The Law of Unintended Consequences: Why Nature Always Finds a Way
“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
– Romans 1:22
Jesse Gelsinger seemed like the model American teenage boy: he loved motorcycles and watching professional wrestling, he attended high school while working part-time as a supermarket clerk, and he was beloved by his family. Yet Jesse had a medical condition that set him apart – partial ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency, a rare genetic disorder that causes problems with protein metabolism. Fortunately, Jesse’s disease was fairly mild, and for the most part controlled with a special diet and medications.
Despite that, the offer to participate in a research trial to inject a “corrected” version of Jesse’s faulty gene was too tempting to pass up. Jesse and his family traveled from Arizona across the country for the experimental procedure, led by Dr. James Wilson of the Institute for Human Gene Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. Although Jesse’s disease was mild, he was randomized to receive the highest dose of the gene delivered by an adenovirus vector (similar to how the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines work today). The therapy was injected directly into Jesse’s hepatic artery, and he suffered a massive immune response to the foreign adenovirus vector, causing his organs to fail. He was declared dead four days later, on September 17th, 1999.
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Many of our feeble efforts to play God fall into one of two categories: attempts at manipulating our own bodies or attempts to manipulate our external environment. Fueling both is the mismatch between knowledge, which is absolute, and perception, which is relative and anchored in the bias of time. Our ruling class believes that their perception at any given moment in time is absolute knowledge. During the COVID-19 pandemic, new data became available on a daily basis, revealing that the ‘elites’ had no perspective on how time makes a mockery of what is considered up-to-date evidence. It took nearly 10 years for researchers to figure out that the 1918 influenza pandemic was caused by a virus, and not a bacterium, as was initially thought. Rather than humble today’s leaders into wondering what we will know about COVID-19 (and COVID-19 vaccines) in ten years’ time, the world descended into biomedical tyranny based on a set of assumptions, later proven to be false.
The pandemic response represents a continuation of decades of biomedical hubris. After the human genome was first sequenced in 2001, scientists (and stock market analysts) announced that the secret code to solving human disease was unlocked. At that time, 98% of the human genome was considered “junk” DNA since it did not code for a gene. Yet just twenty years later, we now know that so-called “junk” DNA plays an important role in regulating gene expression, as do non-DNA molecules inside and outside our cells (including mRNA sequences, the same type of genetic material injected by the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines). Rather than being the secret code to health and happiness, it turns out our DNA is more of a blueprint that other molecules riff off of like a jazz band. Having learned nothing from those revelations, we were assured that the mRNA from the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines would not integrate into human DNA; it turns out those vaccines may do that after all.
But before the pandemic response, there is the origin of COVID-19 itself. Not understanding our own genome did not stop researchers in multiple countries from manipulating the genetic material of coronaviruses to make them more deadly. Even as the lab leak and other non-natural hypotheses of COVID-19’s origins become more widely accepted, there still is the matter of the numerous biolabs around the world, conducting clandestine operations in developed and undeveloped countries. As if the risk-reward balance of those operations weren’t clear enough after the emergence of COVID-19, a war is now being fought in Ukraine amidst dozens of biolabs that contain some of the deadliest pathogens known to man.
Yet there is no reassessment of this cargo cult-like operating model, and the medical establishment continues in its quest to fight nature on multiple fronts. Central to that fight is the manipulation of hormones. Estrogen therapy was prescribed to women experiencing menopause to fight symptoms of a natural aging process. Doctors however, did not consider how female reproductive organs would respond to increased amounts of a hormone that the body was naturally trying to decrease. Menopausal women who took systemic estrogen therapy have an increased risk of breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers. Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) tempts many men today, and in some short-term cases is a much-needed therapy. But long-term TRT can result in an inability to wean off TRT, as it signals to men’s testicles that they do not need to produce testosterone anymore. TRT also carries other potential risks for cardiovascular disease and prostate cancer. There are other ways to boost testosterone like decreasing stress, improving sleep quality, and avoiding environmental and agricultural contaminants (ironically those last two also stem from man’s manipulation of nature).
