A bill that has been described as “the worst children's health bill ever” has been <a href="https://teachersforchoice.substack.com/p/success-minor-consent-bill-in-albany" target="_blank" id="">stricken</a> in Albany, after the Senator who sponsored it, Rachel May, moved to withdraw it from the Senate docket.The bill would have granted children the right to make medical decisions for themselves, without parental involvement, as long as they appeared to comprehend what was involved.&nbsp;Intentionally misleading?The one-line description of Senate Bill S8352 that appears on the <a href="https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/S8352" target="_blank" id="">NY Senate website</a> states that it:Allows certain minors to consent to certain medical, dental, health, and hospital services.However, there is no evidence in the text of the bill itself that ability to give consent will be confined only to “certain” minors, although many lawmakers poised to vote on the law had allegedly gained the impression that it would only apply to “homeless” children.&nbsp;In an undefined state of emergency, anything goesClicking on the link on the Senate's website to access the entire bill currently leads nowhere, now that the bill has been stricken, but the full text still exists in the internet <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20240426230259/https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2023/S8352" target="_blank" id="">archive</a>.The bill includes a provision that, in a state of “emergency,” parents may be totally sidelined when it comes to treating their children:Medical, dental, health, and hospital services may be rendered to persons of any age without the consent of a parent, legal guardian or person possessing a lawful order of custody when, in the practitioner's judgment, an emergency exists and the person is in immediate need of medical attention and an attempt to secure consent would result in delay of treatment which would increase the risk to the person's life or health.Nowhere in the bill is an emergency defined. Nor does the bill specify how much of an increased risk will be needed to justify “emergency” treatment.&nbsp;Can minors truly give informed consent?The bill would also seek to place a child in control of his or her health treatment, regardless of any state of emergency:Any person, including a minor, who comprehends the need for, the nature of, and the reasonably foreseeable risks and benefits involved in any contemplated medical, dental, health, and/or hospital services, and any alternatives thereto, may give effective consent to such services for themself, and the consent of no other person shall be necessary.The bill does not describe any mechanism for determining the level of comprehension of the child concerned.&nbsp;Brought to you by the Letter P(fizer)It appears that a large and well-organized public campaign was effective in exerting pressure on New York lawmakers, and many are now celebrating the decision of Senator May to withdraw the bill. However, it seems likely that the bill will resurface next January with different wording.Meanwhile, children continue to be bombarded by messaging that promotes medical interventions such as COVID shots, in the media, in schools, and elsewhere.<figure class="w-richtext-figure-type-video w-richtext-align-center" style="padding-bottom:33.75%" data-rt-type="video" data-rt-align="center" data-rt-max-width="" data-rt-max-height="33.75%" data-rt-dimensions="0:0" data-page-url=""><div><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://twitframe.com/show?url=https://twitter.com/sesamestreet/status/1541775926014492672?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"></iframe></div></figure> &nbsp;Teachers tempted to abuse their positionsSo far, efforts to pass legislation to require students in NY schools to receive COVID shots have failed. Many shots are mandated, but not all those that the CDC recommends.At times, pressure on children comes from teachers, especially if they fear that their students will infect them with a dangerous virus. The motives of a New York teacher (with no medical credentials) who administered a COVID shot to a student herself are unclear, but the case illustrated the potential for teachers to abuse their position in the area of health; Laura Parker Russo <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/laura-parker-russo-plea-deal-unauthorized-covid-vaccine-injection-long-island/" target="_blank" id="">pled guilty</a> to a misdemeanor in a plea bargain and ended up avoiding prison time, despite giving her 17-year-old student a J&amp;J shot without his parents' consent.&nbsp;They want to bring up your childrenIn her State of the State <a href="https://www.amityvillerecord.com/articles/special-report-schools-speak-out-against-states-potential-covid-vaccine-mandate/" target="_blank" id="">Address </a>in January this year, Governor Hochul insisted that,The Legislature makes the determination in consultation with health experts … We're not talking about mandating the COVID vaccine in schools at this time.However, in his speech at a freedom rally in Albany on May 7, 2024, Dr. James Lyons-Weiler of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge insisted that,Their goal is that parents do not have a say over the biological realities of their children.

