Spoiler Alert: Tyra Banks Is the Devil

 


I loved America's Next Top Model back in the day.  Not only did it feature gorgeous hotties, it was full of gay people back when Ellen was the only "representation" we had.  Miss J, Jay Manuel, lesbian models like Ebony Haith, Kim Stolz & Kayla Ferrell were suddenly all over our screens.  It was prime time appointment viewing in my dorm and I'm sure many others.  (I even did a very short stint writing for an ill-fated Tyra fashion website online.  In true Tyra form, they fired half the writing staff early on but I made the cut only to quit later because they wanted magazine-quality pieces for $15 per article).  Anyway, I was gut-punched to see the recent documentary Reality Check: America's Next Top Model which showed what REALLY went on behind the scenes and on our screens.  Things were very different than I remembered.  

Let's start with the offensive-but-not criminal things (I dare not call any of it "small stuff" because chiiiiile).  Not only keeping the girls stick-thin but celebrating when they fainted, vomited or got taken to the ER due to being underweight & overworked.  Racism on a show executive produced by a Black woman (race-swapping, REALLY?).  Using the contestants' most traumatic life experiences to try and provoke a mental breakdown (and creating brand new traumatic ones specially for the show!).  The list goes on and on.

How they framed a rape

But by far the most shocking and disgusting revelation to come from this documentary was the one involving Shandi Sullivan of Cycle 2.  Not only was this woman raped on the show with cameras rolling, not a single person intervened to stop it.  But it gets worse.  Cameras continued rolling when she broke the news to her boyfriend and he called her a stupid bitch and dumped her on national TV.  And of course it didn't stop there.  They spun this horror as a "cheating scandal" and painted the victim as a perpetrator, even calling Shandi to come on Tyra's nightmare daytime TV talk show and playing footage of the assault on the big screen after she'd asked them not to. 

Rape victim told by Tyra to "fight her carnal desires".  

Background on the assault:  Shandi was starving and underfed, then got overly drunk one evening when it was sprung on the contestants that male models would be coming over for dinner.  She was blackout drunk when one of them climbed on top of her and raped her as cameras continued to roll.  Let me repeat:  A VIOLENT CRIME WAS COMMITTED ON CAMERA AND BROADCAST TO THE WORLD with the victim painted as the villain.  That's a whole other level of wrong.  The fact that a woman could be raped--literally forced to have sex when she was incapable of consenting--while the whole world watched, and then PAINTED AS THE VILLAIN is proof that rape culture is alive and well.  Today, in 2026.  Because to this day, no one has been prosecuted or even questioned by law enforcement about this incident.  The offender's face & name are immortalized on camera and he continues to walk free.  

But back to ANTM.  The girls pretended to be homeless once.  They did a shoot on the impacts of smoking, so silly.  They forced a model to close the gap in her teeth against her will.  This is what the documentary does, somehow managing to center Tyra and the ANTM judges when there were women being abused and endangered on their watch.  And here come the meme lords turning it all into a big joke AGAIN. 

I can't imagine how Shandi must be feeling right now or for the last 20+ years.  Do we know how her mental health is holding up, if she has access to therapy and other support?  Legal representation?  These scumbags should've been sued under the table for what they did to her.  Cycle 2 should've been the final cycle and everyone involved should've been held legally and financially accountable.  That's what would've happened if we lived in a world where misogyny & rape culture weren't the law of the land.  If preventing suicide and other harmful outcomes was REALLY as important as all these networks make it out to be when they broadcast suicide hotline numbers at the end of episodes where they've driven someone over the edge for ratings.  

Molested on set & told to shut up.  

Shandi is incredibly strong for surviving that--all of it.  If by chance she ever reads this, I hope she knows none of that was her fault and there's NOTHING for her to feel bad about.  She had every right to sue the producers including Tyra and to publicly tell the world what happened at the time.   I don't blame her for not being able to do that, but she had every right to.  The fact that she survived and is still here with us is all that matters.  It's now on law enforcement to follow up on the perpetrator(s), though there's probably some bogus excuse not to ("statute of limitations," or "she didn't press charges").  Therein lies the problem.  The one time on the show where a model (Keenyah Hill) DID speak up for herself because she was being groped by a male model, the panel of judges shut her down, basically telling her to shut up and take it.  




