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Francis E. "Frank" Roessler - 2025 - Pratt Funeral and Cremation Service  Tribute Archive

Medical ontology learning framework to investigate daytime impairment in insomnia disorder and treatment effects  Nature.com

Janice Rasmussen Obituary February 27, 2025  Uecker-Witt Funeral Home

Trouble Falling Asleep? Here Are 9 Reasons for Insomnia—and How To Get Some Rest  Health.com

Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published November 8, 2018.

More and more, scientists are confirming and validating recommendations to consume healthy dietary fats, and typically in far greater amounts than recommended by U.S. dietary guidelines. Healthy fats are, in my view, so important for health, I've dedicated my last two books to this topic.

"Fat for Fuel" details how to implement a cyclical ketogenic diet high in healthy fats, low in net carbs and moderate in protein, delves even further into the specifics of dietary fats and how to discriminate between healthy and harmful ones.

This is really crucial information, as unhealthy fats can do more harm than excess sugar. Unfortunately, if you pay attention to government dietary guidelines (or many conventional doctors), you'll be grossly misinformed about which types of fat to eat, and how much.

For example, in the past 100 years, our omega-6 intake has nearly tripled largely due to misleading or outright incorrect marketing and government health campaigns while our intake of omega-3 has decreased tenfold, causing a severe imbalance in our omega-3 to omega-6 ratio.

Hence, this was the incentive for writing "Superfuel" to set the record straight. A majority of the research for this book was compiled by James DiNicolantonio, Pharm.D., author of "The Salt Fix."1 In a nutshell, "Superfuel" guides you back to a diet reminiscent of that during Paleolithic times, with particular focus on animal-based omega-3 fats, specifically those bound to phospholipids.

At that time, much of the omega-3 came from animal brains. Today, brains is unlikely to make the menu, but phospholipid-bound omega-3 can still be had from krill oil and fish roe.

To learn how fats are truly an extraordinary fuel for your body and brain, and why it's so vitally important to eat the right ones, be sure to order a copy of "Superfuel" today. All preorders will also receive three free gifts.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

DHA Is Crucial for Cellular Health

The fats recommended by U.S. health authorities — primarily vegetable oils — are very high in processed (and hence damaged) omega-6 fats. One of the most significant dangers of vegetable oils is that the damaged fats are integrated into your cell membranes, including mitochondrial membranes, and once these membranes become dysfunctional it sets the stage for all sorts of complications and ill health.

For example, as DiNicolantonio explains in our interview, the inner membrane of your mitochondria contains a component called cardiolipin, which needs to be saturated in the omega-3 fat docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in order to function properly.

Cardiolipin can be likened to a cellular alarm system that triggers programmed cell death (apoptosis) by signaling caspase-3 when something goes wrong with the cell. However, if the cardiolipin is not saturated with DHA, it cannot signal caspase-3, and hence apoptosis does not occur. As a result, dysfunctional cells continue to grow and may turn into a tumor. DHA is particularly crucial for brain health. In your brain, DHA:

• Stimulates Nrf2, a transcription factor that regulates cellular oxidation and reduction, and aids in detoxification
• Increases heme oxygenase 1, a protein produced in response to stress, including oxidative stress
• Upregulates antioxidant enzymes

All of this is important for optimal brain health and function. DHA and EPA are also actual structural elements that make up all of your cells, including those in your brain, so their importance really cannot be overstated.

However, the source of your DHA also matters. Industrially processed omega-3 fish oils can actually cause problems similar to those caused by excessive amounts of omega-6. This is a topic we examine at greater depth in "Superfuel."

About half of all fish oils also have problems with oxidation. So, when buying a fish oil supplement, you really need to look for a product that tests the hydro peroxide levels. The lower the level the better, but I recommend staying below 5%.

The Importance of Phospholipids

For years, I've recommended krill oil over fish oil if you don't regularly eat cleaner, small fatty fish such as anchovies and sardines. Krill has a number of benefits over fish oil, but one in particular has been highlighted in research, namely that of phospholipids.

While fatty acids (including DHA and EPA) are water soluble, they cannot be transported in their free form in your blood. They must be "packaged" into lipoprotein vehicles such as phospholipids.

In krill oil, the omega-3s DHA and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) are naturally bound to phospholipids, which makes them more readily absorbed by your body compared to fish oil, where the omega-3s are bound to triglycerides.

Phospholipids are also one of the principal compounds in high-density lipoproteins (HDL), which you want more of, and by allowing your cells to maintain structural integrity, phospholipids help your cells function optimally. Importantly, your brain cannot absorb DHA unless it's bound to phosphatidylcholine, and while krill oil contains phosphatidylcholine naturally, fish oil does not.

When you consume fish oil, your liver has to attach it to phosphatidyl choline in order for it to be utilized by your body, and this is yet another reason for its superior bioavailability. As the name implies, phosphatidyl choline is composed partly of choline, the precursor for the vital neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which sends nerve signals to your brain.

Choline is important to brain development, learning and memory. Since it plays a vital role in fetal and infant brain development, it's particularly important for pregnant and nursing women.

Research Highlights Value of Phospholipid-Bound DHA

Research2 by Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D., highlights the value of DHA bound to phospholipids — such as that found in krill oil — showing this particular form may actually reduce the risk of Alzheimer's in those with the apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) gene.

The APOE4 gene, which predisposes you to this degenerative brain disorder and lowers the typical age of onset, is thought to be present in about one-quarter of the population, so this information could prove invaluable for many. Having a single copy of the gene raises your risk two- to threefold. Being a carrier of both copies can raise your risk fifteenfold.

Two hallmarks of Alzheimer's are amyloid beta plaques and tau tangles, both of which impair normal brain functioning. Alzheimer's patients also have reduced glucose transport into their brains, and this is one of the reasons why plaque and tangles form and accumulate. As explained by Patrick in her press release:3

"DHA promotes brain glucose uptake by regulating the structure and function of special proteins called glucose transporters located at the blood-brain barrier, the tightly bound layer of cells that limits passage of substances into the brain …

DHA … naturally occurs in a triglyceride form and a phospholipid form. Eating DHA-rich fish slows the progression of Alzheimer's disease and improves symptoms in APOE4 carriers. However, some evidence suggests that taking DHA supplements, which largely lack the phospholipid form, does not."

DHA in Phospholipid Form May Be Ideal

According to Patrick, this variation in response appears to be related to the different ways in which the two forms of DHA are metabolized and ultimately transported into your brain.

When the triglyceride form of DHA is metabolized, most of it turns into non-esterified DHA, while the phospholipid form is metabolized primarily into DHA-lysophosphatidylcholine (DHA-lysoPC). While both of these forms can cross the blood-brain barrier to reach your brain, the phospholipid form does so far more efficiently. Patrick explains:4

"Whereas non-esterified DHA passes through the blood-brain barrier via passive diffusion, the phospholipid form, DHA-lysoPC, enters via a special transporter called Mfsd2a.

