Mosquitoes inject human test subjects with parasite in study at Bill Gates-linked center



Researchers at the Bill Gates Foundation-backed Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands have joined an international effort to transform mosquitoes into flying syringes. According to a study published late last month in the New England Journal of Medicine, they apparently now have an effective way of using mosquitoes to deliver some protection against malaria in unsuspecting humans — and possibly other payloads in the future as well.

Scientists have long toyed with the idea of transforming mosquitoes into "flying vaccinator[s]."

Shigeto Yoshida, the lead researcher on a 2010 study that modified mosquitoes' saliva such that they would deliver leishmania vaccines to mice when sucking their blood, noted that vaccination by insect was "just like a conventional vaccination but with no pain and no cost."

"What's more, continuous exposure to bites will maintain high levels of protective immunity, through natural boosting, for a lifetime. So the insect shifts from being a pest to being beneficial," added Yoshida.

Despite the Japanese geneticist's optimism, his study acknowledged that "medical safety issues and concerns about informed consent mitigate the use of the 'flying vaccinator' as a method to deliver vaccines."

Robert Sinden, professor emeritus of parasite cell biology at Imperial College London, told Science at the time that in addition to vaccinating people without their informed consent, no regulatory agency would sign off on the initiative.

The issue of informed consent, apparently an ongoing issue for elements of the scientific community, was evidently not enough to hinder the continued development of flying vaccinators. Hiroyuki Matsuoka of Jichi Medical University in Japan, for instance, announced that with the help of a 2008 Gates Foundation grant, he was preparing work on an engineered mosquito that could produce and secrete a malaria vaccine protein into a host's skin.

In 2022, Sean Murphy and his team at the University of Washington demonstrated the workability of that idea, testing mosquito-borne malaria vaccines on humans, establishing what they called a "proof of concept" for the technology.

'The parasite dies before it infects the blood cells and evolves into its deadly phase.'

Concerned about the short-lived and marginally effective nature of the malaria vaccines currently approved by the World Health Organization, Dutch researchers at the LUMC similarly turned to genetically modified parasites and mosquito carriers as a potential alternative.

In an earlier trial, the researchers tested the effectiveness of GA1, a malaria parasite genetically modified to stop developing after roughly 24 hours of infection in humans, but found that it only provided low protective efficacy against malaria. Hoping for a better outcome, the researchers crafted another parasite, GA2, to stop developing around six days following invasion in preclinical humanized mouse models.

The Bill Gates-backed Gavi, also known as the Vaccine Alliance, noted that "because the parasite dies before it infects the blood cells and evolves into its deadly phase, it instead acts as a way of priming the immune system, as a vaccination usually would."

Afforded a test group of 43 adults between the ages of 19 and 35 who previously had no record of malaria infection, the researchers subjected subjects to 50 bites from GA2-infected mosquitoes, 50 bites from GA1-infected mosquitoes, or 50 bites from uninfected mosquitoes (placebo), in three vaccination sessions at 28-day intervals. Three weeks following their third devouring by mosquitoes, the human test subjects underwent malaria infection with five bites from infected mosquitoes.

According to the study, eight of the nine participants in the GA2 group received effective protection against the malaria infection. Only one of eight participants in the GA1 group received protection, and none of the participants in the placebo group received protection.

The Dutch researchers now seek to replicate their results in a larger human trial.

"These findings represent a significant step forward in malaria vaccine development," Julius Hafalla, an immunologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told Nature. "The ongoing global malaria burden makes the development of more effective vaccines a critical priority."

Leiden University Medical Center received a $1,578,317 grant from the Gates Foundation in September 2023 for the purpose of understanding "population and geographic factors affecting response to malaria vaccines in endemic countries." In November, the center received a Gates Foundation grant "to improve health outcomes and prevent premature death in populations around the world suffering from high rates of Malaria infection by developing next generation malaria vaccine candidates."

Bill Gates has demonstrated, both directly and through his foundation, a desire to shape public health, the news landscape, education policy, AI, insect populations, American farmland, the energy sector, foreign policy, and the earth itself.

