Given the great lies that Nick Hudson identifies*, it's important to understand how the evidence-based contributions from health experts can confront heavy resistance for challenging supposedly scientific guidelines.

* Nick spoke earlier about 'Hudson's Razor'- how false scientific propaganda can readily be identified in it featuring; (i) a global crisis, (ii) a need for a global solution to this threat, and (iii) being accompanied by strong censorship. His talk addressed the large scale scams of (a) statins, (b) the COVID-19 phenomenon, and (c) "man-made" climate change.

#2
As regards “Rewriting the rules" this talk’s three sections speaks to the many ways in which even the agency of eminent experts is not as free to shape public health policy, as they might hope, or even reasonably expect. This presentation’s insights emerge from a new research project aiming to develop a framework for the challenges that eminent experts negotiate whilst criticising dogmas. Hopefully, such research helps us better understand all the ways in which critics' autonomy is reduced. Particularly as they become vulnerable to strategic campaigns from powerful decision makers.

Here follows two cases from very different contexts: The first is for a frontline doctor in Mitchell’s Plain who was censored against sharing his successful COVID-19 treatment protocol. The second is for a US presidential health adviser whose evidence-based challenge to lockdowns, etc. became sidelined. Both cases suggest the high levels of resistance that experts face in attempting to “rewrite the rules” with their individual contributions. Even during a “public health emergency” that should necessitate health experts challenging each others' ideas to uncover the best scientific explanations!

In his practice just 30 kilometers away, Dr Rapiti was one of a few brave doctors who continued to see patients at the start of COVID. This was despite him being 72 years old then, placing him at higher risk. Early into COVID, both international and local authorities advised clinicians that there was no treatment for the “novel coronavirus”. In stark contrast, Dr Rapiti developed a successful, low-cost protocol for treating almost 4,000 patients. He’s drafting a 100+page book that shares Table 10 on the right. It illustrates this protocol's success across each COVID wave.

His practice believed that health authorities’ guidance disagreed with the foundational principle of medicine- to treat early and prevent deterioration. Its patients were treated with an aggressive, high-dose protocol of: Ivermectin, corticosteroids, anti-inflammatories, anticoagulants, and targeted nutritional supplementation. This protocol’s cost ranged from R 400 to 700 per patient (so under $30). Interestingly, his practice avoided COVID-19 testing as being a needless expense that often-produced false positives. He argued that to do testing was not cost-effective medicine, when many of his patients could barely afford food. Plus, the obvious diagnosis was pneumonia* requiring urgent treatment. 

Instead of learning from Dr Rapiti’s direct patient experience and early therapeutic successes, academic institutions and policy makers ignored it. Similarly, the video content that he shared on his successful protocol was censored by YouTube and Facebook. Plus, his interviews on BiZNews, and talks to the Good Hope Christian Church.

On Instagram and Medium, he was deplatformed entirely for "contravening community standards". He also experienced interference against speaking out for Ivermectin on Heart 104FM. Several doctors wrote to Radio 786, warning against featuring Dr Rapitis’ outspoken views on COVID-19 vaccines and the pandemic. His scheduled talk there was cancelled and he was never invited to speak on 786 again. Instead of radio audiences having access to open views in SA's "free society", the airwaves were dominated by official COVID narratives.

Dr Rapiti’s outreach on the US’ National Public Radio became an opportunity for a journalist to smear his practice’s use of Ivermectin… drawing on Professor Salim Abdool Karim’s critique of this “untested” drug... by then proven to work on over 700 of Robert's patients! Dr Rapiti was smeared in Google’s search results, and by fact checkers. In response to content takedowns by major social networks, his practice’s weekly Sunday communications shifted to Rumble, Substack, Telegram and Twitter (now X). These platforms did not remove content, such as his 300 videos showcasing successes.

Dr Rapiti continued with community outreach on Loving Life internet TV, Dr Tess Lawrie’s show, the Good Hope Christian Centre, and the station LN42. Many people then began contacting him regarding treatments for their post- mRNA vaccination injuries. Many were also affected by mental illness, which his practice was unusual in addressing via psychotherapy.

His practice continues to develop its holistic psychological approach- promoting the low-carb lifestyle, and prescribing a 14 hour digestive break. Learn more about this innovative work on Dr Rapiti's website, Substack, or by reading his book on addiction treatments.

During COVID, Robert gathered many testimonials, which included this pertinent example. His intervention supported a daughter in releasing her 71-year-old father from hospital where he was receiving a poor quality of care.

