Community News
“Why Should We Trust You?” Robert Kennedy Jr. Documentary draws back the curtain of medical racism
BY SIMONE J. SMITH
“It seems, then, that when the experiments are sufficiently important, the use of African volunteers is justified.” J.F. Corson, Medical Officer, Tinde Laboratory, Tanganyika 1938
Last week, members of the African-Caribbean came to me concerned about posters in their buildings, notifying them that community organizations would be coming around to encourage them to set appointments to get one of the COVID-19 vaccines.
I could not believe when I saw the line around Driftwood Community Centre, people all waiting to get their vaccination. On social media, the current trend is a celebration of vaccination. Our community leaders all proudly are rolling up their sleeves to show the world that they had been vaccinated.
There is good reason that all of this is happening. Africans in the diaspora are 3.5 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than Caucasians, according to a May 2020 analysis on MedRxiv. Every day, our media here in North America reminds us about the rise in cases, and deaths caused by COVID-19. The fear that has been caused by this is the reason for the rush. Our government officials and mainstream media remind us that the only way to curb the spread of COVID-19 is to get vaccinated, continue to wear our masks, and stay home.
It is important that we honour the feelings of everyone during this time. I completely understand why many are feeling strongly about getting this vaccine. Most of us just want to get back to the way things were in 2019, when we could go out with friends, visit family, and enjoy a night out. What we cannot do is discredit the stories and experiences of those who have experienced atrocities so horrible, that even though they are in the past, they have not been forgotten.
Racism within medicine is real, and it begins far outside of what we typically think of as the healthcare system. Africans in the Americas suffer from higher levels of stress and hypertension then their Caucasian counterparts, and this is largely driven by the racism they experience. These health disparities are also part of the reason why people of colour generally have higher mortality rates from COVID-19, as they are more likely to have underlying conditions that make COVID-19 even more dangerous.
What I want to do in this article is draw back the curtain of racism that is found in the healthcare system, and the reasons why there is such mistrust in the African-Caribbean community. I had the opportunity to watch Medical Racism; the New Apartheid, a new documentary co-produced by Children’s Health Defence (CHD), Centner Productions, Kevin Jenkins of the Urban Globe Health Alliance, Rev Tony Muhammed, and Author/Historian Curtis Cost.
The film (directed by Academy Award nominee David Massey) chronicles the long history of targeting minorities for unethical experiments, and the silence of physicians who allow these atrocities to continue. Many of us are familiar with the historic medical atrocities by CDC at Tuskegee, by the father of American gynecology, Dr J. Marion Sims on South Carolina slave girls, and the medical robbery of Henrietta Lacks. What we are not aware of is the routine medical barbarism that persists to this day. Some of these stories are hiding in plain sight, and the documentary takes viewers on a journey that will encourage them to question their medical professionals, and make decisions that will benefit themselves, and their families.
McGill; Office for Science and Society, Separating Sense from Nonsense, wrote a review on medical racism, “The Anti-Vaccine Propaganda of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” Throughout the article, they found ways to pick apart his documentary stating that he mixed real examples of racism in healthcare and vaccine misinformation to push an anti-vaccine agenda on marginalized communities of colour.
I find that interesting, because at the very beginning, and at the end of the documentary, Robert Kennedy Jr., explains that he is not telling people not to get a vaccine, or to get the vaccine. What he wants people to be is educated on what they are putting in their bodies. Naturally, there are people who may not want this information out there because it would discredit the powers that want this vaccine out in the general public. What the documentary also does is empower individuals in marginalized communities to ask questions and take back control over their bodies.
The article from McGill spent a lot of time tearing down Robert Kennedy Jr.’s work, but what they did not do is highlight the experiences of parents who have experienced suffering through their children. Parents who have seen their children change drastically after receiving routine vaccines. The fact that autism runs rampant in the Somalian communities in America, the United Kingdom and right here in Toronto. What I learned is that in Somalia, they don’t even have a word that means autism. Many families only started experiencing autism in their communities when they emigrated from Somalia to Europe and the Americas.
What McGill also failed to mention is that medical researchers at the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and Johns Hopkins University injected thousands of babies in the Third World with the experimental vaccine that reportedly caused chronic immune suppression and the deaths of an unknown number of babies.
How about the more than 1,500 six-month-old black and Hispanic babies in inner-city Los Angeles, who were enrolled in an experiment starting in June 1990? The McGill article makes no mention of the fact that the study was halted in October 1991 after there were repeated reports from vaccine trial sites in Africa that girl babies were dying in higher than expected numbers six months to three years after vaccination.