Previous studies have found APOE4 disrupts the tight junctions of the blood-brain barrier, leading to a breakdown in the barrier's outer membrane leaflet and a subsequent loss of barrier integrity. One end result of this loss is impaired diffusion of non-esterified DHA."

According to Patrick, people with APOE4 have a faulty non-esterified DHA transport system, and this may be why they're at increased risk for Alzheimer's. The good news is that DHA-lysoPC can bypass the tight junctions, thereby improving DHA transport, and for those with one or two APOE4 variants, taking the phospholipid form of DHA may therefore lower their risk of Alzheimer's more effectively.

"When looking at the effects of DHA on cognitive function in people with APOE4-related Alzheimer's disease, it's important that researchers consider the effects of DHA in phospholipid form, especially from rich sources such as fish roe or krill, which can have as much as one-third to three-quarters of the DHA present in phospholipids," Patrick says.5

"That's where we're most likely to see the greatest benefits, particularly in vulnerable APOE4 carriers."

Omega-3 Fats Linked to Healthy Aging

In other related news, researchers have again linked omega-3 intake to healthier aging. This prospective cohort study6 included data from more than 2,600 seniors collected between 1992 until 2015. Blood levels of omega-3 were obtained at the beginning and end of the study.

In that period, only 11% of participants experienced healthy aging, quantified as the number of years a person lives without physical or mental health problems or disability. Those with the highest omega-3 blood levels were 18% to 21% more likely to live longer, healthier lives.

Interestingly, EPA was found to be the most important factor in this study. Those with the highest levels of EPA were 24% less likely to experience unhealthy aging, compared to those with the lowest EPA levels.

Other omega-3s measured included the animal-based docosapentaenoic acid (DPA) and the plant-based alpha linolenic acid (ALA). DPA was the second-most important factor, while ALA, like DHA, had no significant impact on healthy aging. The researchers speculate that one of the reasons for these findings is omega-3s beneficial impact on heart health. For example:

• Two parallel studies7,8 published in 2008 found fish oil supplements worked better than placebo and the cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor in patients with chronic heart failure.
• Research published in 2016 found eating fatty fish and other omega-3 rich foods may lower your risk of a fatal heart attack by about 10%.9,10
• Heart attack survivors who took 1 gram of marine-based omega-3 per day for three years were found to have a 50% reduced risk of sudden cardiac death.11

EPA Also Lowers Heart Disease Risk

EPA specifically has also been linked to a lower risk for heart disease. A different study12 involving a highly-processed form of EPA (a proprietary prescription formulation of fish oil called Vascepa) found it lowered cardiovascular health risks by 25% compared to a placebo containing mineral oil. This included heart attacks, strokes, bypass surgery and chest pain requiring hospitalization.

The drug trial was called REDUCE-IT and was done for five years. Perhaps the most unusual aspect of this trial is that they used a far higher dosage than is typically used in these types of studies. Participants received 4 grams of EPA per day, which is two to four times more EPA than typically given.

A 25% reduction in cardiovascular risk is typically what you see with the use of statins, and this significant reduction is believed to be a byproduct of EPA's ability to lower triglycerides. Now, while this study strongly supports the use of marine-based omega-3s, it's important to realize that Vascepa is a highly-processed form of omega-3.

With a price tag of $2,500 a year, it's also one of your more expensive alternatives. Aside from being far less expensive, I still believe krill oil may be a superior choice, in part because it's bound to phospholipids, which increases absorption and may be particularly important for those at high risk for Alzheimer's. Krill also naturally contains astaxanthin, a very potent and powerful antioxidant, and the reason krill oil is far less prone to oxidation than fish oil.

Studies such as the REDUCE-IT trial do confirm and support health predictions made in "Superfuel," though, with a key point being that most people need far higher doses than previously thought. As suggested in the REDUCE-IT trial, an ideal dose appears to be between 3 and 4 grams of DHA and EPA combined (although the only way to be sure is to measure your omega-3 blood level, which I'll discuss below).

To learn more about the ins and outs of omega-3 and omega-6 fats, be sure to order your copy of "Superfuel." Remember, all preorders will receive three free gifts, so place your order today.

>>>>> Pre-order now <<<<<

Your Blood Level, Not the Dosage, Is Key for Optimization

While identifying an ideal dosage is important, it's not the most crucial consideration. The fact that some studies have failed to find any health benefits from omega-3 suggests dosage is a flawed parameter. For example, a Cochrane Collaboration review13 concluded omega-3 supplementation has little to no discernible benefit for heart health or longevity.

One explanation for this is the fact that many nutritional studies look at dosage rather than blood levels. GrassrootsHealth vitamin D researchers have clearly demonstrated the importance of looking at achieved blood levels of a nutrient.

When studies look at dosage, no apparent benefits of vitamin D supplementation are found. However, when you look at people's blood level — the concentration of the nutrient in the body — truly dramatic effects are detected. A similar situation exists with omega-3, as the most important parameter is your blood level, known as your omega-3 index, not any particular dose.

The reason for this is because people metabolize nutrients at different rates, and while one may need a very small dose to achieve a certain blood level, another may need several times that dose. Requirements for omega-3 will also vary depending on your lifestyle; your intake of fatty fish, for example, and your level of physical activity.

For this reason, I recommend getting your omega-3 level tested on an annual basis, and to adjust your dosage based on what you need to achieve an omega-3 index of 8% or higher. So, while a general recommendation is to take 3 to 4 grams of omega-3 per day, the only way to really know whether this is too much or too little is to get tested. We offer a convenient, no doctor required, omega-3 index test for your convenience.

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In this video, I interview Mike Benz, executive director for the Foundation for Freedom Online. Benz started off as a corporate lawyer representing tech and media companies before joining the Trump administration, where he worked as a speech writer for Dr. Ben Carson, the former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and President Trump.

He also advised on economic development policy. He then joined the State Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Technology. There, he ran the cyber desks at state, meaning all things having to do with the internet and foreign policy.

“This is toward the end of 2020, which was a really fascinating time to witness the merger, in many respects, of big government and big tech companies themselves,” he says. “I had grown up, I think, like many Americans, with a belief that the First Amendment protected you against government censorship.

The terms of engagement that we had enjoyed from 1991, when the worldwide web rolled out, until 2016, the election in the U.S. and Brexit in the U.K., which is, really, the first political event where the election was determined, in many respects, by momentum on the internet.

There was that 25-year golden period where the idea of being censored by a private sector company, let alone the government, was considered something, to me, very deeply anathema to the American experience.

What I witnessed at the State Department — because I was at the desk, basically, that Google and Facebook would call when they wanted favors abroad, when they wanted American protection or American policies to preserve their dominance in Europe, or in Asia or in Latin America.

And the U.S. government was doing favors for these tech companies while the tech companies were censoring the people who voted for the government. It was a complete betrayal of whatever social contract typically underlies the public-private partnership.”

