Don’t Let Confusion and Fear Block Promising Genetic Therapy Treatments

Originally published at Fox News  Newt Gingrich

Over the past three decades, I have consistently spoken about the enormous potential of biomedical breakthroughs that could solve many of our pressing public challenges. Because of this potential, I have advocated for increased public funding of basic scientific research and reforms at the Food and Drug Administration to speed up the process by which new treatments are available to patients.

One of the most exciting areas of biomedical science today is in genetic medicine, where we are just now seeing the public investment into sequencing the human genome bear fruit in the form of treatments to help patients overcome hereditary disorders.

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of seeing first-hand just how extraordinary these new treatments are, when I attended the Sanford Lorraine Cross Award ceremony in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

The award is different than most prizes for medical achievements. Rather than simply rewarding research which led – or could one day lead – to treatments, the Lorraine Cross Award honors doctors who take their research beyond the lab and take the risks to develop cutting edge cures that actually help patients today.

This focus on cures is a trademark of the philanthropic efforts of Denny Sanford, who has pledged almost $1 billion over the past 16 years to transform a small rural health system in South Dakota into a global health system of hospitals, research centers, and clinics. This system is helping transform the way health care is practiced around the world. In his honor, the health system adopted his name, Sanford Health.

In this inaugural year of the Sanford Lorraine Cross Award, all three of the finalists for the $1 million prize have developed gene therapy techniques which are being used to treat patients today.

As I learned about the incredible things these doctors were doing in this bold new field of medicine, it occurred to me that lack of funding and unnecessary bureaucracy are not the only things that can slow down the progress of developing new treatments. Unnecessary fear caused by confusion over what gene therapy is can also slow progress.

For example, last week, a researcher in China, He Jiankui, claimed that he had used a gene editing technique to confer HIV immunity on twin girl embryos, who were then successfully brought to term. The announcement was met with near universal global criticism, and the Chinese government responded by closing the doctor’s lab and opening an investigation that could result in criminal charges.

So, you see a $1 million prize and acclaim for gene therapy – versus criminal charges and outrage for gene editing. But what is the difference?

In the coming years, we will be hearing a lot more about genetic medicine. We will hear a lot of hope and optimism but also a lot of fear and calls for caution. To understand the awesome promise and peril of this extraordinary new field of medicine, it is worth examining the differences between the work which was honored yesterday in Sioux Falls and the work which was rightly condemned in China.

The technique – gene therapy vs. genome editing

First, there is a big difference between gene therapy and genome editing.

Gene therapy is treating an existing disease in an individual patient who is sick. As one of the Sanford Award nominees, Dr. Jim Wilson, who directs the Gene Therapy Program at the University of Pennsylvania – and whose work refining a gene therapy delivery system is the foundation upon which much of today’s gene therapy treatment is built – explained, “Gene therapy is really the ultimate treatment for patients that have disease due to single gene defects.”

Gene therapy only impacts somatic cells, which are non-reproductive. This means that changes in somatic cells will not be passed on to offspring. So, the treatment only impacts individual patients who give their consent to being treated. In the case of patients who are children, their parents give consent – a practice around which there is a long-established ethical consensus.

By contrast, the work done by the Chinese biologist involved manipulation of the genetic code of human embryos – a technique referred to as “embryo genome editing” (sometimes “germline cell editing.”) Germline cell editing alters reproductive cells. This means the changes will be passed on to future generations.

There is no ethical consensus in place that fully understands the implications of a set of parents giving ethical consent to treatment that will impact all future generations of a patient.

In addition, there is the huge ethical and scientific challenge of how to advance the science of genome editing without the destruction of human embryos.

We may very well see germline editing used in the future to cure disease. But that should only be done after much study and a consensus around these and other ethical issues is reached, which will take time.

In the meantime, we should continue to move forward with gene therapy of somatic cells.

The diseases being treated

Even within the field of somatic cell gene therapy, there are necessary guardrails in place.

Because the field is so new, gene therapy is currently only allowed for diseases which have no other cure or effective treatment.

For instance, one of the Sanford Lorraine Cross Award nominees, Dr. Brian Kaspar, is using gene therapy to change the course of type 1 spinal muscular atrophy, a devastating disease that destroys basic muscle function in babies and usually results in death by age 2. His treatment results in dramatic improvements in muscle function and survival.