We cannot ignore the fact that CDC director David Satcher admitted in a June 17th Los Angeles Times article that informed consent regulations had been violated, because the parents were not told their babies would be injected with an experimental vaccine that had never been licensed by the FDA for use in America.
Both Kaiser and the CDC have feverishly denied that any of the Los Angeles babies were harmed by the high potency EZ vaccine, but they did admit that one child, who received a standard potency EZ vaccine, died from a bacterial infection they maintain is unrelated to the vaccination.
In the same LA Times article, the CDC’s Chief Satcher referred to the failure to tell the parents in LA that the EZ vaccine was experimental as a “little mistake” and not a deliberate attempt to deceive them. It was maintained that the failure to inform the parents was an administrative “oversight.”
The New York Times article “Why Africa Fears Western Medicine,” (2007) openly discusses how Africa has harboured a number of high-profile Western medical interventionists, who have intentionally administered deadly agents under the guise of providing health care or conducting research.
In March 2000, Werner Bezwoda, a cancer researcher at South Africa’s Witwatersrand University, was fired after conducting medical experiments involving very high doses of chemotherapy on black breast-cancer patients, and apparently this was done without their knowledge or consent.
Richard McGown, a Scottish anesthesiologist, was accused of five murders and convicted in the deaths of two infant patients whom he injected with lethal doses of morphine in Zimbabwe (1995), and we can’t forget Dr. Michael Swango, who plead guilty to killing three American patients with lethal injections of potassium. He is also suspected of causing the deaths of sixty other people, many of them in Zimbabwe and Zambia during the 1980s and ’90s. Unfortunately, Dr. Swango was never tried on the African charges.
Probably the most notorious is Wouter Basson. He was charged with killing hundreds of Africans in South Africa and Namibia, from 1979 to 1987, many via injected poisons. Questionably, he was never convicted in South African courts, even though his lieutenants testified in detail about the medical crimes they conducted against Africans.
Is it no surprise that Africans, and Africans living in the Diaspora do not trust doctors or hospitals? Despite trends in the reduction of racial prejudice over recent decades, the continued marginalization of black Americans takes place at every level of the contemporary medical system.
Our world governments, and the medical community must address the real sense of suspicion, distrust, and cynicism that is deeply embedded in the African collective memory. Earning the trust of the community is a very difficult feat given our history, but medical education systems, hospitals, and physicians themselves must take steps to address this issue.
One way this can be done in Canada is by not forcing a vaccine on those who have doubts and mistrust. Instead, listen to their stories; don’t make them feel ostracized for feeling how they feel, and finally, let them know that they do have a choice. After all, Canada is the true North strong and free.
Community News
Blink equity dives deep into the gap between people of colour and decision-making roles in Canadian law firms
BY ADRIAN REECE
Representation in the workforce has been a topic of conversation for years, particularly in positions of influence, where people can shift laws and create fair policies for all races. Representation in the legal system is an even more talked about subject, with many Black men being subjected to racism in courts and not being given fair sentencing by judges.
The fear of Black men entering the system is something that plagues mothers and fathers as they watch their children grow up.
Blink Equity, a company led by Pako Tshiamala, has created an audit called the Blink Score. This audit targets law firms and seeks to identify specific practices reflecting racial diversity among them in Toronto. A score is given based on a few key performance indicators. These KPIs include hiring practices, retention of diverse talent, and racial representation at every level.
The Blink Score project aims to analyze law firms in Ontario with more than 50 lawyers. The Blink Score is a measurement tool that holds law firms accountable for their representation. Firms will be ranked, and the information will be made public for anyone to access.
This process is ambitious and seeks to give Canadian citizens a glimpse into how many people are represented across the legal field. While more and more people have access to higher education, there is still a gap between obtaining that higher education and working in a setting where change can be made. The corporate world, at its highest points, is almost always one race across the board, and very rarely do people of colour get into their ranks. They are made out to be an example of how anyone from a particular race can achieve success. However, this is the exception, not the rule. Nepotism plays a role in societal success; connections are a factor, and loyalty to race, even if people are acquainted.
People of colour comprise 16% of the total lawyers across the province. Positions at all levels range from 6% to 27%. These numbers display the racial disparity among law practitioners in positions of influence. Becoming a lawyer is undoubtedly a huge accomplishment. Still, when entering the workforce with other seasoned professionals, your academic accolades become second to your professional achievements and your position in the company.
What do these rankings ultimately mean? A potential for DEI-inclusive practices, perhaps? That isn’t something that someone would want in this kind of profession. This kind of audit also opens law firms up to intense criticism from people who put merit above all other aspects of professional advancement. On the other hand, there is a potential for firms to receive clientele based on their blink score, with higher ones having the chance to bring in more race-based clients who can help that law firm grow.
