Book critique

By Steve Flecknoe-Brown?FRCPA, FRACP, FRSM, FRCPEdin

Both my sons studied postmodernist philosophy at university, so I gained a second-hand grasp of its principles. Its basic tenet is that any opinion is contestable. This means that authority figures like Aristotle have no more value in a debate than Con the Grocer.

So, 30 years later, we have the Internet and social media. Anybody can call themselves an expert on social media. One’s influence grows with the number of followers one has, rather than the true value of what is posted.

The movie?Don’t Look Up, on Netflix, makes delicious fun of this as well as American presidential politics, US international relations and conspiracy theories in general. In summary, planet Earth is threatened by a comet the size of Mt Everest. The collision date is known precisely, thanks to science. Politics, social and public media proceed in the usual way. As a result the predicted annihilation occurs. Many see it as a metaphor for our responses to climate change or the COVID pandemic — a valid perspective.

Australia has, as a rule, followed the lead of legitimate science in our most recent crisis. Yet there is still dissent among a small minority of individuals. This is fuelled by self- interested parties based in chaotic places, claiming there is a state conspiracy against individual freedoms.

This is most manifest in the Children's Health Defence organisation, recently registered in Australia (Antony Scholefield. Notorious US anti-vax group arrives in Australia warning of 'medical fascism’.?Australian Doctor News. 12 January 2022). It is an offspring of the same movement founded in the USA in 2005 by Robert F Kennedy Jr. They want children to be protected from the evils of vaccination, water fluoridation, food additives, wireless transmissions and all sorts of other conspiracies between government, big Pharma and big business.

Robert F Kennedy Jr has recently published “The Real Anthony Fauci” (Skyhorse Publishing 2021. ISBN 978-1-5107-6680-8). It has become a touchstone for the anti-vaccination movement. Reading the introduction, I thought that the polemic would stop and calm, dispassionate language would follow in the body of the text. It didn’t. Almost every paragraph of the book is peppered with emotive adjectives and hyperbolic phrases.

Mr Kennedy’s pedigree is in his name. He has legal qualifications and was apparently a successful trial lawyer. However he has also followed the lead of the disgraced British anti-vaccine physician, Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield’s work was found to have been falsified and he was struck off?the UK Medical Register in 2010.

Kennedy founded Children’s Health Defense based on Wakefield’s fraudulent claims. Despite subsequent events, he remains its Chairman and continues to publish anti-vaccine propaganda.

But his latest book,?The Real Anthony Fauci,?goes much further than anti-vaccine propaganda. He seriously claims that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are effective treatments for COVID-19. He dismisses the official view that neither of these drugs are of benefit by claiming that arms of the US Government such as the National Institutes of Health are controlled by Dr Anthony Fauci and the Pharmaceutical Industry. As to published scientific findings, his answer is that the great medical journals are so dependent on Big Pharma that they have been pressured to hide “the real truth” about these inexpensive remedies.

He defames Bill Gates with claims that Gates has a financial interest in Big Pharma through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Gates is thus also blamed for suppression of “the real truth” because of this investment. Now, it is?possible?that Bill Gates has great fortunes hidden from view?Kleptopia-style, in secret bank accounts and blind trusts. But the BMGF is a registered charitable foundation subject to intense scrutiny by the US Internal Revenue Service. Proper governance of its activities is mandated; Bill Gates may not control it or profit from its investments. And the IRS has teeth, as the late Al Capone found out.

Kennedy goes on to attack all aspects of the response to COVID-19. He claims that social distancing “has no scientific basis”. Not so, sir. I have seen the work done to establish just how far droplets of various particle size travel from the human airway. He disparages the mask recommendations and the way they have changed over the years. It is the evolving behaviour of the coronavirus strains that has made aerosol spread a threat; hence the change in official recommendations.

I won’t even engage his flat-Earth claims about the harmful effects of 5G. The open internet has democratised information and discourse. More efficient methods of delivering information in ever-growing volumes is in everybody’s interest.

None of the claims in this book can be taken seriously, but its intent to continue fomenting “the doubt machine” should be (Cecilia Tomori. Scientists: don’t feed the doubt machine.?Nature?4 November 2021 page 9). The poor performance of the USA in managing the pandemic has led to an official death toll of 930,168 US citizens as of 17 February 2022. This gives a rate of 2,829 deaths per million population, compared to Australia’s 189 per million. The difference is in how the population (and, at the time, the US President) responded to independent science-based recommendations.

The Senate of Brazil has recommended President Jair Bolsonaro be charged with crimes against humanity over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. Donald Trump, Robert F Kennedy Jr and their acolytes also have blood on their hands.