Despite all of this, in a clear example of the medical establishment “failing forward,” and working in concert with elites who use chaos as a strategy for greater societal control, we now see puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones administered to children experiencing gender dysphoria. The hasty use of hormone blockers and cross-sex hormones in developing young bodies is the most egregious attempt to date to override nature with pharmaceuticals. Demonstrating that the rush to “fix” these children’s genders is rooted in sociopolitical goals and not science are two research studies commissioned by the transgender-friendly UK NHS. One found that puberty blockers did not alleviate symptoms of gender dysphoria, and the other concluded that any benefits of cross-sex hormonal therapy must be weighed against the long-term consequences of exogenous hormones.
Absent in any discussion on pharmacologic therapy for children with gender dysphoria are the lessons learned from estrogen therapy for menopausal women and TRT for men, as well as any acknowledgment that there is no data on the long-term consequences of hormonal therapy in pubertal and even pre-pubertal children. To paraphrase the truest thing Donald Rumsfeld ever said, “there are known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.” The most “gender-affirming” approach in other words would be for the adults in the room to admit what they don’t know. Yet to admit that we don’t fully understand our own bodies, particularly the complex interplay of hormones, runs contrary to the prevailing attitude of absolute knowledge.
Even in an area where scientists admit our knowledge is incomplete, there are particularly vigorous attempts to engineer perfection and progress. Love him or hate him, Elon Musk wants you to want Neuralink implanted inside your brain, whose promised benefits include drawing pictures with your mind and potentially curing Alzheimer’s disease. While some brain implants do help patients with intractable seizures, those interested in Neuralink should read a cautionary tale about eye implants for patients suffering from a genetic disease that causes blindness. Second Sight manufactured a retinal implant that literally gave eyesight back to patients with retinitis pigmentosa, but when the company ran into financial trouble, those with the implant found themselves without technical support for device malfunctions, and in some cases, devices were simply switched off. Cruelly given the gift of sight and then plunged back into darkness, Second Sight patients were presented with the following options: keep the useless implant, have it removed surgically at their own risk, or upgrade to a new implant that goes directly in the brain.
Our treatment of the environment is no better. Cloud-seeding sprays chemicals in the air, including silver iodide, to produce rain. (Interestingly, the scientist who discovered silver iodide could be used for cloud-seeding was Dr. Bernard Vonnegut, the brother of science-fiction author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.) Although the data suggest that cloud-seeding doesn’t work that well, many drought-prone countries (and states in the US) are happily spraying chemicals in the air without regard to their potential effects on humans, animals, and crops. In fact, silver iodide can cause permanent skin discoloration, lung damage, seizures, and other ill health effects. Yet in the debate between cloud-seeding and concerns about silver iodide, stating the known medical risks of silver is considered “fringe science,” as opposed to the debatable efficacy of cloud-seeding. In a brilliant psyop, unless you are advocating for the half-baked futuristic technology seemingly straight out of a sci-fi book or movie, you are on the fringe.
‘Making it rain’ isn’t enough though, as we now have geoengineering to combat climate change. Proposals seeking government and foundation funding include everything from reflecting sunlight back into space, to seeding the ocean with iron, to outright blocking the sun. That last proposal is funded by the Gates Foundation, which also recently released millions of genetically-modified mosquitos in Florida and California. Those mosquitos have been engineered to be sterile for the purported goal of preventing mosquito-borne diseases like Dengue Fever. While Dengue is a terrible disease, mosquitos also serve important ecologic functions, like pollinating plants and eating algae to prevent toxic blooms. Having mosquitos die out in two states with important agricultural industries seems like trading one problem for another. Even worse are technocratic attempts to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, which myopically ignore that carbon dioxide is necessary for plant growth, even the growth of the elite’s favorite genetically modified organisms.
Once one sees that mass geoengineering experiments are favorite causes of elites and their foundations, it’s hard to not draw a connection to the goals of those advocating for a Great Reset. It’s a classic “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition – if geoengineering is successful, then the elites can give themselves awards next year in Davos. If not, those who will suffer are the people who cannot afford to buy a remote island to flee from the ensuing disaster.
