We’ve never spent more money on health insurance, health care, hospitals, and medicine—but we are growing sicker and sicker with chronic diseases. Even worse, our medical professionals do not seem to notice or care about the obvious. Why?

Visit your average doctor—when you can get in for an appointment in a reasonable time period, which is growing harder—and you’re likely to find yourself asked to fill out an assortment of forms asking for the same information you already gave on your last visit. You’ll also be asked to list your medicines and allergies, which the doctor won’t have read or remember when he sees you.

Notably, he probably won’t try to find out if you have suffered any side effects from your medicine, so he probably won’t report them to the federal adverse event database. And if you complain about something that doesn’t show up easily on an insurance-approved test, you might be sent off on a time-consuming and expensive journey to specialists who will be just as baffled and may conclude there’s nothing really wrong with you. You’ll be told that it’s all in your head.

Image: Merck’s 1901 “ready-reference pocket book” for physicians and surgeons. Public domain.

For the answers to a lot of questions regarding why commonsense seems so hard to find among our medical establishment, political leaders, health agencies, and media, it helps to follow the money. Together, these behemoths collude to control our information on a grand scale and protect their financial interests. It can feel nearly impossible to break this information juggernaut and the censorship complex that’s grown up around it.

One little-known example of how these groups misshape our information landscape can be found in medical school. One of the popular medical textbooks is The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, which Merck and Co., a pharmaceutical company with $60 billion in annual revenue, writes and publishes.

Of course, Merck pinky promises that its editorial book division is firewalled from its pharmaceutical-producing side. On that side, the company has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines to settle allegations of fraud, bribing doctors, mis-marketing dangerous medicine, and more.

But when I dug into the Merck Manuals, both for professionals and consumers, I found shocking omissions and false information.

Do Merck Manuals mention that the company’s own HPV cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil, has been the center of major controversies about its safety and effectiveness? Does it disclose that injured patients have filed many lawsuits claiming the vaccines caused illnesses from ovarian failure to cancer? That the scientist who codeveloped Gardasil later spoke out in an unprecedented way, saying that the Merck Gardasil vaccine may have more risks than benefits?

No.

Instead, Merck’s online “consumer version” of the Manual makes an audacious claim under “Side Effects of HPV Vaccine.” It states flatly and falsely, “No serious side effects have been reported.” It’s unknown how that claim could possibly square with Gardasil’s FDA-approved label, which Merck also wrote, which states:

the following postmarketing adverse experiences have been spontaneously reported for GARDASIL: Blood and lymphatic system disorders: Autoimmune hemolytic anemia, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, lymphadenopathy. Respiratory, thoracic, and mediastinal disorders: Pulmonary embolus. Gastrointestinal disorders: Pancreatitis. General disorders and administration site conditions: Asthenia, chills, death, malaise. Immune system disorders: Autoimmune diseases, hypersensitivity reactions including anaphylactic/anaphylactoid reactions, broncho- spasm. Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders: Arthralgia, myalgia. Nervous system disorders: Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, motor neuron disease, paralysis, seizures, transverse myelitis. Infections and infestations: Cellulitis. Vascular disorders: Deep venous thrombosis.

Blood clots, paralysis, seizures, brain damage, and death—yet the Merck Manual online tells med students, doctors, and consumers, “No serious side effects have been reported”?

An unbiased textbook would include a fair recitation of these cons as well as the pros and urge doctors to monitor their patients for possible side effects. Instead, Merck irresponsibly teaches doctors and promises consumers that serious side effects simply do not exist.

The problem extends far beyond the Merck Manuals. A 2022 study examined nine textbooks commonly used to teach which medicine to prescribe for various psychiatric disorders. Two-thirds of the textbook authors and editors had been personally paid by companies that make the drugs.

There may be a silver lining, though. The bad guys finally went too far.

With Covid, the disinformation, intolerance for dissent, shutdowns, mandates, forced or withheld medical treatment, mass firings, and attacks upon tens of thousands of scientists sparked a diverse coalition’s formation. This coalition includes a mix of liberals, conservatives, and nonpartisans. It’s made up of freethinking parents, students, doctors, nurses, researchers, elected officials, and celebrities.

Many had never before questioned public health narratives or their doctors. Most had blindly supported them. But today, members of this new coalition find themselves probing widely pushed orthodoxy on Covid and beyond, rightly asking what else the media and top public health officials have misled us about.

Now, redemption from the grasp of those who seek to control our heath and our lives may come through a collective awakening that’s already begun.

Order Sharyl Attkisson’s new book Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails today (Harper Collins, September 3). Proceeds support independent reporting causes.