The Internet Was Founded by the National Security State

Ostensibly, the rapid expansion of censorship started post-2016, but you can make a strong argument that the internet was never intended to remain free forever. Rather, the intention for it to be used as a totalitarian tool was likely baked in from the start when the national security state founded it in 1968.

The worldwide web, which is the user interface, was launched in 1991, and my suspicion is that the public internet was seeded and allowed to grow in order to capture and make the most of the population dependent upon it, knowing that it would be the most effective social engineering tool ever conceived. Benz comments:

“I totally agree ... A lot of people, in trying to understand what's happening with the net censorship, say ‘We had this free internet, and then suddenly there was this age of censorship and the national security state got involved at the censorship side.’

But when you retrace the history, internet freedom itself was actually a national security state imperative. The internet itself is a product of a counterinsurgency necessity by the Pentagon to manage information during the 1960s, particularly to aggregate social science data. And then, it was privatized.

Opening it up to all comers in the private sector, it was handed off from DARPA [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] to the National Science Foundation, and then went through a series of universities on the infrastructure side.

And then, right out of the gate in 1991, you had the Cold War coming to an end, and then simultaneously, you had this profusion of Pentagon-funded internet freedom technologies. You had things like VPNs, encrypted chat, TOR.

All of the early internet freedom technologies of the ‘90s were funded by the Pentagon, the State Department, and developed by the intelligence community, primarily, as a way of using internet freedom as a means to help dissident groups in foreign countries be able to develop a pro-U.S. beachhead, because it was a way to evade state-controlled media.

This was, basically, an insurgency tool for the U.S. government, in the same way that Voice of America and Radio Free Liberty, and Radio Free Europe were tools of the CIA in the Cold War, to beam in, basically, pro-U.S. content to populations in foreign countries in order to sway them towards U.S. interests. It was a way of managing the world empire.

The internet served the same purpose, and it couldn't be done if it was called a Pentagon operation, a State Department or CIA operation. But all of the tech companies themselves are products of that. Google started as a DARPA grant that was obtained at Stanford by Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

In 1995, they were part of the CIA and NSA's [National Security Agency’s] massive digital data program. They had their monthly meetings with their CIA and NSA advisers for that program, where the express stated purpose was for the CIA and NSA to be able to map so-called ‘Birds of a feather’ online ... so that they could be neutralized.”

How It All Began

As noted by Benz, the idea of having the intelligence community map political “Birds of a Feather” communities in order to either mobilize or neutralize them was (and still is) justified in the name of counterterrorism. Nowadays, as we’ve seen during the pandemic, it’s used to control public discourse, suppress truth, and promote propaganda angles.

The technology used to control public discourse is an artificial intelligence (AI) technique called natural language processing (NLP). It’s a way of aggregating everyone who believes a certain thing online into community databases based on the words they use, the hashtags, the slogans and images.

“Emerging narratives, all manner of metadata affiliations, all that can be aggregated to create a topographical network map of what you believe in and who you're associated with, so that it can all be turned down in a fast, precise and comprehensive manner by content moderation teams, because they're all birds of the same feather,” Benz explains.

“The fact that this grew out of the U.S. National Security state, which is running the show, essentially, today, to me says that there's a continuation between the internet freedom and internet censorship. They simply switched from one side of the chess board to the other.”

What Is the National Security State?

For clarity, when Benz talks about the "National Security State,” what he’s referring to are the institutions that uphold the rules-based international order. Domestically, that includes the Pentagon, State Department, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), certain aspects of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the 17 intelligence agencies.

Of those, the Pentagon, State Department and the intelligence community (IC) are the three central ones that have managed the American world empire since the 1940s. None of them are supposed to be able to operate domestically, but in a sense their power has expanded so much that they essentially control domestic affairs.

As explained by Benz, the Pentagon, State Department and IC are not supposed to be able to operate domestically. “But in a sense, they really control domestic affairs, because their power has expanded so much that they've developed an extraordinary laundering apparatus to be able to fund international institutions that then boomerang back home and effectively control much of domestic political affairs, including discourse on the internet.”

As for the CIA, it was created in 1947 under the National Security Act. It was created as a cloak-and-dagger mechanism, to do things the State Department wanted done but couldn’t get caught doing due to the diplomatic repercussions — things like election rigging, assassinations, media control, bribery and other subversion tactics.

The Birth of Hybrid Warfare

Benz continues his explanation of how and why internet censorship emerged when it did:

“So, there's the U.S. National Security State, and then there's the transatlantic one involving NATO. The story of Western government involvement in internet censorship really started after the 2014 Crimea annexation, which was the biggest foreign policy humiliation of the Obama era.

Atlanta's School of Foreign Policy was deeply inflamed by this event and blamed the fact that there were these breakaway Russia-supporting entities in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea on a failure to penetrate their media, and this idea that hearts and minds were being swung towards the Russian side because of pro-Russian content online.

NATO then declared this doctrine of so-called hybrid warfare — this idea that Russia had won Crimea not by a military annexation, but by winning, illicitly in a sense, the hearts and minds of Crimeans through the use of their propaganda. And the doctrine of hybrid warfare, born in 2014, was this idea that war was no longer a kinetic thing.

There hadn't been a kinetic war in Europe since World War II. Instead, it had moved sub-kinetic into the hearts and minds of the people. In fact, NATO announced a doctrine after 2014 called ‘From tanks to tweets,’ where it shifted its focus, explicitly, from kinetic warfare to social media opinions online.

Brexit, which happened in June 2016 ... was blamed on Russian influence as well. And so all of these institutions that argued for control over the internet in Eastern Europe said, ‘Well, it needs to come now. Now it's an all-of-Europe thing.’

When Trump was then elected five months later, explicitly contemplating the breakup of NATO, all hell broke loose. This idea that we need to censor the internet went from being something that was touchy and novel, in the view of Pentagon brass and State Department folks, to something that was totally essential to saving the entire rules-based international order that came out of World War II.

At the time, the reasoning was, Brexit, in the U.K., was going to give rise to Frexit, in France, with Marine Le Pen and her movement there. Matteo Salvini was going to cause Italexit In Italy, there’d be Grexit in Greece, Spexit in Spain, and the entire European Union would come undone, just because these right-wing populist parties would naturally vote their way into political power.

They would vote for working-class, cheap energy policies that would make them more closely aligned with Russia naturally, because of the cheaper oil prices, or cheaper gas prices. Then, suddenly, you've got no EU, you've got no NATO, and then, you've got no Western military alliance.

So, from that moment, after Trump's election, immediately, there was this diplomatic roadshow by U.S. State Department officials, who all thought they were getting promotions in November 2016. They thought they were going to get promoted from the State Department to the National Security Council. Turns out, they all got fired, because someone with a 5% chance of winning ended up winning that day.

