Rand Paul suspended from Youtube

[s0me0nesmind1]

“Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11th, where you claimed that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan?”


“Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you were referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function…. Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially, you do not know what you are talking about…. I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, Senator, because if you look at the viruses that were used in the experiments that were given in the annual reports that were published in the literature, it is molecularly impossible…. And you are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individual. I totally resent that. If anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you.”

lol did you do any research on this subject yourself, or just listen to Fauci and believe?

First lets take a step back on the history of this - the most obvious part being that Obama stopped allowing all gain of function research, after much controvery of the subject.

In light of controversial research on H5N1 viruses in 2012, the Obama administration in 2014 announced a pause of federally funded GOF research and asked a government advisory group to reevaluate federal GOF funding policies and put together recommendations to help officials make their decisions.

Then under Trump, it was covertly pushed back in courtesy of Fauci - arguably because the Trump administration was too stupid to know or care - and probably from a stance of "we will do anything Obama didn't do"


So that leads to the next question - what is Gain of Function research?

Gain-of-function research has gone on for years and involves experiments that take viruses, or other organisms, and alters their genetic make-up to gain a new ability. In viruses, this can mean making it more transmissible or perhaps more deadly.

The research is often intended to demonstrate how viruses could evolve in the near future, and give researchers something on which to test different medical treatments, like vaccines.

Okay, simple enough.

So that leads to the next question, WAS this gain of function research occurring at the Wuhan lab?

The NIH grant that funded the project said it would study “the risk of future coronavirus (CoV) emergence from wildlife using in-depth field investigations across the human-wildlife interface in China.” The grant description included this line: “Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice.”

“The research was — unequivocally — gain-of-function research,” Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University, a longtime critic of such research, told The Fact Checker. “The research met the definition for gain-of-function research of concern under the 2014 Pause.”

The answer is absolutely, yes.

 

[K1052]

The answer is absolutely, yes.

Why are you snipping the following part of this and not linking your source?

“The research was — unequivocally — gain-of-function research,” Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University, a longtime critic of such research, told The Fact Checker. “The research met the definition for gain-of-function research of concern under the 2014 Pause.”

(Our colleague Josh Rogin reported that this 2017 research article prompted U.S. diplomats and scientists to visit the WIV facility. Afterward, they sent a cable to Washington expressing concern about the safety standards there, intended as “a warning about a potential public-health crisis.”)

But Robert Kessler, a spokesman for the nongovernmental organization EcoHealth Alliance that NIH funded, said claims about funding gain-of-function research are based on a misunderstanding of the grant’s role in the research. He said EcoHealth provided WIV $133,000 a year, except for $66,000 in 2020 (when the grant was terminated by the Trump administration), for a total of about $600,000.


“The NIH has not funded gain-of-function work,” Kessler said in email exchanges. “EcoHealth Alliance was funded by the NIH to conduct study of coronavirus diversity in China. From that award, we subcontracted work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to help with sampling and lab capacity.” He said the citation in the paper was mainly the result of researchers’ desire to cite any possible research that contributed to the findings, with much of the funding coming from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. (Another funder listed was USAID’s Predict program, which helped collect animal viruses and also funded EcoHealth.)

“As described in the paper, all but two of the viruses cultured in the lab failed to even replicate,” he said. “None of them had been manipulated in order to increase their ability to spread, all the researchers did was insert S [spike] proteins in order to gauge their ability to infect human cells.”

Kessler added that “much of that work [described in the grant] wasn’t done because the grant was suspended. But GoF was never the goal here.” As he put it, “gain of function research is the specific process of altering human viruses in order to increase their ability (the titular gain of function) either to spread amongst populations, to infect people, or to cause more severe illness.”

In a lengthy statement to The Fact Checker, Baric — who signed the letter calling for a new investigation — also pushed back against Paul’s assertions at the hearing.

“The Baric laboratory has never investigated strategies to create super viruses,” he said. “Studies focused on understanding the cross-species transmission potential of bat coronaviruses like SHC014 have been reviewed by the NIH and by the UNC Institutional Biosafety Committee for potential of gain-of-function research and were deemed not to be gain of function.”

“We never introduced mutations into the SHC014 [horseshoe bat coronavirus] spike to enhance growth in human cells, though the work demonstrated that bat SARS-like viruses were intrinsically poised to emerge in the future,” he added. “These recombinant clones and viruses were never sent to China. Importantly, independent studies carried out by Italian scientists and others from around the world have confirmed that none of the bat SARS-like viruses studied at UNC were related to SARS-CoV-2, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...or-paul-dr-fauci-flap-over-wuhan-lab-funding/

 

[vi edit]

Regardless of *ANY* of that....

