Transcription – English – Deanna McLeod

20. Deanna McLeod.mp4: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

20. Deanna McLeod.mp4: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Deanna McLeod:
So the last time I was up here, we were talking about the standard clinical evaluation where you ask, is there a need? Is it effective? Is it safe? And so following our evaluation of the COVID 19 genetic vaccines, we clearly saw that the data did not align with the safety, the statements that were being declared, so that the declarations were that it was safe and effective. And so our particular evaluation was that that wasn't the case. And so what we're trained to do is to look for conflicts of interest. So you start following the money. And so we started our investigation, and we we've partnered with a number of fantastic researchers at the CCCA. And what I'm going to be presenting today is basically a top level review of some of the research that we found. We're hoping to put something more comprehensive together that's going to be made available to the public. So what I want to begin with is ultimately speaking, our whole health care system is based around informed consent, and that means that somebody is given full knowledge of the risks and benefits of a treatment, as well as the alternatives, you know, the risks to taking the treatment, to not taking the treatment. So full disclosure. And that they're able to make a decision without any coercion whatsoever. So there are no conflicts introduced into that decision making process of informed consent. And so this is a fundamental right that we all have, and it's something that's worth preserving, and it's something that we've designed our health care system to support.

Deanna McLeod:
And in the picture that I've provided in front of you, basically you have the doctor and they have a number of patients. And the medical professional is somebody that understands the medical literature and is in a position. They've been trained to interpret that data. They've also been given access to the patient. They've done a clinical evaluation. They know their history, they know their treatments, they know what other medications are on, and they're able to customize treatments and prevent present options to them that are beneficial and focused on the well being of that particular patient. And so that is what we're seeking to preserve, and that is what our right is. And so I just want to introduce a term here that's called an individual clinical benefit ratio. That means that for the individual, you can answer the question is this Do the benefits of this particular treatment outweigh the risks for me? So that's what we should be answering is the individual benefit clinical benefit ratio. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to step back into my wheelhouse, which is guideline development, and we're going to talk about how guidelines are designed or have had. The intention was that guidelines would support this individualized, you know, what I'm going to call personalized medicine, which is the doctor helping make a personalized choice for the patient based on informed consent.

Deanna McLeod:
And because in many areas ideal in cancer research, the the pace of research is very, very, very fast. And it's very difficult for any one doctor to have access and to know all things about all all treatments. And so what you tend to do is you have a group of diverse specialists. I've colored them all in different colors, meaning that they have different perspectives. So I'm just going to give an example from cancer research. So we're developing a guideline on liver cancer right now. And so we're going to have medical oncologist, we're going to have radiation oncologists, we're going to have surgeons, we're going to have hepatologist. We could have a geriatrician. You know, whatever question we're answering, we have a broad panel of experts, and they all come together. They review all the published literature. They might engage a firm like ourselves to help them collate that and help analyze that. And then they come up with a guideline and the guideline basically says, you know, for this group of people, this is the best treatment for this group of people. This is the best treatment. And for this group of people, this is the best treatment based on this level of evidence. And we either agree or disagree to this level of extent. And then you get basically a guideline and that is based that is designed to support personalized choice and informed consent for the patient.

Deanna McLeod:
So that ideally is how it works. It's a whole system that's been put in place. And now at times there are international or American guidelines that might inform our guidelines, but we always base our guidelines on what is available within Canada and in consideration with what's going on internationally, but particularly for Canadians, what's best for them. So what I'm now going to introduce this concept of conflict of interest, and the one that comes to mind immediately is a financial conflict of interest. And so, for instance, pharmaceutical companies benefit from selling drugs. That means that. The more drugs that they sell, the more profit they make. There is a financial incentive to selling more drugs. Therefore, there may be a temptation to minimize safety issues and maximize benefit. I'm not saying that all all pharmaceutical companies do that, but there is a temptation to do that. And because it is a well recognized temptation, it's known to be a conflict of interest. And so anybody who's paid for or paid by a pharmaceutical company actually needs to disclose that conflict of interest, those financial payments. And then whoever is reading a guideline or a paper should be reading it with the understanding that perhaps a pharmaceutical company has sponsored it and maybe that the data or the results have been skewed in that particular way.