Gates, who took issue in a January 2021 MSNBC interview with content encouraging "people not to trust the advice on masks or taking the vaccine," has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into malaria vaccine research. He noted on his blog in August, "Malaria is caused by a remarkably adaptable parasite that's constantly changing and developing resistance to our drugs and interventions. Fighting it is like playing a global game of high-stakes whack-a-mole: Just when we think we've got it under control, it pops up somewhere else or in a new form."

Gates noted further that it is important to use existing interventions while "laying the groundwork for a malaria-free future." According to Gates, that future might depend on the use of mRNA vaccines or the genetic modification of mosquito population.

According to the utopian billionaire, "One of our biggest challenges isn't scientific; it's financial and political."

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Scientific American attacks Jay Bhattacharya for prioritizing Americans' autonomy over 'the science'



Scientific American, a 179-year-old magazine published by the German-British Springer Nature Group, appears increasingly keen to dirty itself with politics rather than engage in clean science.

Just weeks after Laura Helmuth stepped down as the magazine's editor in chief after an ugly rant in which she effectively called over 77.3 million Americans who voted for President-elect Donald Trump both "fascists" and "bigoted," and months after the magazine pushed gender ideologues' pseudoscientific narrative, Scientific American published a piece claiming that Trump's choice of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to run the National Institutes of Health is "the wrong move for science and public health."

Extra to insinuating that Bhattacharya was not actually censored during the pandemic and arguing that the destructive approach championed by the scientific establishment during the pandemic was not authoritarian, the author of the piece, Steven Albert, concern-mongered that Trump's pick might prioritize Americans' personal autonomy if confirmed as head of the NIH.

Debate over therapeutics, health protocols, and the origin of COVID-19 was stifled during the pandemic. Bhattacharya, among the experts whose views were suppressed at the urging of Biden health officials, refused to uncritically accept the prevailing wisdom of medical establishmentarians who advocated for lockdowns, vaccine mandates, masking for kids, and other ruinous COVID-19 policies.

Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which suggested that geriatrics and other higher-risk groups should engage in shielding, whereas healthy individuals should "immediately be allowed to resume life as normal." According to the declaration, healthy individuals were better off catching the virus and developing natural immunity.

Scientific establishmentarians keen on coercive medicine and blanket lockdowns attacked Bhattacharya for proposing this alternative approach. President Joe Biden's former chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci called the declaration "total nonsense." Former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins conspired to issue a "quick and devastating takedown" of Bhattacharya's criticism.

In the weeks since Trump announced that Bhattacharya would "restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research," establishmentarians have resumed their attacks on the esteemed epidemiologist both at home and abroad.

'Pitting personal autonomy against the application of science to policy is fine for vanity webcasts and think tanks.'

Steven Albert, Hallen chair of community health and social justice at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health, jumped on the bandwagon, griping in the pages of Scientific American about Bhattacharya's criticism of the "authoritarian tendencies of public health" and his advocacy for turning "the NIH from something that's sort of how to control society into something that's aimed at the discovery of truth to improve the health of Americans."

"The claims of authoritarianism are a screen for pushing a particular agenda that is likely to damage the NIH. Bhattacharya's science agenda is political: to set concerns for personal autonomy against evidence-based public health science," wrote Albert. "This is not appropriate for NIH leadership."

Albert expressed concern that Bhattacharya's apparent prioritization of Americans' God-given and Constitution-secured rights over health policy might prompt him to take a stand against "enforced vaccine requirements for children attending public schools" or perhaps even against the introduction of fluoride in drinking water, which the National Toxicology Program recently admitted can cause mental retardation in kids at the exposure levels seen in various places around the country.

"Pitting personal autonomy against the application of science to policy is fine for vanity webcasts and think tanks, but inappropriate for NIH leadership. If he would rather focus on promoting personal autonomy in pandemic policy, perhaps he is being nominated to the wrong agency," wrote Albert.