Rand Paul is a supposed Doctor that is supposed to "Do no harm" per the Hippocratic oath. Well peddling bullshit to falsify the impact of masks during a global pandemic is pretty far from "Do no harm".

Not that he's a real doctor and even cared about that. But you can't play both sides on this one.

 

[vi edit]

Rand Paul is quickly trying to overtake the lead of Andrew Wakefield as most shitty doctor ever.

Andrew Wakefield - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That fucker is half(maybe even a full 3/4) the reason we are where we are with antivaxxers.

 

[K1052]

Republicans think that flirting with anti-vaccine people and going full anti-mask is fertile political ground. Maybe for their base but not sure about everybody else. They simply don't care if it happens to kill or injure people. Entirely morally bankrupt.

 

[interchange]

Regardless of *ANY* of that....

Rand Paul is a supposed Doctor that is supposed to "Do no harm" per the Hippocratic oath. Well peddling bullshit to falsify the impact of masks during a global pandemic is pretty far from "Do no harm".

Not that he's a real doctor and even cared about that. But you can't play both sides on this one.

The Hippocratic oath is more of a historical reference than anything, and actually originally didn't contain the words or direct equivalent of "first, do no harm". We took some different oath (I don't remember what it was called) when I graduated med school, but it is of ceremonial purpose only. There ethical codes published by professional organizations (AMA for example) which are a bit more meaningful. The AMA poses a general framework with pillars (beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice) which I find much more useful to look at. If we were bound to never do any harm, then a physician could do nothing. It is justifiable, for instance, to knowingly hasten someone's illness if the benefit is relief from pain in a hospice patient.

All that said, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine that it is not ethically justifiable for anyone, much less a physician, to knowingly distribute false or intentionally misleading medical information.

 

[cytg111]

Democrats campaign for 2022 should be “Get assholes and conmen out of congress” make an interactive campaign website where you can click on all these R morons and get an easily readable dossier on all the depraved shit each and everyone have done.
Make flyers of each asshole with a ref to the page and drop em from the sky in the billions.

 

[vi edit]

The Hippocratic oath is more of a historical reference than anything, and actually originally didn't contain the words or direct equivalent of "first, do no harm". We took some different oath (I don't remember what it was called) when I graduated med school, but it is of ceremonial purpose only. There ethical codes published by professional organizations (AMA for example) which are a bit more meaningful. The AMA poses a general framework with pillars (beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice) which I find much more useful to look at. If we were bound to never do any harm, then a physician could do nothing. It is justifiable, for instance, to knowingly hasten someone's illness if the benefit is relief from pain in a hospice patient.

All that said, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine that it is not ethically justifiable for anyone, much less a physician, to knowingly distribute false or intentionally misleading medical information.

For sure. You can't exactly do open heart surgery without "harming" someone first. It's always been about the intent/ethics. Which is the problem with Rand. It's not done in good faith.

 

[soulcougher73]

Nailed it. As always.

 

[cytg111]

Yea. Of course Rand knows its nothing to do with free speech, but it fits into the woke cancel culture that they are betting the farm on to give them the house/senate 2022.
Why not give them what they want? Cancel their asses.

 

[woolfe9998]

For sure. You can't exactly do open heart surgery without "harming" someone first. It's always been about the intent/ethics. Which is the problem with Rand. It's not done in good faith.

I've always understood "do no harm" as meaning, do not leave the patient in worse condition than before you treated her due to something you have done to the patient.

 

[vi edit]

I've always understood "do no harm" as meaning, do not leave the patient in worse condition than before you treated her due to something you have done to the patient.

Yeah like interchange said if that was a hard and fast rule you could never intubate, do chest compressions, do an introsseous line, any sort of invasive procedure, and a million other things.

 

[woolfe9998]

Yeah like interchange said if that was a hard and fast rule you could never intubate, do chest compressions, do an introsseous line, any sort of invasive procedure, and a million other things.

Let me repeat what I said "do not leave the patient in worse condition than before you treated her...."

That means if you have to cut into someone to save that person's life, and they end up alive instead of dead because you cut into them, you haven't violated the oath. You and interchange are expressing a hyper-literal interpretation of "do no harm." An interpretation that AFAIK no one has ever subscribed to.

