From murder to gagging - the pressures on climate change scientists

Following on from the news that Three scientists investigating melting Arctic ice may have been assassinated, professor claims, I have gone through some of the stories where there have been suspicious deaths of journalists, medical practitioners etc.,as well as examples of threats and pressure put on scientists from vested interests.

Have a look at the following stories and then try to tell yourself that Prof. Wadhams concerns are baseless.

Even if some of the stories are just "conspiracy theory" (which I don't believe) there is reason to suspect that some very dark things are happening around us, ranging from assassination (as is clear in the case of Dr.Kelly) to pressure on scientists to keep quiet.

Ten Years Ago: The Death of 

Dr. David Kelly. Murdered 

on the Orders of Her

Majesty’s Government?

Global Research,

13 October, 2011

On July 18, 2003, British biowarfare expert and UN weapons inspector David Kelly was found dead on Harrowdown Hill, near his home in Oxfordshire. Ruled a suicide by the official judicial inquiry chaired by Lord Hutton, now a group of British doctors is challenging the Attorney General’s decision not to hold a coroner’s inquest into the death, citing the overlooked, suppressed and modified evidence suggesting Dr. Kelly was murdered.

This is the GRTV Backgrounder on The Death of Dr. David Kelly.

From the outset, there have been questions about the nature and timing of Dr. David Kelly’s death, as well as the official investigation and subsequent inquiry into the events of that day.

As a UN weapons inspector who had been to Iraq dozens of times to investigate allegations of Saddam Hussein’s bioweapons stockpile, Kelly became the centre of attention in the summer of 2003 when he was revealed as the source of a controversial BBC report alleging that the Blair government had “sexed up” its dossier on Iraqi WMD. In the wake of that scandal, he was called to testify before a parliamentary committee investigating the BBC report and was aggressively questioned about his role in the scandal. He was found dead two days later.

As a UN weapons inspector who had been to Iraq dozens of times to investigate allegations of Saddam Hussein’s bioweapons stockpile, Kelly became the centre of attention in the summer of 2003 when he was revealed as the source of a controversial BBC report alleging that the Blair government had “sexed up” its dossier on Iraqi WMD. In the wake of that scandal, he was called to testify before a parliamentary committee investigating the BBC report and was aggressively questioned about his role in the scandal. He was found dead two days later.

The official inquiry into that death, the Hutton Inquiry, was quickly convened and issue its report in January 2004, officially concluding that Dr. Kelly had taken his own life by a combination of slitting his left wrist and overdosing on coproxamol. Over the course of the decade, however, information has come to light suggesting that the Hutton Inquiry not only ignored key evidence in the case pointing to foul play, but that the report in fact actively covered up such evidence.

The cover up into Dr. Kelly’s death seemingly began before it even started. Operation Mason, the official police investigation into Dr. Kelly’s death, started nine hours before his family even reported him missing.

One of the key witnesses to the Hutton Inquiry and the man who found Dr. Kelly’s body, Detective Constable Coe, now admits that there was surprisingly little blood at the scene for a man who supposedly bled to death. Stunningly, he also admits that he lied to the inquiry in saying that there was only himself and his partner at the scene that day, now admitting that there was an unidentified third man there that many have speculated was someone with the security services.

David Bartlett, the paramedic who pronounced Dr. Kelly dead at the scene, claimed that his body had obviously been moved and confirmed there was surprisingly little blood near the body, saying “I’ve seen more blood at a nosebleed than I saw there.” He also said that as soon as the body was found, the police threw a “blackout” around the scene. He was even banned from speaking to his own control room over radio, the first time that this had happened in his career.

A flight log released under the Freedom of Information Act earlier this year proves that a helicopter landed at the scene just 90 minutes after the discovery of the body. The flight log, which has been heavily redacted, shows that the helicopter only remained on the ground for five minutes before taking off. To this day, the presence of the helicopter at the scene has never been officially explained and there is no indication as to what it was dropping off or picking up from the scene of the crime.