Another pair of nominees, Drs. Jean Bennett and Katherine High, are using gene therapy to reverse an inherited form of blindness, which typically begins with a severe visual impairment during infancy that can continue to worsen over time. Their drug, Luxturna, was the first FDA approved gene therapy and has paved the way for many more breakthroughs.

Contrast these two intractable diseases being treated with gene therapy with what was done in China to make the children immune to HIV.

First, authorized gene therapy techniques are for conditions that already exist in a patient. The children treated at the embryonic stage in China were not HIV positive.

Second, avoiding HIV infection is relatively easy. And even if one contracts the virus, there are already a wide variety of effective treatments. An extraordinary combination of public and private research since the 1980s has turned being HIV positive from a death sentence into a manageable condition – if treatments are available.

There was simply no reason to use a technique as new, experimental, and fraught with ethical and medical peril as gene editing to prevent HIV infection. The risks greatly outweigh the reward.

With gene therapy on defective cells, we have a high degree of certainty about the medical impact of successful treatment – namely, normal function.

The work of the Chinese researcher was very different. He used a gene editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9 to shut down a gene called CCR5, which creates a protein necessary for HIV to enter cells. In other words, he shut down a gene that was functioning normally for humans in order to create an “artificial” resistance to the disease. However, while shutting down CCR5 may make one immune to HIV, we don’t know what other health impacts this will have. These two girls will need to be monitored for the rest of their lives to see how they develop.

Fixing a defect vs. human enhancement

Finally, the most fundamental difference between the type of work in genetic medicine honored by the Sanford Lorraine Cross Award and the work in China condemned around the world is that the former is treatment for genetic defects while the latter is the enhancement of human beings.

The prospect of human enhancement poses enormous ethical questions which strike at the core of how we think about equality – particularly in America.

The American ideal is not just equality under the law, it is also equal opportunity. Namely, that America should strive to be an open society, where people can achieve success through hard work and applying their God-given talents.

But what if talent was no longer exclusively God-given – and could be purchased? Human enhancement that can carry on through the generations could rapidly create a permanent and intractable divide between the wealthy and the rest of humanity because the rich would have both material advantages – and they would literally be born smarter, stronger, and healthier.

There may very well be a future in which genome editing is used medically, such as an effort to permanently eliminate certain recessive genetic disorders from humans. But that day should only come after we have figured out how to make the treatments available to all so that we advance together as a species – as we have with vaccinations for many diseases. Furthermore, we need to find a way to advance the science with the proper respect for human life in all its stages – including embryonic.

In the meantime, we should press forward with the kind of promising gene therapy techniques that were honored Tuesday in Sioux Falls. While these early stage gene therapies were for relatively rare conditions, they are setting the stage for gene therapy treatments for other inherited diseases, such as hemophilia and sickle cell anemia – diseases that impact many people. This is important foremost because of the number of patients it will help but also because of the public costs that are associated with these diseases.

We should all be excited and optimistic about the potential of gene therapy to save lives and make our world a better place.

IS FACEBOOK’S “WAR ROOM” TAKING AIM

By Michael Liedtke - Associated Press - Thursday, October 18, 2018

MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — In an otherwise innocuous part of Facebook’s expansive Silicon Valley campus, a locked door bears a taped-on sign that reads “War Room.” Behind the door lies a nerve center the social network has set up to combat fake accounts and bogus news stories ahead of upcoming elections.

Inside the room are dozens of employees staring intently at their monitors while data streams across giant dashboards. On the walls are posters of the sort Facebook frequently uses to caution or exhort its employees. One reads, “Nothing at Facebook is somebody else’s problem.”

That motto might strike some as ironic, given that the war room was created to counter threats that almost no one at the company, least of all CEO Mark Zuckerberg, took seriously just two years ago - and which the company’s critics now believe pose a threat to democracy.

Days after President Donald Trump’s surprise victory, Zuckerberg brushed off assertions that the outcome had been influenced by fictional news stories on Facebook, calling the idea “pretty crazy.”

But Facebook’s blase attitude shifted as criticism of the company mounted in Congress and elsewhere. Later that year, it acknowledged having run thousands of ads promoting false information placed by Russian agents. Zuckerberg eventually made fixing Facebook his personal challenge for 2018.

