THIS WEEK! Gut Health and Cancer: Exploring the Microbiome Connection On this week's show, IMA President and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Joseph Varon (@joevaron) will be joined by Dr. Sabine Hazan (@SabinehazanMD) for a fascinating discussion on the connection between gut health and cancer, emerging microbiome research, and what it could mean for cancer prevention and treatment. Join us Wednesday, October 14, at 7pm ET. Livestream right here on X!

Independent Doctors Applaud HHS for Opening NIH Clinic to Study and Treat Vaccine-Injured Patients IMA physicians, who have been raising alarms for over 5 years about mRNA COVID shot injuries, say patients are finally getting the long overdue attention they need. FULL STATEMENT: WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), a national coalition of independent physicians, researchers and clinicians, today applauded the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (@HHSGov) for opening a National Institutes of Health (@NIH) clinic dedicated to studying and treating patients who report health problems after vaccination. The IMA also praised HHS for simultaneously announcing a broader list of reforms to strengthen how the federal government documents and investigates vaccine injuries. The clinic, which opened Oct. 5 on the Bethesda, Maryland NIH campus, brings patient care and scientific investigation together under one roof. HHS also announced that, in order to bolster comprehensive vaccine injury reporting: 1. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposes that physicians be reimbursed for their time spent filing reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). 2. Electronic health records will now be required to capture vaccine-related adverse events, thereby bolstering the accuracy of vaccine injury reporting. 3. The CDC also announced its overhauling VAERS to simplify reporting and provide better analytics for vaccine researchers. “For years, vaccine injury was relegated to the backseat, VAERS data was regarded as unreliable, and doctors who viewed vaccine injury as a serious concern were marginalized,” said Dr. Joseph Varon (@joevaron), President and Chief Medical Officer of the IMA. “Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) and his team deserve real credit for prioritizing vaccine injury with the policy changes and tangible resources desperately needed to help those injured. And the fact is, without Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, these changes would not have happened.” During COVID, the IMA and others raised alarms about cardiac and other adverse events reported after the mRNA shots. In 2022, the IMA published a clinical treatment protocol for patients suffering lingering symptoms after COVID-19 vaccination, at a time when major public health refused to formally recognize the condition and no diagnostic code existed for it. Under Secretary Kennedy, however, federal regulators have turned their focus to these and other injuries, including requiring Pfizer (@pfizer) and Moderna (@moderna_tx) to strengthen the myocarditis and pericarditis warnings on their mRNA COVID-19 vaccine labels. “A physician's first duty is to ‘do no harm,’ yet the growing number of vaccine injuries, particularly during COVID years, has left tens of thousands of patients with life-altering conditions,” continued Dr. Varon. “The reforms announced yesterday are part of a long-overdue reckoning, and strong steps toward rebuilding the trust that was lost.” The IMA’s Journal of Independent Medicine (@JIndepMed) has become one of America’s leading forums where doctors can freely discuss the vaccine injuries they’re seeing on the frontlines and the treatment protocols that have the greatest success. The IMA was also named earlier this year an official advisor to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

Two Hundred Fifty Years of American Medicine: What We Built, What We Lost, and What Must Be Restored In the latest installment of IMA’s 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘵 250 𝘠𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 series, IMA President and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Joseph Varon (@joevaron) and IMA Senior Director of Communications & International Fellowship Program @LynneKristensen reflect on the triumphs, failures, and hard lessons of American medicine—and why the next 250 years should prioritize restoring trust, protecting clinical judgment, honoring informed consent, and putting patients back at the center of care. Read the full article, originally published in the Journal of Independent Medicine (@JIndepMed), below. 🔽

Don't miss next week's show, 'The Gut Microbiome and Cancer: Why it Matters,' with host Dr. @joevaron and special guest Dr. Sabine Hazan (@SabinehazanMD)!

Save the Date! IMA's 2027 Conference is taking place April 30-May 1, 2027 in Las Colinas, TX! geni.us/IMA-2027

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Dr. Joseph Varon: When Did Obesity Become a Drug Deficiency? Obesity has risen dramatically in just a few generations. So what changed? In his latest @brownstoneinst article, IMA President and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Joseph Varon (@joevaron) looks beyond the prescription pad—examining changes in our food, physical activity, sleep, environment, and society that may have helped drive the obesity epidemic. Drugs like GLP-1s may offer important benefits for some patients, but their success shouldn’t keep medicine from asking the bigger question: What changed to drive such a dramatic rise in obesity? Read the full article - link below. 🔽