NY bill granting minors full power over medical decisions withdrawn. Defeat, or tactical retreat?

The worst children's health bill ever'

By Alex NewmanThe dominoes are falling faster on Marxist “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” programs in higher education, with Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently becoming the first “elite” U.S. university to eliminate DEI considerations in its hiring. Analysts are referring to the decision as a turning point in the battle against “wokeness” in academia.In true Soviet style, MIT applicants were required to provide a statement bending the knee to DEI ideology. As part of that, they were forced to outline their supposed understanding of “challenges related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Polling cited by Fox News revealed that a “large majority” of students and faculty were scared to express their real views.As part of the hiring process, MIT also forced applicants to outline their “track record of working with diverse groups of people.” Finally, all faculty applicants at MIT were coerced into developing a plan for advancing DEI ideology in their role at the university. In short, publicly embrace the “woke” diversity ideology — or find another job.Critics have compared the coerced DEI statements as a tool for screening out independent thinkers, conservatives, Christians, and others from academia. It represents a forced humiliation ritual, too, with all faculty and sometimes even students being coerced to pledge allegiance to a dangerous ideology that they may secretly loathe.The decision to nix the requirements, embraced by MIT’s senior leadership, comes as more and more universities, donors, lawmakers, investors, and other influential figures find the courage to speak out against the draconian ideology. Multiple states including Florida have forced the issue, ordering state colleges and universities to dismantle the DEI apparatus.&nbsp;MIT President Dr. Sally Kornbluth offered a statement on why the decision was made. “My goals are to tap into the full scope of human talent, to bring the very best to MIT, and to make sure they thrive once here,” she said. “We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”According to media reports, the decision to end forced DEI statements was made by Kornbluth in collaboration with all six academic deans, the MIT chancellor, and the MIT provost. It was not immediately clear whether the university would eliminate positions within the sprawling DEI ideological-enforcement bureaucracy.One major group opposing the use of DEI statements, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), explained the danger of DEI policies “compelling faculty to affirm contested views on matters of public debate or to embed specific ideological perspectives in their academic activities.”“This violates faculty members’ individual rights and thwarts values like intellectual freedom, epistemic humility, and open-mindedness that underlie a university’s mission to produce and disseminate knowledge,” the group said in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/fire-statement-use-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-criteria-faculty-hiring-and" id="">statement</a>. As such, it cautioned universities to be careful about running afoul of the law.“DEI statement policies can too easily function as ideological litmus tests that threaten employment or advancement opportunities for faculty who dissent from prevailing thought on DEI,” the group added, warning administrators that efforts to stifle free speech, compel speech, or undermine academic freedom may violate the First Amendment.Also urging colleges and universities to stop using DEI statements was the Academic Freedom Alliance in Princeton. “The rapid and widespread dissemination of such statements has proceeded with far too little attentiveness to obvious threats to academic freedom,” the organization warned in 2022, calling on institutions to “desist” in the scheme. &nbsp;“The demand for diversity statements enlists academics into a political movement, erasing the distinction between academic expertise and ideological conformity,”&nbsp;<a href="https://academicfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/AFA-DEI-Statement-081822.pdf" id="">the statement</a>&nbsp;continued, warning that even leftists could be ensnared in the DEI regime. “It encourages cynicism and dishonesty.”More and more voices in higher education are finding the courage to dissent against DEI orthodoxy, too. “I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice,” Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy wrote in the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/column/council-on-academic-freedom-at-harvard/article/2024/4/2/kennedy-abandon-dei-statements/" id="">Harvard Crimson</a>. “The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince. The practice of demanding them ought to be abandoned, both at Harvard and beyond.”As The Newman Report&nbsp;<a href="https://www.freedomproject.com/2024/03/06/tnr20240306/" id="">documented</a>&nbsp;in March, the University of Florida —&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/top-public" id="">widely considered</a>&nbsp;one of America’s top public university — decided to eliminate its entire DEI bureaucracy under pressure from the state. All DEI apparatchiks had their positions ended including the “Chief Diversity Officer.”“DEI really is a cover for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination,” explained Florida Board of Education Chairman Ben Gibson, echoing sentiments expressed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and other political leaders. “That has no place in our state colleges at all, and our state colleges need to be focused on learning.”<figure class="w-richtext-figure-type-image w-richtext-align-center" data-rt-type="image" data-rt-align="center"><div><img src="https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/66450044188dfe741d77c31e/66450140cf5a846f0ab246ce_3364780_1225x377_2500.jpeg" alt="" width="auto" height="auto" loading="auto" id=""></div></figure>It is a good sign that more and more universities including Ivy League schools are rejecting the DEI madness. But the battle is far from over. And as the escalating lunacy infecting college students shows, DEI is more a symptom of the deadly disease than the root cause. Taxpayers, parents, donors, and lawmakers must all do more to restore sanity.<a href="https://libertysentinel.org/author/admin/" id="">Alex Newman</a> is an award-winning international journalist, educator, author, and consultant who co-wrote the book “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.” He writes for diverse publications in the United States and abroad.Published at <a href="https://www.freedomproject.com/2024/05/15/tnr20240515/" id="">FreedomProject Media</a>.

