“I don’t want to give you false hope,” the medical assistant at the cancer clinic said to me last week, brow furrowed.

Wait.

What?

Pause the game.

Psychologists even have a label for “false hope.” They define it as a syndrome, akin to fetal alcohol syndrome or Raynaud’s syndrome.

According to Dan Tomasula, Ph.D., a champion of positive psychology, there are three key elements to what he calls “false hope syndrome”:

1. Repeatedly believing in unrealistic expectations

2. Feeling empowered to do something to change the problem even if it is unrealistic

3. Overconfidence from believing you’re in control of the situation even if you’re not

It’s common for allopathic medical doctors to insist that it’s wrong or bad to give their patients, especially people like me who are fighting extremely rare and difficult-to-clear cancers, “false hope.”

They then use their stated or unconscious fear of giving patients “false hope” to justify not using an off-label treatment, not trying something different if the treatment the patient is receiving isn’t working, or to dismiss a patient’s lived experience.

Addicted to negative thinking

Rachel Naomi Remen, a medical doctor, oncology counselor, and academic, tells a story in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom, about a young man with “terminal cancer” who rejected his doctor’s recommendations, beat all the odds, and healed from the cancer nonetheless.

Some time later, Remen called the young man’s former oncologist to talk to him about this fascinating and wonderful outcome. The young man’s doctor was so flabbergasted that his patient did not die—as he had predicted—and was instead living his best life, that he hung up the phone on her.

She called him back several times.

He refused to talk to her.

That story illustrates, to me, just how addicted many people in the medical field are to their own negativity, lack of hope, and feelings of doom and gloom.

False hope? Yes, ma’am!

“There’s nothing wrong with giving me hope,” I insisted to the medical assistant, making a come-hither gesture with my hands. We both laughed. “What’s wrong with being hopeful? Bring it on! I need as much hope as I can get.”

Here’s the thing: none of us knows our expiration date but we all know that we have one. Furthermore, no one can predict the future—what works for one person may be a disaster for another. At the same time, some outside-the-box thinking combined with a determinedly optimistic point of view is often how we can get from the bad place that we are in right now to the good place where we want ourselves to be.

When things look really dire, what benefit is there to being “realistic”? If you want to get ontological about it, what is reality anyway?

Besides, there are measurable positive scientific benefits to the placebo effect, which may be the perfect way to reframe what experts want us to believe is “false” hope.

Think of it this way: If you are going to have a bad outcome, should you think terrible miserable downward spiraling thoughts and be as unhappy as possible until the “inevitable” happens?

Or might it serve you better to be optimistic and positive and imagine the future you want to embody, so that you are bathing your brain and body in positive emotions for the X amount of time you have left?

Joe Dispenza, author of Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, says when you imagine every aspect of the future you want, you create that future in the quantum field, and you give the universe (or God or Mother Nature) the opportunity to give you the future you have imagined.

He’s been relentlessly criticized for saying this. As if it’s disturbing, unfair, or, in one hit piece writer’s words, “scary,” to empower people to think good thoughts, believe they can heal themselves, and imagine a better future for themselves and their families.

Because, you know, even when it works, it’s just a coincidence.

What do you lose in hoping for the best if you end up with the worst?

Let’s say the outcome turns out to be bad: you don’t get the job or the promotion you’ve been trying so hard for, your daughter doesn’t call you on Mother’s Day, the wonderful houseplants you had to leave behind for two weeks while you were on assignment die from lack of watering, or you succumb to a “terminal” illness like stage four metastatic breast cancer (me, I have stage four metastatic melanoma, yay!). Do you want to spend your time in a miserable state of anxious waiting, nonstop worrying, ruminating on your imminent demise, and utter misery, or do you want to be positive and hopeful (and write run-on sentences)?

Yes, we need to plan for possible bad outcomes.

Yes, we need to have all the hard conversations.

And, yes, the couples that sign prenuptial agreements (to protect themselves financially and otherwise in the event that they end up getting divorced) tend to have more stable marriages and are actually less likely to get divorced than couples that don’t.

I do believe in talking about the hard stuff. I do believe in advanced directives and plan Bs. And I do take exception with the people who call or text me and say things like:

“Just drink some hydrogen peroxide and your cancer will be cured!”

“Keep upping the dose of X, Y, Z ‘miracle cure’ and you’ll be better in a jiffy!” (Liver failure, side effects, and the fact that the person promoting said X, Y, or Z is getting financial kickbacks for doing so be damned.)

“OMG, my friend is completely NED because she did ____! [an allopathic treatment you’ve been on that does not work for you but does cause terrible side effects.] All you need to do is read these ten [AI-generated industry-sponsored] links and you’ll see why it works!”

(This happens much more often than you may think. I know these people always mean well. Maybe some are reading this post. But it’s not helpful to send a visually impaired cancer-addled science writer your exclamation-pointed miracle cure, especially when you haven’t talked to her in months, she hasn’t asked for your advice, she cannot click on the above-mentioned industry-sponsored links without experiencing severe eye strain, and has likely tried said miracle cure already. Don’t send texts like this. Do call your friend and tell her these five words. Do show up in person. Do offer them this medicine. These are the things that help. Not AI.)

Too-good-to-be-true stories aside, sometimes all we have is hope. Hope is a beautiful thing. It increases your resilience in the face of a chronic or debilitating disease. Scientists from the Brookings Institute have found that there is a “strong link” between hope and better current and future outcomes. Iranian researchers have found that changing your thinking results in more hope and less depression, stress, and anxiety, and can even reduce pain associated with cancer.

Have hope.

Be optimistic.

Dream big.

Me, I believe in hope.

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About the author:

Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science writer and book author. She has taught post-colonial literature to non-traditional students in inner-city Atlanta; performed the cancan in Middlebury, Vermont; and appeared live on prime-time television in Paris, France. An internationally known advocate for medical freedom, gentle parenting, bodily autonomy, and natural health, she taught for a year as a Fulbright grantee in Niger, West Africa; has em-ceed a conference on the safety concerns of the HPV vaccine in Copenhagen, Denmark; and taught writing in Lucca, Italy.

Related articles:

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I’m teaming up with literary agent Johanna Maaghul to teach an on-line class in how to write a nonfiction book proposal.

This is a live class, that meets in real time (albeit on-line). Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions and get personal feedback on their ideas.

Whether your nonfiction book is mostly written or you just have the germ of an idea, yes, you need an actual factual book proposal.

Even if you plan to self publish, you will be a thousand times more successful throughout every stage of the process if you have a book proposal.

Our course begins on Thursday, May 21, 2026.

I hope you’ll join us.

Wait, what is the Jennifer talking about?

I’m glad you asked.

Here’s the Substack Johanna posted about it, which contains ALL the deets (keep reading, you’ll see):

5 Reasons a Strong Book Proposal Matters

And why most aspiring nonfiction authors get it wrong before they ever get the chance to get it right

CLEAR LANTERN MEDIA AND ARKHUB INSIGHTS AND JOHANNA MAAGHUL

MAY 02, 2026

Every nonfiction author I’ve ever spoken to remembers the moment their book felt real.

For some, it was the first time they typed a chapter title.

For others, it was a stray sentence scribbled on a napkin that wouldn’t leave them alone.

But there’s another moment — a quieter, more decisive one — that almost no one talks about: the moment the book proposal lands on an editor’s desk.

Because here’s the truth most first-time authors don’t realize until it’s too late:

In nonfiction, your book isn’t sold by your manuscript. It’s sold by your proposal.

Agents say yes or no based on the proposal.

Acquisitions editors pitch their teams from the proposal.

Marketing departments forecast sales off the proposal.

Advance amounts are negotiated against the proposal. The manuscript? That comes after the contract. Working with nonfiction authors, I recommend 2-3 chapters are included, but even these chapters go at the END of the proposal.

So if the proposal is the document that decides everything, it’s worth understanding why a strong one matters — and what “strong” actually means.

Here are five reasons.

1. A proposal is the only place your book exists before it exists

A nonfiction book proposal is a working document. It’s the blueprint, the pitch, and the business case rolled into one. Before a single chapter is fully drafted, the proposal has to convince a publisher that this book deserves to exist, that you are the right person to write it, and that there are readers waiting for it.

Most aspiring authors think of a proposal as paperwork. It isn’t. It’s the first piece of professional writing a publisher will ever read from you, and it’s where your future book takes its earliest, most fragile shape.

2. A book proposal tells a publisher whether you understand the market

A surprising number of proposals fail not because the idea is bad, but because the author hasn’t done the work of locating their book in the world. Who is it for? What else is out there? Why does this book belong on the shelf next to those titles — and what does it offer that they don’t?

A strong competitive titles section, a defined audience, and a clear-eyed market analysis do something subtle but powerful: they tell a publisher that you’ve already thought like a publisher. That signal alone moves proposals from the “no” pile to the “let’s talk” pile.

3. A book proposal proves you can write the book

This is the part most writers underestimate. A proposal isn’t just a description of what you’ll write — it’s a sample of your voice, your structure, and your thinking. The overview, the chapter outline, and the sample chapters all do double duty: they describe the book, and they audition you as its author.

If the proposal is muddled, the assumption is that the manuscript will be too. If the proposal is sharp, specific, and confident, the publisher starts to imagine the finished book in their hands.

Join the class

4. A book proposal defines your platform — without making you cringe

“Platform” is one of those words that makes good writers want to disappear under their desks.

But platform isn’t bragging.

It’s evidence. It’s the case for why you — your expertise, your credibility, your reach, your relationships — give this book a fighting chance to find its readers.

A strong proposal presents your platform with clarity and confidence, neither inflating it nor apologizing for it. Done well, this section turns “I’m a first-time author” from a liability into an asset.

5. It’s leverage — long after the deal is signed

Even after you sign your contract, the proposal keeps working. It guides your manuscript when you lose your way. It anchors marketing conversations a year down the line. It shapes how your publicist pitches you, how your cover designer thinks about positioning, how booksellers categorize your title.

A weak proposal gets you a deal you’ll spend the next two years trying to live up to. A strong proposal gets you a deal — and a roadmap.

Learn how to write one that works

I’m thrilled to share that Clear Lantern Authors Academy is launching a brand-new course on exactly this:

How to Write a Killer Book Proposal

Starts Thursday, May 21, 2026 · 2:00–3:30 PM PDT Three live sessions · May 21, May 28, and June 4

Taught by Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D. — an award-winning science journalist, Fulbright grantee, and author or co-author of eight books (three of them national award winners), with bylines in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Smithsonian — alongside me, ArkHub’s Lead Strategist Johanna Maaghul, this three-session course walks you through the exact structure literary agents and publishers expect to see.

Join the class

Across three live sessions, you’ll learn how to:

• Write a strong, magnetic book overview

• Position yourself as the right author for the book

• Define your target audience and analyze competing titles

• Build a marketing and publicity plan publishers take seriously

• Develop a chapter outline and prepare sample chapters

• Format and finalize a submission-ready proposal

You’ll leave the course with the major sections of a professional nonfiction book proposal drafted, structured, and ready for refinement.

If you’ve been sitting on a book idea — or staring at a half-finished proposal that you can’t quite get over the line — this is the class for you.

👉 Space is limited. Reserve your spot here

The book you’ve been carrying around in your head deserves a proposal that does it justice. Let’s build it together.

Clear Lantern Authors Academy is a learning portal for writers who want to strengthen their craft, grow their platform, and expand their creative potential. Browse the full catalog at Clear Lantern Authors Academy on ArkHub.

Clear Lantern Media is a boutique agency focused on strategic representation for authors, creators, and original intellectual property across publishing, film, and media. We provide our clients with the publishing deals, licensing opportunities, and adaptation pathways to match their bold vision and diligent work. We also provide the editorial, publicity, and platform development tools and resources needed to ensure each project reaches its full potential. From pitch to placement, our work is rooted in strong relationships, targeted strategy, and a commitment to preserving creative vision while expanding market reach.

Join the class

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I drove to pick up Serenity’s boyfriend the other day.

Charlie Dog was beside himself when he saw me.

He head butted me to pet him, over and over again. His whole body wagged with excitement and urgency. Then he raced through the open door and sniffed every car frantically with his wet nose, whining and barking in little desperate yips.

