The EBM Coup of Modern Medicine
Specialized Knowledge Matters
A simple ethics question: Should science align itself with the irrational whims of politicians, or should politics reflect the realities of modern science? Should hands-on experience and specialized knowledge be respected, or must expertise kneel beneath a unifying and politicized framework? One would think the answer to be obvious, but the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a launchpad for a global anti-intellectual coup, united under the single banner of “Gold-Standard Evidence Based Medicine.”
Only a craven fool might believe that a lowlife scam artist like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. practices “evidence-based medicine,” much less anyone that leaped at the chance to work under him. Over at the soap opera that is the Food & Drug Administration, recent reporting shows that CBER’s Vinay Prasad is planning on hiring someone with zero relevant experience to assist him in the war on vaccines. However, she and Prasad did co-write a nasty piece of propaganda attacking the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines. It’s worth noting that in 2024, oncologist Prasad previously tweeted that had he been in charge, he would have only given a single dose of the vaccine to uninfected elderly folk. Childish grandstanding doomed to fail, with other people’s families paying the fare.
Feelings-Based Cronyism at the FDA
Lacking any relevant experience beyond attacking vaccines on social media, both Prasad and this new hire subscribe to the politicized framework called “Evidence-Based Medicine,” a sort of faux-intellectual pyramid scheme. If you have hands-on experience actually treating COVID-19 patients, developing N95 respirators, or creating lifesaving vaccines, you are at the very bottom tier of this pyramid. Dedicating years of your life to studying a specialized medical or scientific field, or having tangible real-world accomplishments, makes you a dummy. A charlatan. Someone with a nefarious agenda who cannot be trusted at face value.
If you dedicated your time during a global pandemic to hiding from behind the safety of a keyboard, torturing data points to meet your conclusion while tearing down others, then congratulations! You are now an expert practitioner of Evidence-Based Medicine, and you rest easily at the highest tier of the pyramid, casting doubt & judgement over all the specialties of medicine and science. Journalists will happily publish your evidence-free claims as sacred insights without an ounce of inquiry or verification. You’re the most important person and clearly operate on a higher intellectual level than the demented jesters and hucksters with specialized knowledge and actual tangible achievements.
It’s no wonder that someone like the FDA’s Vinay Prasad adores “Evidence-Based Medicine,” as it gives him a foundation to lash out and tear down others who make an honest effort in their respective fields. Yet, this framework is not localized to the campuses of Stanford and UCSF, nor infesting the Department of Health and Human Services. This coup of modern science and medicine is a truly global phenomenon, with little to show for it except a mountain of needless and preventable dead.
Let us cross the Atlantic and look at one of Vinay Prasad’s “mentors:” Carl Heneghan of Oxford University. Strap in, as we have a long journey ahead of us.
Just Makes a “Top Scientist” Anyways?
Across the ocean, the United Kingdom is struggling through a rather rough flu season, as is many parts of the world. Hospitals are instituting mask mandates, and leaders of the National Health Service are advising people to wear a respirator in public places to protect oneself from infections and prevent the forging of the chains of viral transmission that end in preventable deaths. As an aside, do get your flu and COVID shots if you haven’t already.
Only now in recent centuries do we enjoy the rapid development of so many incredible lifesaving advances in science and medicine. We bear witness to an awesome window of history, in which man’s resistance to the brutal realities of the natural order only grows in power. Armed with the finely-sharpened steel of science, we stab at the eye of Mother Nature and her tyrannical rule over our fragile, mortal lives. There is much to celebrate!
Yet, much of the mainstream press would conceal this from you. A recent British headline from a “Social Affairs Editor” reads “’No need for masks’ say top scientists, as flu outbreak surges,” which is an incredibly dishonest and manipulative framing. The “top scientists” are all of two, hardly a consensus. One of the quoted is Oxford’s Professor of “Evidence-Based Medicine” Carl Heneghan, who outright lies to the public:
“The best quality studies from over two decades, including real world data, shows there is no measurable difference between infectious rates in those who wear masks and those who do not. For NHS leaders to suggest people wear masks is irresponsible and it is not backed by the evidence.”