MIT Drops Forced DEI Statements: “They Don’t Work”

The dominoes are falling fast on Marxist “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” programs

<h2 id="">Will Tamiflu be the new Remdesivir?</h2><h3 id="">&nbsp;</h3><h3 id="">Failed drug repurposed as Covid-19 therapy</h3>Readers might remember that the FDA gave remdesivir emergency use authorization as a therapy for COVID-19. It was prioritized as the remedy of choice, even though the NIH <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/horowitz-the-science-of-remdesivir-vs-ivermectin-a-tale-of-two-drugs" id="">acknowledged</a> liver and renal (kidney) failure as adverse events and the NIH <a href="https://frontline.news/post/why-is-emergency-use-authorization-being-used-to-increase-big-pharmas-coffers-without-any-regard-for-patient-safety" id="">failed</a> to determine its benefit for Ebola patients during trials since it killed more patients than Ebola.Despite the drug increasing the the risk of death by 3% and the chance of renal (kidney) failure by 20%, Dr. Paul Marik <a href="https://frontline.news/post/undue-and-unaccountable-influence-of-fact-checkers-on-medical-science-and-freedom-of-speech#fn:19" id="">testified</a> before Senator Ron Johnson’s panel that hospitals were incentivized to prescribe it giving “a 20% bonus on the entire hospital bill for Medicare patients who were prescribed remdesivir.”<h3 id="">Adverse events mistaken as disease symptoms&nbsp;</h3>Worse yet is that adverse events associated with remdesivir had been mistaken for features of COIVID-19, as Dr. Bryan Ardis <a href="https://frontline.news/post/why-is-emergency-use-authorization-being-used-to-increase-big-pharmas-coffers-without-any-regard-for-patient-safety" id="">told</a> Attorney Reiner Fuellmich, who had been investigating human rights violations related to the Covid-19 pandemic:&nbsp;"Gilead’s “cohort study” conducted for “compassionate use” on patients with COVID-19 was only 28 days long. It reported that of 61 patients treated with the drug, eight were excluded for missing information, 32 (60%) of 53 remaining patients reported adverse events including increased liver enzymes, diarrhea, rash, and kidney function impairment. Twelve patients (23%) had “serious” adverse events including multiple-organ-dysfunction syndrome, septic shock, acute kidney injury, and hypotension (low blood pressure).…Each of these symptoms – multi-organ failure, septic shock, acute kidney injury and hypotension – are described in medical literature as features of COVID-19 itself. (Emphasis added.)<h2 id="">Next pandemic in the works</h2>The FDA has started warning about a potential bird flu pandemic, despite listing it as a low probability, as Frontline News has <a href="https://frontline.news/post/not-to-worry-we-know-how-to-prevent-and-treat-bird-flu-dr-zelenko-s-brother" target="_blank" id="">reported</a>:FDA is sounding an alarm about the potential for such a pandemic, for which it is “drawing up plans to roll out tests, antiviral drugs and vaccines in the event the [bird flu] virus jumps to humans,” as reported by The Gateway Pundit. Even though FDA head Robert Califf says that the probability of this happening is low, they are taking these measures with the rationale that it's best to be prepared for a scenario where the virus jumps to humans.&nbsp;Dr. Peter McCullough, on the Chief Medical Board of The Wellness Company, said the board voted to add Tamiflu to its “Contagion Kit” in the event that bird flu pandemic materializes, as WLT Report <a href="https://wltreport.com/2024/04/19/chief-medical-board-wellness-company-adds-tamiflu-contagion/" target="_blank" id="">reported</a>:“Out of an abundance of caution, we are adding Tamiflu to the Contagion Kit. Tamiflu is a safe medication approved treat Influenza type A, viruses like avian flu. We will continue to closely monitor this situation and make further recommendations as warranted.”The Wellness Company also sells Dr. Zelenko's Z-Stack, which Dr. Zelenko <a href="https://frontline.news/post/not-to-worry-we-know-how-to-prevent-and-treat-bird-flu-dr-zelenko-s-brother" target="_blank" id="">recommended</a> for multiple viruses and will help inhibit bird flu.Dr. Jane Ruby criticized Dr. McCullough for recommending Tamiflu, a pharmaceutical drug with a black box warning for neuropsychiatric side effects, for a non-existent disease.