“I think this has got to be the last time,” his human mama said.

“He’s been sitting by the door howling and crying,” Charlie Dog’s mom furrowed her brows. “He’s never done that before. I think he misses Serenity.”

That’s when I learned that dogs can feel lovesick, just like humans.

When we got to the car, Charlie Dog jumped into the back seat without any hesitation, sniffing and sniffing to see if he could pick up Serenity’s scent.

I buckled him in and we drove to our house.

He stuck his snout out the window, letting the air stream over his face. When I turned onto our street, Charlie Dog went crazy. He started clawing at the car door and crying so mournfully it sounded human.

I let him out as soon as we pulled up to our house. Serenity was inside the house, on the other side of the front door. Charlie and I could both hear her barking her head off to greet us.

As soon as they saw each other, tails wagging faster the speed of light, they raced to the back door, bumping into each other, claws scrabbling on the kitchen floor.

I opened the back door to let them out.

Acting all aloof

Then something strange happened.

Read more

Yesterday I sat down to write another installment of the Lipstick Diaries.

There’s news.

There are photos.

Then life decided to do some life-ing and I ended up taking a friend to urgent care.

The FNP in charge of urgent care took one look at said friend, who I was pushing in a wheelchair because she was too weak to walk, and sent us to the hospital.

So instead of writing about canine copulation, I spent a lovely afternoon in the hospital.

My friend won the poked, prodded, c/t-scanned, talked-to-by-a-doctor-who-had-drunk-too-much-coffee-and-was-incapable-of-asking-a-single-question-or-speaking-articulately-enough-for-us-to-understand-a-single-word (which we might not have understood anyway because the doc’s voice was muffled, courtesy of a white duckbilled mask), and infused with antibiotics lottery.

Lucky us. Not.

Still, I can’t tell you how grateful I was to be the patient advocate this time, and not the patient.

In the meantime, my friend is home recovering; Charlie Dog spent this morning with Serenity and me; an update about project puppies is coming soon (wait until you see the photos); and I have some save-the-dates and shout-outs to share.

Save the date: Brownstone Supper Club

I’m giving the keynote at the first ever Ashland Brownstone Supper Club, on Wednesday evening, May 20th, 2026.

Time: 5:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Place: Ashland Hills Hotel

Address: 2525 Ashland Street in Ashland, Oregon

Bill Kauth, co-founder of the ManKind Project and a local, national, and international living legend, is hosting the supper club

My talk:

“We could not comply”: the unsung heroes who quietly (and not-so-quietly) resisted during COVID

What to expect: delicious food, fabulous friends you haven’t met yet, and cup-filling fellowship

Tickets went on sale an hour ago (literally) via the Brownstone Institute’s website.

This event is expected to sell out.

»Get your tickets to save your spot by clicking here.«

Doctor, doctor, give me the news … Shout-out to Michelle Perro

Pediatrician and healthy food advocate extraordinaire, Michelle Perro, M.D., author of the outstanding book, What’s Making Our Kids Sick? (2017) has just published a new book!

Making Our Kids Well is a compendium full of helpful (and health-full) information. It’s a must-read for new parents and anyone interested in healthy living, healthy eating, and raising healthy kids.

Michelle Perro is an outspoken, straight-shooting, medical freedom, vaccine-friendly doctor. We can all support her by ordering her new book and asking our local libraries to purchase copies as well.

But, wait, there’s more

For the fungus writers among us: ballin’ book proposals

Literary agent and entrepreneur Johanna Maaghul, who joined us at the writing retreat in Tuscany in March, and I are teaching a course together next month.

The course: How to Write a Killer Book Proposal

The dates: May 21, May 28, June 4

The place: ComputerLaLand, which means you can join us from anywhere

The deets and to register: Click here

I mean, with such a nice photo of moi (see below), how can you resist?!

Want a front row seat?

Finally, I’m looking for Substack sponsors to fund some of the deeper-dive science-forward investigative health articles I’d like to publish on this platform.

I’m calling on the quantum field (à la Joe Dispenza) to bring forth two or three sponsors and 26 more paid subscribers so I can make more of my content freely available and open to the public.

What sayest thou?! If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation, have a front row seat on an investigation, and receive a handwritten letter from me plus an original custom-made piece of art, message me and we’ll talk.

Since I’ve only got one eyeball am I allowed to make unsightly—get it?—jokes?

What is the sound of one eye crossing?

It’s late. I’m mixing metaphors.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

See you soon.

Love,

Jennifer

1. There will be no photos

2. This post is paywalled for reasons that will quickly become obvious, despite #1

Many of you already know that I was diagnosed with stage four metastatic melanoma.

Melanoma, which is skin cancer, begins in the melanocytes.

Melanocytes are the cells in your body that make the pigment that gives skin its color.

Usually melanoma presents as a growth on the outside of your body: on the arms, back, face, or legs.

Me, I hit the jackpot. I managed to acquire the rarest form of melanoma, INSIDE MY LEFT EYEBALL.

See how special I am?

And how lucky?

Lest you haven’t been following my garden of melanoma delights and your heart is beating very quickly right now, and you’ve rushed to look in the mirror to see if YOU have a visible growth of some kind in your left eye, right eye, or third eye, please don’t worry.

Ocular or uveal melanoma, which is what I found out I had in May of 2023, only occurs in five or six people out of a million. So it’s very unlikely that you have anything to worry about.

That said, you’re more at risk of getting ocular melanoma if you have:

• light-colored eyes and fair skin

• an Oregon driver’s license (Oregon has double the rates of ocular melanoma than any other state in the Union)

• sustained an eye injury

There’s also some evidence that other risk factors for cancer contribute to your risk of getting ocular melanoma.

These risk factors for cancer include but aren’t limited to having:

• a history of non-stop contact lens wearing

• Unusual skin tags and dark-colored moles

• Precious menstruation (though ocular melanoma is tracked as being slightly more common in men than women, early-onset menses is often a sign of early endocrine disruption and over-exposure to carcinogens and puts you at higher risk of getting cancer)

• Extreme stress

• cumulative exposure to carcinogens as well as known toxic chemicals

Me, I thought I had floaters in my eyes. A normal sign of aging.

I was sure said floaters would clear up on their own.

And, I was wrong. I’d say I was dead wrong but somehow that phraseology doesn’t strike me as funny.

All of these oh-so-lovely events culminated in an enucleation on July 21, 2023.

“The eye is a good container,” one doctor told me.

Apparently not my eye.

When caught early, ocular melanoma—though often lethal—is treatable.

When melanoma is metastatic, meaning the cancer cells have spread to other parts of your body, the mainstream medical establishment still has tools in its toolbox.

According to mainstream medicine, however, these treatments are palliative in nature.

That is, they may help extend your life but they will not cure you.

Jennifer would like to not die from metastatic melanoma, thank you very much.

Which means I’ve been following most of the recommendations of the mainstream oncologists and, as I described several months ago, doing everything else I can—from retraining my brain and resetting my nervous system via prayer, meditation, insights from Joe Dispenza, Byron Katie, and many others, to red light therapy, colon cleanses, coffee enemas, juicing, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and ozone, among many other things—to help support my body and help it heal.

Which brings us to the disgusting thing that happened to me this morning.

Read more

Getting ready to talk to conservative talk show host and media mogul Keith Malinak about the current debates about childhood vaccines.

It’s Thursday, nearly noon West Coast time; nearly 15:00 (aka 3:00 p.m.) on the East Coast.

You can listen/watch live at Keith Malinak’s website, which is here:

https://atmshow.com

Or watch the replay in your pajamas at your leisure wherever you get your podcasts.

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Happy Spring. Happy Pesach. Happy Easer.

The ornamental plum trees are blossoming in southern Oregon.

The magnolias are in full bloom in Tuscany.

The bees are mostly back. The flies and ants are busy. Last weekend, I transplanted a tiny cactus into a planter. There are white lilacs flowering for the first time on the tree I planted in the garden several years ago.

Sunshine always helps me get unstuck.

Part puppy, part plushie

As my regular readers already know, I own the best dog in Dog Land. My pup, Serenity, is a golden doodle on her mama’s side and a King Charles Cavalier mixed with poodle (a “cavapoo”) on her sire’s.

You can read her origin story and how she came to me here.

Serenity turns three next month. She weighs 24 pounds and has the best temperament: she’s patient, attentive, trainable, energetic without being frenetic, intuitive, eager to be helpful, happy to go hiking when the opportunity arises and equally as contented with sitting by my feet while I work.

She’s also intact.

In other words, she has all her lady bits and hasn’t undergone surgery to be altered.

I could be dwelling on the dire predictions of the medical industry about how I’ll soon be taking the long dirt nap.

Instead, I’m trying very hard to focus my thoughts, emotions, attention, energy, and best brain on the present moment. I am feeling gratitude for everything I already have and envisioning all the exciting and wonderful things to come.

One of those things exciting things, coming soon (perhaps?!), is puppies!

Read more

Young families in America opting to have their babies in the hospital are increasingly opting out of routine newborn care.

Indeed, medical doctors are finding that some families are declining not only the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine (to prevent a sexually transmitted disease), but also other standard treatments like immediate cord clamping, injectable vitamin K (to aid in blood clotting), and antibiotic eye ointment (to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted and other infectious diseases), as well as the removal of the foreskin of an infant’s penis, aka circumcision, if the baby is a boy.

And let’s hope they’re also opting in: to exclusive breastfeeding, continuous skin-to-skin contact with their babies, zero separation of the baby from the parents, and even cloth instead of plastic diapering.

Related content: All About Breastfeeding, Podcast Interview With Jennifer Margulis

Does opting out get an A for awesome or for alarming?

It appears that younger Americans are no longer as willing to outsource their brains to the so-called experts as they have been in the past.

Instead, new parents are wanting to be active, informed participants in their infant’s care from the first moments of their baby’s life.

Many in the mainstream medical establishment find this trend alarming.

While doctors are finding themselves on the defensive and the mainstream news media is reporting that opting out of the hepatitis B vaccine and other unnecessary medical interventions during and after birth is a “dangerous” and “harmful” trend, the truth is that new parents are taking back their power.

In fact, they’re engaging in their first real act of advocacy for their families with these three very powerful words: “No, thank you.”

In other words, to new parents—as well as to those of us who have taken the time to do our own research and who have been sounding the alarm about these unnecessary and even harmful interventions for decades—this trend is a step in the right direction.

Where does opting out lead?

Towards a huge financial loss for the pharmaceutical industry and the doctors who have become their lackeys and towards better health for our babies and the entire country.

Hostility towards parents who want to do it their way

I’ve attended hospital births in the United States and several other countries as a birthing mother, a supportive friend, a patient advocate, a journalist, and an NGO employee.

Assuming I was on Team Hospital and not Team MomAndBaby, on-call obstetricians and labor and delivery nurses have made all sorts of telling remarks both directly to me and within my earshot.

Doctor A to Doctor B at a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia: “Room 12 has their birth plan taped to the door.” [rolls eyes] “As if they get to decide.”

Labor and Delivery Nurse (at the coffee station, speaking in a hushed voice) at a hospital in southern Oregon: “She thinks she’s going to have that baby vaginally. Not going to happen. I should know. I was induced and it didn’t go well” [pulls down her scrubs to show me a C-section scar].

Obstetrician based in the Midwest: “Homebirth is a trainwreck that always ends up at my doorstep at 3:00 a.m. Off the record, I do not support choices in childhood.”

I’ve witnessed and experienced the open hostility of so many in the birth industry towards birthing moms who choose to do things a gentler way. Chances are, if you’re reading this article, you have too.

Any parent who dives into the research soon learns that the majority of labor and postpartum practices are about maximizing profits not promoting pediatric health.

So the idea that parents are asking more questions, saying “No, thank you,” more often, and rewriting the thou-must-do-it-my-way medical script is the best news I’ve heard since Grandpa Gary told me about the bookshelf prank he pulled on his kids.

Parents finally asking “Why?”