Benefiting from home-care and following Dr Rapiti’s protocol, the patient recovered within six weeks. He moved off oxygen and could shower, eat and move freely. Such success as evidenced in this testimonial would seem valuable information?

A public health response typically requires non-conventional thinkers to develop low-cost solutions for rapid treatment innovation. In Dr Rapiti’s chats with me, he raised an interesting point about “missing information” in COVID-19 being itself a source of misinformation. He flagged that it should be a point of concern that the learnings of many frontline doctors seemed ignored, despite their successes. At the same time, the voices of academic experts who did not treat patients were dominant in setting policy. He did not believe it was sound that his observational studies, and the empirical results from his practice, should face vilification and censorship.

Due to his public health expertise and prominent criticism of the poor scientific basis for lockdowns, Dr Atlas was approached to be a presidential health adviser. In visiting the White House to be screened for this role,  he became concerned at how simple PCR testing indicators still informed the government’s response after six months. By contrast, he believed that the five points in pink should have by then have been in use. He was also concerned that the COVID-19 Task Force did not have a public health expert on it, believing this contributed to that Force ignoring an analysis of the steep costs that lockdowns cause, particularly to society’s most vulnerable- children, the poor and the elderly.

At the same time, Dr Atlas was concerned at the negative bias of America’s mainstream pro-Democrat broadcast media, who keenly flagged any poor outcomes to spotlight Trump administration was "not listening to The Science™️". The expert presence of Dr Atlas at media briefings threatened this narrative.

Likewise, providing scientific support for reopening businesses and schools challenged official COVID-19 policy. As Dr Atlas’ activities were also perceived as potentially aiding Trump’s re-election, he describes becoming a target for smears in the mainstream media, censorship on social media platforms, plus criticism from senior academic peers. Many examples are provided in his book, but my talk is short, so I’ll cover key examples: For starters YouTube pulled down a Hoover interview in which Dr Atlas spoke to why reopening schools would be safe, with children’s low-risk of COVID. Likewise, an expert panel discussion on the flawed scientific rationale behind the extended lockdowns, outdoor masking, plus masking of children, was removed under YouTube’s ‘medical misinformation policy’ in March, 2021. 

Twitter also temporarily banned Dr Atlas’ account after he questioned the efficacy of masks. Despite quoting sources, such as the CDC, WHO, and Oxford, and reiterating official mitigation protocols. He was reinstated after recognizing his Twitter censorship, but remains highly concerned at the implications for science in a supposedly “free society” that such censorship holds. This includes Facebook’s removal of 7 million pieces of COVID-19 dissent and an unfair Wikipedia profile claiming Atlas spread “misinformation”. In a seemingly unprecedented move, the Stanford Faculty Senate issued a resolution claiming that Dr Atlas had “fostered” falsehoods and misrepresentation of science. Prof John Cochrane wrote an interesting critique of this resolution, asking its authors to provide concrete examples of the opinions and statements they took issue with before he might sign it. They did not reply. 

In addition to chilling open debate, the resolution also catalysed threats to Dr Atlas that necessitated a police presence outside his home and the installation of expensive home security equipment. While Dr Atlas was successful in providing more protection for people in nursing homes, he was ultimately frustrated in changing policies around testing, lockdowns and re-opening education. A strong example of policy inertia was evidenced in attempt to redefine the CDC’s guidelines on COVID testing: To improve timely results for priority cases, Dr Atlas had motivated that new guidelines should provide clearer guidance on both focused testing for the vulnerable, and for the public. After this new testing guidance was published it received pushback from talking heads on TV, senior Democrat politicians and public health organisations.

After a two-week flurry of attacks, the CDC posted guidance that reverted to the old measures- the power of public perception seeming to trump scientific revisions. Media control was also evidenced both via the White House’s failure to publicise a meeting between its Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Professors Bhattacharya, Gupta and Kulldorff. Likewise, the BBC pulled out of interviewing them unless a perspective for the lockdown narrative could be included. This after the BBC had featured only pro-lockdowners for months! Alongside CNN, Forbes, Politico, New York Times, The Washington Post and other media, dissenters were demonized after calling for focused protection and reopening. "Herd immunity" became a weaponized term, while COVID-19 fears were exaggerated to manipulate support for lockdowns.

Such fear-mongering pushed unhinged individuals to harass Dr Atlas in Washington DC, and via social media. He resigned from his public health advisor position in December. Despite presenting stong arguments, he was unable to change the COVID Task Force’s policies for mass testing, business lockdowns and educational closures. His case serves as another cautionary tale on “Rewriting the rules” as it bridges many concerns: Political polarisation infecting medical science and academia, contributing to a desire to censor alternate viewpoints. The power of the mainstream media in propagandising for a fake scientific consensus, and smearing dissenters. Finally, scientific discovery can be actively suppressed by bureaucrats, when enabled by conflicted politicians, and further abetted via censorship on Big Tech.