So, they took their international connections, their international networks around the Atlanta Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, the entire think tank, quasi-intelligence, quasi-military, government-funded NGO soup, and they did this international roadshow, starting in January 2017, to convince European countries to start censoring their internet ...

Out of that came NetzDG [Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz, the Network Enforcement Act] in Germany, which introduced a necessity of artificial intelligence-powered social media censorship.

All of that was, essentially, spearheaded by this network of State Department and Pentagon folks who then used their own internal folks in the government to procure government grants and contracts to these same entities. Eventually, they all rotated into those tech companies to set the policies as well.”

Threat From Within

So, to summarize, the infrastructure for worldwide internet censorship was largely established by IC veterans who were forced out by the Trump administration, and that infrastructure was then used to catalyze the international censorship response during COVID in late 2019, early 2020. Benz continues:

“Right. And those veterans were not alone. The full story is not just the shadow security state and exile. The fact is this. The Trump administration never had control of its own defense department, State Department or intelligence community.

It was the intelligence community that, essentially, drove his first impeachment, that drove a two-and-a-half year special prosecutor investigation that rolled up 12 to 20 of Trump's closest associates. You had a chief of staff there who was hiding the military figures from the government. The careers at state threatened the political appointees from the inside. I experienced that myself.

This permanent aspect of Washington, with unfireable careers in high places, combined with a turf war in the GOP [Republican Party] between the populist right and the neo-conservative right, with the neo-conservative right having many well-placed Republicans in the Defense Department, State Department, in IC, to thwart the previous president's agenda there, allowed this political network and exile, on the censorship side, to work with their allies within the government to create these censorship beach heads.

So, for example, that's how they created the Department of Homeland Security’s ... first permanent government censorship bureau in the form of this entity called CISA [the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, founded in November 2018], which is supposed to just be a cybersecurity entity.

It was done because of media and intelligence community laundering of a never-substantiated claim that Russia had potentially hacked the 2016 election, hacked the election machines or voting software, or might be able to do so in the future, and so we need a robust armed-to-the-teeth DHS unit to protect our cybersecurity from the Russians.

It's the mission creep of the century. After the Mueller probe ended in June 2019, this unit, CISA, within DHS [Department of Homeland Security] — which had set up all of this, and which is only supposed to do cybersecurity — said ‘Well, if you squint and look at it, discourse online is a cybersecurity threat because if it undermines public faith or confidence in our elections, and it’s done using a cyber nexus, i.e., social media post, then that’s a form of cybersecurity threat, because democracy is essential to our security.’

And so you went from this cybersecurity mission to a cyber censorship bureau, because if you tweeted something about mail-in ballots in the 2020 election, that was deemed to be a cyber attack on critical infrastructure, i.e., elections.

When they got away with that in 2020, DHS then said, ‘Well, if you squint and look at it, public health is also critical infrastructure.’ So, now, DHS gets to direct social media companies to censor opinions about COVID-19.

Then they worked their way into saying the same thing about financial systems, financial services, about the Ukraine war, about immigration. It got to the point where, by late 2022, the head of CISA declared that cognitive infrastructure is critical infrastructure.”

Cracks only appeared after Republicans got a majority in the House of Representatives in November 2022 and Elon Musk acquired Twitter. Public support for government also dwindled as Musk’s release of the Twitter Files revealed the extent of government’s involvement in the censoring of Americans.

So far, though, public awareness hasn’t changed anything. The very entities that once stood for internet freedom, like the National Science Foundation, are still actively funding and furthering government censorship activities.

AI Gives Censors God-Like Powers

Benz first became “gripped by the stakes of what was happening on the internet” in August 2016, after reading a series of papers discussing the use of NLP to monitor, surveil and regulate the distribution of information on social media based on the words used.

“DARPA provided tens of millions of dollars of funding for this language processing, this language chunking capacity of AI in order, ostensibly, to stop ISIS recruiting on Facebook and Twitter,” Benz says.

“As part of the predicate for putting military boots on the ground in Syria, there was a lot of talk about ISIS coming to the U.S., and they were recruiting on Facebook and Twitter. And so the Pentagon, DARPA and the IC developed this language spyware capacity to map the dialectic of how ISIS sympathizers talk online, the words they use, the images they share, the prefixes, the suffixes, all the different community connections.

And then, I saw that this was being done for purposes of domestic political control instead of foreign counterterrorism, and the power that it has. It is what totally changed the internet forever. Before 2016, there was not the technological capacity to do mass social media censorship. That was the age of what censorship insiders like to call the whack-a-mole era. Censorship was reactive.

It was done by forum, by moderators, essentially. Everything had to be flagged manually before it could be taken down, which meant millions of people had already seen it, or it had already gone viral, it had already done its damage, so to speak, and you were just cutting off the backend with an act of censorship.

You could never have a permanent control apparatus in that setting, because there would always be a first mover advantage to whoever posted it. What AI censorship technology breakthroughs enabled after 2016 was a kind of nuclear weapon, if you will, on the censorship side, to be able to end the war immediately.

You don't need a standing army of 100,000 people to censor COVID. You need one good developer, working with one manic social scientist who spends her entire life mapping what Dr. Mercola says online, and what he's talking about this week, what his followers are saying, what they're saying about this drug, or what they're saying about this vaccine, or what they're saying about this institution.

All of that can be cataloged into a lexicon of how you talk. And then, all of that talk can just be turned down to zero. At the same time, they can super amplify the language that they themselves are doing. So it gives a God-like control to a tiny, tiny, tiny minority of people who can then use that to control the discourse of the entire population.

What's also so terrifying about the National Security State's involvement in this is, when they discovered the power of this by mid-2018, they began to roll it out to every other country in the world for purposes of political control there — to the Ghana desk, to the Ecuador desk, to Southeast Asia, all over Europe.”

Can We Get Out of the Grip of Censorship?

At the time of this writing, we’re in a lull. The COVID pandemic has been declared over and aside from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, there are no major political crises going on that warrant heavy censorship. The networks and technologies for radical suppression are already in place, however, and can be turned up at a moment’s notice.

We’ve also recently seen just how easy it is for alternative media to be infiltrated and upended, so the fact that there are alternative platforms doesn’t guarantee that future censorship efforts will fail.

“There are so many threat vectors,” Benz says. “There are a lot of questions about what's going on, for example, at Project Veritas, with how quickly it ousted James O'Keefe after releasing the most viral video ever, on Pfizer. It was about one week later — after their biggest accomplishment, perhaps, ever — that it was totally overthrown.

A similar thing has happened with Fox News with [the firing of] Tucker Carlson, the most popular cable TV host in the country — the guy who gets three times more concurrent viewership than CNN, in the opposing spot. Institutions can absolutely be penetrated and co-opted when enough pressure is applied.”