In 2008, one of his colleagues and personal confidants, Mai Pederson, came forward to say that Dr. Kelly could not have killed himself in the manner suggested because he had difficulty using his right hand for strenuous activities because of a painful injury he had sustained to his right elbow. Still, the official conclusion of the Hutton Inquiry holds that Kelly used a knife in his right hand to slit his left wrist.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence, however, is the testimony of a group of doctors who have come together in recent years to provide expert testimony challenging the official claim of suicide.

It is their contention that the verdict of suicide does not fit with the medical evidence presented in the case, and they have formed a group in recent years to petition the UK government to convene a coroner’s inquest into the death, something that should have been done in the first place but was not.

Last week I had the chance to talk to one of the doctors who has been vocal in challenging the results of the Hutton Inquiry, Dr. David Halpin. I asked him about some of the medical evidence that problematizes the official verdict that Dr. Kelly’s death was a suicide.

Shortly after the group of doctors and barristers questioning Dr. Kelly’s death formed in 2009 to put pressure on the government to re-open the investigation, it was revealed that Lord Hutton had taken the extraordinary measure of classifying all of the medical records used by the inquiry, including the post-mortem findings and photographs of the body, for 70 years, a decision that not even the Ministry of Justice was able to explain the legal basis for.

A widespread public backlash forced the government to release the post-mortem documents in late 2010. After reviewing the post-mortem, Dr. Michael Powers, QC, a former coroner and one of the doctors demanding an inquest, noted that there was in fact no new information revealed in the report and that the release of the documents may have been an attempt to close off the option of a coroner’s inquest into the death in the face of massive public support for the reopening of the Kelly case.

Indeed, in June of 2011, UK Attorney General Dominic Grieve did refuse to open an inquest into the matter.

Now, Dr. Halpin is involved in an attempt to open a judicial review into the decision not to convene an inquest on the death. Paying for the proceedings out of his own pocket, this retired orthopedic surgeon is now shouldering the brunt of the responsibility for attempting to see a proper investigation into the many discrepancies in the Dr. Kelly case.

In recent months an independent grassroots campaign to raise funds for the legal battle for an inquest has sprung up, and the public continues to show great concern over this case.

In my conversation, I had the chance to ask Dr. Halpin about the public’s support, and why convening an inquest into Dr. Kelly’s death is a matter of such importance

Five Holistic Doctors Dead

NEWS:   Alternative health sites have claimed that five (or six) “holistic health doctors” died under suspicious circumstances in June and July 2015.

Snopes.com,
21 July, 2015



In mid-July 2015, a number of articles on the subject of recently deceased alternative health practitioners began to circulate on social media. One of those (articles (“5 Holistic Health Doctors Found Dead In 4 Weeks, 5 More Go Missing — After Run-Ins with Feds”) appeared to have inspired several other similar articles, but the claims they made were mostly congruent.

The web site HealthNutNews published one of the first iterations, offering a list of recently deceased physicians, chiropractors, and osteopaths:

June 19th, 2015 – Dr Bradstreet … was found with a gunshot wound to his chest in a river. The small town locals ruled the death almost immediately as a suicide; but many have their doubts. This same day in Mexico … three doctors were traveling to the State Capital in Mexico, to deliver some papers. They were reported missing that day.

This portion of the article referenced one of the five “holistic health doctors” who was found dead, as well as three nameless doctors who went “missing” in Mexico in circumstances seemingly related to each another only by date. No information was provided about what readers were supposed to infer from this information. 

The deceased doctor to whom the author referred was James Jeffrey Bradstreet, a controversial figure found dead of a gunshot wound in a river in June 2015. Bradstreet, 61, was subject to a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raid shortly before his death, which police said appeared to be suicide.

As for the missing Mexican doctors, a 9 July 2015 article in The Daily Beast profiled their case and gave no indication that the individuals affected were in any way affiliated with alternative medicine or were on the radar of the FDA. In fact, there are no clear parallels between the deceased “holistic health doctors” included in the conspiracy theory and the missing Mexican doctors that we could find.