Albert further suggested — in the pages of a magazine that not only platformed the claim on the heels of a rushed vaccine rollout that "there is no question that the current vaccines are effective and safe" but also echoed the discredited thesis of a paper in its sister journal that the COVID-19 virus likely had zoonotic origins — that Bhattacharya's critical views "are one more unfortunate legacy of the COVID pandemic."

Albert defended the failed pandemic policies that Bhattacharya previously criticized, claiming that "science supported school closures, work-from-home policies, large gathering restrictions in public spaces, and face mask requirements as effective ways to lower hospital surges and buy time for vaccine development."

The "science" that Albert trusted in the case of school closures clearly needed the kind of second-guessing advocated by Bhattacharya, given that the closures put multitudes of school children years behind in math, reading, science, and general learning and have been linked to massive spikes in mental illness, suicide, and obesity.

After making the grossly ahistoric claim that "it is not authoritarian to use science for policy" and accusing Trump of dealing in falsehoods, Albert claimed that "income inequality and access to health care," not "authoritarianism in science or public health," were responsible for the devastation wreaked upon the country during the pandemic.

Albert wrapped up his hit piece by complaining about Bhattacharya possibly decentralizing the agency's functions and shifting NIH grant funding to the states; banning dangerous gain-of-function research and experiments using aborted baby parts; and depoliticizing science.

In response to Bhattacharya's nomination last month, Matt Kibbe, BlazeTV host of "Kibbe on Liberty" and "The Coverup," which recently featured the epidemiologist, noted, "Jay Bhattacharya was deemed a 'fringe epidemiologist' by former NIH Director Francis Collins, who demonized him for asking obvious questions about the government's authoritarian response to COVID. Now, Jay will take the helm at NIH and clean house of all those who corrupted public health and did so much damage to Americans during the pandemic. Karma is a b****."

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Scientific American pushes claims that science-based critiques of gender ideology are 'misinformation,' 'violence'



Gender ideologues have the Biden administration and multitudes of Democratic lawmakers across the country dutifully advancing their agenda and victimizing multitudes of Americans, but apparently that's not enough. They also appear keen to have the broader public buy into their narrative around sex, genital mutilations, and transgenderism.

In an effort to overcome or at the very least sidestep the common citizen's common sense, social constructivists have in recent decades attempted to mask their reality-defying philosophy in the language of science.

The trouble with this effort is that when exposed to actual scientific scrutiny, their claims have altogether failed to hold water. That has become especially clear in recent months where even Britain's National Health Service has pumped the brakes on so-called "gender-affirming care."

Faced with the collapse of their narrative, ideologues have worked to villainize critics and to reframe the debate about gender. On Friday, one such attempt was made in the pages of Scientific American, a 178-year-old science magazine published by the German-British Springer Nature Group.

Scientific American published an interview that originally appeared in OpenMind Magazine — former Discover magazine editor in chief Corey Powell's outlet that supposedly tackles "disinformation" in science.

The interview, originally made possible by a grant from the Pulitzer Center's aptly titled "Truth Decay" initiative, comprises an engagement between Powell and two transvestites, both of whom are self-identified activists: a French-Canadian man who calls himself Florence Ashley and describes himself as a "transfeminine activist, academic, and slut"; and Simon Dow-Kuang Sun, a senior fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies in Chicago.

Blaze News previously reported that Ashley, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law in Canada, wrote that where confused kids are concerned, "Unbounded social transition and ready access to puberty blockers ought to be treated as the default option, and support should be offered to parents who may have difficulty accepting their youth."

He claimed in an article for the leftist blog Truthout that efforts to protect children from irreversible puberty blockers, genital mutilations, and LGBT propaganda are "rooted in racism and white supremacy."

Ashley has also called for the decriminalization of rape by fraud, particularly in cases in which a transvestite has sex with a victim without indicating he isn't actually a woman as advertised.

Sun, unlike Ashley, actually has credentials as a scientist and has studied neuroplasticity. However, the credibility of his scientific declarations concerning gender ideology may not altogether be scientific.