Transatlantic Flank Attack 2.0 Underway

As mentioned earlier, the U.S. censorship really began with NATO. Benz refers to this as the transatlantic flank attack. Basically, when U.S. intelligence want to impact the internet domestically, they first work with their European partners to enact regulatory changes in Europe first. This then ends up spilling into the U.S. market, and the IC appears to have had nothing to do with it.

The first transatlantic flank attack took place in early 2017 with the NetzDG. We’re now under transatlantic attack again, through the Digital Markets Act. This law, Benz says, will make it very difficult for Rumble and other free speech platforms to maintain that posture during the next pandemic. Once these platforms are forced to comply with the Digital Markets Act on the European side, the changes will be felt everywhere.

Cause for Cautious Optimism

While Benz remains hopeful that solutions to global censorship will present themselves, he still recognizes that the forces at play are enormous and the risks are high.

“It's one of these things where the more you see what we're up against, the more sobering it becomes. I think you need to maintain hope in order to maintain energy, to maintain momentum. With momentum, weird things can happen, even if you're not supposed to win. Strange things break, or take a life of their own, or resurface.

All the little weaknesses of the system get tested, simply by a momentum here and there. For example, Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter is probably the reason that the GOP got over the hump in doing all of these congressional investigations into the government's role in censorship.

They felt like they had an ally at Twitter, that they had billionaire backing. There was a waterfall, cascade impact. So, I am hopeful. DHS is on the run right now. They purged their website of all their domestic censorship operations that they listed and were loud and proud about for two whole years after the catastrophe of the disinformation governance board in April 2022.

They already had a Ministry of Truth at DHS. They just gave one hypothetical board the wrong name. They didn't call it the CISA. They made the mistake of calling it by the right name, and that's what ended the entire political support for the underlying apparatus.

So, the importance of an Orwellian name is essential for maintaining the political support. But I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm hopeful, and I'm honored to be a part of this rebel fleet of folks trying to take on the empire behind the censorship situation.

But having seen, in so many iterations the toolkit they use, it is a medieval torture toolkit that can do strange things. Pressure can do strange things, even to great people. And so I'm cautiously optimistic.”

Essential Internet Backbone Is Not Politically Neutral

In my view, internet decentralization is one key innovation that could break the grip of censorship. That said, other aspects, such as cybersecurity, must also be reinvented.

CloudFlare, for example, a content delivery and cloud cybersecurity service, basically controls the internet because they protect online businesses and platforms from hackers using Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. Without it, you cannot survive online if you’re a big business. Even with a decentralized internet, CloudFlare might still be able to exert control by leaving sites open to DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks.

Disturbingly, CloudFlare got political for the first time after 2016, when it decided to remove protection from a site called Kiwi Farms, which expressed anti-transgender views. As a result, the site had to move over to a Russian server to get back online.

Basically, U.S. citizens had to look for internet freedom in Russia because their architecture could not be supported in the U.S. — all because a government-integrated backbone of the internet made a political decision, likely at the behest of the IC.

“If there is another pandemic, for example, and there's a push for certain medical interventions or countermeasures that certain sites don't go along with, the CloudFlare, absolutely, could be a weapon in that respect,” Benz says.

“One of the things I found so troubling is that CISA, this DHS censorship agency, after the 2020 election set up a private sector liaison subcommittee for mis- and disinformation policies in the private sector. It was a seven-person subcommittee, with all of the top censorship experts at the University of Washington and Stanford.

Vijaya Gadde, the former head of censorship at Twitter, was a part of this board. I thought it was very troubling that the CEO of CloudFlare was also one of the seven people on the DHS censorship board.”

Major Challenges to a Decentralized Internet

Benz continues:

“To proceed to the various challenges to a decentralized internet, when you move up the stack of censorship ... they can move up to cloud servers, to payment processors, and even to things like CloudFlare and your infrastructure protection.

In the early era of censorship, there was a rebuttal by censorship advocates that if you don't like what private sector companies are doing, start your own social media companies. Build your own Google, build your own YouTube, build your own Facebook, build your own Twitter.

And then, what started to happen as censorship got completely insane, when it went from being troubling to disturbing, to saturating ... you started to see these alternative social media platforms like Gab and Parler ... that tried to escape the content moderation policies with Big Tech. But what started to happen is, those social media companies, like Parler, were completely destroyed.

Parler was de-platformed from, basically, the entire internet, when the president had just moved there, after being kicked off Twitter. That was a very instructive moment, and one that censorship insiders have reflected on, I should say, many, times as a moment of, ‘Should we have done that? We did it, but it costs us a lot of political capital.’

Parler was kicked off of Amazon Web Services. They were kicked off of all of the banks. They were banned from email providers. They could not hook to the internet, essentially, to even maintain the ability to post anything there. So, it went from build your own social media company to build your own bank.

Now you need to build your own bank and get a banking license for the payment processors. You need to build your own email distribution. You need to build your own cloud servers.

You need to build your own software service providers. And, eventually, are you going to need to lay your own subsea cables across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans? The social media companies didn't invent the internet. They are superimposed on Pentagon infrastructure.”

The House Needs to Defund the Censorship Industry

Without doubt, there will be another crisis, whether it be another pandemic or war or something else, that will send the censorship machine into full gear yet again. Right now we’re in a lull, so this is the time to think ahead and get prepared. The question is, what can we do? How do we prepare and fight back?

According to Benz, one of the most effective strategies that would have immediate effect, and could be done right now, would be to strip the censorship industry of its government funding. He explains:

“Right now, there's a Republican controlled House. The advantage of the House is that it controls appropriations, the purse strings of the federal government. If the House Appropriations Committee took seriously the government subsidization of censorship networks in the private sector, you could defund the speech police, even though, on the AI side, it only takes one good coder to be able to take out an entire political philosophy.

The fact is, they can only do that job because of an army of social science folks across 45 different U.S. colleges and universities who get paid. There are tens of thousands of them who are paid through the National Science Foundation, through DARPA grants and State Department grants, to map communities online as a matter of social science, and then provide that to the computer scientist to censor it.

My foundation, the Foundation for Freedom Online, has detailed $100 million, just in the past 18 months, that have gone from the federal government institutions directly into social media censorship insiders. Censorship is not an act anymore, it's an industry, and you can cripple their capacity building.

When you pump it full of money, you go from having a couple of people do it, to tens of thousands of people doing it. The censorship capacity is built on an infrastructure of an industry that relies on government to pay for it, and it relies on government to spearhead their penetration into the institutions.

Right now, there are about eight different congressional committees trying to solve this problem from different aspects. I've personally briefed eight different congressional committees ... But only a few of those committees are taking it seriously enough to pursue the issue deeply, and where that will shake out remains uncertain.

CISA worked with dozens of social media companies and private sector cutouts to launder censorship from the government into the private sector, but the institution I worked with more than anyone was the University of Stanford, the Stanford Internet Observatory in particular.