My mom liked to say that a smart question deserves a smart answer. And these parents are asking smart questions:

1. Why rush to cut the cord when the research clearly shows that delayed cord clamping is better for the baby?

2. Why would a baby born to a hepatitis B–negative mother need a vaccine within a few hours of birth?

3. Why slather antibiotic goop in a newborn baby’s eyes when neither parent has any sexually transmitted disease and we know that antibiotics disrupt the baby’s microbiome; can be devastating, even lethal, for longterm health; and that the over-use of antibiotics is a global health threat?

4. Why cut off a important, functional, and highly erogenous part of a newborn’s penis when this is a practice that is almost never done for medical reasons in European countries where people, especially men, enjoy better health and longer lives?

5. Are these interventions—all of which involve a significant upcharge to the consumer by way of the insurance companies—truly needed or simply a routine way for hospitals to make more money and doctors to justify their jobs?

Misinformation or missing information?

We live in an information age where it’s easier to access scientific studies and find likeminded people than ever before.

The parents who are opting out the most often are the ones talking to regret moms who followed the doctors’ orders and ended up with severely immune-challenged and brain-damaged children.

Doctors entrenched in the status quo find all of this threatening.

As well they should.

There is a lot of misinformation out there. There’s also a lot of missing information.

“When you look at a child who’s innocent and vulnerable—and a simple intervention that’s been done since 1961 is refused—knowing that baby’s going out into the world is super worrisome to me,” Idaho-based pediatrician Tom Patterson, recently told a journalist from CNN in reference to parents opting out of injectable vitamin K.

Listening to the doctor’s answers to their questions, weighing the absolute versus the relative risk of any intervention, and deciding—say—that your newborn who doesn’t have hepatitis B and who has no possible route of exposure can safely delay getting a hepatitis B vaccine, perhaps indefinitely, doesn’t make you or your family “reckless,” “stupid,” or “irresponsible.”

It is the parents, after all—not the doctors, nurses, public health officials, or angry posters on the internet—who have to live with the consequences of the choices we make for our infants.

Some clinicians report that when they take time to calmly and respectfully explain the risks and benefits of routine postpartum care, doubting parents will ultimately say okay.

But many will not.

After careful consideration, these parents choose not to conform to the standard of care.

A new family’s choice to do nothing—no cord clamping, no circumcision, no hepatitis B vaccine, no injectable vitamin K, no newborn bath, no eye ointment, no supplementing with pesticide-laden artificial milk products, no allowing the baby to be taken to the nursery—is deeply uncomfortable for doctors inside a medical system that profits off docility and compliance.

There’s a reason we call it “doctor’s orders.” Conventional medical doctors aren’t used to being questioned.

Or having their advice ignored.

At the same time, without getting into the debates surrounding each of these interventions, perhaps we can agree that it’s never a good idea to live a life on autopilot. Not for parents. Not for doctors.

We all understand that no two human fingerprints are alike. So it shouldn’t be that hard to understand that one-size-fits-all makes no sense for brand new humans.

That new parents are increasingly unsatisfied with rote answers gives me hope for humanity.

Let’s hope this is the beginning of a new and lasting trend: to reject one-size-fits-all profit-motivated medicine in favor of gentler, healthier, and less profit-driven care.

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About the author:
Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning journalist and the author of the highly acclaimed book, Your Baby, Your Way (Scribner, 2015). Co-author of The Vaccine-Friendly Plan (Ballantine, 2016), she has published health and science articles in hundreds of magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Smithsonian magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, Ms. magazine, and The Epoch Times.

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When my friend’s niece spiked a fever during labor, the attending obstetrician put her on an antibiotic drip. After the baby was born, the pediatrician also prescribed him a round of antibiotics “just in case.”

A young person I know went to the doctor with a very mild sore throat and left with a prescription of antibiotics even though a rapid strep test came back negative.

A first-time mom, I was enthusiastically given antibiotics for my infant daughter, as well as medicine “for the pain,” at a well-baby visit. Our daughter had been crying. Her eardrum looked red. The kind, compassionate, and recently minted doctor decided she had an ear infection.

A “massive” and “staggering” health problem

In the 1940s, not long after they were first used to fight intractable infections, scientists and medical doctors voiced concerns about antibiotics being overused and possibly leading to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

In 2019 PBS News Hour reported that the overuse of antibiotics is a “massive” and “staggering” health problem.

Both in hospitals and doctor’s offices, “we’re prescribing antibiotics when they’re not needed,” said the CDC’s Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, M.D. “These are medications that have significant side effects,” he continued. “…When you don’t need them, you’re exposing yourself to all of those side effects with no benefit,” he said.

Even though medical doctors today are aware of the harms of the misuse and over-use of antibiotics, they continue to offer them to patients when they are not necessary.

While most people are aware that the over-use of antibiotics gives rise to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which are responsible for at least 35,000 deaths a year in the United States alone, according to the CDC.

In recent years, peer-reviewed scientific research has linked antibiotic exposure to an obesity, an increased risk of asthma, higher incidents of bowel diseases, juvenile arthritis, and even colon cancer.

At the same time, most people don’t realize that antibiotics can have a negative effect on the developing brain.

Disrupting murine cognition

A study published in the peer-reviewed journal iScience several years ago links low-dose antibiotics to significant changes in the infant microbiome which, in turn, affects infant cognition.

The study, “Effects of Early-Life Penicillin Exposure on the Gut Microbiome and Front Cortex and Amygdala Gene Expression,” conducted on mice, found a disturbing connection between antibiotic exposure and changes in gene expression in parts of the brain responsible for neurodevelopment.

The team New York University scientists divided mice into three groups.

• One group of pregnant mice was exposed to penicillin the week leading up to birth.

• A second group of mice was exposed to penicillin during the week following birth.

• The third group of mice, the control group, had no antibiotic exposure.

The scientists dosed the mice with penicillin at amounts that would be on par with what humans would receive. Their team then compared the composition of microbes in the pups of the two exposed groups to that in the control group.

Low-dose penicillin disrupts the microbiome

The result: the scientists found that exposure to even low doses of penicillin changed the composition of the microbiome in the mice pups.

More specifically, the antibiotic-exposed pups had notably decreased numbers of the beneficial bacteria, Lactobacillus, among other species of bacteria, and notably increased numbers of Enterococcus, Enterobacteriales, and Pseudomonales, among others.

The scientists further found that these changes were linked to changes in gene expression in the brains of the exposed mice.

Most worrisome, perhaps: This experiment showed that multiple pathways crucial for normal neurodevelopment were negatively affected in the antibiotic-exposed mice.

Because the doses of penicillin were so low, the researchers argued that it is unlikely that the brain effects they observed were a direct result of the penicillin itself.

Instead, they hypothesized it was more likely that the brain changes observed in the mice were due to the changes in their microbiomes.

In other words, the scientists explained, due to the antibiotic exposure “the gut–brain axis is perturbed leading to organizational effects that permanently alter the structure and function of the brain.”

Early-life antibiotic exposure harms the developing brain

The New York University scientists concluded that early-life antibiotic exposure may harm the developing brains of human infants similarly:

“[T]hese results provide evidence that early-life antibiotic exposure in humans may have effects not only on the infant microbiome but also on gene expression within critical brain structures, including the frontal cortex and amygdala, which are vulnerable to perinatal insults,” they wrote.

“These initial findings … suggest a paradigm shift in early-life antibiotic use should be considered. Although not considered a potentially severe CNS [central nervous system] teratogen such as alcohol, cocaine, or toxoplasmosis … early-life antibiotic use may have unexpected consequences.”

Prescribing antibiotics during pregnancy far more often than necessary

For many babies, antibiotic exposure begins before birth. In fact, there is evidence that a large percentage—perhaps as many as one third—of the 3.6 million babies born in the United States each year are getting dosed with antibiotics before, during, or just after birth.

A 2025 review, published in the journal Pharmacotherapy, found that antibiotics account for some 80 percent of all medications a woman might be prescribed during pregnancy, and that between 20 to 25 percent of pregnant women will use antibiotics to treat urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted diseases, and upper respiratory infections.

At the same time, the CDC recommends prophylactic antibiotics for all laboring women who test positive for Group B strep.

Illness due to Group B strep occurs in approximately 1 in 600 live births. But a 2013 study, of over 7,500 pregnant women, revealed that nearly a third of pregnant women were given antibiotics.

In that study, published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, only thirteen percent of pregnant women showed risk factors for Group B strep.

Still, a full 31 percent of the participants received prophylactic antibiotics anyway.

While this 2013 study emphasized the success of the prenatal use of antibiotics to avoid Group B strep infections, which can be dangerous or even deadly for newborns, the data within it suggests that we are prescribing antibiotics to pregnant women far more often than necessary.

At the same time, according to the CDC, just over 32 percent of all births in the United States are via Cesarean.

For surgical birth, intravenous prophylactic antibiotics are almost always prescribed, ostensibly to prevent maternal infection.

That’s what the doctor told my friend’s niece just last week.

But what the doctors are not telling pregnant women is that when these antibiotics are started during labor or any time before the infant’s cord is clamped, the baby, too, is being exposed.

Not only that. The baby will also be imbibing antibiotics via the mother’s milk, as these drugs are secreted in detectable amounts in breast milk.

We need a healthy gut to have a healthy brain

A growing body of scientific literature has shown the importance of the infant microbiome for good health.

Though may seem counterintuitive, the microbiome is particularly important to brain functioning.

The brain contains something like 99 billion neurons.

These neurons communicate with each other via electrical and chemical signaling.

Especially as a baby’s brain develops, but even later in life, the neurons in our brains form connections with thousands of other neurons.

And scientists are increasingly realizing that a healthy gut microbiome is necessary for our brains to signal properly.

In fact, experts now believe that the communication between the central nervous system and the intrinsic nervous system of the gastrointestinal tract, which has come to be known as the “gut–brain axis,” is crucial not only for proper digestion and proper brain functioning, but also for overall health.

In addition, the human gut is lined with something like 100 million neurons, leading a journalist from science.org to describe it as “practically a brain unto itself.” This enteric nervous system, as it has come to be known, maintains local control of digestion, communicates with the brain via chemically signaling, has an effect on mood, sociability, intuition, and the innate fear response, among other things.

Antibiotic overuse associated with autism

Early antibiotic exposure affects metabolism and inflammation, which in turn affects brain structure and function and gene expression.

Given all of this, it is not surprising that a study in the peer-reviewed journal Nature conducted by a team of researchers in Minnesota found that infants postnatally exposed to antibiotics had both hearing and memory issues at one month of age.

In a research study published in 2013 in the North American Journal of Medicine and Science, Elizabeth Mumper, a Virginia-based medical doctor with over 40 years of clinical experience who specializes in helping families affected by autism, found an association between antibiotic use and autism.

In this study, Mumper identified the best practices that lead to a cohort of 294 children in which there were zero autism diagnoses (when at least 6 would be expected, based on CDC’s published autism rates at the time.)

These best practices included:

• minimizing exposure to environmental toxins (pesticides and herbicides)

• maximizing breastfeeding

• limiting the use of antibiotics

• using probiotics in infancy

• nutritional counseling

• avoiding acetaminophen (the main ingredient in infant Tylenol)

• vaccinating children on an evidence-based and much less aggressive vaccine schedule.

Doctors, listen up!

According to the New York University research, prior to 1945 no children were exposed to antibiotics during childhood.

Today, the average American child receives eight rounds of antibiotics before the age of five, according to researchers from Harvard.

If early antibiotic exposure is indeed causing altered brain function in a high percentage of American children, we must find ways to mitigate those effects.

“Our present findings should trigger re-examining widespread antibiotic prescriptions when their use is not directly indicated,” the team of iScience study authors concluded in 2021.

Woman can avoid antibiotics during pregnancy by eating healthy fresh whole organically grown foods to foster a healthy immune system; avoiding all sugar, junk food, and other edible food-like substances that aren’t really food; getting plenty of sleep (which helps the body rest, digest, and fight illness); and using herbs to fight bacterial infections when needed.

Garlic is a powerful natural antibiotic that can clear up bacterial infections during pregnancy. In addition, pregnant women can avoid being unnecessarily prescribed antibiotics by laboring and birthing at home with the help of experienced and competent homebirth midwives.