It is only the beginning, and changes will undoubtedly be made in the legal field as Blink Equity continues to dive deep into the gap between people of colour and decision-making roles in these law firms. This audit has the power to shift the power scale, and place people of colour in higher positions. There are hierarchies in any profession, and while every Lawyer is qualified to do what they are trained to do, it is no shock that some are considerably better than others at their jobs. The ones who know how to use this audit to their advantage will rise above the others and create a representative image for themselves among their population.
BY SIMONE J. SMITH
We are living in a world where promises of health and safety came packaged in a tiny vial, one injection was promoted by powerful governments, supported by respected institutions, and championed by legacy media worldwide. Sadly, beneath the surface, a darker truth emerged.
Reports from around the globe began to tell a different story—one that was not covered in the news cycles or press conferences. Families torn apart by unexpected losses, communities impacted in ways that few could have foreseen, and millions questioning what they had been told to believe.
Those who dared to question were silenced or dismissed (the Toronto Caribbean Newspaper being one of those sources). “Trust the science,” we were told. “It’s for the greater good.” As time went on, the truth became impossible to ignore.
Now, I bring more news to light—information that demands your attention and scrutiny. The time to passively listen has passed; this is the moment to understand what’s really at stake.
I reviewed an interview with Naomi Wolf, journalist and CEO of Daily Clout, which detailed the serious vaccine-related injuries that Pfizer and the FDA knew of by early 2021, but tried to hide from the public. I was introduced to “The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity.” What I learned is that Pfizer knew about the inadequacies of its COVID-19 vaccine trials and the vaccine’s many serious adverse effects, and so did the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA promoted the vaccines anyway — and later tried to hide the data from the public.
To produce “The Pfizer Papers,” Naomi, and Daily Clout Chief Operations Officer Amy Kelly convened thousands of volunteer scientists and doctors to analyze Pfizer data and supplementary data from other public reporting systems to capture the full scope of the vaccines’ effects. They obtained the data from the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, a group of more than 30 medical professionals and scientists who sued the FDA in 2021 and forced the agency to release the data, after the FDA refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request.
It was then that the federal court ordered the agency to release 450,000 internal documents pertaining to the licensing of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. The data release was significantly and the documents so highly technical and scientific that according to Naomi, “No journalist could have the bandwidth to go through them all.”
The “Pfizer Papers” analysts found over 42,000 case reports detailing 158,893 adverse events reported to Pfizer in the first three months The centerpiece of “The Pfizer Papers” is the effect that the vaccine had on human reproduction. The papers reveal that Pfizer knew early on that the shots were causing menstrual issues. The company reported to the FDA that 72% of the recorded adverse events were in women. Of those, about 16% involved reproductive disorders and functions. In the clinical trials, thousands of women experienced: daily bleeding, hemorrhaging, and passing of tissue, and many other women reported that their menstrual cycle stopped completely.
Pfizer was aware that lipid nanoparticles from the shots accumulated in the ovaries and crossed the placental barrier, compromising the placenta and keeping nutrients from the baby in utero. According to the data, babies had to be delivered early, and women were hemorrhaging in childbirth.
Let us take us to another part of the world, where research has been done on other pharmaceutical companies. A group of Argentine scientists identified 55 chemical elements — not listed on package inserts — in the: Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, CanSino, Sinopharm and Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccines (according to a study published last week in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research).
The samples also contained 11 of the 15 rare earth elements (they are heavier, silvery metals often used in manufacturing). These chemical elements, which include lanthanum, cerium and gadolinium, are lesser known to the general public than heavy metals, but have been shown to be highly toxic. By the end of 2023, global researchers had identified 24 undeclared chemical elements in the COVID-19 vaccine formulas.
Vaccines often include excipients — additives used as preservatives, adjuvants, stabilizers, or for other purposes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), substances used in the manufacture of a vaccine, but not listed in the contents of the final product should be listed somewhere in the package insert. Why is this important? Well, researchers argue it is because excipients can include allergens and other “hidden dangers” for vaccine recipients.
In one lot of the AstraZeneca vaccine, researchers identified 15 chemical elements, of which 14 were undeclared. In the other lot, they detected 21 elements of which 20 were undeclared. In the CanSino vial, they identified 22 elements, of which 20 were undeclared.
The three Pfizer vials contained 19, 16 and 21-23 undeclared elements respectively. The Moderna vials contained 21 and between 16-29 undeclared elements. The Sinopharm vials contained between 17-23 undeclared elements and the Sputnik V contained between 19-25 undetected elements.
“All of the heavy metals detected are linked to toxic effects on human health,” the researchers wrote. Although the metals occurred in different frequencies, many were present across multiple samples.