Despite being a public health policy expert, Dr Atlas’ most valuable contributions were blocked by bureaucrats. They ensured that lockdowns, mass testing, masking, and educational facility closures were applied, whilst their negative impacts went largely undiscussed.

Drs Atlas and Rapiti’s cases suggests 11 key points on resistance: Both doctors were well-positioned to challenge COVID-19 narratives due to their extensive medical knowledge. Each had to negotiate a huge asymmetry between their resourcing versus the orthodoxy’s. A sanctions stack’s pressure influenced the duration and motivation of their respective resistance- while Dr Scott Atlas left the White House in anger and disgust, Dr Rapiti has become even more motivated to challenge the status-quo. During COVID-19 he was leading his practice at all hours, so could not formally contribute to the academic literature on his successes. This suggests how during an emergency the scholarly literature will exclude important frontline knowledge as “missing information”. Many scholars may not appreciate the extent of this, thanks to The Science™️’s heavily controlled “health communication for consensus” architecture.

Despite their expertise, both doctors were quickly presented as part of a medical “fringe” for raising inconvenient questions. In terms of changing policy, Dr Atlas' opportunity to contribute as a presidential adviser proved not to be as influential as he expected, given that powerful networks he seemed unfamiliar with were actually controlling COVID-19 policy. These two slides help explain why changing policy, knowledge to ‘Rewriting the Rules' is so hard, even for the most eminent dissidents. At a meta-level, there is also the challenge of a lack of explicit disclosure around what the Undone Science is. Likewise, scientific suppression’s role in supporting bias is under-researched. A lack of awareness around health communication as propaganda, scientific suppression and Undone Science, are all important blind-spots in the academic Health Sciences, and its literature.

Blindness to all three pose an obstacle for academics and their students understanding what is taught as truth. A topical example is the recent promotion for the EAT-LANCET’s “planetary health diet”

(see https://cluelessdoctors.com/2019/01/19/the-eat-lancet-commission-the-worlds-biggest-lie/).

First funded by mega billionaire Gunhild Stordalen and launched in 2019, this diet was updated by the EAT-Lancet Commission 2025. 20 of the most influential critics of the original diet were targeted for pre-bunking in advance through the Meat vs EAT LANCET report. It falsely claims that the meat industry not only funded criticism of the original “planetary health diet” but also directed dissenters in their successful backlash. This report is just one of many “health communication” pieces planned by the GPPP’s plant-based, processed food stakeholders for their One Health approach.

Such an example points to how the “public health” response context in which experts operate in

can serve as a mirage, concealing the apposite agendas of funders.

Here are some questions that required answering but seem not to have been prioritized during COVID-19. Both doctors contributed to this knowledge in the brackets shown here. Framing resistance to their answers, helps us learn how authoritarian networks block knowledge contributions that might catalyze social change. 

Experts’ free speech and civil rights were heavily constrained during COVID-19. Like most countries, South Africa did not see the practice of active academic freedom with robust debate on campuses, or even in many journals. Nor did its national science organisations fund unorthodox research, notably as regarding personal health prevention, or into brave physicians' development of successful, low-cost protocols.

Before COVID-19, such brave frontline work would be a key part of a standard public health emergency response. As per (ii) in a list of five guidelines described in Debbie Lerman’s book. While COVID saw the healthcare capacity increase, points (i), (ii), (iv) and (v) were ignored. The Deep State goes Viral's compelling explanation is that by mid-March the COVID response had been transferred in many countries from Departments of Health to Military and National Security agencies. This shift supported a “quarantine until vaccine” approach, previously applicable for countering bio-terrorism. With this change, public health planning switched to non-stop ‘lockdown until vaccination’ communications.

Such an unprecedented shift reflected the triumph of a ‘dual-use’ endeavour: The National Biodefence complex’s collaboration with the Global Public-Private Partnership (GPPP). Its agents are shown in the table on the right. ’Dual use’ describes efforts that may serve both military and civilian objectives.

Pathogens can be bioweapons, but they can also spread naturally. Countermeasures from the Pandemic Preparedness Industry can be used against both natural outbreaks and bio-terror attacks. After 9/11, biodefence research grew dramatically, supported by government and non-profits keen to support the study of pandemic counter-measures. The civilian side of this research was mostly funded by public health agencies and mega-nonprofits interested in vaccine development to control natural disease outbreaks.