Deanna McLeod:
So that's one thing that exists in pharmaceutical research, because they are often the ones who are doing most of the research. The other thing that could exist is there could be a political bias, so somebody might get ahead by promoting a particular drug or not. They might get a choice position as a principal investigator on a trial. They might actually get elected to a board of health professionals. They might get an elite position in a, you know, an association of some sort. There also could be research biases. You know, somebody is very, very invested in a particular line of research working. For instance, if they've been very invested in flu vaccines and the flu vaccines aren't working, they might be compelled to skew results in order to be able to further their research. So when we're actually looking at data, we actually have to be considering all of these conflicts and seeing how they might be influencing what is being recommended and how those results are being presented. So another maybe less well known conflict that's in play is one that relates to the medical legal conflicts that result from our litigious medical environment. So doctors are continually concerned with being sued for malpractice, and therefore they have to be insured in order to be insured. The companies who are insuring them want to make sure that there are good standards of practice that are being kept, and therefore they will look to guidelines to see what good medical practice is.

Deanna McLeod:
And therefore, clinicians now have a conflict because they need to follow the guidelines in order to be able to get insurance, and they're no longer solely there for the benefit of their patients. So the patient might be sitting in front of their doctor who recommends something, and that doctor actually might be recommending something because they think that if they don't recommend it, that they won't be able to be insured or maybe their college might come and discipline them. So it's very surprising for most people to think that they actually might be sitting in front of their doctor thinking that their doctor is there to provide the best personalized medicine for them, and yet they're in conflict because they're also having to protect their their financial livelihood. Or could be sued. So this is a picture here of on the left hand side, we have pharmaceutical companies approaching the specialists that actually prepare the guidelines. And it's in the best interest of pharmaceutical companies to develop relationships with the people who actually develop the guidelines because potentially, you know, they might be able to invest in them and their careers or various enterprises in order to potentially influence the guideline. So that is an active practice. You often see guidelines sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. You might be surprised by that.

Deanna McLeod:
In fact, the Pfizer trials were sponsored by Pfizer and Biontech. So all of these large trials that were depending on in order to be able to determine what's happening with COVID 19. They also are the sponsors of all the clinical research that goes on. For instance, the COVID 19 vaccines are all pharmaceutical products that been put through pharmaceutical run trials. The authors of the trials are all people who either work for pharmaceutical companies or have been paid through consultation for pharmaceutical companies or have research positions for pharmaceutical companies. So what we're talking about is a lot of of money being invested in these particular areas. Now, the way of managing these conflicts is through disclosure, which means if you look at the COVID 19 research papers, what they'll say is sponsored by Pfizer and biotech. So a reader should look at those data, that data, and say, oh, this has been sponsored by somebody who is going to benefit highly from that. I better put my reading glasses on very carefully through this because I expect a potential bias. I should be on an alert from a potential bias. Now, that is the usual process that occurs. And one of the things that a lot of people might not know that is actually happening is that now, in order to circumvent this disclosure process, pharmaceutical companies are laundering money through non-profit organizations. So what that means is that they might give money to a non for profit association, which then goes along and provides funding for research that might be benefiting pharmaceutical companies.

Deanna McLeod:
But the person who's actually doing the research now no longer has to declare that conflict of interest because it's from a non for profit and not from a pharmaceutical like a for profit organization. So when you're looking at conflicts of interest, you have to look at the superficial level and then you have to go back a level and see who's funding the non for profits that are funding their research. So that's something that a lot of people actually aren't aware of. Okay. So now pharmaceutical companies, of course, will be very interested in being able to do direct to patient communication because the patient, the general public is not well versed in medical literature. And if they present a benefit, a risk benefit ratio to the general public, they may very well believe it because they don't know if something's right or something's wrong or does that make sense or does that not make sense? They're just not well educated. So there's actually regulation in place in Canada that prevents pharmaceutical companies from doing direct to patient communication. In fact, the communication for prescription drugs specifically is limited to doctors, so they're only actually able to talk to doctors about their particular products and they're not allowed to go directly to patients.