When Carl Heneghan claims that reccomending PPE to prevent transmission of viruses is “irreponsible,” he is merely citing his own writing: a Cochrane “review” he and Tom Jefferson wrote in 2023. Even after conflating airborne & droplet transmission of viruses, cherry-picking inadequate randomized control trials which suited his narrative, and refusing to consult with colleagues that have relevant experience, Heneghan & Jefferson’s now-infamous “Cochrane review of masks” was inconclusive in its findings. They could not prove a positive or negative impact. This did not stop Heneghan and Jefferson from outright lying about the contents of their Cochrane review, however.
A reputable scientist doesn’t need to mislead the public about their findings.
Tom Jefferson ran to Maryanne Demasi, a shameless anti-vaccine propagandist, boldly declaring that there was “no evidence” to support non-pharmaceutical interventions in their entirety. Jefferson also claimed that “we don’t know” how SARS-CoV-2, an airborne virus, is transmitted. The zealots of “Evidence-Based Medicine” assume their ignorance to be the final authority on scientific matters, slandering anyone who challenges their uninformed opinions.
Modern PPE such as airborne N95 respirators are not designed by medical doctors, however. Research & development engineers at 3M, Binax, and other manufacturers would be shocked to learn that their entire scientific field is nothing but an elaborate fraud, and they are all a bunch of dummies who have wasted their entire professional careers. Torturing datasets from the comfort of their university offices, Evidence-Based Medicine had deemed an entire profession as heretical.
A May 2023 editorial in Scientific American by actual experts with knowledge in the relevant fields, Matthew Oliver, Mark Ungrin, and Joe Vipond, thoroughly demolish Heneghan & Jefferson’s paper. They call this approach “methodological fetishism,” a mistake other scientists have made throughout history, “...a failure to recognize and respect interdisciplinary expertise.”
A May 2023 editorial in Scientific American by actual experts with knowledge in the relevant fields, Matthew Oliver, Mark Ungrin, and Joe Vipond, thoroughly demolish Heneghan & Jefferson’s paper. They call this approach “methodological fetishism,” a mistake other scientists have made throughout history, “...a failure to recognize and respect interdisciplinary expertise.”
It’s no wonder that the FDA’s Vinay Prasad loves Heneghan and this “Cochrane review of masks.” It’s the single paper he has repeatedly cited across social media, no matter how overwhelmingly debunked it is; the same obvious flaws pointed out time and time again. Why submit oneself to the humbling experience of expanding your knowledge, when you can so casually lash out at others from the comfort of ignorance?
The scientific field of engineering has made incredible strides in the past century alone. We have bent gravity to our will with incredible steel beasts, we’ve strapped a Roman candle to the ass of man and sent him to play golf on the surface of the moon, and we’ve even deployed robotic children to beam back selfies from the surface of Mars. Teams made up of thousands of dedicated specialists worked together to realize these incredible achievements long assumed to be impossible. Why is it suddenly so hard to believe that a specialized piece of fabric can serve as armor against the infection of airborne viruses?
From Aerosols to Obstetrics
Carl Heneghan exploited the framework of “Evidence-Based Medicine” to assume supreme authority over engineering science. This was not enough, however. As quickly as you may snap your finger, Heneghan and his colleague Tom Jefferson also assumed themselves the supreme authority over vaccinology and obstetrics (the field of study centered on pregnancy) to attack the COVID-19 vaccine for pregnant people in Februrary 2025. As their most beloved fanboy Vinay Prasad tweeted out:
“Important post by Carl and Tom. Looks like the Pfizer randomized control trial in pregnant women was severely underpowered. These authors say no more covid shots in pregnant women until a good randomized trial is done. I agree with them”
Did you feel that? The shifting of the ground beneath your feet as we traveled so quickly from the wonders of PPE engineering and aerosol dynamics all the way to obstetrics and vaccinology? Only through “Evidence-Based Medicine” can one command instant expertise over entire specialties that people dedicate their careers to the study and practice of. Just what does Heneghan do with such awesome powers?
As you can see for yourself, nothing more than tearing others down. This “top scientist” egotistically assumes a position of authority over so many others, with little respect for the complexities of specific scientific fields. An honest journalist would investigate as to whether this was genuine scientific inquiry, or merely narcisscistic ramblings of the willfully ignorant. Sadly, the public is left with propagandists will merely tell you what to believe, discarding mountains of evidence that contradict political narratives.