New moms can avoid taking antibiotics by getting plenty of rest; staying hydrated; eating healthy; and making sure they have plenty of emotional, physical, and financially support during the first few months of life with a new baby.

Eating prebiotic foods—food that feeds healthy gut bacteria—also helps. Excellent prebiotic foods include artichokes, green bananas, and green banana flour. If you’re someone who struggles with bacterial infections, taking a high-quality probiotic with every meal is also a good idea. To maximize absorption, probiotics can be taken in suppository form both rectally and vaginally.

A nervous and insecure first-time mom, I filled the doctor’s prescription for an antibiotic for my baby. On the drive back to our rental in Little Five Points, the baby fell fast asleep.

She woke up smiling and drooling. She didn’t have an ear infection. She didn’t need the antibiotics. All she’d actually needed was a nap.

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About the author:
Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science and health journalist. A different version of this article first appeared in The Epoch Times.

A few years back, my friend Anna gifted me the book The Four Agreements. She told me later she was reaching for another book on her bookshelf but the one that she pulled out was Don Miguel Ruiz’s 1997 classic; so she figured that was the book the universe wanted her to give me.

The Four Agreements is a slim self-help book that has helped over 15 million readers in the United States alone, according to Ruiz’s website.

Purportedly based on Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements outlines a code of conduct for readers to follow in order to reduce strife and suffering and increase joy.

The Toltecs thrived between 800 and 1000 B.C. What we know about them comes from the Aztecs, an indigenous civilization in the region we now call Mexico.

Simple, straightforward, and life-changing

On the surface, these four agreements seem simple and straightforward, even obvious.

In reality, if you’re able to implement them, the agreements are profound, even revolutionary, offering all of us humans a protocol that has the potential to heal even the most chasmic rifts.

Of the four agreements, the one that’s been helping me the most is:

#2: “Don’t take anything personally.”

So easy to say. Just four small words. Not so easy to implement.

Perhaps you’re already an enlightened creature, someone who’s more saintly than humanoid, and you are able to not take it personally when, for example:

• Your _____ [fill in the blank with the relative of your choice, perhaps one of your very own children] calls you a “dumb ass” or, worse, the R-word, because said relative knows that you find that kind of language hateful, offensive, and triggering, and that you pride yourself on being smart

• Your _____ [fill in the blank with the relative of your choice, perhaps the one you love more than anyone in the world] sends you an email with the words “shame on you” as the subject line

• Your best friend, who you usually talk to every day or at least a couple times a week, doesn’t return any of your phone calls for several months

• Your editor answers your call in an irritated tone. Without even saying hello, he snaps: “I never talk on the phone. What do you want?”

This is all theoretical, of course.

None of these situations has ever happened to me.

I’ve also never been called “a total asshole” in a public forum by an MIT science writer, no less.

Because, you know, calling humans terminology to describe the anal cavity via which excrement is excreted is both very becoming to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as to the pursuit of science.

(That lovely article has since been expunged from the internet. I can’t imagine why. It is, however, still available via the Wayback Machine.)

Or told: “You make me want to root for.the eye cancer you fkn horrible woman. Go cancer!!!! I do hope it eats you alive after all the pain and suffering you have caused. This is such sweet karma.”

That has never happened to me either.

So how do you NOT take all the horrible things people say and do personally?

Remaining calm and positive in the face of other people’s judgments, unkindness, prejudices, and untoward behavior takes work.

Perhaps it’s a skill to be cultivated over a lifetime. Or perhaps not biting on the juicy worms of other people’s cruelty, drama, and crazy-making is something that’s easy once you realize—really realize—that nothing nasty that anyone says or does is personal to you.

Put differently, people who feel badly about themselves are unkind to others. Their unkindness is a byproduct of their own personal dysfunction, low self-esteem, emotional immaturity, jealousy, and other issues.

We can’t control anyone else’s behavior.

But we can control our reactions.

The way I see it, you have three choices:

Choice 1: Take someone’s bad mood or mean words personally, obsess over how that person is acting, respond angrily, and get sucked into the drama. This choice results in you lowering yourself to their base level and letting the other person’s unhappiness affect you, your mood, and your day. For most of my life, I’ve excelled at this. I’ve been so sensitive to other people’s moods that even an angry clerk at the check-out counter has been known to derail my day.

Choice 2: Ignore the cutting remarks and bad actions. Remain relentlessly positive in the face of negativity. Make jokes. Give hugs (when appropriate). Turn the negative into a positive by stepping back to see what it can teach you.

This choice involves taking what is good—if anything—from the situation and leaving the bad on the table.

This choice results in you moving forward in spite of the frustration. A student of mine taught me recently a great acronym that she and her colleagues use in their facilitation work: Think of the thing you are NOT taking personally as an “AFGO,” which stands for Another F**king Growth Opportunity.

Choice 3: Remove yourself from the nasty person’s presence and/or remove them from yours. If someone is bullying you on-line, block them. If they’re writing nasty things about you, don’t read what they’ve written. If you feel bad every time you’re with them, use that negative feeling as valuable information (aka an AFGO, see Choice 2) that may be an indication that you need to relegate that person to the background of your life, and figure out how to connect with happier, less jealous, and more grounded people.

Me, I am learning to do all of this.

It’s a work in progress.

The Jennifer 2.0 who I’ve written about before is a work in progress too.

Meditating helps. Joe Dispenza helps. Praying and learning about God helps. As does reading philosophical and spiritual texts.

A few days ago, a young person Who-Will-Not-Be-Named was acting like an old curmudgeon on steroids. This person was saying all sort of inappropriate and unkind things—trying to get a rise out of said person’s progenitors.

The Grump: Where you wanna go?

The Progenitors: Either X or Y place would be good!

The Grump: Naw. They’re both ass.

The Progenitors: No worries. Where’s good for you? We’re flexible.

The Grump: Everywhere’s closed. And we don’t even have enough time. I have things to do. This sucks. You’re not even ready! My day’s ruined. Oh my god, now I have to wait for you. I have things to do. I don’t have time to sit here deciding. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.

One progenitor decided to find the whole situation funny and absurd. The offspring had gotten too little sleep, eaten too little food, and needed some exercise, sunlight, and outside time.

Yes, it was frustrating.

But, no, it wasn’t personal.

Nothing ever is.

The other progenitor

Read more

“Anyone who thinks autism is not a disability should spend a day with my daughter,” writes Alison Singer, president and co-founder of the Autism Science Foundation.

Singer’s daughter, Jodie, lives in a group home for adults who require “a very intensive level of support.”

Jodie, her mom explains, suffers from seizures. She “struggles to perform everyday tasks like talking, expressing her needs and wants, and adjusting to even the slightest changes in her routine.”

At the same time, some champions of neurodiversity insist that we should celebrate all autism, even profound autism.

They argue that instead of seeing autism as a disability, the world needs to understand that “autism is a gift.”

Wandering

Tell that to the parents of the 5-year-old boy with autism who was found unresponsive in a parking lot in central Iowa after wandering away earlier this month.

He died soon after. The Iowa police have said there was no evidence of foul play.

Or to the family of Jenny Dim, a non-verbal child with autism who was found dead in a pond in Northern Kentucky on March 14.

Dim was one of nine children with autism who have died by drowning this year, according to MSN.

Toileting issues

Or to a friend who I’ll call Alta.

“I know every way to clean human urine off a carpet,” Alta told me sadly.

Alta’s son, in his late twenties, cannot speak, express his needs, or toilet himself. He wears an adult-sized diaper most of the time. He sometimes smears his own feces on the bathroom wall.

Self-induced harm

Yet Alta and her husband have it easy compared to the parents of Yotam Rabinovich, a profoundly autistic 30-year-old.

Last March, Yotam banged his head so violently against the wall, that he had to be hospitalized.

Anesthetized and put on a breathing machine, Yotam suffered severe self-induced injuries to his spine and central nervous system.

At the same time, profound autism is a disability that the mainstream media, industry apologists, and bought politicians refuse to acknowledge.

Families affected by profound autism mostly suffer behind closed doors.

Children and young adults with severe autism who are too violent or too medically compromised to live with their families act out in private.

Ego-forward medical doctors cling to the fallacy that autism is genetic, unwilling to admit that they themselves are implicated in causing brain damage in their pediatric patients.

The pharmaceutical industry controls the narrative. Big Pharma’s big profits would disappear overnight if the news media reported honestly about how the over-use of prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals—including vaccines, acetaminophen, and antibiotics—was causing severe autism.

Life-threatening

Those who insist we should celebrate autism willfully ignore the data that shows just how life-threatening this disability actually is.

Indeed, the average life expectancy with someone with autism is approximately 36 years, according to a 2017 study by the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Is that a gift?

Autism Awareness Month

April is Autism Awareness Month.

Alta won’t be bragging about her son on social media.

Yotam’s parents won’t either.

Recent science shows that early humans who had what we would now call dyslexia helped their kinship groups by being more likely to explore new places and being more open to new ideas.

Temple Grandin, one of the most famous adults with autism, is a renowned inventor who developed a system for treating livestock more humanely. Grandin credits her myriad accomplishments to her neurological differences.

Neurodiversity is certainly something to celebrate.

Profound autism is not.

Related posts:

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Why This Israeli Doctor Believes He Knows What’s Causing Autism
Steve Silberman is Wrong About Autism: He Owes Parents an Apology

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I was invited to speak at the Bioregulatory Medicine Institute’s annual conference, which took place last week.

On an, um, cruise ship.

In the middle of the Atlantic.

The other presenters included medical doctors, naturopathic doctors, chiropractors, and other health care practitioners.

Among the themes running through these presentations: the problem with cumulative exposure to toxic chemicals; the importance of supporting the body’s natural detoxification pathways; and how to avoid toxins for yourself, your family, and even your pets.

Several speakers, including me, talked about how a growing body of scientific literature shows that a class of synthetic compounds, known as forever chemicals, are among the worst toxins for human health.

Now a new study from researchers in China, based on data collected in the United States, shows they’re even worse than we think.

What are forever chemicals, anyway?

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are synthetic compounds in a wide range of consumer products and industrial products.

They’re also found in drinking water in the United States. Bottoms up.

They’re collectively called forever chemicals because they break down so slowly—in the environment, in our human bodies, and even in the fat of the seals, whales, and walruses living relatively isolated lives in the Arctic.

The sad and worrisome fact is that forever chemicals can bio-persist in the environment for decades, even centuries, and they can also be found in the human body years, even decades, after exposure.

Examples of forever chemicals include:

Band-Aids
Conventional dental floss
No-stick cooking pans
Waterproof synthetic clothing
Stain-resistant fabrics
Firefighting foam

As anyone who’s ever used a non-stick Teflon pan already knows, forever chemicals are impressive compounds. They make useful products that effectively repel water, heat, and oil, making them more resistant to damage and longer lasting.

The new research

Now, new evidence from scientists in China, published in the journal Frontiers in Aging just last month, strongly suggests that forever chemicals are also linked to accelerated aging.

I’ll skip to the take-aways, for anyone who just wants the CliffNotes:

• This new study shows that forever chemicals accelerate aging at the cellular level.

• Higher levels of some of these forever chemicals, also known as PFAS, are linked to years of faster aging, particularly in men.

• This new study adds to a growing body of scientific evidence that confirms concerns we’ve been sharing for years about toxic chemicals, specifically PFAS, contributing to both short and long-term health problems.

The study, “Emerging PFAS contaminants PFNA and PFSA amplify epigenetic aging: sex- and age-stratified risks in an aging population,” examined biological age via markers found on the participants’ DNA. These markers are called telomeres, and they measure aging on the cellular level.

As Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel explain in their excellent 2017 book, The Telomere Effect, telomeres are microscopic caps at the end of our DNA.

Think of them like the plastic tips on shoelaces. They protect our genetic material during cell division.

During aging, telomeres naturally shorten, eventually reaching a point where cells can no longer divide properly, contributing to the aging process and age-related diseases.

This study concentrated on two less studied forever chemicals: perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA) and perfluorosulfonic acids (PFSA).