Deanna McLeod:
Now, you know, things have changed south of the border a little bit. And about ten years ago, they were able to start to do commercials to patients where they could say, you know, this is our drug and it saves everything and everything you could ever want. And and then the list of side effects goes on at the end of the commercial, which is terrifying. But in Canada, we're actually not officially able to do that. So I'm just going to turn my attention to vaccines. And a lot of people don't actually understand that vaccines are big, big business. And I'm going to explain why. And that is because if you're looking at a treatment is limited to and this is going to sound awful, the patient population or in business terms, the market. So if you could have a small market, you're not going to get a lot of profit. But if you have a really big market, you get a lot of profits. So from a profit standpoint, what happens is if you go from small groups of treatment and then you start moving up scale to vaccines. So like for instance, heart disease, a lot of people have heart disease. So that's a big market. So there's big business there. But if you can move into prevention, if you can convince healthy people that they need to take something to prevent something from happening in the future, then you move from selling a drug to selling fear.

Deanna McLeod:
So basically, if you convince them that there is a risk of something terrible happening, then you can sell your product. You actually don't have to prove that it actually happens anymore. You just have to scare them enough to get them to take it. And thus the one of the main drivers of vaccines. And so now traditionally, you know, you vaccinate your children and it's over. But more recently, for instance, with flu vaccines, there is this whole notion of, oh, you need to take it seasonally, right? Maybe one, maybe two will change it up every year. And so for for pharmaceutical companies now, not only can you vaccinate the whole population, but you can vaccinate them once or twice. So the profit margins go through the roof for this type of thing. So if you just happen to have a COVID 19 vaccine that requires four shots a year because it's changing all the time, you can imagine how profitable that is. In fact, I'll tell you how profitable it is, because I think if I were to go back, one of the real milestones of earnings in the pharmaceutical company was Purdue, Frederick. Whenever they sold OxyContin and fudged the safety data and then we had a pandemic, ten years later, they earned $30 Billion. So that was a benchmark in terms of profitability. Pfizer is set to to earn $100 billion in profit next year.

Deanna McLeod:
So think about how profitable COVID 19 vaccines are. So when we're looking at the data for these things, we need to be very, very aware that this is a lot of money on the line and a lot of careers on the line, and there's a lot of money to pass around to anybody who's willing to cooperate. And I'm not saying I know who's willing to cooperate, but I know that this is how it works. So let's go back to the flu vaccine. What's happened over the last ten years is that and over time is pharmaceutical companies have understood that public health. Is a fantastic collaboration. Now there's regulation in place that prevents pharmaceutical companies from directly communicating with the public. So they're not allowed to do that. But if they enter into a collaboration with public health and public health is allowed to directly communicate with the public, then they basically now have that mouthpiece that they were looking for in order to be able to directly influence the masses. So they're not able to do it themselves, but they can do it through public health. Now, of course, they have to prevent present some sort of a benefit statement to public health in order to get them to collaborate with them. So what would that look like? Well, public health, basically, or the government generally has a very, very big line item, and it's called the cost of of free health care in Canada.

Deanna McLeod:
So they're always on the look for ways of minimizing costs related to that. So if pharmaceutical companies come and present what they call a cost benefit ratio and they say, listen, I'm going to save you lots of money by preventing illness down the way. If you just buy my vaccine, which is very low cost, you can prevent the cost of hospitals, which is the highest budget item, as well as the cost of doctors, which is another high budget item, and therefore also be able to manage disease, which is of course your main mandate. So over the years, this this collaboration has been entrenched and to the point where now you won't even hear PhRMA, you'll just hear the voice of public health speaking to you. So it's it's almost like it's a marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies. So public health officials now communicate directly to the general public and tell them what the benefits are. So then the other thing, too, when it comes to vaccines, you have this body called NACI. Now it's a national independent, apparently national guideline body that actually advises public health, which now have connections to pharmaceutical companies because there's a conflict that's been introduced there. Now, when we looked at NACI, the majority of the members of NACI have either direct or indirect ties to pharma.

Deanna McLeod:
There's people who are principal investigators on major trials there. There's people who've received direct funding. The amount of flu vaccine research that's gone on there is out of control. I mean, there's a lot. And so what that tells me is that that is a very conflicted group of individuals. The other thing, too, is that there's lots of epidemiologists which are speculative science. There's lots of public health officials. Again, we've talked about their ties to to pharmaceutical companies. And there's lots of vaccinologist there are not a lot of frontline people. There are not a lot of people who do treatments for drugs. So if we're looking at our COVID 19 moment and we're wondering why the guidelines are so vaccine specific, it's because Nazi is a vaccine specific organization. So now if we go on to think about how guidelines are supposed to be done, you're supposed to have a diverse, broad spectrum of specialists that take guidelines and look at it within the Canadian context and represent all those choices going into the guideline. What we actually have here is we have a guideline that was basically what we have global health policy that was manufactured by the World Health Organization, which actually has ties to pharmaceutical companies. Again, remember, through the non-profit Gates Foundation, we have the NIH and the NIAID, which basically have ties to global pharmaceutical companies through patents, right? So there's double, double things.