Plague in Russia? After COVID, Americans Don't Know Whom to Believe, and That Should Alarm Everyone Independent physicians warn that public distrust of health authorities is now a public-health threat in its own right, and that it will not heal without real accountability. FULL STATEMENT: WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), a national coalition of independent physicians, researchers, and clinicians, said today that the public's reaction to reports of a suspected pneumonic plague outbreak in Siberia is a strong warning to Washington, D.C. that health institutions have yet to earn back the credibility and public trust they spent during COVID. That credibility will only come through real accountability for the COVID-era abuses. "When an alarm goes off and half the country assumes it's a con, the alarm system is broken," said IMA President and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Joseph Varon (@joevaron). "That’s a direct result of years of spin, the censorship of practicing frontline physicians, and the coercive mandates imposed on American families by a health bureaucracy far too close to the pharmaceutical industry. And, as we all know, time has vindicated the doctors of the Independent Medical Alliance and others who were silenced and threatened.” “So, now when Americans hear 'plague' and 'mRNA vaccine' in the same breath, their response is: ‘fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,’" concluded Dr. Varon. Russian authorities have placed nearly 200 people under medical observation after the death of a laboratory worker at a regional anti-plague research institute in the Irkutsk region. Russian health authorities have not confirmed that she contracted plague, and the @WhiteHouse and State Department (@StateDept) say they are monitoring the situation. Online, Americans are split between panic and contempt, neither reaction being helpful. At the same time, social media exploded with recirculated headlines about an Israeli-developed mRNA vaccine for pneumonic plague. That vaccine was tested in mice and announced more than a year ago. To many Americans, the pattern looked all too familiar. "Pneumonic plague deserves a serious response," Dr. Varon continued. "Here is what the public should know: plague is a bacterial infection, and when it is caught early, it is treatable with inexpensive, widely available antibiotics. Americans deserve that kind of straight talk, and they did not get it during COVID, when early treatment was dismissed, and the doctors who pursued it were punished.” “If this threat, or the next one, turns out to be real, we need health authorities people actually believe,” said Dr. Varon. “That will not happen until Congress and the Department of Justice (@dojphofficial) conduct genuine investigations and hold accountable those responsible for the COVID-era abuses. But simply issuing more promises and press releases won't restore that trust."

Published in the Journal of Independent Medicine: A New Review of Autism Risk Factors Dr. Peter McCullough (@P_McCulloughMD) and @NicHulscher joined host Dr. @joevaron on a recent IMA webinar to discuss the important findings of their paper, 'Determinants of Autism Spectrum Disorder,' published in the Journal of Independent Medicine (@JIndepMed). Watch the full discussion and read paper - links below. 🔽

After The BMJ Investigation, Congress Must Act Did industry capture help silence COVID shot safety warnings? The BMJ's findings demand an answer from lawmakers. FULL STATEMENT: WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), a national coalition of independent physicians, researchers and clinicians, today called on Congress to end the regulatory capture that may have contributed to the COVID vaccine safety failures documented by The BMJ (@bmj_latest). The BMJ found that CDC (@CDCgov) and @FDA officials were warned that the data mining tool they relied on to scan vaccine injury reports was blind to signals from the Pfizer (@pfizer) and Moderna (@moderna_tx) mRNA shots. Officials kept the tool and told the FDA scientist who raised the problem to back off. Then they assured the public there were no safety signals. Pfizer and Moderna had record years. Pfizer's Comirnaty brought in roughly $37 billion to $38 billion in each of 2021 and 2022. Moderna went from $803 million in revenue in 2020 to more than $18 billion in 2021, almost entirely from Spikevax. The CDC didn't run its second promised analysis until 2022. When it did, the analysis flagged myocarditis and other events as safety signals week after week, even as the CDC director publicly described the results as showing nothing unexpected. Throughout the rollout, the federal government acted as regulator, largest buyer, liability shield, and, with Moderna, development partner. Several senior officials who oversaw these products later took high-paying jobs in the pharmaceutical industry. "Congress needs to connect the dots and find out exactly where the pressure to overlook this data came from," said Dr. Joseph Varon (@joevaron), President and Chief Medical Officer of the Independent Medical Alliance. "Frontline doctors, me included, were speaking up about the injuries we were seeing from the COVID shot. They used flawed FDA and CDC data to shut us down." IMA is calling on Congress to enact five reforms. 1. Separate the functions. The FDA's biologics center authorized the mRNA shots and also controlled the safety analysis that could have raised questions about them. The CDC promoted vaccine uptake while co-running VAERS. Post-market vaccine safety should sit in an office that does not answer to the people responsible for vaccination rates, and whose findings cannot be overruled because they might fuel "rhetoric." 2. Slow the revolving door. Senior officials who personally handled authorization, labeling or safety-signal decisions for a class of products should be barred for a set number of years from taking a paycheck, consulting contract or board seat with any manufacturer of that class. The FDA should also publish an annual accounting of where its departing medical reviewers go. 3. Make safety analyses public from day one. Any emergency product that floods VAERS should automatically trigger at least two pre-specified data mining methods, including one designed to catch effects shared across a product class. Post weekly results to a public docket the same week they're produced. If a method is known to be insensitive, every official statement that cites it should say so. 4. Protect the scientist who brings bad news. Ana Szarfman was a career FDA officer. She was told to hold off, and when she persisted, to stop. Congress should give federal safety scientists who flag defects in active surveillance systems statutory protection, including a private right of action if they are removed from the work for speaking up. 5. Put practicing physicians in the room. Safety rules that affect every household shouldn't be written only by people who will never treat the 24-year-old with chest pain. Frontline doctors need a real seat at the table. "We're done accepting 'trust us' from agencies that kept a broken alarm running and then pointed to the silence," Varon said. "If they want the public's trust back, they can start by taking the fox out of the henhouse."

Moderna’s mRNA Flu Shot Under Scrutiny On this week's IMA show, host Dr. Joseph Varon (@joevaron) was joined by Dr. Peter McCullough (@P_McCulloughMD), Nicolas Hulscher (@NicHulscher), and Dr. John Catanzaro (@Docjohnc)—authors of a new paper published in the 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘦 (@JIndepMed)—for a discussion on their findings about Moderna’s new mRNA influenza vaccine and the questions they raise. Watch now.

Find the Journal of Independent Medicine: journalofindependentmedicine…

Hello, all! Welcome to another Wednesday weekly show with the IMA! Welcome to tonight's host, Dr. @joevaron!

The paper that is the topic of tonight’s discussion can be found here: journalofindependentmedicine…

Reanalysis Of FDA Clinical Data For Mflusiva (Mrna-1010): journalofindependentmedicine…