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Tick Tock: forever chemicals fast forward our epigenetic clocks

Xiangwei Li, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and lead author on the study, and his team of scientists, analyzed data from 326 participants (51 percent were men; 48 percent women).

The data analyzed was from participants who were 50 years old and older. Their data had already been collected during a previous study, the 1999-2000 health and nutrition survey.

The Chinese researchers tested blood samples for the presence of different forever chemicals, including PFNA and PFSA.

Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, the forever chemicals appeared in measurable amounts in over 95 percent of the blood samples analyzed.

The team then estimated participants’ biological age based on chemical markers attached to DNA, measuring DNA methylation capacity, which provides an accurate signal for how fast the body is aging at the biochemical and molecular level.

Using these clocks, the Chinese researchers calculated whether a person’s biological age appeared older or younger than their actual years and tested whether higher PFAS levels were associated with faster biological aging.

The results?

Higher levels of these two lesser known and studied forever chemicals were linked to two to four years of accelerated aging.

The link was most pronounced in men between the ages of 50 to 64.

“…PFAS exposure may be linked to molecular changes related to aging and long-term health risk,” Xiangwei Li told a journalist from Healthline.

This study adds to a growing body of research that has linked forever chemicals to negative health outcomes, including high cholesterol, obesity, and an increased risk of certain cancers.

Why did it appear that the forever chemicals had the worst effects on middle-aged men?

Though the answer to this question was out of the scope of the study, the lead researcher told a journalist that men may be more vulnerable to the negative health effects of forever chemicals than women due to sex-linked differences in body composition, hormones, and metabolism.

Is it possible to rid your life forever of forever chemicals?

“We’re living on a poisoned planet,” Dr. James Odell, Executive Director of the Bioregulatory Medicine Institute (BRMI), said to me while he was preparing a blood sample to scrutinize under his microscope.

It’s true.

Even families that do everything in their power to rid their lives of plastic, to avoid forever chemicals, and to walk more gently in this world, almost all of us have measurable levels of forever chemicals and other toxicants circulating in our blood.

So what’s a health-minded eco-minded human to do to avoid cancer-causing endocrine-disrupting life-extinguishing forever chemicals?

1. Do install a water purification system that filters out forever chemicals for your drinking water and bath water. Reverse osmosis and granular activated carbon filter systems may work best. Be aware, however, that if you aggressively filter your water you may need to supplement your diet with the beneficial trace minerals that the body needs but that are also being filtered out.

2. Don’t ever use a Teflon or non-stick pan again. Every time you scratch a non-stick pan, you get flakes of forever chemicals in your food. Delicious. Not. Caste iron, glass, and stainless-steel cookware are better options. Right now, this second, throw every plastic cooking utensil in your kitchen into the trash. Heating plastic of any kind is never a good idea, as the heating process results in toxic chemicals leeching into your food. Replace with wood, bamboo, and stainless steel.

3. Don’t floss your teeth with conventional dental floss. That lovely glide you get between your teeth? It comes to you courtesy of forever chemicals. Use natural waxed dental floss or a water pic to clean between your teeth instead.

4. Do cook at home and bring your own glass take-out containers with you if you are eating out. There are forever chemicals in food wrappers and take-out containers.

5. Don’t use conventional cleaning products. Though it’s mostly industrial cleaning products that contain the most forever chemicals (and other toxic ingredients), upholstery cleaners and spray-on water repellants, including popular brands like Scotchgard, also can contain these chemicals. The least toxic alternative is to make your own beauty and cleaning products. My husband has uses these simple, easy, cost-effective recipes for DIY laundry detergent and DIY kitchen spray.

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No, It’s Not Click Bait. Yes, There **IS** Glyphosate in Vaccines

About the author:

Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning health and science journalist. The author/editor of eight books, she has appeared live on prime-time television in France, taught post-colonial literature to non-traditional students in inner-city Atlanta, and worked on the literacy component of a child survival campaign in West Africa. Her articles have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and on the cover of Smithsonian magazine. Support independent journalism and medical freedom by becoming a subscriber to Vibrant Life.

When I was little, I wanted a pet. Anything furry with legs. But my mom was allergic to cats and my dad was afraid of dogs.

No fur friends for me.

Instead, we had a tropical fishtank for awhile, which grew cloudy from algae and neglect.

And an iguana named Izzy.

Who mysteriously disappeared one day. I’m pretty sure my dad was afraid to tell me that Izzy died.

I was ten when my parents divorced. In junior high school, my dad started dating a woman who’d rescued a dog from the streets of Italy. Cindy had named her dog “Street.”

Street was an affectionate, terrified, tiny thing who cowered when my father’s friends came over to play poker.

She was afraid of men, especially tall ones.

When Street died, Cindy got a Jack Russel Terrier. She was living at our house by then, and she let me name the dog.

I chose Tosh, after the reggae artist. I felt very clever. Tosh’s name was something of a pun: “Tâche” in French means “spot” and Tosh was a small white dog with black spots.

Cindy and my dad broke up. She moved out. I never saw Tosh again. I missed them both. But Tosh was never really my dog.

We didn’t get a dog when the kids were little

When we first met, the man I would eventually marry and I spent countless hours talking about breeds of dogs, the benefits of dogs, and the best ways to care for dogs.

But three years later, when we started a family, it felt like too much.

We both had allergies.

Money was tight.

Time was tight.

Besides, our landlord didn’t allow pets.

For me the transition from being a Type A highly motivated graduate student at Emory University to a breastfeeding, baby-wearing, take-life-more-slowly, you-are-not-defined-by-your-accomplishments 29-year-old mom was really hard.

It was all I could do to juggle finishing my doctoral thesis—which I submitted two days after our oldest daughter was born—breastfeed the baby, and prepare the classes I was slated to teach in the fall.

Getting a dog was the farthest thing from my mind.

It always felt like too much.

Who would walk the dog? Who would feed the dog? Who would pay for the dog’s food and other necessities? We struggled with the kids to do their chores. Our house was never as clean or tidy as I wanted it to be. And I felt overwhelmed by so many responsibilities already.

Still, I started a Pinterest board about making homemade dog food and natural pet health.

I read Marley and Me and Pack of Two and The Art of Racing in the Rain and I loved every word in the sections about Pearl, the German short-haired pointer, in Robert Parker’s Spencer novels.

I was even hired to write articles about dogs as doulas and horse-assisted outdoor birth and I researched the pediatric health benefits of having pets for the book Dr. Paul Thomas and I co-wrote together.

Dr. Paul is a cat person.

I was still pet-less.

But we still highlighted the health benefits of cohabitating with canines in our book.

Then I got cancer … and Serenity

Three of our four were already grown by the time the dog I’d been waiting for finally arrived. The OGs are quick to point out that their begging and pleading for a family dog fell on deaf ears when they were little and everyone in the family considers Serenity to be “my” dog and mine alone.

Serenity tends to agree. She’s lying at my feet as I write this and she does not like to let me out of her sight. When I come back from being away—whether for a few hours or a few days—she is beside herself with happiness. Her whole body wags and quivers, she covers me in wet doggy kisses, and she has been known to jump on my head in her joy.

I initially planned to have Serenity trained as a service dog. Technically a mutt (she’s half poodle from both sides, a quarter golden retriever, and a quarter King Charles Cavalier), Serenity came to me from a mom of five in Utah whose 40-something husband died unexpectedly from a side effect of a heart medication.

Nicole’s youngest wasn’t even a year old when her husband died and she—the baby—was having some very difficult health problems. On top of all of that, their beloved family dog had recently passed away.

Though everyone in her extended family was vociferously against her, Nicole knew she and her children needed a new dog to help her family heal. That dog, a certified golden doodle (if such a thing exists), is Serenity’s mom.

Millie, who is smart, affectionate, fun-loving, and patient, was a balm to the Gobles’ wounded souls and her puppies, including Serenity, are wonderful, kind, patient creatures.

Still. I thought I was getting a golden doodle cavapoo support dog. I didn’t realize we were signing up for a sock stealer, couch hog, picky eater (I will tell you about Serenity and her weird way of eating another time), energizer bunny (she’s a calm dog but she can be frisky as fuck Fido and once she starts to play, she NEVER wants to stop), and a living breathing teddy bear.

This dog is amazing.

Maybe everyone says that about their dog?

Her greatest joy in life (besides taking care of me) is chasing the wild turkeys that have become invasive in southern Oregon. She also loves to hunt squirrels and point at ground game. She keenly watches the hawks that careen overhead when my husband takes her to the range.

She’s fast and light on her feet but hops like a jack rabbit when she runs. It’s hard to describe and very fun to watch.

I try to write a gratitude list every day, based on the day of the month. So today I will write down 22 things I’m grateful for. Serenity—the dog—will be at the top of my list.

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About the author:
Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is a new dog owner, an award-winning science journalist, and the author/editor/co-author/co-editor of eight books, including the #1 Amazon bestseller, The Vaccine-Friendly Plan, co-authored with Paul Thomas, M.D. Support independent journalism by becoming a paid subscriber to Vibrant Life. Or make a one-time contribution by buying her a cup of organic coffee green juice via Venmo at @Jennifer-Margulis-2 (last 4 digits: “1256”).

It snowed yesterday for this first time this winter. Soft puffy white snow falling softly, softly falling all night and then most of the day. Roads icy, classes cancelled, offices closed.

We had to call the gas company to light the furnace. Avista said they’d come between 8:00 a.m. and noon. And that they’d call first. But if we didn’t answer the phone, the appointment would be automatically canceled.

Afraid I’d miss the call, I kept my phone ringer turned on all morning, something I rarely do.

Phone, dear, must thou make me so anxious?

Every time my phone dinged, I felt a spike of adrenaline course through my body.

I could feel the stress making my chest tighten.

I wasn’t consciously worrying about the furnace, wondering how to find the energy to dig the snowbound car out (clearing cancer leaves you exhausted in a way that I hope no one reading this ever has to experience), or fretting that I’d inadvertently miss the call.

But each time a beep erupted from the phone in my pocket, it interrupted my thoughts and our walk.

The phone was talking to me: telling me to be anxious.

That’s how it felt anyway.

It feels pretty much impossible not to have a smartphone. They’re as ubiquitous as chicken tenders these days. To wit: I stopped to chat with a homeless Vietnam vet who was in a wheelchair holding a cardboard sign at the supermarket. He has a smartphone too.

Phone, darling, our relationship has got to change

Still, I’m ready—more than ready—to break up with my phone.

That’s the subject of the book I’m reading now. (Yes, I’m listening to it. And yes, I am listening to it ON MY PHONE.)

It’s called How to Break Up With Your Phone.

The book is divided into three parts: The Wake Up, The Break Up, and The Make Up.

In it, health and science journalist Catherine Price highlights how and why smartphones—and other mobile internet-connected devices—are making us disconnected, depressed, anxious, sleepless, and lonely.

It’s a good book.

An inspiring book.

A friendly book that celebrates in real life relationships, having as much off-screen fun as possible, and showing up for your life, not just your screens.

Though I don’t have any app notifications on my phone and I don’t usually keep the ringer on, I’ve felt for a long time that I have been spending way, way, waaaay (did I mention waaay?) too much time on my phone.

One phone-free day per week

So, as I mentioned in my last post, before I even started reading Price’s book, I had already instituted a weekly weekend phone fast.

Having a phone-free day is also part of Price’s plan.

#GreatMinds

Knowing something is one thing. Actually changing a habit or conquering an addiction is another. The weekly phone fast was really hard for me to do at first.

==> Related article: Living a Flat Life on a High-Resolution Screen <==

Phone, snookums, how I miss you when you’re gone

Like a smoker addicted to cigarettes, I kept thinking about the phone, looking at the drawer where I left it, and craving it.

But now that I’m used to phone fasting, which I am doing from Friday night until Sunday morning, I find myself looking forward to getting to spend an entire day—and two bedtimes—without my phone.

I look forward to it so much that I am starting to think that not using my phone on Saturdays may be one of the best thing I’ve done in years.

And I’m wondering if it would be possible for me to fast two days a week instead of one.

Last weekend something wonderful and unexpected happened.

I’d forgotten to remind a friend that I wouldn’t be available by phone. She showed up at my house—her blue eyes sparkling and her face in a frown.