Another portion of the article stated:

June 21st, 2015 — Father’s Day: We have two dead chiropractors, Dr. Holt [33] and Dr. Hedendal [67] (both reported to be fathers), in Florida; both found on the East Coast, both were presumably healthy, and both were described as very fit. We still have no cause of death listed in the articles we can find on either one.

A definitive cause of death for Hedendal has indeed been difficult to turn up, but Florida television station WBBH cited “natural causes” as a possibility. (Hedendal was 67 at the time of his death.) Comments on an online obituary for Hedendal included remarks (#41) from an individual named Rudy Vlaardingerbroek, who noted that:

I knew Bruce well for almost twenty years. I enjoyed chatting with him and throwing the discus. On Father’s Day he was at the Sunshine State Games and felt dizzy throwing the discus and even fell once. He just didn’t look good acc. to other throwers, although his last throw was 133. He was given water and Gatorade, went to his car and passed away sitting there. He must have died of severe hydration, which may have led to a heart attack. We will surely miss him.

As for Holt, his cause of death was indeed not readily available in searches (which have now been crowded out by conspiracy theory ramblings). An article on his death published in Raleigh News & Observer reported that that information was still pending:

[Holt’s] unexpected death last month while on a trip to Jacksonville, Fla. has been a blow to his family and the community he’d created through his work. Though he had been struggling with recent health issues, none were thought to be life threatening by loved ones. His family is awaiting the results from an autopsy report.

We found no indication that Hedendal or Holt had experienced run-ins with the FDA (as had Bradstreet) in recent months.

The next portion of the original article stated:

June 26th, 2015 – Dr. Patrick Fitzpatrick MD goes missing. He was traveling from North Dakota, to neighboring Montana (which he did often as his son lived there), and his truck and trailer were found on the side of the road. The search has expanded, but authorities say it’s like he vanished without a trace. He’s 6′ tall, and described as Irish-looking, with a goatee; and details can be found on the links.

Actually, Dr. Patrick Fitzpatrick of Bismarck, North Dakota was last seen on 2 July 2015. Dr. Fitzpatrick did not seem a likely candidate for a massive big pharma hit job, nor was he an “alternative health” practitioner of any description. Articles published about his disappearance described him as a retired ophthalmologist known for forays into nature preserves, who’d grown increasingly frail in recent years:

[Lieutenant Arlyn Greydanus] says the 74-year-old suffers from medical conditions that require medicine and could suffer from confusion. He also struggles with walking great distances and walks slowly, but is believed to have possibly gotten a ride from the area where his car was abandoned.

“From where the vehicle is stuck there are many different directions he could go. He’s actually stuck in what’s called a pea field. It’s very difficult to walk through that that field was searched extensively by helicopter and you would have been able to see if someone walked through there. There’s a two-track road that he drove in on and possibly walked out on,” Lt. Greydanus said.

The article continued with the following:

June 29th, 2015 – The beloved holistic Theresa Sievers MD was found murdered in her home. Jeffrey Whiteside MD a pulmonologist went missing , vanishing when he simply “walked away” . Dr. Whiteside, known for his successful treatment of lung cancer, disappeared in Door County, Wisconsin, while vacationing with family. They say he was on foot, and had no vehicle; and numerous reports call it “mysterious,” saying he too, vanished without a trace.

On 29 June 2015, Theresa Sievers was bludgeoned to death in her Florida home. An investigation into Sievers’ murder remains open, and law enforcement officials have declinedto comment on what they’ve found so far. But again, we were unable to turn up any evidence suggesting Sievers had an adversarial relationship with the FDA or any other large, powerful public health agencies before she was brutally murdered, and whoever killed her left a remarkable amount of evidence (incongruent with a calculated corporate hit).

Another entry read:

July 10th, 2015 – Lisa Riley DO (Doctor of Osteopathic medicine) is found in her home with a gunshot wound to her head.

Lisa M. Riley, 34, was indeed a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine and not an MD, but her field of practice was listed as the decidedly uncontroversial “emergency medicine.” If Dr. Riley had cause to murderously enrage the medical establishment, that cause was well hidden.

