, 1989. These uses remain banned. The April 2019 final rule does not provide a way for these uses to return to the marketplace.
• April 2019 Final Rule to ensure that asbestos products that are no longer on the market cannot return to commerce without the Agency evaluating them and putting in place any necessary restrictions or prohibiting use. The uses covered under this rule were not already prohibited under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and could have returned to the market at any time.
• Risk evaluation of asbestos under TSCA. EPA is reviewing a handful of very limited, still ongoing uses of asbestos. The evaluation of the risks associated with ongoing uses of asbestos is required under TSCA section 6. If EPA finds unreasonable risk, the Agency will take prompt action to address those risks.

** See https://www.epa.gov/asbestos

 

 

 

How the World Health Organization Gave Up Its Scientific Independence

Trust WHO: The Business of Global Health

Al Jazeera (2018)

Film Review

This documentary concerns the capture of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) by pharmaceutical and other corporations. The problem originates, according to filmmakers, from the refusal global governments to fully fund the agency. As a result, WHO has come to rely on foundations and corporate sponsors to finance their programs. Forty percent of current WHO funding comes from non-government sources. The Gates Foundation, with their strong GMO and vaccine agenda, is its second largest funder after the US government.

Worse still, only 30% of the WHO budget is discretionary. Seventy-percent must be dedicated to programs specified by donors.

The film examines numerous instances in which WHO has pursued the interest of corporate sponsors to the clear detriment of world health. The most grievous example occurred in 2011, when they failed to recommend that Japanese children take potassium iodide to prevent them from radioactive iodine released from the Fukushima meltdowns. The recommendation for children to take prophylactic potassium iodide following nuclear accidents has been a standard WHO recommendation since 1999.

According to radiation health expert Dr Helen Caldicott (see Fukushima: An Ongoing Radiological Catastrophe, more than 200 Fukushima children had developed thyroid cancer by June 2018. Most, if not all of these cases could have been prevented by giving them potassium iodide. Thyroid cancer in the Japanese population is normally quite rare – it occurs in roughly one of every million individuals.

The film can’t be embedded but can be viewed at the Al Jazeera website:

Trust Who: The Business of Global Health

Poisoned Planet

Poisoned Planet: How Constant Exposure to Man-Made Chemicals is Putting Your Life at Risk

By Julian Cribb
Allen and Unwin (2014)

Book Review

Poisoned Planet is an encyclopedia of environmental toxins and their effect on human health. At present, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved 84,000 different manufactured chemicals. This doesn’t include unintentionally released chemicals, which number even higher. In 36 years, the EPA has only banned five chemicals. The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) monitors 212. All human beings on the planet have a minimum of 150 toxic chemicals in their bloodstream, regardless of where they live.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that man made toxic chemicals cause 4.9 million deaths annually. According to Australian journalist Julian Cribb, the largest source of chemical toxicity is coal burning power plants, giving off mercury, cadmium, sulfur and volatile organic carcinogens. These toxins cause 170,000 deaths annually, mostly from mercury poisoning. Mercury enters the food chain via fish, rice and green vegetables. Public health officials have been warning pregnant women and small children not to eat tuna or shellfish for two decades.

While many toxic exposures are unavoidable, it’s really scary how many people are poisoning themselves and their children through indoor air pollution, food packaging, sunscreens, cosmetics and cleaning products containing toxic chemicals. See Obgyns Speak Out On Toxic Chemicals and Buyer Beware: Americans are Systematically Poisoning Themselves

Cribb is highly critical of doctors for failing to warn their patients about these risks. Sadly current medical training is totally drug-based and medical students receive minimal training in nutrition or toxicology.

In the developed world, indoor air pollution is caused by chemicals emitted by synthetic building materials; wall, floor and furniture coverings; bedding; paints; plastic; foam rubber and common pesticides.

The most worrying toxins in food packaging are phthalates and bisphenyl A (BPA). Both are linked to cancer, infertility, asthma, obesity, diabetes and endocrine and neurobehavioral disorders.

Toxins found in sunscreen and cosmetics include phthalates, triclosan and parabins, which have all been linked to cancer, infertility and obesity.