“I’ve been trying to reach you!” she huffed, half smiling, as she strode towards a living room chair and flopping herself down.

I was so glad to see her. At the door. At my house. Coming to see me.

Remember when we all used to do that? Show up for each other? In real life? Without texting first? When there was no voice texting, snap chatting, instagraming?

Remember when we used to live our lives instead of performing them?

Phone, my love bug, I’m tired of all the posturing

Read more

When the kids were little, we always had a family journal: an oversized blank book for the whole family to write and draw in.

We’d asks friends, relatives, and visitors to add share their thoughts in our family journal; trace the kids’ hands and write their favorite color, food, activities, and more inside the handprint; glue in photographs and ticket stubs; add scribbles.

Towards the end of every December, I’d bring the journal to the dinner table and invite everyone in the family to talk about their goals, hopes, and dreams for the new year. Then we would write each person’s resolutions in our family journal.

(My best ever New Year’s resolution was when I resolved to get more rejections. You can read more about that here.)

It’s been several years since we finished the last family journal and—perhaps because three of the four kids are out of the house now—we never started a new one.

Even though I believe sitting together to eat a delicious, organic, seasonal home-cooked meal, without any electronics on hand, is really important, these days it’s hard to get our teen to even join us at the dinner table.

So I made my New Year’s resolutions by myself, well after the start of 2026.

Yes, I know it’s the middle of February.

I’ve been on the slow train lately. Having stage four metastatic melanoma can do that to a girl. I do not recommend you try it. Ever. Cancer is a horrible disease.

There’s an expression in the language spoken in many countries in West Africa, Hausa: sannu sannu bata hana zuwa, which loosely translates into “slowly, slowly doesn’t mean you won’t arrive.”

To wit: I’ve been s-l-o-w-l-y recovering from what was a much more brutal procedure than I’d expected to liquify the lesions in my liver. Eighteen days post-op the stabbing pain beneath my right ribcage is finally lessening.

A month and a half into the new year seems like a good time to share my resolutions.

I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours.

Ready? Set? Go.

My 2026 New Year’s resolutions

#1: Have a phone-free day 1 x week

I’m doing a phone fast starting Friday at sundown and ending Sunday mid morning. I plan to do this at least 52 times this year. This resolution is going so well I may implement a second phone-free day per week.

#2: Have 26 new experiences in 2026

#3: Do 26 kind things for other people

#4: Write 26 old-fashioned snail mail letters

#5: Purge 26 items (4 x this year)

Making space feels so good—out with the old, in with the new and all that—that I’ve already done this 3 times this year.

#6: FINISH the three nonfiction books I have in the hopper

…and talk to my agent about moving forward, and have a plan for each about getting them published.

#7: Make art (1 x week plus classes, see #2)

#8: Tithe $26 or $260 to people and charities that need my help and support (26 x this year)

#9: Go on 26 new-to-me walks/hikes in 2026

#10: Find the right sire for the sweetest, smartest, kindest, most intuitive and affectionate medical dog on the planet

… so she can have one litter of puppies and fulfill her destiny to be the best mama on the planet as well as being the best dog.

#11: Get 26 new paid subscribers to Vibrant Life in 2026

Want to help me with this one?! A paid subscription costs $8 a month or $80 a year. I don’t like paywalling posts—I’d like all the content to be free to everyone, thank you very much—but this channel is my main source of income right now and the way I support our family. The first five new subscribers from this post will get a free autographed copy of one of my books (you can read more about these three via these Amazon referred links: Your Baby, Your Way; The Vaccine-Friendly Plan; or The Addiction Spectrum) or a free autographed copy of Dr. Paul’s Vax Facts, along with all the perks a paid subscription brings. (United States addresses only. Sorry about that but postage overseas is prohibitively expensive.)

Subscribe now

Your turn?!

I’d (we’d) love to hear about your New Year’s resolutions, hopes, dreams, goals, thoughts about this post, or anything else you’d like to share ❤️☀️🌷🙏

Leave a comment

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Love,

Jennifer

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“The problem lies with all vaccines”

by Richard Moskowitz, M.D.**
Special to Vibrant Life

I practiced as a family physician for 53 years before retiring in 2020.

Most of what I’ve learned accumulated from my experience with individual patients and their families. I learned as much from my patients as they learned from me.

My concern about vaccines began in the 1980s.

I started to see a definite increase in vaccine injury among the children in my practice, though I couldn’t definitively link any particular vaccine to a specific health issue it regularly caused.

As time went on, I noticed kids were also responding to their shots nonspecifically, by developing a more intense or protracted version of chronic diseases they were already suffering from.

This pattern was readily observable with chronic ear infections, which were ubiquitous back then; but eventually it showed itself with other common ailments as well: asthma, allergies, eczema, ADHD, autism, and learning disabilities.

What I saw was irrefutable, even though I couldn’t “prove” it: the more vaccines a child was given, the more acutely the child suffered from a whole range of chronic diseases encountered in pediatric practice.

Even more confusing was the fact that chronic diseases can exist silently as well as overtly, and can wax and wane unpredictably. To detect adverse reactions I had to track the chronic symptoms as well, noticing children who were still clearly ill despite being successfully treated with the usual drugs.

Eventually I saw that children who recovered to the point of being well and essentially symptom-free for several months would often relapse dramatically within a week or two after the next vaccine, whatever it was, leaving no doubt as to the cause.

Vaccine injury the rule, not the exception

Over the years I saw many, many such children exhibiting the same pattern, enough to qualify as the rule, not just the exception.

With or without treatment, those who recovered to the point of enjoying excellent health for a period of months or even longer would consistently relapse in a big way within a week or two of their next vaccination, whatever it was, and no matter which disease they suffered from.

One unforgettable example was a girl plagued by bedwetting and severe OCD in elementary school who recovered with homeopathic treatment and remained in splendid health for more than ten years. Then the college of her choice required an MMR booster for admission. Within a week of receiving the booster, her old condition came roaring back.

A mechanism inadvertently built into the design of vaccines

This pattern continued to hold true over the thirty years that I remained in practice after that.

It confirmed my suspicion that mandating more and more vaccines for whole populations, repeatedly throughout life, was contributing in a major way to the immense and increasing burden of chronic diseases that now dominates medical practice to the point that it’s come to be the norm.

This does not reflect hypersensitivity in rare individuals, but a mechanism inadvertently built into the design of all vaccines, as an important feature of how they work.

Causing the chronic diseases of our time

Gripped by the inescapable logic of that conclusion and unnerved by our obstinate refusal to even consider it, I began combing through the scientific literature and was surprised to find an impressive body of reputable, published research along much the same lines,¹ albeit largely ignored by most practicing physicians because it contradicts what we’ve been taught, sincerely believe, and seldom think to question.

One study showed that the infant mortality rate (IMR) of around thirty in developed countries was directly proportional to the number of vaccines administered in the first year of life, with the United States at the very top of both lists.^2.

Another involving two prominent HMOs found that the risk of hospitalizations and doctor visits was likewise substantially higher in children who were fully vaccinated according to the CDC schedule than in those receiving a smaller number,^3. while a third study indicated a risk that was proportional to the number of individual vaccine components given simultaneously at the same visit.^4.

All of these scientific studies corroborated the role of vaccines in exacerbating and very likely initiating the chronic diseases of our time, and even quantified it in proportion to the total number of individual vaccine components received.

Acute infections prime the body’s innate immune system

Even more profound were the findings of another large body of work, that individuals who came down with, and recovered from, common acute infectious diseases as children were much less likely to develop chronic autoimmune diseases and cancer later in life than those who had not.

One such study compared adults with several types of cancer to matched controls who were cancer-free, and found that those who had contracted measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, pertussis, and/or scarlet fever as children were 20% less likely to develop genital, prostate, GI, skin, or ENT cancer later in life if they had experienced any one of these infections. They were 60% less likely if they’d had 3 or 4 of them, and 76% less likely if more than 4.⁵

This research led me to revisit the basic immunology that vaccination has largely replaced, and which is accordingly being glossed over in med school.

Natural immunity is a basic element of good health

Contracting childhood illnesses is not bad in and of itself. Succumbing to them—dying or having lifelong post-illnesses symptoms—is what we are trying to avoid.

In particular, these acute illnesses with fever activate a coordinated ensemble of immune mechanisms that work together to remove the offending microorganism from the blood, an all-important prerequisite of specificimmunity that is unattainable by any one mechanism acting alone, and also nonspecifically prime the system to respond acutely, vigorously, and in concert to whatever other infections it may encounter in the future.

{Click here to read more about the benefits of having a fever}

The studies I read and have cited here provide convincing evidence that both components of natural immunity are fundamental determinants of optimal health for individuals, and also by extension their families, their communities, and ultimately all human life on the planet.

Such a gift merits rejoicing, yet most of us are completely unaware of it—or of its implicit reverse, that vaccinating everybody against everything takes more and more of that strength away.

I am not arguing that all vaccines are useless and should never be used. I am also not denying that deaths from acute infectious diseases have indeed been prevented to some extent by vaccinating against them, which is no small achievement.

The broad promise of natural immunity

But vaccination pales by comparison with the broad promise of natural immunity that almost all of us are born with. Our quest for narrowly targeted power over nature has blinded us to the big picture, leading us to undermine this incomparable health benefit that vaccination is designed to replace ... and has succeeded all too well in doing so.

Whatever good vaccines are capable of depends solely on the quantity of specific antibodies they can generate over long periods of time. This not only bypasses but dysregulates all the other mechanisms that antibody synthesis has evolved to collaborate with,⁶ interfering with the natural immunity that good health requires.

After 14 days or so, most vaccines will indeed elicit measurable titers of specific antibodies, enough to prevent the overt illness for some time.

But without the acute illness, there is no role for the other mechanisms, no priming of the collective immune response, no method or pathway for expelling the foreign organism or pathogenic fragment, and thus nothing of the splendid, all-purpose health benefit we’ve been discussing.

Worse, where an invading pathogen actually goes, how it persuades the immune system to continue producing antibodies against it for years or even decades, and the price we pay for vaccination’s partial, temporary, counterfeit immunity are questions that the public needs to have answered.

But if the industry knows the answers, they’re not telling us. Instead, we’re told not to ask, and can expect nothing but censorship, haughty contempt, or righteous indignation when we do.

Driving pathogens into our organs?

Consider this: for a vaccine recipient to achieve continuous antibody synthesis over long periods of time requires the ongoing physical presence of the foreign organism, its pathogenic fragment, or at least the information contained within the organs of the immune system—the blood and lymphatic system, the bone marrow, liver, spleen, thymus, and intestines—permanently. This is precisely what the whole immune mechanism seems to have evolved to prevent.

In other words, unlike most of the diseases it targets, vaccination is a chronic phenomenon.

It is dangerously misleading to claim that vaccines render us immune to acute diseases, when in fact they drive the pathogens deeper into our vital organs, force us to harbor them chronically if not permanently instead, and can only succeed by rendering us incapable of responding acutely to them, and possibly to other antigens as well.

In short, the mechanism by which vaccines prevent acute infections has the effect of setting up chronic dysfunctions.

This ill-considered tradeoff can help us understand why the harmful effects of vaccines are hidden within the mechanisms of chronic disease, and so are difficult to detect with the same methods we use to investigate the unwanted side effects of ordinary drugs.

Investigating individual vaccines and specific diseases was frustrating and inconclusive long before Big Pharma began minimizing and concealing those risks in order to maximize their profit.

This allows the effect to snowball, because the problem lies with all vaccines, and with the aggregate risk of chronic disease in general, obscured by the mystery of whether and to what extent individuals will manifest chronic diseases over time.

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A call to do the science: it’s time to compare the total health picture of a large cohort of fully vaccinated and fully un-vaccinated children

If we could allow for these factors, the scientific investigation of vaccination harm becomes simple to design and carry out, so much so that we need to ask ourselves why our country, which professes its commitment to science, has never seen fit to conduct it.

It would require nothing more complicated than comparing the total health picture of two very large subpopulations of roughly equal size: one fully vaccinated according to the recommended CDC schedule, and the other not vaccinated at all.