It’s true that Riley’s death occurred under exceptionally suspicious circumstances. She was found dead of a gunshot wound by her husband in her home on 10 July 2015, and ten days later the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) announced that Riley’s husband, Yathomas Riley, would be charged in connection with her death:

The Americus Office of the GBI is announcing the issuance of arrest warrants for Yathomas Riley in the death of his wife, Dr. Lisa Riley. A Lee County magistrate judge issued warrants today charging Riley with Murder, Felony Murder and Aggravated Assault in the death of Dr. Riley. The charges stem from an investigation initiated by GBI agents and the Lee County Sheriff’s Office when her body was reported discovered by Yathomas Riley at their Northampton Road residence in Leesburg on July 10, 2015. Riley has remained in custody at the Lee County Jail since his arrest on July 10, 2015 for charges unrelated to his wife’s death. The extensive investigation into the matter is still ongoing.

Yathomas Riley was implicated in a similar situation in 2010 involving his then-girlfriend Koketia King. That woman was shot in the head as well, and Riley claimed the wound was self-inflicted. King survived.

Later articles also tied the death of Dr. Ronald Schwartz, 65, to the conspiracy. Schwartz wasfound shot to death in his Jupiter, Florida, home on 19 July 2015, but the deceased was neither an alternative health practitioner nor embroiled in any controversy at the time of his apparent murder. Schwartz, an obstetrician and gynecologist, was licensed in Tennessee and Georgia (not Florida) and believed to be functionally retired from medicine. His neighbors described him as quiet and reclusive.

So while Bradstreet died of an apparently self-inflicted wound under increasing FDA heat (and following a recent raid), none of the other doctors subsequently tacked on to conspiracies regarding his death led similar lives. Of the four missing doctors, one was elderly and retired, and three vanished in Mexico (where they lived and worked). Dr. Holt’s passing was a shock to many, but autopsy results are pending. Dr. Hedendal was 67 and passed away after a day of strenuous physical activity (presumably of natural causes). The murder of Dr. Sievers remains unsolved but was unlikely to have been carried out by high-level hitmen. Dr. Riley’s husband (implicated in a similar shooting in 2010) was charged in connection with her suspicious death.

Folks who deeply distrust medicine and science might take the list’s assertions as plausible, but under the slightest scrutiny its claims disintegrate. Given the breadth of fields in which these individuals practiced (e.g., chiropracty, obstetrics, ophthalmology), millions of Americans could conceivably be counted among their ranks. Even if all the deaths and disappearances were suspicious (which most of them appeared not to be), five people out of millions is a very small percentage. 

The claims were not unlike the “Clinton Body Count” rumor, by which every dead person who had the slightest link to the Clintons was drafted into a broad, vague conspiracy theory. This rumor (like its predecessor) cherry-picked information that fit its narrative (such as timeframe) while discarding the facts that didn’t fit (such as mainstream area of practice or later-explained circumstances/arrests).

Journalist Michael Hastings sent chilling email to colleagues before death

June 24, 2013

Mere hours before the fiery car crash that took his life, journalist Michael Hastings sent an email to friends and colleagues urging them to get legal counsel if they were approached by federal authorities.

“Hey [redacted] the Feds are interviewing my 'close friends and associates,'" read the message dated June 17 at 12:56 p.m. from Hastings to editors at the website BuzzFeed, where he worked.

"Perhaps if the authorities arrive 'BuzzFeed GQ', er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.”

Hastings added that he was onto a big story and that he would, “need to go off the radat [radar] for a bit,” according to KTLA in Los Angeles.

Fifteen hours later, in the early morning of June 18, Hastings was driving a Mercedes C250 at a high speed when he lost control in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park neighborhood, causing the car to fishtail and crash into a palm tree. The impact caused the car to burst into flames, trapping the 33-year-old inside.

Silencing the Scientist: Tyrone Hayes on Being Targeted by Herbicide Firm Syngenta

We speak with scientist Tyrone Hayes of the University of California, Berkeley, who discovered a widely used herbicide may have harmful effects on the endocrine system. 