"A Different Time"

Because common sense & basic decency didn't exist until Twitter.

The fact that everybody acts like the mid-2000s were "a different time" before basic morals existed is also ridiculous to me.  Sure, #MeToo hadn't happened yet and Black Lives Matter didn't exist, but those movements are not the starting point for morality or law and order either.  Rape was still a crime; a Black woman should've known not to paint white women Black and put dashikis on them for a photo shoot.  Knowledge of the harms of eating disorders was most definitely a thing. 

For a show populated by so many minority and gay people, ANTM sure wasn't very conscientious about the crap they were churning out to impressionable young viewers.  Would a show full of male contestants EVER think to behave this way?  Today's reality TV landscape suggests not.  Shows like The Real Housewives, Dance Moms, Sister Wives and Toddlers and Tiaras prove that exploitation of women and children is not just accepted but celebrated in American society, even as the Epstein files rule the headlines.  Cue faux performative outrage.  Keep scrolling.

The fact is we live in a world where people will watch a crime against humanity unfold and say "that's wild."  No, you dumb shits, it's not "wild".  Wild is bonkers, bananas, silly.  Like Nick Cannon's "Wild'n Out."  This shit is criminal.  Revolting.  Psychopathic.  Unforgivable.  The fact that the modeling industry is a major playground for Epstein-affiliated crooks like Jean-Luc Brunel goes completely unmentioned in this documentary, naturally.

And all of you enablers calling Tyra a "perfect scapegoat" and making excuses for her because she happens to be a Black female:  stop.  You're giving rape apologist vibes.  It's the same shit that happened when Cosby, R. Kelly & Diddy's crimes were revealed.  Not every Black person is MLK or Maya Angelou.  Some people are just indefensible narcissists worthy of every bad thing written and said about them.  The fact that these assholes victimized OTHER BLACK PEOPLE seems lost on you terminally stupid excuse-makers.  She said it herself:  this show was her dream.  Her baby.  She was Executive Producer, editor, judge and host.  It made her even filthy richer than she already was at the expense of poor, traumatized and minority women, and then she comes out unapologetically and promises us "Cycle 25".  If you don't see the issue with that, you can burn right alongside her.  

Hi!  ✌😀  Like this article?  Drop a donation in one of the accounts below.  Google AdSense does not support "drug-related" content so I rely on your contributions to keep this blog running.  It's hard out here for an independent freelance writer in the digital age.  Thank you!  🌈

BITCOIN:
18cwb3qFkGghVqqzNSX59EFypzzF8Dd7Vg

BITCOIN CASH:
qz84t4ua2achx90a7yk8efelvufggflhu5tzalry7l

Whistleblower Karen Silkwood: Driven Off the Road TWICE?

 

A burgeoning nuclear industry clashing with a growing unionization movement.  Increasing knowledge of the effects of radiation exposure combined with the shoddy handling practices and frequent contamination incidents at a nuclear facility in a small Oklahoma town.  40-66 pounds of missing plutonium hand-waved away by a government that moved the goalposts of how much nuclear material was allowed to go "missing" before corporations had to report it.  A fatal one-car crash of a union leader on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter on a desolate stretch of highway on a cold November night in 1974.   These are just some of the troubling details of the still-unsolved Karen Silkwood case.  

The 1970s were a very different time.  We were still friendly with Iran, which had yet to undergo the Islamic revolution.  Studio54 was all the rage and its patrons were powered by pure Colombian and Bolivian cocaine.  Quaaludes, a powerful depressant (sedative-hypnotic) that fell somewhere between barbiturates and benzodiazepines, were handed out at anxiety clinics the same way opioids were at pain clinics in the early 2000s.  The Vietnam war was just ending around the mid-70s, bringing home a generation of mentally and physically wounded men.  But aside from that, things tended to feel like one big party.  Baby Boomers were in their 20s and bands like Queen, Aerosmith, Funkadelic, the Bee Gees and Black Sabbath ruled the airwaves.  Jimmy Carter was president, and his focus was on things like solar power and pot legalization.  