The simplest way to measure that would be to calculate the “all-cause morbidity and mortality,” the rate of death and incidence of serious illness in both groups over a period of years or even decades, to encompass the chronic dimension.

A preliminary version measuring only the death rate would be even easier to carry out and almost as instructive.

What makes the study I propose so compelling is the strong likelihood that the evidence it provides will be accepted as decisive if not life-changing by almost everyone, however it turns out.

For, if the vaccinated group proves to be healthier than the unvaccinated, or even roughly comparable to them, then the nay-sayers like me will need to pipe down, which would surely be a relief to all.

But if the unvaccinated prove to be substantially healthier, as I’d be willing to bet, then we’ll see vaccines in a very different way.

To begin with, they would no longer be mandatory; the manufacturers should no longer have free rein to fund, control, and profit from the CDC, the NIH, and the research they conduct; and they should once more be held liable for the deaths and crippling injuries that they cause, just like any other industry.

The main difficulty will be finding someone reputable to run the study who is totally independent of all of these power centers.

Until then, I hope that all childhood and adult vaccines will simply be made optional.

They should be readily available to all those who want them, after consultation with their physician.

As importantly, the public should be invited and even encouraged to discuss and debate the safety, efficacy, and necessity of each and every vaccine.

Leave a comment

Related posts:

Autopsy confirms Maine baby died from vaccines
They said this vaccine would protect us from genital cancer. They lied
Yes, vaccines cause autism. And, yes, the government knows they do

**Editor’s note: We’re delighted to be publishing this article by Dr. Richard Moskowitz M.D., on Vibrant Life. Issues related to vaccine mechanics and safety are notoriously complicated and this version of Dr. Moskowitz’s essay has been edited for length and clarity, simplified from his longer version in order to reach a broader audience.

About the author:

Richard Moskowitz earned a B.A. in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1959. He studied medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree in 1963. A prolific writer and beloved family physician, he is an expert in homeopathy and the author of several books.

References:

1. Richard Moskowitz, M. D., Vaccines: a Reappraisal, Skyhorse, 2017, pp. 147-180.

2. Miller, N., and Goldman, G., “Infant Mortality Rates Regressed against the Number of Vaccine Doses Routinely Given,” Human Experimental Toxicology 30: 1420, 2011.

3. Glanz, J., et al., “A Population-Based Cohort Study of Under-Vaccination in 8 Managed-Care Organizations across the United States,” JAMA Pediatrics 167: 284, 2013.

4. Goldman and Miller, “Relative Trends in Hospitalizations and Mortality among Infants by the Number of Vaccine Doses and Age, Based on the VAERS Reporting System, 1990-2010,” Human Experimental Toxicology 31:1012, 2012.

5. Albonico, H., et al., “Febrile Infectious Childhood Diseases in the History of Cancer Patients and Matched Controls,” Medical Hypotheses 51: 315, 1998.

6. Professors Lucija Tomljenovic and Chris Shaw, “Aluminum Vaccine Adjuvants: Are They Safe?” Current Medicinal Chemistry 18: 2630, 2011.

Exactly a week ago today, I was under general anesthesia getting my liver zapped with sound waves.

I sent an email to y’all about it last Thursday, the day after the procedure.

I typed it on my phone with my thumbs, doped up on anti-nausea medicine and painkillers.

But now I kinda sorta, uh, can’t find the email on the list on my Substack’s homepage.

I was sure it was there.

But now it’s not.

We could blame my bad eyesight.

Except I don’t think it’s actually there and I don’t know how to make it auto-populate and I don’t want to annoy the beeswax out of all of your ears by sending it again to your inboxes (as you can all see, I am a techno-genius).

In any case, in case you missed it, I did manage to find a link, which is here. Don’t ask me how there can be a link but no link. Fine, ask me.

You: Why is there a link but no link?

Me: I don’t {expletive deleted} know.

Okay, none of that was very funny.

I’ve pretty much felt like I was run over by a truck for the past seven days. Or punched in the guts. By a gang of thugs. Hourly.

Hilarious, right? Fun, too.

Equally fun has been the stabbing pain in my liver with every footfall when I take Serenity (the dog if not the emotion) for a walks.

So I’ve been walking s-l-o-w-l-y.

To be honest, I haven’t really been going for walks as much as goings for stumbles.

Today I put a toe back into the Land of the Living.

“Welcome back to the Land of the Living,” my now 88-year-old dad used to say after we kids recovered from an illness. I’m not really there yet but my right big toe is.

And that toe was on the Robert Scott Bell Show this afternoon. Microbiologist Brian Hooker, Ph.D., a colleague, autism dad, and fearless freedom fighter, was interviewed in the first hour. I was on the show in the second hour.

To talk about … vaginas, mismanaged hypothyroidism, the other V-word that’s not vagina

Italy!

More specifically, the writing retreat I’ll be leading in Tuscany, hosted by an Italian-American start-up called Italian Life. («== Do you think they stole the name from my channel? Hmmm.)

The Italian Life website is live now.

The retreat is officially happening.

And … there are two slots left.

Or maybe one?

Not sure.

Blame it on the post-op brain fog?

==» Watch the Robert Scott Bell Show to find out more. «==

Read these three (3)—count ’em—three (3) Substacks below about Italy to find out more (you can scroll on past or you can click the purple “read full story” if you want to read them):

Thank you to RSB for having me on.

Thank you to Brian Hooker for being a tireless champion for families with autism, safe vaccines, and real science.

Thank you to Italian Life for putting this high-level writing retreat together.

Thank you to Dr. Kevin Burns for liquifying the lesions in my liver. (Say that five times fast, I dare you.)

Thank you to my son for taking good care of me in Hermiston, Oregon.

Thank you to every single one of you for the prayers, healing mojo, words of comfort, and myriad kindnesses for which I am so grateful.

And to the wanting-to-remain-anonymous incredibly generous donor who contributed to the retreat’s start-up costs.

And to the amazingly kind reader (who is also named Jennifer) who sent me a gift that embodies my life right now: a broken bowl mended with gold paint in the way of the Japanese art of Kintsugi.

I have no words. Only gratitude. And a lump in my throat, which was not caused by the breathing tube they threaded into my lungs (one of which they deflated…)

Doing my best to make Mary Oliver—and my dad—proud and to enjoy this one wild and precious life.

Enjoy it with me. In Tuscany?

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Love,

Jennifer (who has been broken into pieces and is doing her best to heal)

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?

By Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., and Suzanne Arms

Not long before she died, actress Betty White sang the praises of the pussy.

“Why do people say ‘grow some balls’?” White asked rhetorically. “Balls are weak. If you want to be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”

Indeed, the vagina is an astonishingly strong, versatile, and accomplished organ. We don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that the valorous vagina has superpowers.

It provides sexual pleasure to a woman, as well as a warm, wet, and welcoming environment for a penis.

To accommodate an infant’s head passing through, the vaginal canal stretches to the size of a large grapefruit. And, soon after the birth, it contracts and returns to the size of a pear.

In addition, the vagina provides a safe and healthy harbor for necessary beneficial bacterial that coat the baby’s body as it is born, seeding what will be a healthy immune system.

In America’s mercenary medical system, hospitals, private doctors and insurance companies profit off women’s fears and insecurities: weight loss drugs, used disproportionately by women, make the medical establishment billions of dollars a year.

Plastic surgeons buy second homes for cash with the money they rake in from performing those oh-so-popular tummy tucks, breast augmentations, and labia reconstructions known in the business as “Mommy makeovers.”

And don’t get us started on Botox.

Doctors downplay the vajayjay

Modern conventional medicine tends to negate the importance of a woman’s body, especially when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth.

Most U.S.-trained obstetricians are not taught about the benefits of a normal vaginal birth.

Few have ever been at a woman’s side throughout her labor.

And they are not trained in non-pharmaceutical labor aids, such as walking, rolling on an exercise ball, using a reboza, hydrotherapy, acupuncture, or even something as simple and effective as applying counterpressure to the lower back with tennis balls.

Given that midwives and doctors who support vaginal birth have the best birth outcomes around the world, why don’t we teach medical students and doctors about the importance of vaginal birth and the best ways to support normal, physiological, vaginal birth?

Minimizing the vagina to maximize profits

Downplaying the importance of the vajayjay, profiting off of women’s insecurities about their nether regions, and intervening unnecessarily during childbirth is also profit-driven.

The more interventions a woman is subjected to, whether she needs them or not, the more money the medical establishment and hospitals generate.

When birth unfolds as nature intends, a small human emerges into the world through the mother’s fully dilated cervix.

Her contractions, combined with the baby’s efforts, squeeze the baby down the vaginal canal and out through the vaginal opening.

Some babies are born vaginally in less than half an hour from mom’s first labor pang. Some take days to come Earthside.

There is very little financial reward when a woman gives birth naturally, especially when she does so in the comfort and privacy of her own home or in an independent free-standing birthing center.

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The un-necessarean

At the same time, there is a strong financial incentive to bypass the vagina and cut a baby out of her mother’s womb via the abdomen.

The most profitable intervention during birth is abdominal surgery. The average C-section birth costs twice as much as a vaginal birth.

We have known for over 30 years that the maximum cesarean section rate should be between 10 to 15 percent. Yet, in the U.S., the C-section rate is over 30 percent. And in many hospitals, it’s 50 percent or higher.

About 3.75 million babies are born in America each year, and some 1.2 million are born abdominally. Given optimal c-section rates, at least 562,500 of these cesarean births in America are unnecessary.

Surgical birth—which is done quickly and at the doctor’s convenience—is considered liability-free. That is, there is the perception in the current medical culture, confirmed by past litigation, that hospitals and doctorsare much less likely to be sued for a bad outcome with the mom or the baby if a Caesarean was done.

Surgical birth nets so much profit for hospitals that doctors with low C-section rates are often reprimanded behind closed doors, or even fired. American doctors are sometimes even given internal and highly confidential step-by-step instructions to perform cesareans even without a woman’s consent.

Snags with C-section births

Popular? Yes. Safe? No.

Major abdominal surgery for birth is much more dangerous for both the mother and her baby than normal, physiological, vaginal birth.

While vaginal birth confers many benefits, cesarean birth often results in both short and long-term health problems.

Risks for the mom include a greater chance of hemorrhage, infection, and uterine adhesions; both short and longer-term complications from the anesthesia; and the increased the risk of complications in subsequent pregnancies, to name just a few.

A woman is ten times more likely to die during a C-section birth than during a vaginal one.

For her baby, risks include breathing problems. Also, according to the National Center for Health Research, babies born via C-Section are significantly more likely to develop arthritis, asthma, Celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, and several other health issues than babies born vaginally.

Benefits of vaginal birth

At the same time, an un-interfered with vaginal birth confers many benefits: physical, psychological, and spiritual.

A successful vaginal birth, especially one where the pain is managed with psychological support and non-toxic remedies, empowers the new mom with a deep-rooted confidence in herself and trust in her body.

This sense of empowerment helps her feel confident about being a mom and loving toward her baby.

The baby also benefits from having been squeezed down the birth canal and emerging from the vagina. The process stimulates the nervous system, exposes the baby to beneficial bacteria that will colonize the gut, help with digestion, and strengthen the immune system, and prepares the lungs to breathe air.

A baby born in a loving and gentle way will enjoy a lifetime of health benefits. Kudos to birthing moms and their valorous vaginas, that muscular, mysterious, and amazing reproductive organ that provides women and their lovers with pleasure and gives babies such a good start in life.

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About the authors:

Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., a science writer, is the award-winning author of the book Your Baby, Your Way: Taking Charge of Your Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Parenting Decisions for a Happier, Healthier Family. Suzanne Arms is an internationally known birth activist and the author of the 1975 bestseller Immaculate Deception: A New Look at Women and Childbirth in America.

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As he explained when we talked on Zoom, J.P. spent nearly four years battling symptoms related to mismanaged hypothyroidism.

Hypothyroidism

Hypothyroidism is a condition where the thyroid—a butterfly-shaped gland at the front of the neck—doesn’t make enough thyroid hormone.

This medical issue is also called “underactive thyroid.”