The war room is a major part of Facebook’s ongoing repairs. Its technology draws upon the artificial-intelligence system Facebook has been using to help identify “inauthentic” posts and user behavior. Facebookprovided a tightly controlled glimpse at its war room to The Associated Press and other media ahead of the second round of presidential elections in Brazil on Oct. 28 and the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 6.

“There is no substitute for physical, real-world interaction,” said Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s director of elections and civic engagement. “The primary thing we have learned is just how effective it is to have people in the same room all together.”

More than 20 different teams now coordinate the efforts of more than 20,000 people - mostly contractors - devoted to blocking fake accounts and fictional news and stopping other abuses on Facebook and its other services. As part of the crackdown, Facebook also has hired fact checkers, including The Associated Press, to vet new stories posted on its social network.

Facebook credits its war room and other stepped-up patrolling efforts for booting 1.3 billion fake accounts over the past year and jettisoning hundreds of pages set up by foreign governments and other agents looking to create mischief.

But it remains unclear whether Facebook is doing enough, said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters For America, a liberal group that monitors misinformation. He noted that the sensational themes distributed in fictional news stories can be highly effective at keeping people “engaged” on Facebook - which in turn makes it possible to sell more of the ads that generate most of Facebook’s revenue.

“What they are doing so far seems to be more about trying to prevent another public relations disaster and less so about putting in meaningful solutions to the problem,” Carusone said. “On balance, I would say they that are still way off.”

Facebook disagrees with that assessment, although its efforts are still a work in progress. Chakrabarti, for instance, acknowledged that some “bugs” prevented Facebook from taking some unspecified actions to prevent manipulation efforts in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election earlier this month. He declined to elaborate.

The war room is currently focused on Brazil’s next round of elections and upcoming U.S. midterms. Large U.S. and Brazilian flags hang on opposing walls and clocks show the time in both countries.

Facebook declined to let the media scrutinize the computer screens in front of the employees, and required reporters to refrain from mentioning some of the equipment inside the war room, calling it “proprietary information.” While on duty, war-room workers are only allowed to leave the room for short bathroom breaks or to grab food to eat at their desks.

Although no final decisions have been made, the war room is likely to become a permanent fixture at Facebook, said Katie Harbath, Facebook’s director of global politics and government outreach.

“It is a constant arms race,” she said. “This is our new normal.”

Judicial Watch Uncovers Soros/State Department Collusion!

Judicial Watch Uncovers Soros/State Department Collusion! 

Judicial Watch has taken the lead in exposing the dubious ties between State Department and the radical Soros operation.
 
We just released 49 pages of new documents forced out from the State Department detailing the hand-in-glove relationship between the Obama Sate Department and Soros, Inc.  

The documents deal primarily with the activities of Soros’ top operative in Albania, Andri Dobrushi, the director of Soros’ Open Society Foundation-Albania, who was actively engaged in channeling funding to what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban calls Soros’ “mercenary army.” The documents show U.S. grant money flowing through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that profess to promote “civil society,” while in fact attacking traditional, pro-American groups, governments and policies.

We filed a May 26, 2017, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State and USAID after they failed to respond to March 31, 2017, FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:17-cv-01012)).

The records reveal that Soros operative Dobrushi was the first person on a list of invitees by then U.S. Ambassador to Albania Donald Lu to attend an “election rollout event” held at the U.S. Embassy on April 27, 2015. The event was intended to “launch U.S. assistance for the June local elections,” being held in Tirana, Albania. As we previously reported in an April 4, 2018, press release, Ambassador Lu has been closely associated with Soros and the socialist government in Albania, which he assisted by denying U.S. visas to conservative jurists from the conservative party in Albania. Lu has since been nominated by the Trump administration to become US Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan.

Additionally, a June 18, 2015, email from Ilva Cuko, a Program Specialist in the Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Embassy in Tirana, invites several people, including Dobrushi, to a “Donors Grant Reviewing meeting” at the U.S. Embassy, in which the participants would review applications for grants submitted by NGOs seeking U.S. taxpayer grant money from the State Department. Cuko says she would “like to invite you in a discussion on these proposals. Your valuable input and comments will be used by the U.S. Embassy’s Democracy Commission, which has the ultimate authority in awarding the grants.”