Epidemiologists estimate eighty percent of all cancers are linked to environmental factors, with cancer rates increasing by 1-3% a year. There is also growing evidence implicating environmental toxins to the growing epidemic of infertility and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

Big Sugar, Inc

Big Sugar: Sweet, White and Deadly

Brian McKenna (2005)

Film Review

Big Sugar is about the sugar lobby and how they use their wealth and power to prevent the World Health Organization (WHO) and other regulatory agencies from dispensing accurate information about the link between high sugar intake and obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

This Canadian documentary is divided into two parts. Part I deals with the links between sugar and slavery and the modern sugar barons have replaced the slaveholders who effectively controlled British foreign and domestic policy for 200 years. Part II is about the global obesity epidemic and efforts by WHO in 2005 to issue guidelines limiting daily sugar intake to 10% of total calories. The powerful sugar lobby defeated this initiative by employing many of the same techniques as the tobacco industry (and the climate denial industry). After attacking the science linking high sugar intake and obesity, they attacked the scientists themselves as biased fanatics. They then got them fired, demoted, and/or transferred. Under pressure from Big Sugar, both Bush administrations threatened to withhold the funding they owed WHO, and the pesky nutritionists who sought to warn people about the dangers of sugar magically vanished.

The documentary focuses on two of the most prominent slave holding families, as well a Canadian woman of African descent whose ancestors were owned by the Church of England and worked on a plantation in Barbados. The filmmakers liken these historical paragons to a modern day Cuban exile family in Florida called the Fanjuls. The latter donate generously to both major parties to make sure the US government continues to subsidize sugar production. The Fanjuls and other Florida sugar barons reap $1.5 billion in subsidies for $3.1 million in campaign contributions.

In addition to exposing the ecological devastation sugar cultivation has caused in the Florida Everglades, the filmmakers also visit the Fanjuls’ sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic. Despite the official abolition of slavery, working conditions on Dominican sugar plantations remain virtually unchanged. The Fanjuls lure Haitian immigrants across the border with a promise of paying work. Once their passports are confiscated, they become virtual slaves. Workers, who are paid $2 for a twelve hour day, experience chronic hunger and malnutrition. Forbidden to grow their own vegetables, they’re forced to rely on a company store that charges them three times the normal price for food. They have no access to medical care, and child labor is rife.

Doctors Resist Changes to Reduce Medical Errors

Avoidable Errors Third Leading Cause of Death

Preventable medical errors remain the  third highest cause cause of death in the US – following heart disease and cancer. They claim the lives of 400,000 Americans every year. In the following TED talk, Boston surgeon and public health researcher Dr Atul Gawande talks about the World Health Organization (WHO) approaching him to research possible methods of reducing avoidable surgical deaths.

What Gawande discovered was that the role of doctors has failed to keep up with the increasing complexity of medical technology. Prior to the discovery of penicillin in 1945, most patients who were ill enough to be hospitalized died. Occasionally a courageous doctor would save a patient with heroic and/or revolutionary treatment. This caused doctors who were daring “cowboys” and “pioneers” to be sought out and rewarded.

In the new millennium, Gawande argues, amazing new technologies, rather than brilliant doctors, are saving patients. Although the increasing complexity of medical technology requires ever larger medical teams, the health system is still oriented around the skill and expertise of individual doctors. We’re still relying on the brilliance of individuals. What we really need is pit crews.

Gawande approached the challenge WHO gave him by looking at other high risk professions, such as skyscraper construction and aircraft manufacture. He wanted to see what they did to reduce the risk of avoidable errors.

He was inspired by the checklists Boeing uses at every stage of manufacturing – for key details that can get forgotten. He developed a similar series of surgical checklists, which he tested in a dozen different countries. The checklists reduced complication rates by 35% and death rates by 45%.

Gawande published his remarkable findings in the New Yorker in 2007 and in a 2009 book, The Checklist Manifesto.

Seven years later the majority of hospitals and surgical teams refuse to implement Gawande’s checklists –  for reasons he fails to specify. Apparently their responsibility in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of patients isn’t sufficient to inspire change. I must admit this mystifies me.

Also posted in Veterans Today