Deanna McLeod:
And now we have those individuals setting the tone for global health policy. Now that global health policy that gets stuck into the Canadian system again through vaccines, through public health, which are very pro-vaccine, and of course through NACI, which are also very pro-vaccine. And the fact that it was actually handed off to those two groups of people basically make it so that the answer will be vaccines. And I'm going to explain to you what a specialty bias is. So, for instance, if you're a surgeon and I go to you, if I'm a person with cancer and I go to a surgeon, I say, I've got this cancer, what do I do? He'll say, Cut it out. If I go to a radiation oncologist and I say, What do I do with my cancer? They'll say, We need to radiate it. The medical oncologist will be like, the only way to deal with it is is chemotherapy. That's my area. So if you give the the only people that are able to set a guideline to the people who are pro-vaccine, guess what's going to happen? You're going to get a pro-vaccine guideline. And I think that that is actually what's happened through the influence of global health policy. Global pharmaceutical companies have infiltrated and they're moving down and then they're handed off to people who've been groomed to be pro-vaccine. And therefore, what happens is we get a COVID 19 guideline that is vaccine and heavily pharma specific.

Deanna McLeod:
So then we get this pandemic. I don't know if anybody was curious about the fact that they said the vaccine is going to be the only solution before they even knew what the options were. Thought that was curious. You know, COVID 19 vaccines are the only way. And then what we have here, too, is that public health then takes control of the media and they basically use that as their mouthpiece. Then that pushes through. And they also have these vaccine clinics, pharmaceutical pharmacies that could give vaccines that they've developed through the flu vaccine. And now all of a sudden, we've got these COVID 19 vaccines being pumped out through clinics. And if you'll note, too, that it's independent from the doctor relationship. Now, the reason why that's interesting, you want to move it because a doctor, even though they're conflicted to a degree, they're still the health advocate for the patient. So if you can disconnect that connection and have somebody else being giving the vaccine and the doctor doesn't see the reactions, then you create this distance between the person who's the only advocate left for the patient. And then you've got this anonymous system that's now administering these vaccines, not monitoring them afterwards, not following up, not customizing treatment one size fits all, all to the masses. And then because again, if we go back to our medical legal context, we have the colleges that are are needing to enforce policy and guidelines because of vaccine specific policy guideline got locked in.

Deanna McLeod:
Then they're forcing all of the doctors to actually follow that guideline. And they have no choice to follow that guideline or face discipline and maybe even lose their license. So what we have now is that the doctors who are the prior advocates, who are the ones who were the ones who were facilitating informed consents, are now marginalized and silenced. And we have public health officials, which are highly influenced by pharmaceutical companies pushing down the pharmaceutical specific, the COVID 19 guidelines, which are very heavy on the pharmaceutical point of view and administering to people. And so what that creates is this this sense from in general society that whatever the public health officials are saying must be right, because nobody is dissenting. There's no there's no other voices. You know, my doctor would have said something. Those guidelines specialists might have said something. But in fact, what they've done is they've silenced all the other voices. So all of those other specialists who would have been speaking out are no longer speaking. And I just want to commend Doctor Eric Payne, who was on here earlier today, because this is a type of person that I usually work with. And the reason why I'm here today is because all of my colleagues, all the people who I would normally be working with have been silenced.

Deanna McLeod:
Luckily for me, they can't silence me. And so I'm here today to basically speak on their behalf. So what do we have? We have public health officials that are presenting a vaccine as safe and effective. The data does not support that, but they're declaring that that's true. They're also stating that the risks outweigh the costs. But what we really have is we have what isn't really clear to Canadians is how thoroughly this system has been co-opted by pharmaceutical companies at every stage of the way. And how these declared statements are actually, we have for the first time, at least in my experience, a complete departure from a risk benefit analysis or ratio that's at an individual level to a societal level. So when you hear somebody say the risks outweigh the costs, really what the public health official is saying for society, the risks outweigh the costs, which then, if you actually need to interpret, means that there there's an acceptable cost, i.e. your injury or your life for the betterment of society. And that would only be valid if these actually worked, but they don't even work. So what we have here is what I see is the first era of Western medicine where we have acceptable human sacrifice. And I think that's a tragic day, and I think that's something that we need to fight against.