In its early stages, hypothyroidism may not cause obvious symptoms.

However, it can become severe, leading to even more serious health problems, such as heart issues, extreme lethargy, and breathing problems if left untreated.

Tired, depressed, and apathetic

J.P.’s presenting symptoms included feeling constantly tired, depressed, and apathetic.

In J.P.’s case, brain fog became a part of his daily life.

His creative drive all but disappeared, his analytical reasoning dulled.

He started feeling tired in a bone-crushing way that sleep couldn’t fix.

Perplexed as to why the activities that had always been so automatic started taking him an incredible amount of effort, he knew he needed a definitive answer to what was wrong. He longed to be himself again.

But even though he’d had a thyroidectomy some years before and his presenting symptoms were a clear indication that the thyroid medicine he was on was not doing its job, no one was sure what to do. The doctors tried increasing the dosing and changing his thyroid medication to one that was more easily absorbed.

Nothing helped.

J.P. started doubting himself.

Though he felt terrible, maybe nothing was wrong?

Maybe being exhausted and foggy was just his new normal?

Since nothing was working, maybe the problem wasn’t fixable?

Elevated blood levels of TSH are a sign of hypothyroidism. J.P., a successful investor, had over 30 lab results spanning three years and nine months that documented elevated thyroid stimulating hormone. Yet his doctors kept telling him to “follow the standard morning protocol” despite the fact that it was not working.

The wrong time of day

The conventional treatment for hypothyroidism is usually a daily dose of an artificial thyroid hormone, the most common of which is called levothyroxine.

Every physician J.P. saw told him the same thing: levothyroxine first thing in the morning. On an empty stomach. Then wait 30 to 60 minutes before eating.

This was dogma, repeated in every prescribing guideline, every patient handout, every endocrinology textbook.

But J.P. had followed his doctors’ instructions perfectly, but these instructions left him chronically ill.

Exhausted and at a loss, J.P. realized he needed to figure out why his body wasn’t responding to the medication, even at increased doses.

Simply put, he was not getting well.

So started reading as much as he could in the scientific literature.

There had to be an answer somewhere.

He read papers on malabsorption. Among other things, he discovered that even separated by more than an hour from dosing, coffee interferes with thyroid hormone absorption.

He ordered his own duodenal biopsies looking for causes of malabsorption.

He went on special diets.

He fasted.

Then he started eating just one meal a day.

Absolutely nothing worked. He was wretched, depressed, and under-functioning.

Then, on a whim born of desperation, J.P. thought: maybe I should just try taking levothyroxine at bedtime.

One week after he changed from morning dosing to bedtime dosing, his TSH normalized.

For the first time in almost four years, he felt like himself again.

American doctors mismanaging thyroid medication administration?

J.P. believes that American doctors are catastrophically mismanaging thyroid medicine administration.

The American Thyroid Association’s dismisses the idea that bedtime dosing can be effective for some patients, dubbing it only a “weak recommendation” based on limited evidence.

Europe recommends bedtime dosing

At the same time, the European Thyroid Association (ETA), reviewing newer clinical evidence, has issued a “strong recommendation” for bedtime dosing.

In its most recent guidelines, issued in 2025, the ETA asserts that bedtime dosing is therapeutically equivalent to morning dosing.

While doing his own research, J.P. also discovered a landmark randomized double-blind study, conducted in 2010, that found significant benefits to bedtime dosing.

Yet the American Thyroid Association insists on a morning-only dosing protocol. In other words, some 30 million American patients are being told to follow a timing protocol that does not work.

The European Thyroid Association, on the other hand, recommends that hypothyroid patients choose the timing that is best for their own lifestyle.

Doubling down on ill-timed dosing

Though the evidence and guidelines have changed, American doctors continue telling patients the same thing they have been saying for decades.

J.P. told me that he feels that doctors are not giving patients options and are instead fundamentally rejecting a hypothyroid patient’s freedom to choose.

An unwillingness to offer bedtime dosing as an option, J.P. contends, is harming hundreds of thousands of people with hypothyroidism and unnecessarily perpetuating—even causing—related health problems.

Hypothyroid pregnant women and their unborn babies vulnerable to harm

Three of my acquaintances, that I know of, had total thyroidectomies as young adults to treat autoimmune disease. All three wanted biological children. None was able to carry a baby to term. Until I started talking to J.P., I thought their fertility issues had to do with their struggles with autoimmunity. Now I wonder if the miscarriages had more to do with medical mismanagement than with the autoimmune disease.

This isn’t just about tired middle-aged men who can’t get their doctors to listen. This dosing timing issue is also affecting pregnant women and their unborn babies.

The fetal brain depends entirely on maternal thyroid hormone from weeks 5-14 of gestation.

After week 14, the damage is irreversible.

A 2019 MRI study by Jansen showed this: maternal TSH affects brain structure only when measured at 8 weeks.

By 14 weeks, the association disappears.

This is the equivalent of the critical window for preventing neural tube defects by making sure a pregnant woman is eating foods rich in folate (leafy greens, black beans, cruciferous vegetables, nuts, and some fruits) and supplementing with methyl-folate. In both cases—to avoid neural tube defects in the fetus and hypothyroid-induced miscarriage or other health issues—there is a narrow biological window for prevention. Miss it, and the damage cannot be repaired, no matter how much intervention comes later.

Yet American guidelines for managing hypothyroidism during pregnancy recommend against early screeningbased on two major trials (CATS 2012, Casey 2017) that started treatment at 13-18 weeks. After the critical window for brain development has already closed.

The trials tested whether late treatment could rescue damage already done.

It could not.

So the American medical establishment concluded thyroid treatment in pregnancy doesn’t work.

In the meantime, a 1990 study by Mandel showed that 75 percent of treated hypothyroid women see their TSH spike as early as week 6 without dose adjustment.

Every pregnant woman is told to take prenatal vitamins, many of which contain iron and calcium.

Iron and calcium reduce levothyroxine absorption by 20-30 percent when taken within four hours.

FDA label for Synthroid (levothyroxine) warns about “iron supplements” and “calcium supplements.” It explicitly recommends that users “separate administration of these agents from levothyroxine by at least four hours.”

But the FDA’s instructions do not explicitly mention “prenatal vitamins” or that prenatal vitamins can directly interfere with thyroid medications.

This is a critical omission because pregnant women think of a stand-alone iron supplement as a separate pill, not an ingredient in their prescribed or over-the-counter prenatal vitamins.

So expectant moms take both in the mornings, the medicine is not absorbed, and the fetal brain suffers during the exact weeks when it is developing rapidly and most vulnerable to damage.

A 1999 study showed untreated maternal hypothyroidism causes a 7-point IQ deficit in children. The FDA knows this. It’s in their medical reviews written in 1999. They documented that inadequate treatment causes miscarriage and fetal harm. Yet their warnings about iron and calcium don’t mention prenatal vitamins.

It felt like someone washed the windows

J.P. told me that when he finally discovered that bedtime dosing worked for him, everything changed.

His TSH normalized.

His energy returned.

His brain fog lifted.

His sense of self came back.

A systems failure

But J.P.’s one person.

What about the hundreds of thousands of hypothyroid patients, including pregnant women, whose disease is being mismanaged?

These patients are being told to follow a dosing protocol that is demonstrably less effective, for the subclinical cohort, than what the European Thyroid Association recommends.

Among pregnant women, 2 to 5 percent have subclinical hypothyroidism. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), does not recommend universal screening.

If even a fraction of pregnancies were affected by delayed screening due to ACOG’s guidelines against universal screening, and if bedtime dosing could have prevented some of the preventable miscarriages and developmental delays, the scale of harm is staggering.

J.P. contends that this medical mismanagement is leading to the miscarriages, children born with preventable cognitive impairment, and women being told—like J.P. was—that the problems are all in their head, that their symptoms aren’t real, and that they just need to “reduce the stress in their lives.”

In other words, we’re not talking about one man’s three-year struggle. We’re talking about millions of pregnancies resulting in avoidable miscarriages and brain dysfunction in offspring.

A man on a mission

J.P. is no longer waiting for the system to fix itself.

He’s filing a federal lawsuit.

He’s alleging that certain authorities failed to update levothyroxine labels to include bedtime dosing as a viable alternative despite clinical evidence supporting its efficacy.

He’s arguing that this omission represents a labeling deficiency.

He’s building a case using rigorous analysis of competing hypotheses, systematically processing the clinical literature to demonstrate that the manufacturers had access to evidence they chose not to disclose. He’s not asking for permission from the system anymore. He’s forcing the system to answer.

If you’re a hypothyroid patient with a story or a pregnant woman whose thyroid dysfunction was mismanaged, J.P. would like to hear from you. Contact him at levolawsuit@proton.me.

Your story matters.

The evidence matters.

And it’s time the medical establishment caught up to what Europe already knows.

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Earlier this month the CDC announced it was reducing the recommended number of vaccines on America’s childhood vaccine schedule to make the schedule more in line with other countries—countries where children have better health outcomes than in our fair land.

Vaccine safety advocates celebrated in the streets.

Big business and pro-vaccine fanatics sobbed in their soup.

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Suing HHS and CDC

Now the medical establishment, the very people who will lose over a million dollars a year in their own private practices, is making a great big noisy public fuss over the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s decision to reduce the number of recommended vaccines.

Because, you know, if we reduce our children’s toxic burden and help them have healthier, happier childhoods, we’re all going to lose a lotta mu-la-lah die.

AAP, promoting obesity, harming our children, one Big Mac at a time

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is a trade organization made up of 67,000 pediatricians.

In 2024, this “non-profit” generated over $140 million in annual revenue, according to two financial watchdogs: ProPublica and Guidestar.

In a gross conflict of interests that the liberal media willfully ignores and the AAP deliberately obfuscates, the AAP receives a tremendous amount of money from the pharmaceutical industry, infant formula (aka artificial desiccated milk) manufacturers, and pharmacies like CVS.

No more money from Coca-Cola

The AAP used to take millions of dollars from companies like Mickey Ds and Coca-Cola.

’Cause, you know, we should encourage kids to eat fast food and drink soda as much as possible.

For their health—oh, um, wait a second.

Once the public wised up to how the AAP was promoting obesity and tooth decay and even using money from the Coke Foundation to fund research on children’s health, the AAP stopped accepting donations from Coca-Cola.

As far as I can tell, McDonald’s continues to fund the AAP.

“Egregious, reckless, and dangerous”

The plaintiffs suing U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) include:

Our dear, lovely, and never-financially-motivated friends at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), as well as the American College of Physicians (ACP), the American Public Health Association (APHA), and others.

They have alleged that the decision to have a gentler, more science-based vaccine schedule is the “most egregious, reckless, and dangerous of the actions Defendants have taken to date.”

Me, I’m terrified.

I know you are too.

After all, I wear a condom when I’m in the car by myself. So I won’t get pregnant while I’m driving.

I know you do too.

“A baseless attempt to litigate for the interests … of corporate donors”

The response from the HHS to the new updated complaints, as reported by The Hill:

This lawsuit is “a baseless attempt to litigate for the interests of the organization’s top corporate donors, which make virtually every vaccine across the CDC immunization schedules…

“AAP is angry that CDC eliminated corporate influence in vaccine recommendations by reconstituting the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices with leading physicians and public health experts and by accepting recommendations from a comprehensive scientific review of U.S. childhood immunization practices conducted under President Trump’s order to examine international best practices in peer developed countries.”

Best immune practices. Thorough scientific analysis. Reduced toxic burden. Less likelihood of neurological and immunological damage. Less likelihood of parents giving their children brain-damaging acetaminophen. Not as many trips to the pediatrician, the pediatric neurologist, the gastroenterologist, the rheumatologist, the dermatologist. Healthier, happier babies. Healthier, happier kids.

No wonder the mainstream medical establishment is running scared.

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About the author:

Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science journalist and book author. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and on the cover of Smithsonian magazine. Support independent journalism by asking your local library to order a copy of one of her books for all their patrons to read and enjoy, giving a one-time donation via Venmo (@Jennifer-Margulis-2, last 4 digits “1256”), and becoming a free or paid subscriber to her Substack channel, Vibrant Life.

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