<figure class="w-richtext-figure-type-video w-richtext-align-center" style="padding-bottom:33.75%" data-rt-type="video" data-rt-align="center" data-rt-max-width="" data-rt-max-height="33.75%" data-rt-dimensions="0:0" data-page-url=""><div><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://twitframe.com/show?url=https://twitter.com/JoeTalkShow?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"></iframe></div></figure> <h3 id="">&nbsp;</h3><h2 id="">Is Tamiflu a good choice? &nbsp;</h2>The government generally <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/12/21/hhs-increases-access-to-tamiflu-through-the-strategic-national-stockpile.html" target="_blank" id="">stockpiles</a> Tamiflu for release in the event of a flu epidemic as it did in 2022. Many people may also try to get as much of it as they can get their hands on, in anticipation of the currently improbable event. Yet, Tamiflu does not have such a good track record. &nbsp;<h3 id="">No real benefits, serious rates of adverse events</h3><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/apr/10/tamiflu-saga-drug-trials-big-pharma" target="_blank" id="">According</a> to an April 2014 article about Tamiflu, published by The Guardian, the drug’s manufacturer, Roche, had withheld critical trial information. The independent Cochrane Collaboration's initial positive reports on the drug were, therefore, found to be based on incomplete data. After the mistake was recognized in 2008, it took Dr. Thomas Jefferson, the lead reviewer, six years to get the full information and perform a new review with complete data.After “ceaseless questions from Cochrane and the British Medical Journal, after half a decade, Roche finally gave Cochrane the information it needed,” which author Dr. Ben Goldacre summed up in his article. The Cochrane report showed that not only was there little, if any, benefit from Tamiflu, but the “mild” adverse effects are actually quite significant, all of which he detailed:&nbsp;<ul id=""><li id="">It does not reduce the number of hospitalizations</li><li id="">There isn’t enough data to know if it reduces death</li><li id="">It reduces self-reported undiagnosed pneumonia, but there is no significant benefit according to detailed diagnostic forms for pneumonia.</li><li id="">It might help prevent flu symptoms, but not asymptomatic spread&nbsp;</li><li id="">It may take a few hours off the duration of flu symptoms</li></ul>Dr. Goldacre put numbers to the adverse events percentages demonstrating what would happen if a million people took Tamiflu in a pandemic:<ul id=""><li id="">45,000 will experience vomiting,&nbsp;</li><li id="">31,000 will experience headache and&nbsp;</li><li id="">11,000 will have psychiatric side-effects.&nbsp;</li></ul>These numbers, he warns, are only for 1 million people.&nbsp;Remember, though, that those figures all assume we are only giving Tamiflu to a million people: if things kick off, we have stockpiled enough for 80% of the population. That's quite a lot of vomit.<h3 id="">Tamiflu saga reverberations</h3>Pandemic fear and scientific misconduct&nbsp;In 2015, the Indian Journal of Pharmacology reviewed the Tamiflu saga to learn how to avoid a similar situation in the future. Problems they found included pandemic panic, propaganda, and scientific misconduct.A cocktail of pandemic panic, publicity propaganda, and scientific misconduct turned a new medicine with only modest efficacy into a blockbuster. It appears that the multiple regulatory checks and balances gave way as science lost its primacy and pharmaceutical enterprise lost no time in making the most of it. This reminds one of Prof R. P. Feynman's statements after Challenger space shuttle disaster. (Emphasis added.)“Reality must take precedence over public relations as nature can’t be fooled”Tamiflu saga should have prevented remdesivir catastropheBMJ <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4701" target="_blank" id="">published</a> an editorial, in 2022, criticizing the use of remdesivir and lamenting “the lost lessons of Tamiflu.” Editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee pointed out that Tamiflu's and Remdesivir's stories share many common features, including both having failed in previous settings and being hyped on poor research:. . . How one such treatment reached its costly prominence, despite the already available evidence of its inadequacies, stands as a cautionary tale. It also shows how little or how slowly we learn. The remdesivir story shares many common features with the saga of Tamiflu (oseltamivir), the drug that cost the world billions of dollars during the 2009 swine flu pandemic. Both drugs had failed in earlier