 

[ultimatebob]

Took me 15 seconds to find this video just by rationalizing that surely someone has done this in slow mo.

He is partly right, though... If you're wearing it like a chin diaper like your typical Rand Paul fan would, they really don't do anything.

 

[thilanliyan]

Nailed it. As always.

He should run for congress

 

[WelshBloke]

Let me repeat what I said "do not leave the patient in worse condition than before you treated her...."

That means if you have to cut into someone to save that person's life, and they end up alive instead of dead because you cut into them, you haven't violated the oath. You and interchange are expressing a hyper-literal interpretation of "do no harm." An interpretation that AFAIK no one has ever subscribed to.

Thing is that you don't know if cutting into them is going to end up with them alive or dead always.
Surgeons do their best but people aren't made of Lego and all those decisions are pretty fuzzy.

 

[woolfe9998]

Nailed it. As always.

That was one of Bo's best videos. Highly recommended.

LOL @ Paul who thinks youtube is abridging his Constitutional rights. "Congress shall make no law...." Instead, he, a member of that very body, wants to force private citizens to carry and amplify his own speech. Talk about an inversion of both law and reality.

 

[woolfe9998]

Thing is that you don't know if cutting into them is going to end up with them alive or dead always.
Surgeons do their best but people aren't made of Lego and all those decisions are pretty fuzzy.

Obviously the situation in actual medicine is too complex for such a simple ethical formulation. The Hypocratic oath is ancient and has been replaced by modern ethical guidelines which are for more extensive. "Do no harm" has an important meaning though. It means that whenever possible, the doctor should strive to not be the patient's problem. A doctor should treat, if she can, or not, if she can't, but always strive to not increase the patient's problem.

Since it's an ethical guideline, it carries inherent in it some sort of intent requirement. Intending to do harm, being reckless (e.g. performing surgery while drunk), or ordinary negligence (oops!), are different things ethically. Still another is performing a surgery where there is a range of possible outcomes, with the bad outcomes being less likely, but you get a bad outcome anyway, in spite of not making any mistakes.

 

[interchange]

I've always understood "do no harm" as meaning, do not leave the patient in worse condition than before you treated her due to something you have done to the patient.

You could maybe transform that to do not do something you predict to leave the patient in worse condition than before you treated them. But let's apply that to, say, someone with a thyroid nodule that on ultrasound is more likely benign than cancerous but meets criteria for a fine needle aspiration biopsy. Although that biopsy is not likely to cause much harm, apart from it's diagnostic value it doesn't provide any benefit either and definitely creates some degree of harm. Well, there's a greater than 50% chance that the patient is worse off because it is more likely than not benign. But then there's some subjective value in knowing it isn't, so how do we judge that?

Even that conflict is getting off easy. What about the person with an estimated 3 month survival from a painful cancer that wants more pain medicine despite you knowing that it is likely to produce harmful respiratory suppression. Well, in a hospice setting, it's often encouraged if a person is in pain and the opiates relieve the pain to keep pressing that button (if a person/family so desires) even when it is expected that last button push will cause death. Not quite euthanasia, but heading right for that boundary.

How about cosmetic surgery?

Anyway, they're not real exercises. It's just showing how complex and subjective these kinds of decisions can get so take it more as a guiding ideal rather than concrete rule.

 

[woolfe9998]

You could maybe transform that to do not do something you predict to leave the patient in worse condition than before you treated them. But let's apply that to, say, someone with a thyroid nodule that on ultrasound is more likely benign than cancerous but meets criteria for a fine needle aspiration biopsy. Although that biopsy is not likely to cause much harm, apart from it's diagnostic value it doesn't provide any benefit either and definitely creates some degree of harm. Well, there's a greater than 50% chance that the patient is worse off because it is more likely than not benign. But then there's some subjective value in knowing it isn't, so how do we judge that?

There's more than "subjective" value in knowing that it is. That's why you perform the biopsy. But you have to weigh variables first: the degree of harm likely to be caused by the needle aspiration versus the likelihood of discovering a treatable malignancy. It's also called a risk/benefit analysis. Doing that kind of analysis in good faith, then making a recommendation to your patient based on that analysis, strikes me as in no way violating the aspiration to "do no harm." Because you are recommending the best course of action, the one where the probabilities favor the patient, based on all currently known information.