Yes, there are circumstances which merit intervention – but always the wisdom of time bears fruit. For example, aggressively treating early COVID-19 infection with ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, “old” drugs with decades of safety data from being given to millions, if not billions of patients. Contrast that reasonable pharmacologic intervention with the hasty administration of vaccines that work by a completely experimental mechanism under the premise of “it’s new so it will be better.”
This is not to say that we can’t put our brains to work to better understand things like our environment and use that knowledge for good (as in the case of regenerative agriculture). But society simply cannot “war game” how cloud seeding will interact with genetically modified mosquitos who are buzzing over water seeded with iron. Similarly, we’ve seen time and time again that so-called “table-top exercises” cannot predict how our body will interact with a foreign substance, be it a drug or a device.
Worshippers of the new Science religion cannot stop themselves from playing God. But their failure to appreciate that the human body and nature are so complex that our minds can never fully comprehend them stems from a lack of true religious belief. The real Paracelsus, a medieval physician, believed in an interplay between the mystic, the scientific, and the divine. One can work for better health and a better environment, but one must also realize there is some limit to what can be achieved through man’s hands alone. Where that boundary lies is nebulous and cannot by its very nature ever be defined. Yet firm boundaries on a map are not needed, for suffice to say we have likely overstepped the bounds of what science should be attempting in the past two years, and if not then, certainly overstepping it in what the ruling class is contemplating for us all now.
The broader societal push to manipulate or negate the natural course of life, at best, is a case of naïve exuberance from midwit bureaucrats. At worst, from those really in charge, there is tacit acknowledgment of some individuals’ misfortunes, coupled with an evil ignorance of the possibility of a larger-scale catastrophe. To date, the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, but at some point the cumulative effect of these follies will be felt on a grander scale (imagine if COVID-19 was deadlier), or some pet project will rankle a part of Mother Nature that contains a kill switch.
As many countries finally begin to ease their draconian COVID-19 restrictions, people en masse must re-assert their autonomy and refuse to take part in any manipulation of their bodies. Thwarting biolabs and geoengineering plans is a tougher task, as many of those projects are supranational and arrive unannounced in people’s backyards. There are concrete suggestions for promoting things like healthy agriculture that combined with aggressive local politicking could result in communities better fortified against outside intervention; but what is needed most is a brutally honest assessment of our own thought patterns and those of our loved ones.
The easiest path traveling via the fastest synapses and releasing bursts of dopamine is to go with the crowd, even if it’s a cargo cult sponsored by Pfizer. The tougher mental path we must forge within ourselves (and cultivate within our circles) acknowledges the dire circumstances but remains relentlessly optimistic. But that optimism is only possible if you decide that there will be no yielding under any circumstances.
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Jesse Gelsinger’s death was a shock to both the public and to the scientists who had staked their entire careers on the prospects of gene therapy. Subsequent investigations revealed that other patients had suffered serious side effects, that monkeys who had been given the same treatment had died, and that Jesse didn’t even meet the inclusion criteria for the trial. Absent in the press coverage of this terrible death though, was the larger question of whether gene therapy should be attempted at all. Even broader than that, there was no debate (or in today’s language, “conversation”) about whether the gene therapy trial went beyond the scope of what we can and should manipulate within the human body. Time passed and the outrage about Jesse Gelsinger’s death faded, and today gene therapy research on humans continues unabated.
Rather than accepting or even pondering our limited ability to manipulate nature, the societal trend is to embrace the newest technology or pharmaceutical that promises to beat nature at its own game. The developed world has taken the cargo cults to scale. It’s as if the cult leaders “leveraged” their Pacific Island start-up to receive Series B funding and are now eyeing an IPO.
Yet Mother Nature always finds a way to assert her dominance over our laughable plans. The blowback we receive oftentimes is not severe when viewed in the larger context of the universe. However, on the scale of the individual human, nature’s revenge for being disrespected is catastrophic, and often irreversible.
Cover photo: Jesse Gelsinger, 18, in Philadelphia, 1998.
Paracelsus is the pseudonym of a US-based practicing physician and author of “First Do No Harm.”