Cuko on August 28, 2015, also invited Dobrushi to attend another U.S. Embassy Democracy Commission Small Grants Program “Grant Proposal Technical Review” meeting on September 3 at the U.S. Embassy. At this meeting, Cuko said they would focus on applications dealing with “anticorruption.” Ironically, under the leadership of Soros’ close friend, socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama, who took power in 2013, corruption in Albania has soared, with cannabis trafficking in the country increasing 300 percent between 2016 and 2017.

In a February 22, 2016, email, Cuko again invites several people, including Dobrushi, to another “Donors Grant Reviewing Meeting” held at the U.S. Embassy on February 26 where Dobrushi would be able to influence Embassy officials who have “the ultimate authority in awarding the grants.”

Another document, titled “Guidelines for the Democracy Commission Small Grants Program,” shows that the applications for grants that Soros’ operative was reviewing are part of a program the State Department runs in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States called the “Democracy Commission Small Grants Program,” which is supposed to “promote grassroots democracy.” The guidelines also say that the program “supports initiatives of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in building the social and intellectual foundations of democracy, the democratic resolution of problems, strengthening civil society watchdog activities, and the institutionalization of open, pluralistic political processes.”

In addition to Albania, Judicial Watch also has filed FOIA lawsuits against the State Department and USAID for records about funding and political activities of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations in, Macedonia, Romania and Colombia.

In an earlier document production connected to this lawsuit, we obtained 32 pages of records showing that the Obama administration sent U.S. taxpayers’ funds to a Soros-backed group that used the money to fund left-wing political activities in Albania. That included working with the country’s socialist government to push for highly controversial judicial “reform.”

The records also detail how the Soros operation helped the State Department review grant applications from other groups for taxpayer funding. USAID funds were funneled to Soros’ left-wing Open Society Foundations in Albania, particularly the Soros operation efforts to give the socialist government greater control of the judiciary. USAID reportedly gave $9 million in 2016 to the “Justice for All” campaign, which is overseen by Soros’ “East West Management Institute.”

The Obama administration turned over key State Department activities to George Soros, especially in Albania. The Deep State continues to be aligned with Soros and uses the State Department in countries such as Albania to push his radical agenda. And, of course, tax dollars for Soros abroad frees up resources for his activities here in the United States.

Trump Continues to Move Agenda, Despite Media

Originally published at Fox News  Newt Gingrich

The media has been fully fixated on the eminent confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court, but in the meantime, President Trump has once again proven his trade strategy is paying off.

In case you missed it, President Trump has effectively replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he has promised to do since the campaign and the institutional elites said was impossible. In the final hours leading up to a US-imposed deadline, Canada relented and agreed to join a new agreement that Trump had negotiated with Mexico, thus the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was born. All that is left now is for Congress and the legislative bodies of Canada and Mexico to sign off on the deal.

This was a critical step in President Trump’s effort to bring fairness back into US trade policies. I discuss this in my New York Times best seller Trump’s America: The Truth About Our Nation’s Great Comeback.

This updated trade regime with Mexico and Canada will mean auto-industry jobs will return to North America from overseas. By 2020, cars sold in the US that have fewer than 75 percent of their parts made in countries other than the US, Canada, or Mexico will face tariffs. This percentage under NAFTA was 62.5 percent.

Further, the North American auto-making playing field will be leveled under the new agreement. By 2023, 40 percent of the work done on cars made in the US, Mexico, and Canada, will have to be completed by workers making at least $16 an hour. Additionally, companies, particularly those in Mexico, will have to operate under new environmental and labor regulations that are more in line with regulations faced by companies in the United States.

This is a great example of how President Trump is not a traditional conservative – but is instead extremely pro-American. Republicans are not typically associated with more stringent environmental or labor rules, but in this case, it will ensure that fair competition is maintained within the North American automotive sector – a key point that was missing from NAFTA that led to many jobs leaving America.