Jim Jordan's Weaponization Subcommittee just subpoenaed Stanford for what I call the perfectly preserved First Amendment crime scene. Stanford meticulously kept logs of all of its censorship activities with government officials for the COVID-19 pandemic, and for two election cycles.

They detailed 66 narratives that they censored online, having to do with everything about vaccines, efficacy of masks, opposition to lockdown mandates. And then, they had a fourth category for conspiracy theories, basically anything that someone said about the World Economic Forum, or Bill Gates.

They're now refusing to comply with that subpoena. But the stakes keep getting escalated, because who's going to enforce that subpoena? Steve Bannon, regardless of your opinion of him, just got indicted for not complying with a subpoena, but is this Justice Department going to pursue criminal penalties against Stanford, for withholding congressional subpoena for their government?

This is for their government, because they were the formal partners. They had a formal partnership with the DHS. That stuff should be FOIA-able, first of all. You shouldn't even need a subpoena for it. The only reason you can't FOIA it is because they laundered it through Stanford. Standord holds the records rather than DHS.

I tried to FOIA that from DHS, and DHS says, ‘We don't have it, even though they were our communications.’ So this is the way the CIA structures in an operation, through a web of cutouts and offshore banks, so you can never really get transparency. They're now doing that for the censorship industry at home ...

Whether they will continue to raise the stakes is now a terrifying open issue. And the fact that it's the inside guys who are running the censorship situation means there may be other tactics that need to be pursued here, which is why I talked about, simply, going to the appropriations committee and zeroing it out, so you don't even need to enforce subpoenas, necessarily.”

Building a Whole-of-Society Solution

As explained by Benz, the censorship industry was built as a so-called whole-of-society effort. According to the DHS, misinformation online is a whole-of-society problem that requires a whole-of-society solution. By that, they meant that four types of institutions had to fuse together as a seamless whole. Those four categories and key functions are:

1. Government institutions, which provide funding and coordination
2. Private sector institutions that do the censorship and dedicate funds to censorship through corporate-social responsibility programs
3. Civil society institutions (universities, NGOs, academia, foundations, nonprofits and activists) that do the research, the spying and collecting of data that are then given to the private sector to censor
4. News media/fact checking institutions, which put pressure on institutions, platforms and businesses to comply with the censorship demands

What the Foundation for Freedom Online is doing is educating people about this structure, and the ways in which legislatures and the government can be restructured, how civil society institutions can be established, and how news media can be created to support and promote freedom rather than censorship.

To learn more, be sure to check out foundationforfreedomonline.com. You can also follow his very active Twitter account Benz on Twitter.

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At a time when organic farmers are going out of business and being gobbled up by corporate agribusinesses by the hundreds,1 draft regulation2,3,4 currently under consideration would legalize factory farm conditions for organic chickens, thereby pushing even more of the smaller organic farmers out.

While the proposed rule claims to protect and improve “animal welfare,” all it will accomplish is the further destruction of independent organic farmers who do things right and therefore cannot compete with “organic” mega-corporations that can sell their foods at far lower prices because they cheat on the organic standards.

There Are Two Kinds of Organic

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, in 2019, nine organic-certified corporate-owned confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Texas produced 1.5 times more “organic” milk than all 530 family-owned organic dairy farms in Wisconsin combined.5

As of 2021, there are 13 corporate dairies in Texas with organic certification, and they’re producing 2.8 times more “organic” milk than the remaining 407 organic family farms in Wisconsin.6 In those two years, 123 family farms went out of business in Wisconsin, as did hundreds more in other states.

When small organic farms go out of business, it’s not just that family that loses something. Consumers also lose. They lose access to authentic organic milk that meets their environmental expectations, and they’re deceived, because they think the higher price they pay provides economic justice and reward for farmers who are doing things right.

Meanwhile, most of the organic milk available comes from CAFOs that have anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 cows, with a density of five to 10 cows per acre, that roam in desert conditions.7 The scene on these factory farms is as far from idyllic farm life as you can get.

Unlike on a family farm, these CAFO cows don’t graze on grass in pasture. Rather, pasture grass is cut and then fed to the cows, as shown below. When actual pasture size is considered, the effective stocking level can be as high as 20 cows per acre, whereas family farms typically provide 1 acre per cow.8

Industry Watchdog Issues Warning

According to the Organic Trade Association (OTA), the regulation is “the first significant movement on organic animal welfare in years.” The Humane Society Legislative Fund has also hailed the proposed rules as “a landmark federal regulation.”9

Mark Kastel, executive director of OrganicEye, an organic industry watchdog, vehemently disagrees, saying that rather than strengthening the organic label, the new regulations will undermine it further by permanently codifying practices that violate the spirit of organics, and even the current letter of the law.

Organic companies have been acquired by conventional producers that slowly but surely have eroded organic standards through willful violations and lobbying.

“Organics was supposed to be the antidote to the ‘get big or get out’ draconian agribusiness domination of our food supply,” Kastel writes.10 Instead, organic companies have been acquired by conventional producers that slowly but surely have eroded organic standards through willful violations and lobbying.

As a result, 90% of “organic” eggs now come from gigantic confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) owned by the largest suppliers of conventional eggs, and most certified organic chicken comes from companies that raise birds in near-total confinement and feed them imported grains that may or may not be truly organic, as organic grain fraud is now commonplace.

Legalizing Violations of the Organic Spirit

In a letter to members, Kastel writes:11

“For most of the last decade and a half, stakeholders in the organic industry have alleged that the largest egg companies in the United States have been operating mammoth livestock factories, with the USDA illegally granting organic certification.

In 2022, the agency released a new draft rule which they purport will bring these operations into compliance, assure a level playing field for competitors, and meet consumer expectations ...

Other than family-scale farms producing certified organic eggs, the majority of production takes place on commercial operations — commonly with 20,000-30,000 birds per building — with some of the largest conventional egg marketers in the country operating certified organic houses with as many as 200,000 chickens per building and over a million birds on individual ‘farms’ ...

The industry’s most vocal watchdog, OrganicEye, has vociferously criticized the proposed regulations as a giveaway to corporate agribusiness interests, codifying the continuing violations of the spirit and letter of the law by failing to assure that organically managed animals have legitimate access to the outdoors and are able to exhibit their natural instinctual behaviors, both requirements of the current statute and regulations.”

Proposed Standards Hardly Enshrine Animal Welfare

According to OrganicEye’s analysis, the proposed new organic rule would allow organic poultry farmers to stack birds in multitiered aviaries stretching from floor to ceiling, providing as little as 1 square foot of space per animal, and that’s including outdoor porches, which have limited access.

The following image was provided by OrganicEye as an example of what this “organic” CAFO setup looks like.

Outdoor requirements aren’t any better — just 1 to 2 square feet depending on the weight of the birds. For comparison, farmers who are part of the Organic Valley cooperative must provide at least 5 square feet per hen, and European organic regulations require 43 square feet per bird.12

The draft rule also allows egg-laying hens to be confined for the first 16 to 21 weeks of their life. After this much time spent in indoor confinement, many chickens are too frightened to ever venture outside. They’ve basically been trained not to roam. The situation is even worse for broiler chickens, which can be confined until just one or two weeks before their scheduled slaughter.