But dig a little deeper and you'll see the '70s weren't all that glamorous.  Musicians and celebrities routinely had sex with underage "groupies" and drugged women to rape them without consequence.  Women's rights in general were abhorrent, and Black people and gays were still treated like 3rd class citizens.  Homosexuality was considered a mental illness by the APA until early 1974.  This was also the year that Karen Silkwood, a high-level lab technician at the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant in Cimarron, OK, died in a mysterious one-car crash on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter.

Silkwood's badly crushed vehicle.

Karen first got on her employer's bad side when she engaged in an unsuccessful strike in 1972.  (Actually, she probably already had a strike against her for being female in the male-dominated factory/technician field).  Strike 2 (or 3) came when Karen became the 1st woman elected to the union's bargaining committee, for which her job was to document health & safety violations.  Among the many disturbing violations she noted was missing plutonium--specifically between 40 and 66 POUNDS of it.  

To this point, none of the workers had been informed that plutonium could cause cancer.  Sounds insane  today, but it's true.  Karen was informed at a September 1974 meeting and was shocked.  She pulled the legislative director aside and told him:

"I work in a quality-control lab, and I noticed the lab technician would use a felt pen on the X-ray to cover over that little thin line that showed a crack in the control rod welds." And [she told me] there was some fooling with the computer data, too."

Silkwood herself had been so badly contaminated (in highly suspicious ways) she likely would've died a horrible death from radiation-related illness if she hadn't been killed in a car wreck.  It's still debated how her apartment became the source of exposure of both plutonium and uranium, and how the inside of her unused work gloves came to contain dangerous amounts of plutonium despite no punctures.  Kerr-McGee outrageously claimed she contaminated herself to make the company "look bad" even though she was legitimately upset to she learn the radioactive material caused cancer.  She'd always taken safety very seriously, so it's unlikely she or anyone else would've done such a thing.  By the end of her life she was very depressed and those who knew her cited the radiation exposure as the major cause of her low mood.




The Crash

Crash site, 2026

Silkwood crashed her car shortly after leaving a meeting with the union at a small cafe, during which she cried quietly about her fear of developing cancer due to plutonium exposure.  She allegedly said the only bright spot was all the documentation she carried and planned to show the reporter later that night.  She was heading Oklahoma City to meet New York Times reporter David Burnham and carrying a folder, a spiral notebook and a packet of documents with her when she left the union meeting.  None of those were recovered from the car or the surrounding scene.  

Her autopsy found levels of methaqualone (Quaaludes) nearly twice the medicinal dose in her system.  Two tablets of the potent drug were found in her car along with a couple of cannabis joints.  A marijuana plant was also present in her apartment.  She was not wearing her seatbelt.  Her car bore signs of possible ramming from behind, and it appeared to some that she'd been awake at the time of the crash.  From Wikipedia:

"In most one-vehicle accidents where the driver has gone to sleep, or because of impaired abilities," Pipkin noted, "the vehicle has always gone off to the right because of the contour of the road, namely the crown." The second thing Pipkin reported was that the Honda tracks in the grass showed the car did not drift, but was actually out of control before it left the highway. "The only way that this car could have been put in that attitude," he wrote, "was either an impact by an unknown vehicle or a combination of an impact by an unknown vehicle and driver over-reaction and subsequent loss of control."

 

The Aftermath

Nuclear bombs: then & now

Turns out, all of Karen's allegations against the plant were proven true and the plant was ultimately shut down a year later.  (The company itself remained a powerful force in Oklahoma, operating a number of gas stations and other filthy businesses for decades).  The plutonium that contaminated her apartment came from a part of the plant she hadn't accessed in years.  Her family sued Kerr-McGee and was initially awarded a record-setting 10.5 million settlement, but it was overturned by the federal government on the grounds that "state governments can't award punitive damages due to federal regulations of nuclear plants".  Never mind that their "regulation" was a fucking joke.  

The real mystery is what happened to all that missing plutonium.  Once you get to the bottom of that rabbit hole, you start to realize why this evil corporation might have wanted to shut Ms. Silkwood up forever.  About 70 other workers at the same plant had already been contaminated, so that alone wouldn't have been motive to literally have her killed.  But having concrete proof of the company selling nuclear material on the black market in a manner that broke world anti-proliferation treaties would definitely do it.  Because you see, the government had a hand in allowing this material to go unaccounted for.  Regulatory agencies kept moving the goalposts, increasing the amount that was allowed to be "missing" from these facilities until it reached an insane 250% margin of error allowed, according to a 1977 Rolling Stone article.  There was also a media blackout on the issue of missing plutonium, allegedly for "national security" reasons. Convenient.

