It’s Time for Separation of Science and State – Commentary

By Peter Yim

The U.S. government’s medical authorities have betrayed the country.

They have misled Americans on COVID-19 treatments and vaccines: suppressing the use of safe generic drugs for early treatment while endlessly promoting novel vaccines with horrific safety profiles. We don’t know the impact of these acts, but it has likely been devastating.

The question is: What was all this about? Was this garden-variety corruption?

Yes, the behavior by the medical authorities likely resulted from the corruption of individuals. But there is more going on here. Namely, science is too closely associated with the state.

This is unnatural. Science is the search for truth in the natural world, and it is unavoidably in conflict with the state. The state seeks to control, and science is intrinsically uncontrollable.

Enduring Tension

The tension between church and the state has been at the core of Western liberal democracy since the signing of the U. S. Constitution.

The first clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This is the doctrine behind the separation of church and state. The founders of the nation understood the relationship between the state and religion is fraught with potential conflict and sought to protect the church from the state.

In contrast, the relationship between the government and scince was ill-defined in the Constitution except that the government should protect ‘writings and discoveries.”

Deprived of Early Treatment

On issue after issue in the pandemic, federal medical authorities have lied and deceived. The most deadly were the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) lies that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are dangerous. Hydroxychloroquine is used chronically by hundreds of thousands of people in the United States. Billions of doses of ivermectin have been dispensed worldwide since its discovery.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a statement with a similar impact. NIH was more circumspect on the use of ivermectin for COVID-19: “There is insufficient evidence for the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel (the Panel) to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19.”

That statement is certainly false.

The “Panel” never considered the issue. My investigations have revealed as much. The chair of the panel implicitly acknowledged no vote was held on the ivermectin recommendation, in an exchange at the Annals of Internal Medicine (comments section).

The NIH statement on ivermectin is simply the view of the Panel Chairs. Litigation is ongoing to force the NIH to confirm this deception explicitly. The case will turn on a motion for summary judgment that is currently in the hands of the presiding judge.

Another fraud was the refusal to acknowledge natural immunity from prior COVID-19 infection. The assertion that vaccination is superior to natural immunity has a certain totalitarian brazenness: a newly minted theory based on an outlier study authored by federal employees and published without peer review.

COVID-19 Shot Safety Deception

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC) has betrayed the country by its refusal to acknowledge uncertainty about the safety of the COVID-19 shots. The safety of the shots is unknown to the public because of the totalitarian secrecy of the U.S. pharmacovigilance system.

Anyone can report a vaccine adverse event through VAERS (the Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System), and the number of reported adverse events is publicly available. However, the CDC fact sheet states, “Once adverse events are identified using VAERS, they may be monitored in other immunization safety systems to confirm if a particular adverse event is related to a vaccination and identify any specific risk factors.”

The events may be monitored. We don’t know if they are monitored because that information is not publicly disclosed.

As a result, we don’t know the number of cases in which the shot was ruled out as a cause of the adverse event. Those supportive of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign make their assumptions; those against make theirs. In truth, zero information is available on how many of the reported adverse events were not caused by the shot.

Mysterious Origins

Then there’s the question of where the virus came from. On that issue, the NIH director released a statement: “The scientific evidence to date indicates that the virus is likely the result of viral evolution in nature. …”

At the same time, however, the NIH is defending itself against the charge it funded the development of SARS-CoV-2. This is surely the mother of all conflicts of interest.

On this critical issue, we are left to the mercies of the World Health Organization and the Chinese government to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Fear of People, Truth

Democracy functions properly only when the people are fully informed. In the words of John F. Kennedy, “A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

In the United States, we would not tolerate a federal agency of religion, and the time has come to unplug federal medical authorities. The government is currently borrowing the mantle of “truth” by association with science without a bona fide dedication to truth and discovery. The U.S. government has clearly become the adversary of science.

There is no reason to expect more from the NIH, the FDA, or the CDC. These agencies are not much more than drug companies masquerading as public institutions.

Peter Yim, Ph.D., (https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjyim/) is a computer scientist and educator. A version of this article was originally published on Substack on December 26, 2021. Reprinted with permission.

(photo, “Defeat the Mandate” Rally, Washington, D.C., January 23, 2022, courtesy AnneMarie Schieber)

(This article was updated on February 14, 2022)