The new agreement also puts in place much tougher rules about protecting intellectual property. This will mean a great deal to American manufacturers and innovators. Drug companies, for example, spend billions of dollars to research, develop, and deploy new medications, only to see foreign countries effectively ignore their patent rights. That means US patients are providing a disproportionate share of the return on investment for biopharmaceuticals. In other words, foreign countries are freeloading off of US patients. Under the new agreement, biopharmaceutical propriety information will be protected for at least a full 10 years, bringing their rules closer to alignment with the United States. The result will be more dollars flowing to research and development, leading to more new cures and treatments.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker can take some credit for one of the biggest successes of the new agreement. For years, Governor Walker has fought to pressure Canada to open up its highly-protected, unfair dairy market. In fact, Walker’s fight with the Canadian dairy trade is where much of this focus on Canada started. That tightly controlled dairy market is set to loosen up, which will be a significant boon to dairy farmers in Wisconsin and surrounding states.

Virtually everyone in the elite media is missing – or ignoring – that this updated, stronger relationship with our neighbors will help give President Trump better leverage to fight for American interests in trade negotiations with Europe and Asia.

This is of course anathema to the old guard elites who believe that American administrations should put global interests ahead of our own. At every turn, this group has criticized President Trump for his use of tariffs – or the threat of tariffs – in trade negotiations. They have consistently cried that the President’s policies on trade would lead to a worldwide economic recession. This is the narrative the elite media has happily parroted.

Yet, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the outperformance and continual improvement of the US economy is actually lifting government bond yields. This, among other indicators, proves that the sky-is-falling, doomsday warnings of the elite globalists have simply not materialized.

The elites have not come around to the idea that trade and diplomacy are separate. Unfair trade agreements destroy US jobs. The objective of US trade policy should be job creation – not international relations.

While this may shock the conscience of globalists on network news and at institutions, like the Council on Foreign Relations, it has been understood for decades by the US working class. President Trump was simply the first to listen.

When will the elite US media wake up to reality and see that the President is making good deals for Americans?

Do I Hit a Tree or a School Bus?

Do I Hit a Tree or a School Bus? By Alex Koyfman Written Oct. 04, 2018 Dear Reader, The driverless car has been a longtime fantasy among an extremely varied group of potential users, from science-fiction aficionados all the way to Jagermeister enthusiasts who dream of a machine that can take them home without the risk of injury or arrest.  Today, thanks to advancements made by some of the world's most prominent automakers, that fantasy is becoming a reality.  BMW, Mercedes, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, and, of course, Tesla, among others, have all made major inroads into developing this potentially world-altering product, with several models capable of completely autonomous operation due to be released as early as 2021.  And while most of these offerings allow the conventional human driver the mere option of sitting back and not doing anything, some automakers, such as GM, for example, have gone so far as to promise a car with no steering wheel and no pedals at all, making it a true autonomous vehicle.  If all goes according to plan, this heavily retrofitted Chevy Bolt will be entering service with select taxi fleets as early as next year. To those of you not paying extra-special attention to your calendars, that's sometime within the next 15 months.  That's a pretty insane timeline when you think about it. We've been living with human-controlled, human-dependent automobiles for more than 110 years now — vehicles where the operator was the only decision maker.  And just like that, inside of the next five financial quarters, all that will start to change. What most people fail to appreciate, however, is just how much work and complexity goes into achieving anything close to a functional autonomous vehicle.  Consider this: In the chaotic environment of the modern roadway, occasionally accidents will be inevitable, regardless of how many computer-controlled cars are out there.  Tree limbs will fall, pedestrians will step into roadways, water mains will break, and any number of other events that no supercomputer will be able to control will occur, instantly creating situations where contact between vehicles and other objects will be unavoidable.  In such situations, autonomous cars will have to make the same sorts of decisions that human drivers have been making since the very dawn of motorized vehicles: Since I have to crash into something, who or what do I crash into, given my choices? Hard Decisions Do I crash into the tree that's just fallen into my path, or do I swerve and hit the minivan containing a family of five? Do I hit the pedestrian that just stepped into my path, or do I strike an oncoming bus? Do I careen headlong into a stopped truck, or do I take my chances with a brick wall? These are all difficult choices, but they're choices that will have to be made nonetheless — and choices the vehicle owner and vehicle manufacturer/software designer will have to live with, both morally and legally.  In order to even consider those choices, however, the car will need to be equipped with technology that will inform its central processor of the situation. This crucial function will require arrays of complex sensors to feed a constant stream of accurate, detailed information.  This is an aspect of the problem that I think many overlook when they think about autonomous vehicles, and it's one of the most challenging to perfect.  Other, more salient aspects of the package, such as servo motors to control the steering, the acceleration and breaking, or the navigational suite, are fairly straightforward in comparison. These sensors, especially the visual sensors — the eyes of the car — which will provide a complete situational picture of the vehicle's immediate surroundings, will need to be particularly advanced, in terms of both collecting data and processing it. And that's what I'm currently most interested in for an investment angle. Because this technological subset, referred to by the eggheads as “machine vision,” is becoming an industry unto itself. It will require billions in investment capital over the coming years, but the idea of machine vision is nothing new. Machines have been growing eyes and making decisions based on the information those eyes provide for since before the turn of the 21st century. The origins of these advanced sensors come from a variety of surprising applications.An Unexpected Origin One of the pioneers of this technology, which I've been following for the last several months, made its reputation building visual sensors for machines involved in manufacturing. These sensors have allowed for products to get produced faster and more precisely, while adhering to stricter quality standards. That testing ground has created some of the most advanced visual sensors in existence, but what few people — its creators included — anticipated was just how important and far-reaching their work would be in this new application.  Since I started my research on this company, its shares have been trending upward.  It's my belief that this is just the beginning, the first hints of one of the most profound bull markets in any technological sector of the last decade. Big enough to take this $10 billion company up several-fold at least — just in the next few years as the autonomous vehicle industry begins to find its rhythm.  The real show has yet to begin, but if you don't want to be sitting on the sidelines, watching it go by when the real fireworks start over the course of the next year or so, you need to get informed now.  I've put together a substantial research report detailing all of my findings.  It's free of charge to access and gives you the full rundown of the company, the technology, the market, and the forecast.  Don't wait another minute.  Click here to access.  Fortune favors the bold, Alex Koyfman