The attorney for the Silkwood family, Daniel Sheehan, claims the missing plutonium was actually weapons-grade material and it went directly to the uber-trustworthy Israel, who was directed to split it with the Shah of Iran and South Africa.  (Remember, Iran was our ally at the time).  This is the side of the nuclear power industry that's rarely discussed today when aggressive nuclear power proponents fill Reddit comment sections with their propaganda.  But even Wikipedia contains a prominent section on the "dual uses" of this "technology," which can be used both for power and weapons like those used in Nagasaki & Hiroshima. 

The nuclear industry has a long and torrid history of scandals that prove human beings are utterly  incapable of responsibly handling such deadly material on a scale large enough to make it a viable energy alternative to oil and gas.  It's not unlike the BSL-IV laboratories that handle the most deadly pathogens on Earth with no informed consent from the public, or the psychopathic scientists tinkering with "mirror life" and AI viruses.  Some among us just can't resist playing God with the most hazardous killing materials in existence (I can't even say "known to man" because some of these things aren't known even to the most science-minded among us.  Even those at the highest levels of government).  That's a problem.



A SECOND Wreck?

Quaaludes were ultimately banned largely for their role in date rapes and causing car crashes.  If not for this detail, it would be 100% clear that Karen Silkwood was murdered.  The pills were prescribed legally for her anxiety and depression, but they alter judgment, coordination and cognition to such a degree that they're never safe to drive on.  The irony is that depressants like benzos, methaqualone, alcohol and barbiturates can worsen depression and other mood disorders to a dangerous degree, yet they're still prescribed for it to this day (mostly benzos).  

But even this detail comes into question when you learn of a little detail that's almost never mentioned in even the most thorough documentaries about Karen Silkwood.  Just 2 weeks before the fatal crash, Karen was involved in a bizarre wreck at 1:15 a.m. on Highway 33 in which she drove BACKWARDS over a 13-foot embankment!  Interestingly, she didn't report it to the police, instead just calling a wrecking service to have her car towed from a desolate country road West of Guthrie, OK.  She did report it to her car insurance company.  But here's the most important detail:  she wasn't taking Quaaludes yet. 

Here are the details from an official FBI report:

In regard to SILKWOOD* s accident that preceded 
the fatal accident, this matter was not investigated by 
the OHP when the accident occurred, however, it has been 
determined that at 1:15 A.M, , on October 31, 1974, 
(Thursday), at a point 3.8 miles west of Guthrie, Oklahoma, 
on State Highway 33, SILKWOOD* s car, a 1973 Honda, went off 
the highway going over backwards off a 13 foot embankment 
and coming to rest against a fence post. 

SILKWOOD left the car in the ditch until 
morning and thereafter contacted Martin* s Wrecker Service 
in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Wrecker service extracted vehicle 
from ditch and as he previously indicated, this accident 
was not reported to the OHP. It is his understanding that 
as result of this accident SILKWOOD filed a claim with the 
Allstate Insurance Company for damage to the left rear 
quarter panel of the vehicle. It is also his understanding 
the wrecker driver who picked up the SILKWOOD car after the 
fatal accident observed in her car a recent estimate from 
the Eskridge Pontiac-Honda Company relative to damage to 
the left rear quarter panel. It is his understanding this 
estimate Was in excess of $300. 

Inquiry by his department determined that SILKWOOD, on November 1, 1974, 
contacted Dr. CLARENCE in Oklahoma City, 
She subsequently contacted the doctor on November 4, 1974, at which time she 
complained she could not sleep.  It is my understanding that 
he prescribed the metnaquaione (methaqualone) as result of SILKWOOD* s visits. 

Emphasis mine.

It's believed the back-end damage to her car came from that incident, yet if that's the case, it only makes the whole thing look MORE suspicious because she wasn't taking downers yet!  The only place I've seen this mentioned was in one Youtube video, which cited the FBI's own document quoted above.  That vid attempted to write off the fatal crash as a result of intoxication and failed to make the connection with the previous wreck and possible foul play, instead insinuating that Karen was just a bad driver. 