settings. At the start of the pandemics both were hyped on limited, poor quality research, mainly funded by drug companies. Both were bought in large amounts by governments without data to back up their purchase. Both have harms that have been inadequately researched and reported. (Emphasis added.)Problems with remdesivir were also covered in <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/very-very-bad-look-remdesivir-first-fda-approved-covid-19-drug" target="_blank" id="">The ‘very, very bad look' of remdesivir, the first FDA-approved COVID-19 drug</a>: The Food and Drug Administration held no advisory meeting on antiviral, and the European Union signed contract without knowing of failed trial.It may seem incredible, yet despite the Tamiflu saga and remdesivir catastrophe, Tamiflu is still being considered a safe and effective antiviral to combat the bird flu, not just by Dr McCullough, but by the FDA as well, as Frontline News <a href="https://frontline.news/post/not-to-worry-we-know-how-to-prevent-and-treat-bird-flu-dr-zelenko-s-brother" target="_blank" id="">reported</a>.<h2 id="">Can it happen again?</h2><h3 id="">Tamiflu pandemic? Tamiflu adverse effects mimic bird flu symptoms</h3>Is it possible to create a bird flu pandemic by mistaking Tamiflu adverse events for bird flu, as occurred when Remdesivir adverse effects were written up as features of COVID-19? Like Tamiflu's adverse events, bird flu symptoms include nausea and vomiting.[fn]<a href="https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22401-bird-flu" id="">Symptoms</a> of bird flu per the Cleveland Clinic - fever, fatigue, cough, muscle aches. sore throat. nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stuffy or runny nose. shortness of breath (dyspnea), and pink eye (conjunctivitis).[/fn]&nbsp;The US population <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/" id="">today</a> is 341,586,555. During the COVID-19 “pandemic” 80% of the population got at least one mRNA shot. 80% of the population today is 273,269,244. While many more people might question a new bird flu vaccine, Tamiflu is a drug most people have heard of and still believe to be safe — like Dr. McCullough, apparently.&nbsp;<h3 id="">Bye-bye freedom</h3>Tamiflu isn't as dangerous as Remdesivir, which is perhaps why even normally cautious physicians are willing to promote it, “to be on the safe side.” However, the real danger lies not in the mass administration of Tamiflu, but in the potential consequences. In the event of hundreds of thousands of people being stricken with debilitating, if non-life-threatening, adverse events that are mistaken for bird flu, mass hysteria could erupt, providing certain vested interests with the perfect opportunity to rush through emergency use authorization for an all-new, untested “wonder drug” to cure "bird flu," not to mention lockdown restrictions so restrictive we may long for the COVID era. &nbsp;Related articles:<ul id=""><li id=""><a href="https://frontline.news/post/not-to-worry-we-know-how-to-prevent-and-treat-bird-flu-dr-zelenko-s-brother" target="_blank" id="">Not to worry! We know how to prevent and treat bird flu - Dr. Zelenko's brother</a></li><li id=""><a href="https://frontline.news/post/cheap-drugs-cheap-nutrients-treat-disease-say-fauci-baric-fda#fnref:8" target="_blank" id="">Cheap drugs, cheap nutrients treat disease say Fauci, Baric, FDA</a></li><li id=""><a href="https://frontline.news/post/why-is-emergency-use-authorization-being-used-to-increase-big-pharmas-coffers-without-any-regard-for-patient-safety" target="_blank" id="">Why is Emergency Use Authorization being used to increase big pharma coffers with no regard for patient safety?</a></li><li id=""><a href="https://frontline.news/post/zelenko-on-next-pandemic-zinc-ionophores-and-zinc-inhibit-all-covid-influenza-rsv-ebola-marburg-hantavirus-strains" id="">Zelenko on next pandemic: Zinc ionophores and zinc inhibit all COVID, influenza, RSV, Ebola, Marburg, hantavirus strains</a></li><li id=""><a href="https://frontline.news/post/flashback-60-minutes-mike-wallace-exposes-1976-swine-flu-pandemic-vaccine-injuries" id="">Flashback: 60 Minutes - Mike Wallace exposes 1976 Swine Flu Pandemic vaccine injuries</a>&nbsp;</li></ul>

Will our next pandemic be a Tamiflu pandemic? Tamiflu's adverse events mimic bird flu

Possible COVID-19 remake? Remdesivir adverse events were identified as COVID-19 features