But when he tried to publish the results, the chemical’s manufacturer launched a campaign to discredit his work. 

Hayes was first hired in 1997 by a company, which later became agribusiness giant Syngenta, to study their product, atrazine, a pesticide that is applied to more than half the corn crops in the United States, and widely used on golf courses and Christmas tree farms. When Hayes found results Syngenta did not expect — that atrazine causes sexual abnormalities in frogs, and could cause the same problems for humans — it refused to allow him to publish his findings. 

A new article in The New Yorker magazine uses court documents from a class action lawsuit against Syngenta to show how it sought to smear Hayes’ reputation and prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from banning the profitable chemical, which is already banned by the European Union

Death threats, intimidation and abuse: climate change scientist Michael E. Mann counts the cost of honesty

Research by Michael E. Mann confirmed the reality of global warming. Little did he know that it would also expose him to a vicious hate campaign

MIT Climate Scientist's Wife Threatened In A "Frenzy of Hate"

Prominent MIT researcher Kerry Emanuel has been receiving an unprecedented "frenzy of hate" after a video featuring an interview with him was published last week by Climate Desk.

Emails contained "veiled threats against my wife," and other "tangible threats," Emanuel, a highly regarded atmospheric scientist and director of MIT's Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate program, said in an interview. "They were vile, these emails. They were the kind of emails nobody would like to receive."

"What was a little bit new about it was dragging family members into it and feeling that my family might be under threat, so naturally I didn't feel very good about that at all," Emanuel said. "I thought it was low to drag somebody's spouse into arguments like this."

Please listen to the interview of the wonderful article, 

When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job, John H Richardson talking about the pressures on scientists

When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job

Scientists in New Zealand are clearly under pressure and being gagged which may explain why Radio New Zealand is so silent on the subject.

New Zealand Scientists Complain Of Gagging Over Climate Change Issues

IB News,

23 June, 2015

A coalition of New Zealand scientists on Monday warned that restrictions on government funding and stringent media regulations were silencing them from providing serious inputs to the government's climate change policies, and that they were effectively being gagged.

The New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) said in a press release that it had concerns about the government’s decision of shortening the public consultation period on climate change to a period of less than four weeks, which many scientists say is insufficient. The consultation period will reportedly help the government determine its negotiating position in a U.N. meeting on climate change to be held in Paris in December.

“Climate change will have a profound influence on New Zealanders, and there are many complex issues that need to be dealt with,” NZAS President Nicola Gaston said in a statement. “Yet, there is a marked lack of publicly available information and analysis which would help New Zealanders decide on the best course of action.”

Gaston also said that key research institutions, including the Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) and local universities, are unable to play a large enough role in setting climate policy. 

“The CRIs play a critical role in advising the government on climate change issues, and are dependent on millions of dollars in year-to-year contracts as a result,” the group said, adding that the institutes' dependency on government funds forced them not to be critical of state policies, for fear of backlash.

Last year, the government rolled out its Code of Conduct on Public Engagement, listing guidelines for scientists to interact with the public and the press. The move was criticized by the Royal Society of New Zealand, an association of scientists. NZAS also found in a 2014 survey that 40 percent of scientists were prevented from making a public comment on a controversial issue because of management policy or due to fear of losing research funding.

Also on Monday, Opposition Labour Party spokesman David Cunliffe called for Science and Innovation Minister Steven Joyce to launch an inquiry into the allegations leveled by the scientists. “When 40 percent of scientists say they are being gagged and can’t speak out on issues of public importance, it’s clear evident something is wrong,” Cunliffe said in a statement. “The minister has a responsibility to ensure that scientists can contribute to public debate in New Zealand without fear of reprisal.”

New Zealand’s policy on addressing climate change has drawn criticism from environmental groups before. The World Wildlife Federation warned that the government is “failing to respond adequately to the huge challenges and vast opportunities that climate change presents for our people and economy.” New Zealand’s rating in a climate change performance index last year was “poor,” and it ranked just above China and the United States, two of the world’s biggest energy emitters.