The fact that this happened so close to the fatal incident definitely adds fuel to the murder theories IMHO.  If we could know for CERTAIN that Karen wasn't taking methaqualone prior to seeing Dr. Clarence on November 4, 1974, this would all but seal the case as a murder for me.  The fact that she first contacted this doctor THE DAY AFTER the first wreck suggests it caused her significant distress.  

Was Karen having problems sleeping because she was being followed and feared what ultimately ended up happening?  Did somebody tamper with her car in a way that would cause it to suddenly go backwards and plummet off an embankment?  Was some of her depression and crying at the final union meeting due to being shaken up by her previous late night wreck?  We'll never know because the only person who can answer those questions is no longer with us.





The Fate of Whistleblowers in America

Whistleblowing = a deadly exercise in the "Land of the Free"

What do I think happened to Karen Silkwood?  The same thing happening to whistleblowers today. Manning was thrown in a military prison; Snowden has been exiled in Russia since 2013.  Assange was tortured at Belmarsh prison for years, and they were the lucky ones because they're still living.  In more recent times, multiple corporate whistleblowers have turned up dead of alleged suicide.  Thus is the danger of corporate fascism. 

Even if it turns out that all 5 of those men actually committed suicide, it's 100% unacceptable that an employer or ex-employer would be allowed to harass, threaten, defame and otherwise drive workers to that point for having the audacity to report blatant health, safety & environmental violations.  Clearly, our whistleblower protection laws are NOT being enforced.   Meanwhile our government is trying to write laws banning VPNs and other forms of internet anonymity that make it possible to report the crimes of governments and corporations in a safe manner!  They want to make damn sure we can be driven off the road like Karen Silkwood or pushed out a 10 story window like Frank Olson. 

Where the hell is the media?  That's right:  they've got corporate sponsors to suck off.  I can't wait until they're put completely out of business by citizen journalists, who consistently put them to shame with faster, more accurate information and often even beat law enforcement to the punch when it comes to developing stories.  

Whatever caused this woman's death, there's no question she was ultimately a very brave and important figure in the fight against corporate evil and eventually in shutting down the nuclear industry in the U.S.  The Three Mile Accident in 1979 was the final nail in the coffin, but Karen's death drew enough national attention to get Kerr-McGee's shitty plant shut down.  A major motion picture was even made starring Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher.  Sadly, unions have lost most of their power since the 1970s as relations between regulators and corporations have grown ever more incestuous.  Working conditions continue to deteriorate and whistleblowers arguably face an even more uphill battle than they did back then. 

Rather than staying and fighting when things get hard, most employees just change jobs or even career paths because we've been so thoroughly propagandized and stripped of our historical knowledge of unionizing, labor strikes and civil disobedience in America.  The U.S. just saw its first general strike in EIGHTY YEARS in response to the ICE killings of 2 people--a fact that would've been unthinkable to the workers of the 1930s-1950s.

R.I.P. Karen Silkwood and all victims of state-sanctioned violence whose only "crimes" were telling the truth to protect the public.  For a country that pushes "personal accountability" so hard, you'd think there'd be at least a couple corporate CEOs in prison or on death row for decisions that killed hundreds of thousands of people for no reason other than enriching themselves.  (BP oil spill, Bayer AIDS blood scandal, Vioxx peddlers, Monsanto Agent Orange pushers, etc).  If "corporations are people," they must be held to the same legal standards as the average Joe.

Karen Silkwood
1946 - 1974

Hi!  ✌😀  Like this article?  Drop a donation in one of the accounts below.  Google AdSense does not support "drug-related" content so I rely on your contributions to keep this blog running.  It's hard out here for an independent freelance writer in the digital age.  Thank you!

BITCOIN:
18cwb3qFkGghVqqzNSX59EFypzzF8Dd7Vg

BITCOIN CASH:
qz84t4ua2achx90a7yk8efelvufggflhu5tzalry7l

When Intuition and Gut Feelings Can't Be Trusted

Intuition and "gut feelings" are a true gift.  Even the paralyzing fear one feels when their life is in danger is a positive thing, as discussed in the classic book "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin DeBecker.  Women are trained from a young age to prioritize "niceness" and congeniality above our own safety and often ignore our internal warning system for fear of appearing "bitchy" or ungrateful.  This is to our detriment.  That feeling when a man is following a little too close, when someone behaves okay on paper but their "vibe" gives you a sickly feeling...  that sort of thing should NEVER be ignored or downplayed.