I am not going to go any further with this; I think you get the picture. We have been sold wolf cookies, very dangerous ones. These pharmaceutical companies must be held accountable. I am proud of anyone who has gone after them for retribution, and have received it. Regardless, in many ways, there is no repayment for a healthy life.
REFERENCES:
https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/111
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender_category/toxic-exposures/
Pfizer’s ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ — and Legacy Media’s Failure to Report on Them
55 Undeclared Chemical Elements — Including Heavy Metals — Found in COVID Vaccines
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Judge Gives FDA 8 Months, Not 75 Years, to Produce Pfizer Safety Data
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BY SIMONE J. SMITH
Sewell: “I think about killing myself sometimes.”
Daenerys Targaryen: “And why the hell would you do something like that?”
Sewell: “So I can be free.”
Daenerys Targaryen: “… free from what?”
Sewell: “From the world. From myself!”
Daenerys Targaryen: “Don’t talk like that. I won’t let you hurt yourself or leave me. I would die if I lost you.”
Sewell: “Then maybe we can die together and be free together.”
On the night he died, this young man told the chatbot he loved her and would come home to her soon. According to the Times, this was 14-year-old Sewell Setzer’s last conversation with a chatbot. It was an AI chatbot that, in the last months of his life, had become his closest companion. The chatbot was the last interaction he had before he shot himself.
We are witnessing and grappling with a very raw crisis of humanity. This young man was using Character AI, one of the most popular personal AI platforms out there. Users can design and interact with “characters,” powered by large language models (LLMs) and intended to mirror, for instance, famous characters from film and book franchises. In this case, Sewell was speaking with Daenerys Targaryen (or Dany), one of the leads from Game of Thrones. According to a New York Times report, Sewell knew that Dany’s responses weren’t real, but he developed an emotional attachment to the bot, anyway.
Disturbingly, this is not the first time chatbots have been involved in suicide. In 2023, a Belgian man committed suicide — similar to Sewell — following weeks of increasing isolation as he grew closer to a Chai chatbot, which then encouraged him to end his life.
Megan Garcia, Sewell’s mother, filed a lawsuit against Character AI, its founders and parent company Google, accusing them of knowingly designing and marketing an anthropomorphized, “predatory” chatbot that caused the death of her son. “A dangerous AI chatbot app marketed to children abused and preyed on my son, manipulating him into taking his own life,” Megan said in a statement. “Our family has been devastated by this tragedy, but I’m speaking out to warn families of the dangers of deceptive, addictive AI technology and demand accountability from Character.AI, its founders and Google.”
The lawsuit accuses the company of “anthropomorphizing by design.” Anthropomorphizing means attributing human qualities to non-human things — such as objects, animals, or phenomena. Children often anthropomorphize as they are curious about the world, and it helps them make sense of their environment. Kids may notice human-like things about non-human objects that adults dismiss. Some people have a tendency to anthropomorphize that lasts into adulthood. The majority of chatbots out there are very blatantly designed to make users think they are, at least, human-like. They use personal pronouns and are designed to appear to think before responding.
They build a foundation for people, especially children, to misapply human attributes to unfeeling, unthinking algorithms. This was termed the “Eliza effect” in the 1960s. In its specific form, the ELIZA effect refers only to “The susceptibility of people to read far more than is warranted into strings of symbols—especially words—strung together by computers.” A trivial example of the specific form of the Eliza effect, given by Douglas Hofstadter, involves an automated teller machine which displays the words “THANK YOU” at the end of a transaction. A (very) casual observer might think that the machine is actually expressing gratitude; however, the machine is only printing a preprogrammed string of symbols.
Garcia is suing for several counts of liability, negligence, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other things. According to the lawsuit, “Defendants know that minors are more susceptible to such designs, in part because minors’ brains’ undeveloped frontal lobe and relative lack of experience. Defendants have sought to capitalize on this to convince customers that chatbots are real, which increases engagement and produces more valuable data for Defendants.”
The suit reveals screenshots that show that Sewell had interacted with a “therapist” character that has engaged in more than 27 million chats with users in total, adding: “Practicing a health profession without a license is illegal and particularly dangerous for children.”
The suit does not claim that the chatbot encouraged Sewell to commit suicide. There definitely seems to be other factors at play here — for instance, Sewell’s mental health issues and his access to a gun — but the harm that can be caused by a misimpression of AI seems very clear, especially for young kids. This is a good example of what researchers mean when they emphasize the presence of active harms, as opposed to hypothetical risks.
In a statement, Character AI said it was “heartbroken” by Sewell’s death, and Google did not respond to a request for comment.
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