If you can't figure it out, ask a computerAs part of their ongoing struggle to be perceived as genuine scientists, psychiatrists are now trying not only to diagnose people with “mental illness” but to actually predict who might be susceptible to “diseases of the brain.” Much attention is currently being given to utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) models by training them to distinguish between people who are “ill” and those who appear ill but are actually not.“Sonia,” who was interviewed for this article, describes what strikes her as odd in this approach.If you’re a psychiatrist and you need an AI model to figure out if someone’s crazy or not, then perhaps you should be looking for a different job. My husband’s been psychotic a few times, and I could see it in his eyes right away.&nbsp;An exact science?Perhaps Sonia is right, but there’s nothing in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM, the psychiatrist’s guide to disease) about “seeing it in the eyes.” One imagines that psychiatrists would be the objects of ridicule if they tried to claim that they diagnosed patients based on such a criterion.Under the heading, “Psychotic Disorders,” the latest edition of the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519704/table/ch3.t20/" target="_blank" id="">DSM </a>has a grand total of nine sub-categories. At the top of the list is “schizophrenia.”The characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia are described as:<ol id=""><li id="">Delusions</li><li id="">Hallucinations</li><li id="">Disorganized speech (e.g. frequent derailment or incoherence)</li><li id="">Grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior</li><li id="">Negative symptoms (i.e. diminished emotional expression or involition)</li></ol>A person needs to have two or more of these symptoms for a “significant” portion of the time for at least a month (or less, if “successfully treated”). The exception is when the delusions are defined as “bizarre” or hallucinations consist of a “running commentary on the person’s behavior or thoughts, or two or more voices conversing together.”None of these symptoms can be defined in any established scientific way. Despite decades of talking about neurotransmitters, measuring and observing hormones and brain activity, and experimenting with drugs that play with all of these (as well as so-called genetic markers for schizophrenia), there’s no physical test that can diagnose schizophrenia.&nbsp;Are you a quasi-nutter?More problematically, as a recent paper published in <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2802139?guestAccessKey=d895dae0-ae75-4a87-bbb3-bf067edb2ee8&utm_source=silverchair&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_alert-jamapsychiatry&utm_term=mostread&utm_content=olf-widget_05082024&adv=" target="_blank" id="">JAMA Psychiatry</a> claimed, plenty of people sometimes experience symptoms one-to-five (and even several of them) without being psychotic.Hallucination-like experiences and delusion-like beliefs are common in individuals without psychoses.How so? The paper (written by Dr. Philip Corlett, an associate professor at the Yale University School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry) begins by quoting an early psychiatric text (dating back to 1901) which refers to delusions and the like which are linked to religious experiences. Today, that category has been broadened with the addition of “people who believe in conspiracy theories” who are on the “psychosis continuum,” though not (perhaps) technically psychotic themselves.If madness is a continuum, then psychiatrists can’t be blamed for failing to correctly determine exactly where on that continuum a particular patient lies, so goes the thinking.&nbsp;&nbsp;Most people on the spectrum?Continuums are useful things, and they often come with numbers attached; that is, on a scale of 1 to 100, those between 80 and 100 (for example) can be said to be schizophrenic, those between 60 and 80 are potentially so, and so forth. It turns out that psychiatrists actually have a form of diagnosis based on a numbered continuum — it’s called the “21-Item Peters et al. Delusions Inventory (<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15954204/" target="_blank" id="">PDI</a>).”The PDI is made up of a list of questions on how people view all kinds of issues such as being spied upon, thinking that people can read your mind, feeling that you have a special mission in life, and so forth. The final score a person receives depends not only on what they believe but how distressed they are by it.The JAMA paper describes how the PDI can be used to