How to OPT OUT of cancer and live completely without the disease

How to OPT OUT of cancer and live completely without the disease, no matter what your doctor says

Wednesday, October 03, 2018 by: Mike Adams
Tags: cancer, free will, freedom, goodhealth, healthy living, natural health, opt out, prevention

(Natural News) Today, we’re launching a powerful new video series called “Opt Out Universe” which teaches viewers how to opt out of life experiences you wish to avoid in order to improve your life, overcome disease, escape financial servitude and more. The name comes from the philosophical realization that most of the bad outcomes people experience in life are self-inflicted, often unconsciously. In fact, most people inadvertently create the negative outcomes they would much rather avoid.

This powerful philosophy — known as the “Opt Out Universe” mindset — rests on the principle of free will and the freedom to choose. You live in a universe where you can largely choose your outcome in life. So why not choose to be healthy and free from disease, debt, addiction and other negative outcomes? (Sounds simple, and it really is once you have the right knowledge…)

How to opt out of cancer

The first video course in this series is called “Opt Out of Cancer.” It presents a powerful, mind-expanding course that empowers people with the realization that nearly all cancer is caused by things people inadvertently do to themselves. People eat cancer-causing foods. They put cancer-causing chemicals on their skin through personal care products. They take cancer-causing medications and live in cancer-causing indoor air environments caused by chemicals in the air.

But the positive, powerful realization in all this is that nearly everyone can choose to avoid cancer if they simply have the knowledge of what causes cancer. And most people who have already been diagnosed with cancer can reverse cancer using simple strategies and small behavioral changes.

This new course is launched in conjunction with the release of The Truth About Cancerdocu-series that features powerful, life-changing interviews from dozens of holistic health experts who teach people how to beat cancer. Get the full details on this docu-series at this Natural News link.

The “Opt Out of Cancer” video course, just launched today, you can watch the first episode below, or visit OptOutUniverse.com to see all episodes as they are posted in the days ahead.

See me at OptOutUniverse.com

The Cultural Civil War Continues: Results vs. Resistance

Originally published at Fox News  by Newt Gingrich

We are living through a historic turning point in American history.

Many Americans want to keep building on the tremendous results we have seen since Republicans took control in Washington, while others, who are seeing their power and elite status wane, are bitterly fighting to resist, obstruct, and distort the Republicans’ success.

It is part of the same political-cultural civil war that I discussed in my New York Times best seller Trump’s America: The Truth About Our Nation’s Great Comeback.