However, intuition (including "mother's intuition") has its limits.  Because it's a survival instinct that originates in the primitive part of our brain, it has no ability to be rational or carry out complex analytical or critical thinking processes.  Its only purpose is IMMEDIATE survival--outrunning the lion on the Savannah, escaping seconds before lightning strikes... avoiding modern-day human predators, freak accidents or natural disasters.  The feeling is often indescribably intense and sets in seemingly out of nowhere, prompting immediate action before one even has time to think.  

This is exactly the kind of thing that works against rational, logical thought.  Intuition or doing "what feels right" when it comes to complex medical decisions or other things requiring expert levels of knowledge is dangerous because these things don't adhere to our "common sense" beliefs about what's good/bad for you, etc.  Example:  Genetically modified foods (GMOs) scare a whole lot of people, but there's 0 medical or scientific evidence to justify that fear.  Vaccine ingredient lists sound intimidating, plus nobody likes to see their child cry from the pain of being jabbed with a needle. 

Viral infections, not vaccines, trigger chronic illnesses like autoimmune disease.

But vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and far less risky than the diseases they prevent.  It SOUNDS reasonable that just letting a child acquire infections "naturally" would "build a strong immune system" but that idea actually comes from the largely discredited Hygiene Hypothesis.  In fact, the #1 reason kids didn't make it to adulthood before the 1950s was infectious disease, and many of the autoimmune diseases & chronic conditions blamed on vaccines are actually proven to be triggered by viral infections.  Entire sections of cemeteries called "baby gardens" were dedicated to just infants and toddlers who died from transmissible disease prior to childhood vaccination.  The fact that we've largely forgotten this horror speaks to their safety and effectiveness.  





Natural ≠ Safe

We tend to believe that "natural = safe" and "chemical = dangerous" but that couldn't be further from the truth.  Plenty of things in nature* will kill you with amazing speed and acuity while synthetic things like antivirals for AIDS and shingles, antibiotics, Naloxone, Epi-pens, Albuterol inhalers and the various and sundry drugs for cancer treatment, cardiovascular conditions, Type I and II diabetes and mental illness save countless lives around the world every year, month, day, minute and second.  Disagree?  Then keep your science-hating ass away from the hospital/doctor's office next time you're nursing a 104F fever or slice an artery.  Go visit your spice rack or consult a green witch.  Walk your talk.

The nonsense that started it all... Why'd it take TWELVE years to retract tho?

The anti-vaccine movement has been around since the first vaccine but gained a dangerous foothold when the internet became ubiquitous.  Measles, for instance, was declared eliminated in the U.S. in the year 2000.  Cue Andrew Wakefield's bogus retracted study and the shitstorm of celebrity advocacy by geniuses like Jenny McCarthy, Rob Schneider & others with 0 medical education/experience.  Unfunny clowns with a platform and a crowd of equally uneducated followers.  Now we're staring down the barrel of a full-blown measles outbreak.  As of late 2019, 140,000 people worldwide died from the disease, many of whom were children.  2025 saw the most cases of any year since 2000.  We're not just losing ground, we're falling off the edge of the flat Earth.

All this when it takes two fucking seconds to answer the big scawy question on all the concerned parents' minds:  whether vaccines cause autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.  Here's your answer:

Courtesy the NHS.

I encourage you to try Googling, Bing'ing, Yandexing, Gibiru'ing, DuckDuckGo'ing and otherwise searching this question in as many ways as you can think of, because the answer is always the same.  You don't develop autism after birth just like you don't "develop" Down Syndrome post-natally.  You're born with it and will die with it, therefore vaccines nor any other thing can cause it after you exit the womb.  It's a brain wiring disorder of neurology, not psychology, and it happens when the brain's neurons, axons, myelin sheaths and other hardware is laid down in the womb. 

Just because it's not noticed by parents or others before a certain age doesn't mean it wasn't always THERE, it just means it gets worse at certain developmental stages (being a developmental disorder and all), such as when the brain grows more rapidly than at any other point between ages 1-3, or during the adolescent and teen years when puberty hormones and pruning cause extreme changes.  These developmental periods are difficult for ANY child, but for the autistic or ADHD child, they can be catastrophic in the absence of major nutritional, emotional & neuroprotective supports.