The Burning of American Medicine
“History is full of people who out of fear, ignorance, or a lust for power, have destroyed treasures of immeasurable value which truly belong to all of us. We must never let it happen again.” -Carl Sagan, Cosmos Episode 13 “Who Speaks For Earth”
Thousands of years ago in the ancient city of Alexandria, ships which docked at port were searched by police. Not for contraband, but for books containing all matter of subjects from scientific discoveries to wonderful plays. They would be seized and copied, stored in the Library of Alexandria before the original was returned to the owner. Imagine that: a police which, instead of terrorizing the civilian population, liberated knowledge to serve all of us as a sacred public utility.
Heneghan’s model of “Evidence-Based Medicine” would bar the doors of the Library of Alexandria shut. Only he, and his privileged class of EBM Zealots, will tell you what to believe and what is considered valid evidence. Humanity’s grand march against infectious diseases, armed with incredible tools such as respirators and vaccines, comes to a halt. The incredible democratization of science is replaced with the irrational whims of high priests who decree that only submission to infectious diseases & contradictory proclamations may be permitted.
Sailing back across the Atlantic, our feet touching the soil of the United States of America, we see that the loudest practitioners of Heneghan’s “Evidence-Based Medicine” are... anything but. Highly irrational whims, common myths debunked for decades, and obscene antics dominate the headlines of our federal public health agencies. A child can be taught to understand scientific concepts. Calling what grown adults are doing today under the banner of “Gold Standard Evidence-Based Medicine” childish is an insult to kids.
This is not EBM. This is PBD: Personality-Based Decrees.
Remember Macedo & Lee, the Princeton “political scientists” who wrote the book In COVID’s Wake, attacking NPIs in their entirety? They bragged in the media that they didn’t consult with experts in related fields, instead simply reading meta-analyses and systematic reviews, what is considered the highest tier of “Evidence-Based Medicine.” Well, it turns out that the father in law of someone quoted in the book actually read it, and his son said the precise opposite. Why is it that three of the loudest proponents of “Evidence-Based Medicine” are all on record outright lying to the public? If EBM proved that masks don’t work and NPIs are all junk, then this should be a slam dunk. Why bother misleading anyone if such a truth is so obvious?
Today, we all take it for granted that the planets revolve around the sun in an ellipsis, not a perfect spiral. Over four and a half centuries ago when this was discovered, Johannes Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion were not appreciated by those in power. He would be persecuted for his beliefs, excommunicated, and made a refugee twice in his lifetime. The irrational political and religous whims of man sought to shackle and suppress scientific innovation for daring to understand our mortal realm.
Now in America, pediatricians and the other specialists of modern-medicine are demonized, while unethical quacks are claiming “MAHA Wins” under the banner of “Evidence-Based Medicine.” Having inherited the intellectual splendor that is the recent rapid advances of modern medicine, these charlatans are instead choosing to set fire to our modern version of the Library of Alexandria, with whatever remains to be swept away by a rising tide of pestilence. If Kepler had made his discoveries here and now, he would be condemned and cast out for not “aligning” with the Trump Administration.
“Evidence-Based Medicine” is about amassing power and influence over others, rejecting modern lifesaving advances to serve emotionally charged fictional narratives. The EBM Zealot demands science prostate itself at the feet of political whims, no matter how irrational or unethical. Tearing down others is considered a meaningful achievement, with no apologies given when obvious flaws made from a place of amateur ignorance are pointed out.
This goes against the very foundations of the collaborative enterprise that is modern science and medicine. You can see why the FDA’s Vinay Prasad wants vaccine RCTs, often impossible or unethical, to solely performed by Big Pharma, however. It gives him and his fellow EBM zealots the free reign to attack and demonize the development of new, lifesaving vaccines for the entertainment of their social media fans.
The EBM Zealot’s theory of pandemic management is actually quite simple. When a new pandemic threat emerges:
Don’t implement non-pharmaceutical interventions in any way
Don’t waste money developing vaccines
Let new viruses, lab made or otherwise, rapidly burn through an unvaccinated population, regardless of the consequences.
Entire fields of lifesaving science and medicine written off as heretical, resulting in massive numbers of preventable deaths, all offered up as human sacrifice in service of the irrational whims of a few ignorant cranks. This is the precise opposite of the collaborative enterprise that is scientific advancement, a cornerstone of civilization dating back thousands of years. Just as mysticism strangled science in centuries past, the zealots of “Evidence-Based Medicine” want nothing more than a petty tyranny over America’s best and brightest.
There is simply nothing left to do except to deny this sick and twisted fantasy.