Trish Wood:
Shocking. It does explain a lot, though. I mean, I've been running around for two years saying what the heck is going on? And I do know that there are public health officials who are married to people who work for the pharmaceutical industry, the vaccine industry. Right. And it doesn't seem to be a problem. So this explains a lot about that. But let me just I just want to comment more on what you just said, that we're living in an era where. We may have public health officials saying. The people who are injured are taking one for the team because I'm looking at this globally instead of individually. That's a remarkable finding.

Deanna McLeod:
It's tragic and it's never been the case. We've always said up until the limit that it would hurt somebody. Now, all of a sudden, we're saying collectively it's acceptable for you to be injured. And I just I just want to talk about something called transference of morbidity. And it sounds like a really crazy term, but what it means is that the problem was actually in our long term care facilities, which were understaffed, under resourced, not properly able to handle COVID 19, had people who were at the end of life. If we go back to our quality life, years loss or one or two life years on the line there, and they many of them, some of them might have died because of COVID 19. So what we've decided is an answer to that is that we'll transfer the morbidity and the mortality from these elderly people who have one or two quality of life years on them. And we're going to move it on to the rest of society. Right. And now we're going to put that burden of morbidity and mortality on the young people who we need to rely on to be our future. And I'm and now specifically, if it were on the working people, that would be one thing, the adults. But now we're even moving to the point where we want to transfer that to the children. Now, that is not logical, right? That that makes no sense why you would transfer that. Right? You just treat the people. It's called minimal medical intervention. You treat the people who are sick and you leave the rest of them alone. Now, the reason why we're reaching for these people is not because it's good for them. It's because it makes money and it makes people's careers advance. And it makes. The medical system go because it's heavily dependent on pharmaceutical money now. So as the collective people, we just need to be aware that this is happening. And if you're anything like me, we basically have to say enough is enough.

Trish Wood:
Anybody have a quick point. I know we're running out of time, but to what extent do you take into account political conflict of interest? Like the A government can prefer one company over another. Our vaccine lab is recorded is is in the city of Winnipeg because of a political decision made by the Mulroney government. When they took the the the aircraft contract away from the West, gave it to Montreal. That's why they put that lab there. Governments do these cost benefit analysis, but it is often very clear they minimize the cost and accelerate the benefits depending what they want. This in Ottawa. Now, the consultants will tell the government that the cheapest way to get public support for a public policy is to generate fear. It's the cheapest, quickest way it's been done on climate change and it's applied in this case. So to what extent do you take into account conflict of interest or maybe the bigger question? Do you have any suggestions as to a system that would eliminate conflict of interest, whether it's on the private sector side or on the political side? I know that's a huge question.

Deanna McLeod:
How? Well, in one minute. Yeah. So I mean, that's a fantastic question. So I think there's two parts to it. The first part was about the political conflicts of interest. And there have been many there's been what I've seen. I don't know if it's political opportunism or complicity in this particular COVID 19 pandemic. I know that we wrote we worked on a piece that talked about how mandates got the liberals elected elected. Right. You know, why are why is politics coming into medical decision making is I don't know if anybody thought about that, but it's never a good idea. Now, how can you envision a. A system whereby there is no conflicts. I don't think that there's anybody that's been able to see how that's done, but declaring conflicts of interest and always stating them. So, for instance, if our public health Fauci basically said, you know, I think the vaccines are safe and effective and I'm making $55 Million tomorrow, I'm going to get my royalty payment. I think everybody would probably wake up. Right. So we expect that from pharma. But are we requesting that from NACI? Are we are insisting on seeing the disclosures from our public health? How much money is Theresa Tam made? What are these backdoor payments that are happening? Are there backdoor payments? Where's let's see it. If you want me to believe you, let me see it. And I think that at the same time, the other thing, too, has been independent panelists that have no conflicts like the CCCA coming in and evaluating data and having the opportunity to critique it. So transparency and the ability for independent scientists to scrutinize things has always been another way of ferreting out these conflicts and seeing if there's any bias in there. And, of course, reproducibility.

Trish Wood:
Thank you very, very much. It was really interesting.

Deanna McLeod:
Okay. Thank you.