Plus, infants don't tend to do a lot of the things you'd need to do to be diagnosed with autism--playing with toys "wrong," toe-walking, hand-flapping, echolalia, extreme pickiness with food, repetitive behaviors/stimming, lack of eye contact/reciprocal emotion.  They just lay there sucking a bottle.  Still, professionals have diagnosed autism in infants as young as 6 months old because they know what to look for.





Where SHOULD You Go for Reliable Health Info?

Smart people know when to defer to the experts.  Idiots think they know more than them.

Reliable does not mean "whatever confirms my existing beliefs."  It means factual and unbiased.  People seem to have lost the ability to tell fact from opinion and to know when to defer to actual experts.  When life-altering medical decisions are involved, you can't just pick a side like you would pick a political party or Superbowl team.  There are people whose entire adult lives have been devoted to studying all the intricate and boring details of these issues and then applying them in the real world, and you will NEVER know more than they do (nor will I). 

Just as you wouldn't go to a mechanic for a root canal or a veterinarian for a colonoscopy, you should NEVER go to social media (TikTok & Youtube vids, Facebook groups, memes or other unofficial sources) for important medical info.  If you wouldn't trust a random layperson or group to perform a complex surgery or make big medical decisions for your loved one, do not accept the bullshit these non-experts churn out just because it appeals to your gut reaction or instincts.

.what?  How common web addresses stack up.

That doesn't mean nowhere on the internet is reliable, but social media algorithms are set up to show you more of what you like/follow/interact with, not more of what's reliable, fact-based or true.  This is why Zuckerberg has been on trial so many times: his website has caused civil wars in Myanmar, tampered with election outcomes in the U.S. and promoted deadly medical misinformation via this dangerous algorithm whose only goal is to get you to spend more time on the site--facts be damned.  What you want is factual, evidence-based information with no regard for opinion or what's convenient, comfortable or profitable.  Here are some places you can find that:

Cochrane

NIH

AAFP.org (American Academy of Family Physicians)

Medlineplus.gov

Harvard Health

Yale.edu

World Health Organization (WHO.int)

Science-Based Medicine (sciencebasedmedicine.org)

NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine)

Just go to Google or another search engine to find these.  Generally, well-known hospitals and health orgs like The Red Cross, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, American Heart Association & American Cancer Society are high-quality as well.  And here's a list of the top-rated charities.  Plenty of well-known ones, like the Susan G. Komen breast cancer charity (still the highest-grossing and most well-known of its kind) are incredibly shady.  Recall their pink drill bit controversy among others.  

Not satire:  a real Susan G. Komen ad

* Oh yeah, here's that list of 100% natural things that will kill your ass deader than a hammer.  

Ricin

Oleander

Botulism

Lead, mercury & arsenic

Mosquitoes (Malaria and Zika)

Ticks (Lyme, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever & this terrifying list of tick-borne diseases) 

Anthrax

Ionizing radiation (aka "the sun")

Asbestos
the broken pits of cherries, apricots, peaches & plums (cyanide)
Tobacco, morphine, ephedra, ergot, Betel nut
Deathcap mushrooms
Deadly nightshades (scopolamine, datura, henbane, etc)
High doses of Vitamin A, E or D
Wood smoke
Carbon monoxide, radon, methane, phosgene
HPV, HIV, Black plague, rabies, Ebola, Nipah, Smallpox, Polio
Tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, tsunamis, floods

...to name a few.  


Oh yeah, a newborn baby in New Mexico just died of listeria because its mother drank raw milk, which has been under increasing scrutiny due to the presence of Avian flu in cow's milk.  So you can add that to the list.

Hi!  ✌😀  Like this article?  Drop a donation in one of the accounts below.  Google AdSense does not support "drug-related" content so I rely on your contributions to keep this blog running.  It's hard out here for an independent freelance writer in the digital age.  Thank you!

BITCOIN:
18cwb3qFkGghVqqzNSX59EFypzzF8Dd7Vg

BITCOIN CASH:
qz84t4ua2achx90a7yk8efelvufggflhu5tzalry7l