As these were potentially useful against bio-terror attacks too, it was unsurprising that these fields merged into a dual-use entity called ‘biodefense’ or “health security”. This symbiotic military/civilian enterprise could attract more funding and exert greater influence than biodefence or pandemic preparedness alone.

The growth of such collaboration in the USA, also coincided with a shift of power away from nation states, as capital and political power migrated into the GPPP. This is the context of a “health security” leviathan for mRNA vaccination emerging during COVID-19, as an indispensable system “too big to fail”. Its alignment to long term GPPP Great Reset ambitions, provides an interesting context to ground

resistance in each case: Dr Rapiti proved that a viable, low-cost treatment existed, which would pose a threat to Emergency Use Authorisation of the experimental “vaccines”. Likewise, Dr Atlas’ questioning of lockdowns, mass testing, and masking challenged the environment of fear necessary for maintaining social control past the roll-out of mass vaccination. Do read the books below for more on this nefarious reality.

The Global biodefence PPP builds on the large influence of Big Pharma, which already exerts a huge amount of financial control via the ‘Chorus effect’. Journalist John MacGregor’s book spotlights this effect. There is huge commercial buy-in across all key social agents, which poses a challenge for them

appreciating any value in “heretical” vaccine critiques, such as in the books on the right.

Research into the resistance dissidents face can help us better appreciate the complicated context of why experts confront suppression of evidence-based contributions. Resistance research can also help scholars appreciate how scientific suppression impacts what is neglected, or entirely absent in the scholarly literature.

This section addresses how the field of resistance studies help us understand suppression versus those attempting to ‘rewrite the rules’. Resistance studies supports understanding marginalized social agents who aim at developing intellectual autonomy and oppositional ways of thinking for combating epistemic injustice from networks of power exercising domination. Unusually, we focus on cases where resistance is readily identifiable, since COVID-19 dissenters inevitably must strive to gain visibility for their contributions. 

In preliminary research, we are collating cases for varied types of experts' COVID-19 contributions, where individuals describe facing strong resistance. 

These myriad of examples presents an opportunity to address a neglected topic; how institutional and other structural constraints work against dissident experts. Answering the first question entails exploring the concern of systematic bias against dissent in the top medical journals. While the second addresses how experts felt constrained in making their critical contributions. The third covers the myriad of constraints that led to a bias for the official COVID-19 narrative in medical academia.

Due to its broad interdisciplinary nature, resistance studies is well-suited for describing the Undone Science of COVID, plus the varied tactics that authorities can use to suppress legitimate academic contributions from a diverse group of experts.

For example, the typology of ‘Internal Challenges in Medicine’ spotlights a continuum from resistance into rebellion, and onto heresy. Heresy is a suitable concept for our cases since medical orthodoxy has the power to define which COVID contributions were “unacceptable”, meriting greater resistance and marginalisation.

Delborne’s conceptual framework is useful for describing the contrarian science of COVID dissidents and the types of impedance and outright suppression their contributions faced in failing to be reviewed, or to receive strong counter-arguments against their ideas. Plus, resistance to their research program, and even dissidents’ entire scientific field.

The “Classification for Suppression Methods in Science” will also be referenced, since it is likely that the experts we interview will describe self-censorship, experiencing external complaints, blocking of their outputs, with attempts to stigmatise and discredit their work. And direct attacks on career prospects.

The first characteristic, in pink here, that Prof Martin flagged in ‘Censorship in Science: Deeper Processes ' (2024) flags how scholarship would seem dangerously one-sided if it does not fairly address treatment paradigms outside of costly mRNA vaccination. The 13 unanswered questions spotlighted in the previous section speak to ‘Undone Science’. Last, the issue of incorporated science is flagged- GPPP investors are not disinterested parties, as the COVID-19 response transferred trillions of dollars of wealth from us, as private citizens, to the GPPP’s supporters.

The previous frameworks are just a small sample of what’s been written on institutional resistance against dissenting individuals. We will be writing a review article to define what’s been done. This will ground our research plans and help us develop a comprehensive framework for undergirding our hard cases and research articles. The two cases shared with you today spotlight that the suppression of experts’ contributions is not a minor matter. Hopefully, our project will raise greater awareness for this, whilst contributing to policies that can better support the rights of individuals to express credible dissent, and to over-write bad rules, and the lying rulers who enforce them. 

Thank you for listening to our work.

And thanks to the team that supports TNF’s Academic Free Speech focus, and to CPUT and the Organisation for Propaganda Studies.

Thanks too to the Nutrition Network for this opportunity.

Please contact me on with any questions, comments or concerns about this presentation…