You can see this fight over results versus resistance vividly in the assault Senate Democrats have executed to destroy Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who has decades of exemplary service across the government. Many in the mainstream media are pretending that the Democratic attack was prompted by last minute, uncorroborated, 36-year-old allegations of sexual assault, but the offensive started much earlier – and quickly reached fever pitch.

Newt Live: Destroying Kavanaugh and Destroying America

The moment Justice Anthony Kennedy announced he would retire in June, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats said President Trump’s nominee to replace him should not be confirmed until after the midterm elections. They were trying to fabricate a false equivalence between Kennedy’s replacement and the Republican refusal to hold confirmation hearings for Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s final Supreme Court nominee, ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Once Kavanaugh was nominated by President Trump, Schumer, seeing his first effort was ineffective, simply made clear that he was going to “oppose Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination with everything I have.” So far, he’s kept his word.

Democrats – including some on the Senate Judiciary Committee – quickly banded together for a joint press conference to get out the message that they opposed Kavanaugh because they suspected he would not support left-wing policies. There, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told the victims of the school shooting that took place in Parkland, Florida, that "Judge Kavanaugh is your worst nightmare."

At a press conference with Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Senator Cory Booker said anyone who supported Kavanaugh’s confirmation was “complicit in the evil.”

In July – the same month Kavanaugh was nominated – Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office received a letter containing the sexual assault allegations by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Feinstein then conspired to keep the allegations secret and allowed Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing – and numerous interviews with senators – to carry on without raising the allegations. According to Feinstein, she was honoring Ford’s request that her identity remain confidential. At the same time, Democrats recommended lawyers to Ford who, according to Senator Tom Cotton, will now be investigated for blatantly lying to Ford and telling her that Senate Judiciary Committee staff wouldn’t come to interview her in California.

Then, when it became clear that Kavanaugh would be confirmed, Feinstein’s office apparently went into resistance mode, discarded Ford’s request for privacy in the name of political gain, and may have leaked her letter to the press. The leak, which is now being investigated, created the chaotic media circus that forced Ford and her family – as well as the Kavanaugh family – into the center of the political-cultural turmoil. And make no mistake: This is exactly what the leak was meant to do.

The uncorroborated allegation spurred more, which became more and more salacious and unbelievable. For a moment, the Democratic fear was replaced by hysterical rage.

Finally, with regard to the allegations, Senator Mazie Hirono told all “the men of this country” to “just shut up.” Then, Schumer said publicly that nominees being considered for the political appointments have “no presumption of innocence” – the most basic concept of the American justice system.

Now, the Democrats are beginning to realize that the uncorroborated allegations aren’t going to work, so they are going after how Kavanaugh characterized his drinking in high school.

This level of resistance is breaking the Democrats’ grip of reality – and it’s a pattern.

There are clear similarities between the Kavanaugh smearing and the investigation into so-called Russian collusion. It’s not about evidence. It’s not about facts. It’s not about what’s good for America. It’s about doing anything possible to support resistance against President Trump and the Republican agenda.

What the Democrats don’t realize is that the election this fall is not going to be about President Trump — it’s going to be about what kind of America we want to become.

This is a big, historic choice for American voters. They will have the opportunity to choose between Republican results and Democratic resistance.

They will choose between having a better, fairer international trade system (see Trump’s success with replacing NAFTA) or the old international-interest trade regime that closed American factories and drove jobs out of our country.

They will choose between continuing massive job growth in almost every industry or returning to the special interest, high-regulation policies that killed job growth for eight years under Obama.

They will choose between tax cuts that allow families of four earning the average median income to keep over $2,000 annually or a left-wing, high-tax bureaucratic system that will keep more taxpayer money and distribute it according to Washington’s wishes.

They will choose between a practical, common-sense approach to lowering the cost of health care while keeping your choice of doctor and insurance and a one-size-fits-all government system that costs too much and is controlled by Washington bureaucrats.

They will choose between having safe borders and safe children or having lawlessness and so-called sanctuary cities – which are safe havens for MS-13 and other dangerous multinational gangs that are helping to fuel the opioid epidemic, which is killing more than 40,000 Americans per year.

Make no mistake: This is a big choice about what kind of country we are going to become, what kind of history we want to make, and whether we want results or resistance.