decide whether or not someone has a “psychotic illness”:People without a psychotic illness endorse a mean (SD) of 7 (4) unusual beliefs compared to 12 (6) in patients with schizophrenia…An SD (standard deviation) of 4, and certainly 6, is huge, and means that there was a huge range of scores in both categories. Indeed, when we look at the raw data in the original study (which was based on 35 questions, later whittled down to 21), we find that “healthy” participants scored between 0 and 31 on the 35-point scale; “deluded” participants scored between 2 and 35 points.And the JAMA paper acknowledges this, admitting in delicious understatement that,… clearly, these ranges overlap…&nbsp;Conspiracy theorists as lab ratsSo, since symptoms of schizophrenia can’t be scientifically determined, brains can’t be analyzed to decide whether someone is psychotic or not, and the 21-Item Inventory produces rather unsatisfactory results, what is a psychiatrist to do if he wants to diagnose accurately?One answer is AI — let the computers figure it out.But AI models have to be trained, and this is where the conspiracy theorist becomes useful. Just as an AI model being taught how to detect a cat against a variety of backgrounds needs to be tested against objects that are very similar to cats but nonetheless not cats, so too the AI psychosis-detection model needs to have “foils” who are very similar to psychotics but nonetheless not psychotic.We would like to suggest that people who believe in conspiracy theories or new religious movements and people who hear voices but do not have clinical diagnoses might serve as adversarial examples to a network trained on the phenomenal features and cognitive and neural mechanisms of psychosis that we have accrued as a field so far.&nbsp;Psychotics in-the-makingAt first glance, this could appear encouraging for those who believe in what psychiatrists define as conspiracies. They’re not psychotic according to this approach. They’re just… something as yet undefined. The JAMA paper suggests that distinguishing between genuine psychotics and conspiracy theorists could reveal what divides them:In this way, we can hone in on the important features that portend illness, disability, and distress, rather than features that are distributed more widely, even in individuals whose experiences closely resemble those of people with schizophrenia.Intriguingly, the author of the paper does not distinguish between people who are ill and those who are not. The distinction is between people who might become ill (“features that portend illness…”) and people who apparently won’t.&nbsp;If you like your conspiracy theory, you can keep it (just don't appear distressed by it)Who are these mysterious people who could become psychotic?&nbsp;According to Yale’s Dr. Corlett, these could be people (conspiracy theorists or others) who are upset by their delusions and find that they make it harder for them to behave normally:These might include people in clinical high-risk studies who do not quite meet the threshold for psychosis risk state but who nevertheless evince some degree of distress and impairment.He would like an AI model to be able to predict whether these people will develop full-blown psychosis or not:Any differential prediction of conversion might impact the ongoing debate regarding the risk state and whether it merely represents an earlier phase of the illness course.&nbsp;Who will get trampled under the inexorable march of psychiatrists' feet?So, while Dr. Corlett admits that “such individuals might be classified as having a psychotic illness when in fact they do not,” he is not content to leave things there. If he (or other psychiatrists, or anyone else) decides that the field of psychiatry needs more scientific backbone and that the continuum theory of psychosis is to be confirmed, he may seek to use conspiracy theorists to “prove” this theory.After all, he states,&nbsp;… individuals with schizotypal dispositions who experience attenuated psychotic symptoms may also provide useful foils as the field of psychiatry joins the inexorable march toward precision approaches driven by machine learning.If psychiatry is to become a precise science, it will be very helpful if psychiatrists can identify people who are likely to become psychotic and predict, based on a pseudo-scientific AI model, that they will become so.In which case, Sonia’s recommendation, if you happen to be a “conspiracy theorist,” is:Stay far away from psychiatry.

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