What’s more, the new rules would allow for half the outdoor area to be covered in either concrete or gravel. “How are the birds going to engage in their natural instinctual behavior — foraging, eating grass, scratching and pecking for bugs and worms — on concrete?” Kastel asks.

Proposed Rule Fulfills Corporate Lobbyists Wish-List

As noted by OrganicEye, these “anemic requirements” are “straight from the wish list of corporate lobbyists.”13 Indeed, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack himself is a former million-dollar-a-year agribusiness lobbyist who was named BIO Governor of the Year in 2001 by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) “for his support of the industry's economic growth and agricultural biotechnology research.”14

So, Vilsack is hardly a champion for true organic farming, and the USDA’s failure to uphold the integrity of the organic standards under his stewardship15 highlights his corporate Big-Ag, biotech biases, as does his choice of members to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB).

The NOSB is supposed to be a highly-diversified body of industry stakeholders, including organic farmers and consumer advocates, but contrary to that charter, at least 80% of current board members are now affiliated with the industry’s most powerful lobbying group, the OTA.16,17 According to Kastel:18

“The OTA has spent years, and invested untold corporate dues, in honing the persona that it is a tax-exempt nonprofit group working in the interest of the public when, in fact, it is a ruthless industry lobby group that has crossed swords with the nonprofit community on virtually every controversial issue before the NOSB.”

Several still independently-owned organic brands, such as Nature’s Path, Nutiva and Dr. Bronner’s, have resigned their memberships in the OTA in protest of its Big Ag bias.19

Under Vilsack, the NOSB was also stripped of its ability to set its own agenda. It’s supposed to work independently, but as small organic farmers have been bought up by large conventional ag conglomerates,20 the corporate dominance over the NOSB has also grown and organic standards have been watered down to benefit the largest of these corporate “organic” producers.

An Affront to Organic Consumers

OrganicEye describes the proposed rules as “an affront to consumers who are willing to pay a premium to support truly humane treatment of animals and to secure nutrient-dense and more flavorful food for their families.”21 Kastel adds:

“It’s Orwellian doublespeak, intentionally misleading the public, for the USDA to claim that these proposed rules are going to improve the status quo of factory farm production currently dominating organic livestock, or that they represent the expectations of consumers.”

OrganicEye board president Jim Gerritsen, a certified organic farmer in Maine, also stated:

“While USDA should be codifying the improved welfare of livestock, and increasing organic integrity, this misguided proposed rule sadly does neither. Rather, it enshrines the very practices which have allowed industrial factory farms to move in, take over, and push out hard-working organic family farms.”

A Call to Action

OrganicEye is now renewing its call to the USDA to enforce current organic regulations and is urging organic consumers and supporters to appeal to President Biden to intervene and stop this latest “giveaway to corporate lobbyists.”

Organic regulations already mandate outdoor access for all livestock, including pasture access for grass fed cows and other ruminants. Importantly, organically raised animals must, by law, have the opportunity to express their natural instinctual behaviors.

The problem is these rules are not being enforced, and the answer to nonenforcement is not new regulations that simply codify the violations and abuses that are already taking place on industrial-scale “organic farms.”

OrganicEye has created a proxy letter you can download here. Simply print it out, sign it, add any personal comments on the back, and mail it to OrganicEye. They will deliver the letters to Biden’s office. As noted in that letter:

“A new approach needs to be developed as an alternative to the tens of millions of dollars currently spent on annual inspections. The vast preponderance of documented fraud — what we assume is only the tip of the iceberg — is being discovered by OrganicEye and others outside of the certification/inspection process.

Resources should be focused on hiring experienced agriculturalists/forensic accountants for more comprehensive/periodic audits (punctuated with liberal unannounced inspections and testing).

The department needs to prioritize listening to the NGO community rather than corporate lobbyists who have been appointed to key leadership positions at the USDA and on the NOSB.”

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Mustard greens are a nutrient-dense source of vitamins and minerals, but their bitter flavor makes them unpalatable to many. To remedy the problem, Tom Adams, cofounder and CEO of Pairwise, told Wired, "We basically created a new category of salad."1

The agricultural biotechnology company, founded in 2017, had raised $90 million by 2021, and $115 million total,2 "to bring new varieties of fruits and vegetables to market."3 Its first product, Conscious Greens Purple Power Baby Greens Blend, is also the first CRISPR-edited food available to U.S. consumers.4

Gene-Edited Mustard Greens Coming to US Stores

Pairwise scientists used the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, or Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat, to edit mustard greens’ DNA, removing a gene that gives them their pungent flavor.

The greens are first being rolled out in restaurants and other locations in St. Louis, Springfield, Massachusetts, and the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, before heading to U.S. grocery stores — beginning in the Pacific Northwest.5

Pairwise is careful to describe itself as a "pioneering food startup,"6 trying to distance itself from its true biotechnology roots. It describes the gene-edited greens as:

"... [A] mix of colorful Superfood leafy greens with a unique, fresh flavor and up to double the nutrition of romaine. Using CRISPR technologies to improve taste and nutrition in produce, Conscious Greens are field-grown Superfood greens that eat like lettuce, offering a versatile new option for chefs and salad lovers alike."

The company has also built a glossy PR campaign to make their motives seem altruistic and necessary to improve Americans’ diets. In a news release, Haven Baker, Pairwise co-founder and chief business officer, stated:7

"We’re proud to be bringing the first CRISPR food product to the U.S. We set out to solve an important problem — that most lettuce isn’t very nutritious, and other types of greens are too bitter or too hard to eat.

Using CRISPR, we’ve been able to improve new types of nutritious greens to make them more desirable for consumers, and we did it in a quarter of the time of traditional breeding methods. Launching Conscious Greens through this exciting partnership with PFG [Performance Food Group], is a major milestone in achieving our mission to build a healthier world through better fruits and vegetables."

But are CRISPR foods really better — or do they pose unknown, and potentially serious, risks to the environment and the people who eat them? Further, it’s not going to stop here. Pairwise is already working on using CRISPR to create blackberries with no seeds and cherries without pits.8

The idea that genetic modification is going to compel people to eat mustard greens when they otherwise wouldn’t is also highly questionable. So the company’s claims that its gene-edited products will boost American’s nutritional intake are likely to fall flat.

Is CRISPR Really an Exact Science?

CRISPR is being increasingly used to tinker with natural foods. In addition to altering taste, CRISPR is being used to extend shelf life and create foods that resist certain bacteria and viruses.9

Whereas genetic engineering involves the introduction of foreign genes, CRISPR involves manipulating or editing existing DNA. It’s said to be "exceptionally precise." In an interview with Yale Insights, Dr. Gregory Licholai, a biotech entrepreneur, explained CRISPR this way:10

"So as you probably know, our book of life is made of DNA. DNA itself is many millions of base-pairs, which is like a language. And within that language, there are certain regions which code for genes, and those genes are incredibly important because those genes go on to make up everything about us.