Even that conflict is getting off easy. What about the person with an estimated 3 month survival from a painful cancer that wants more pain medicine despite you knowing that it is likely to produce harmful respiratory suppression. Well, in a hospice setting, it's often encouraged if a person is in pain and the opiates relieve the pain to keep pressing that button (if a person/family so desires) even when it is expected that last button push will cause death. Not quite euthanasia, but heading right for that boundary.

I see no problems with medical euthanasia when done at the patient's request. In my view, under certain circumstances, you may be "harming" the patient more to keep them alive.

How about cosmetic surgery?

Anyway, they're not real exercises. It's just showing how complex and subjective these kinds of decisions can get so take it more as a guiding ideal rather than concrete rule.

On that, we agree. "Do no harm" is aspirational. A doctor should be mindful that it is her duty to apply her best effort to not leave the patient in worse condition than they were before she intervened. But in the real world, the calculus can get complicated.

 

[manly]

“Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11th, where you claimed that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan?”


“Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you were referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function…. Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially, you do not know what you are talking about…. I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, Senator, because if you look at the viruses that were used in the experiments that were given in the annual reports that were published in the literature, it is molecularly impossible…. And you are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individual. I totally resent that. If anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you.”

In that exchange, Paul went even further. He nearly literally said Dr. Fauci was responsible for 4M COVID deaths. That's why Fauci went back at him so hard in the response you quoted. If there were more spines and ethics in the Senate, they would censure Rand Paul for that comment alone.

He is partly right, though... If you're wearing it like a chin diaper like your typical Rand Paul fan would, they really don't do anything.

I don't want to be misconstrued as a MAGAt, but on a very limited point, that might pass muster. Aren't single-layer cloth masks barely better than nothing? IIRC neck gaiters do nothing because they are thin, single-layer and stretched over the mouth. Don't get me wrong, there are good multi-layer cloth masks out there, but one needs to know what they're buying.

This isn't to absolve the total shitbag that Rand Paul is; and it's still somewhat bizarro to me how much of a lightning rod masks (and then vaccines) became as a result of MAGA politics.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I don't want to be misconstrued as a MAGAt, but on a very limited point, that might pass muster. Aren't single-layer cloth masks barely better than nothing? IIRC neck gaiters do nothing because they are thin, single-layer and stretched over the mouth. Don't get me wrong, there are good multi-layer cloth masks out there, but one needs to know what they're buying.

This isn't to absolve the total shitbag that Rand Paul is; and it's still somewhat bizarro to me how much of a lightning rod masks (and then vaccines) became as a result of MAGA politics.

Folks have already been fully indoctrinated. You could convince people to wear mouth condoms to combat the virus now regardless of what the actual facts are.

 

[WelshBloke]

I don't want to be misconstrued as a MAGAt, but on a very limited point, that might pass muster. Aren't single-layer cloth masks barely better than nothing? IIRC neck gaiters do nothing because they are thin, single-layer and stretched over the mouth. Don't get me wrong, there are good multi-layer cloth masks out there, but one needs to know what they're buying.

Even a crappy cloth mask stops you from projecting viral particles as far as you would do with no face covering.
This was the whole point of face coverings and keeping a bit of distance between people.

 

[hal2kilo]

Even a crappy cloth mask stops you from projecting viral particles as far as you would do with no face covering.
This was the whole point of face coverings and keeping a bit of distance between people.

I'm really not understanding people not understanding the concept of belts and suspenders. Theoretically, you only need one, but to be safe, why not both (masks and vaccine). Is your own breath that bad?

 

[fskimospy]

In that exchange, Paul went even further. He nearly literally said Dr. Fauci was responsible for 4M COVID deaths. That's why Fauci went back at him so hard in the response you quoted. If there were more spines and ethics in the Senate, they would censure Rand Paul for that comment alone.


I don't want to be misconstrued as a MAGAt, but on a very limited point, that might pass muster. Aren't single-layer cloth masks barely better than nothing? IIRC neck gaiters do nothing because they are thin, single-layer and stretched over the mouth. Don't get me wrong, there are good multi-layer cloth masks out there, but one needs to know what they're buying.

This isn't to absolve the total shitbag that Rand Paul is; and it's still somewhat bizarro to me how much of a lightning rod masks (and then vaccines) became as a result of MAGA politics.

Single layer cloth masks aren’t terribly effective, no, but research indicates they are better than nothing.