In an article he co-authored last year with Ashley, Sun declared there is "no such thing as a male or female brain." Just months later, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science revealed that a group of Stanford Medicine researchers identified "highly replicable, generalizable, and behaviorally relevant sex differences in human functional brain organization localized to the default mode network, striatum, and limbic network."

The framing of the interview in Scientific American made clear that science would be taking a back seat and that the aim was political.

Powell's interview is prefaced with the following statement: "In 2023 alone, more than 500 anti-trans bills were proposed or adopted in nearly every state in the United States, targeting everything from drag performances to gender-affirming medical care to school inclusion policies for trans people. Support for these measures has been enabled and propelled by scientific misinformation, which has proven to be a distressingly effective tool in outraging a public that might otherwise be broadly empathetic, or at least uncertain about where to stand."

After recycling the suggestion that the science informing legislation against sex change mutilations is "disinformation," Scientific American recirculated the suggestion by Sun that the notion there are "just two sexes" — characterized in the piece as "sex essentialism" — is "completely wrong about the biology of how sex characteristics arise."

"The error is simply that the gametes are a determining factor of sex — that once you know what gametes a person produces, that's their sex and nothing about it can change," claimed Sun. "But biology is a dynamic system where an organism starts in a particular state and grows through life and through development with multiple systems interacting. That is, more precisely, how sex works. Sex essentialism boils all that down to one, immutable characteristic to preclude transness as a biological phenomenon."

Ashley chimed in, saying, "The people who use ideas about biological sex against trans people are first appealing to the idea of biology as a description of difference, but then they do a jump and use that conception of biology as a form of meaning. The thing is, we organize society around meaning, not difference. Biology at its core can't tell you what matters to human organizations."

"We should really be asking what we care about, and then look to see if biology has anything to say about it. If you go through that exercise, then you realize that biology really has very little, if not virtually nothing, to say about things like trans rights," added Ashley.

The Canadian activist went on to intimate that when a scientist interprets empirical results in a way that hurts the transgender narrative, he or she is committing "epistemological violence."

"Epistemological violence occurs when a researcher or somebody else interprets empirical results in a way that devalues, pathologizes, or harms a marginalized group, even though there are equally good or better explanations for the same data," said Ashley.

Ashley then noted in the interview, "We should try to interpret the data in a way that's compatible with their inclusion and well-being, if that's an equally good interpretation."

The interview concluded with a call for shutting down undesirable speech.

"Shut down misinformation and hate when you see it crop up around you," Ashley told Powell. "Oftentimes we don't like confrontation, so we just let misinformation go. We need people to start speaking up whenever it comes up. And be loud. We’re in an ecosystem where the anti-trans voices are trying to portray themselves as speaking for a silent majority. We need people to be loud enough to counter any impression of a silent majority.

While Scientific American claims it is "committed to sharing trustworthy knowledge" and "enhancing our understanding," it has also indicated it is committed to "advancing social justice." It appears these commitments are not equally weighted.

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Scientific American to begin using term 'climate emergency,' says it 'agreed with major news outlets worldwide' to do so



Scientific American — the longtime publication that covers the "intersection of science and society" — announced Monday that it will begin using the term "climate emergency" in its coverage of climate change.

In publishing the op-ed "We Are Living in a Climate Emergency, and We're Going to Say So," senior editor Mark Fischetti called attention to the magazine's decision, which insists that "this is a statement of science, not politics."

A Scientific American tweet added that it "agreed with major news outlets worldwide" in enacting the "climate emergency" terminology:

Scientific American has agreed with major news outlets worldwide to start using the term “climate emergency” in its… https://t.co/SfkeH1OGXB
— Scientific American (@Scientific American)1618236001.0

What else does Scientific American have to say?

The magazine said that adopting the term "climate emergency" is "not a journalistic fancy. We are on solid scientific ground."

The op-ed went on to cite a January article from its pages that noted "more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries had signed a report to signify their agreement that the world is facing a climate emergency that requires bold action. As of April 9, another 2,100 had signed on."