There’s 40,000 proteins that become outputs of those genes and they are involved in our health, our wellbeing, and any defect in those genes becomes problematic and causes disease.

What was previously attempted with gene editing was to manipulate genetic information in blocks, basically in big pieces. It’s kind of like trying to edit a book by only being able to rip out a page at a time and transfer a page at a time, without really being able to control the actual words. The power of this technology: it literally comes down to the individual letters.

So the precision is far better than anything that has happened before. The excitement in the scientific community is being able to go in and very precisely make changes in DNA of actual genes that you can actually turn off bad genes or you can potentially repair genes that have got mutations in them where the code is written incorrectly."

But CRISPR isn’t always an exact science. As is often the case when it comes to tinkering with genetics, gene editing has led to unexpected side effects, including enlarged tongues and extra vertebrae in animals.11,12

Further, when researchers at the U.K.’s Wellcome Sanger Institute systematically studied mutations from CRISPR-Cas9 in mouse and human cells, large genetic rearrangements were observed, including DNA deletions and insertions, near the target site. The DNA deletions could end up activating genes that should stay "off," such as cancer-causing genes, as well as silencing those that should be "on."13

Risks of Humans Manipulating the Genetic Code

In 2022, researchers with Boston Children’s Hospital revealed that using CRISPR in human cell lines increased the risk of large rearrangements of DNA, which could increase cancer risk. Such rearrangements occurred up to 6% of the time.14,15 In a news release Boston Children’s Hospital explained:16

"CRISPR seems to exacerbate a natural process known as retrotransposition, in which DNA sequences known as "mobile elements" or "jumping genes" replicate themselves and move from one location in the genome to another. Similar to CRISPR, these mobile elements use enzymes to create a double-stranded break in DNA where they insert themselves.

Retrotransposition is often harmless — in fact, over the course of evolution, mobile elements have come to make up approximately a third of our genome. (Some scientists believe they are actually ancient viruses.) But mobile elements have also been linked to disease, including cancer. When the breaks they create in DNA aren’t repaired, mismatched ends of DNA can join, leading to rearrangements."

In another warning, researchers attempted to use CRISPR-Cas9 to repair a mutation linked to hereditary blindness in human embryos.17 But when they did, it led to "genetic havoc" in about half of the cells, triggering them to lose entire chromosomes.18

"We’re often used to hearing about papers where CRISPR is very successful," Nicole Kaplan, a geneticist at New York University, told The New York Times. "But with the amount of power we hold ... [it is crucial] ... to understand consequences we didn’t intend."19 What’s more, Licholai said, is that genes edited with CRISPR may be transferred to other organisms and become part of the environment:

"One of the biggest risks of CRISPR is what’s called gene drive, or genetic drive. What that means is that because you’re actually manipulating genes and those genes get incorporated into the genome, into the encyclopedia, basically, that sits within cells, potentially those genes can then be transferred on to other organisms.

And once they’re transferred on to other organisms, once they become part of the cycle, then those genes are in the environment.

That’s probably the biggest fear of CRISPR. Humans manipulating the genetic code, and those manipulations get passed on generation to generation to generation. We think we know what we’re doing, we think we’re measuring exactly what changes we’re doing to the genes, but there’s always the possibility that either we miss something or our technology can’t pick up on other changes that have been made that haven’t been directed by us.

And the fear then is that those changes lead to antibiotic resistance or other mutations that go out into the population and would be very difficult to control. Basically creating incurable diseases or other potential mutations that we wouldn’t really have control over."

USDA Is Testing Gene-Edited Insects

Even though the unintended consequences of gene editing are unknown and potentially devastating, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is working with a U.S. company to test gene-edited insects in greenhouses. The insects, spotted wing drosophila, cause damage to many fruit crops. The project uses CRISPR to add genes to kill female drosophila while sterilizing males.20

Glassy winged sharpshooters, which spread bacteria that devastates vineyards, are also being targeted with CRISPR.21 A carbohydrate in the insects’ mouth allows the targeted bacteria to stick. Researchers intend to insert genes into sharpshooters’ mouths to make them a nonstick surface, causing bacteria to slide off.22

"Chemicals can only travel so far before they degrade in the environment," Jason Delborne, North Carolina State University professor of science, policy and society, told MIT Technology Review. "If you introduce a gene-edited organism that can move through the environment, you have the potential to change or transform environments across a huge spatial and temporal scale."23

And therein lies the problem. Once released into the environment, there’s no turning back — and no way of knowing what other changes could occur from this genetic manipulation, at a worldwide scale.

FDA Says Gene-Edited Beef Is ‘Low Risk’

The FDA announced in March 2022 that Recombinetics’ gene-edited cattle received a low-risk determination for marketing products, including food, made from their meat. "This is the FDA’s first low-risk determination for enforcement discretion for an IGA [intentional genomic alteration] in an animal for food use," the FDA reported.24

The animals’ genes were modified to make their coats shorter and slicker. The genetic modification to their coats is intended to help them better withstand heat stress, allowing them to gain more weight and increase the efficiency of meat production25 — but at what cost? While a lengthy approval process is typically necessary for gene-edited animals to enter the food market, the FDA streamlined the process for gene-edited cattle, allowing them to skirt the regular approval process.

The agency stated the gene-edited beef cattle do not raise any safety concerns because the gene modifications result in the same genetic makeup seen in so-called "slick coat" cattle, which are conventionally bred.26

But in 2019, Brazil stopped its plans to allow a herd of Recombinetics’ gene-edited cattle after unexpected DNA changes were uncovered. As with the FDA, Brazilian regulators had determined that Recombinetics could proceed without any special oversight, since their gene-editing involved modifying cattle with a naturally occurring trait.

In this case, instead of altering the cattle’s coats, Recombinetics was editing the cattle to be hornless — until something went wrong. A piece of bacterial DNA used to deliver the desired gene had become pasted into a cow’s genome, essentially rendering it "part bacteria."27

Regardless, in 2022, Recombinetics stated its gene-edited meat products would be available to "select customers in the global market soon" while general consumers would be able to purchase gene-edited meat in as few as two years.28

Gene-Edited Foods Aren’t Labeled

Because regulators don’t consider gene-edited foods to be genetically modified organisms (GMOs), they don’t have to be labeled. However, 75% of Americans want gene-edited foods to carry a label.29 As gene-edited foods become more common in the marketplace, if you’d like to avoid them, choose organic foods, which cannot be gene edited at this time.

You can also get to know a local farmer who has no intention of using this technology, and grow as much of your own food as possible. This way, you’ll have full control over what is, and isn’t, in your food supply.

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