The magazine, further citing the article, said that as of January, "1,859 jurisdictions in 33 countries have issued climate emergency declarations covering more than 820 million people."

Fischetti wrote that "journalism should reflect what science says: the climate emergency is here."

What does the magazine's statement say?

The op-ed included Scientific American's formal statement:

April 12, 2021

From Covering Climate Now, Scientific American,Columbia Journalism Review, the Nation, the Guardian, Noticias Telemundo, Al Jazeera, Asahi Shimbun and La Repubblica:

The planet is heating up way too fast. It's time for journalism to recognize that the climate emergency is here.

This is a statement of science, not politics. Thousands of scientists—including James Hansen, the NASA scientist who put the problem on the public agenda in 1988, and David King and Hans Schellnhuber, former science advisers to the British and German governments, respectively—have said humanity faces a "climate emergency."

Why "emergency"? Because words matter. To preserve a livable planet, humanity must take action immediately. Failure to slash the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will make the extraordinary heat, storms, wildfires and ice melt of 2020 routine and could "render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable," warned the January Scientific American article.

The media's response to COVID-19 provides a useful model. Guided by science, journalists have described the pandemic as an emergency, chronicled its devasting [sic] impacts, called out disinformation and told audiences how to protect themselves (with masks and social distancing, for example).

We need the same commitment to the climate story. As partners in Covering Climate Now, a global consortium of hundreds of news outlets, we will present coverage in the lead-up to Earth Day, April 22, 2021, around the theme "Living Through the Climate Emergency." We invite journalists everywhere to join us.

How did folks react?

The response to Scientific American's announcement on Twitter that it will begin using the term "climate emergency" was a mixed bag. Some commenters heartily agreed with the magazine, while others did not.

One user wrote "this is so scary; you can blame the Republicans for destroying our planet," while another commenter replied, "Please do explain how that is? Also any peer reviewed papers you've written on the subject of how a political party is responsible for the climate of Earth." Another user quipped, "Still waiting for Al Gore's predictions to come true."

CPAC reportedly cuts rapper from lineup after reports of anti-Semitic behaviors. Rapper fires back, calls it 'censorship at its best.'



The Conservative Political Action Conference has cut a rapper from its lineup after he reportedly made anti-Semitic tweets, USA Today reported.

What are the details?

Rapper Young Pharaoh will not appear as a panelist at CPAC's 2021 conference this weekend following allegations that he expressed decidedly anti-Semitic sentiments on social media.

The allegations against Pharaoh were brought forth after Media Matters for America reported that the rapper told his followers that Judaism is a "complete lie" and "made up for political gain." He also reportedly alleged that "Jewish people are 'thieving fake Jews.'"

Pharaoh is a hip-hop artist who was also identified by the outlet as an "online commentator who has dabbled in conspiracy theories."

According to a report from The Daily Beast, Pharaoh also once tweeted, "THERE IS NO #HISTORICAL OR #SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF #JEWS OR #JUDAISM."

Media Matters also reported that the rapper attacked conservative commentator Ben Shapiro over his own Jewish faith.

The outlet reported that the rapper was previously scheduled to take part on a panel titled, "Please Check the Number and Dial Again: Doubt, Dysfunction, and the Price of Missed Opportunities."

What was Young Pharaoh's response?

In response to the news, Young Pharaoh blasted the move as "censorship at its best."

At the time of this reporting, his Twitter account appears to have been suspended.

According to Newsweek, he added, "All because I said: 'I do not believe in the validity of Judaism and am willing to place $50,000 on myself to debate the top Jewish Rabbi.' Now I'm no longer invited to CPAC, racist, dictatorship, Young Pharaoh."

The conference — titled "America Uncanceled" — is set to take place this weekend in Orlando, Florida, and former President Donald Trump is set to appear and give his first speech since leaving office.

The organization on Twitter wrote, "We have just learned that someone we invited to CPAC has expressed reprehensible views that have no home with our conference or our organization. The individual will not be participating at our conference."