Are You Ready For The Convergence of Metaphysics, Immunology, and Epigenetics?

Posted on | April 16, 2026 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

Stanford neuroscientist, David Eagleman, reminded us this week that “A coherent explanation of consciousness eludes modern science.” That was his opening line in the New York Times book review of Michael Pollan’s latest effort, “A World Appears.” In it, Pollan asks innocently, “How does the brain generate a unified sense of self?”

According to Eagleman, “Pollan is not able to furnish the answers (no one can, yet), but he presents a captivating exploration, one that is highly personal and sensitive.” In this, he is not alone. Other fields are engaged in the same pursuit.

To begin with, there are the epigeneticists. They study “how our environment influences our genes by changing the chemicals attached to them.” In the hands of these scientists, genes are not “set in stone and (fully) predetermined.” Of late, these investigators have been unraveling how various chemicals, working on the surface and inside cells are constantly altering and adjusting how our genes work. Thus the title, since “epi” is Greek for “over, outside of, around.”

Other investigators like Professor Eddy Keming Chen in the department of Philosophy at University of California San Diego come at the problem from a different direction. She bolstered her PhD in Philosophy with a Masters in Mathematical Physics, and a graduate certificate in Cognitive Science. She teaches the PHIL 130 course on Metaphysics.

In the UCSD college syllabus, she tees up the question, “Why study metaphysics?” She promises enrollees that if they sign up, they’ll find a bit of magic in exploring tough questions, like: “Do we have free will? Is it compatible with causal determinism? What is the place of the mind and of the consciousness in a physical world?”

In the Jesuit world that I came from, such courses were mandatory as part of the core curriculum. In my own alma mater, they no longer carry the same mandate, but still remain alive and well.

Consider, for example PHL 365 – a 3 credit course at LeMoyne College titled Philosophy of Mind. Once again, there is magic in the air for inquiring minds. Here is a description. “The main focus of the course will be the ‘mind-body problem’: can the existence of minds and mental states be reconciled with a thoroughly materialistic or physical view of the world? A second, closely connected focus will be: can mental states be implemented on a computer?”

Finally, if neither of these fields captures your imagination, you could follow the lead of Dr. Marie Duhamel, a member of the Board of Directors of the French Society of Proteomics, and research immunologist at the University of Lille. Her 2025 publication in Frontiers in Immunology, titled “Self or non self: end of a dogma?” is an epic exploration of the historical foundations of immunology, and begins this way, “The question of what constitutes the ‘self’ and how living organisms maintain their integrity against external threats has preoccupied thinkers from diverse fields, including philosophy, biology and medicine, for centuries.”

Reviewing more than a century of research that began with the birth of Immunology as a discipline, Dr. Duhamel and her co-author Professor Michel Salzet, are forced to acknowledge that prior assumptions were not entirely incorrect but represent only a portion of the truth. In their words, “Conceptually, the entire premise that the immune system’s first job is to define what is self so as not to attack it is contradicted when we consider microchimerism and pregnancy tolerance, cases in which truly foreign (paternally derived) tissues persist without triggering rejection. Similarly, the fact that the human microbiome can be vital to normal function challenges the assumption that foreignness inevitably triggers aggression.”

Where then does the truth lie? According to the authors, “The role of the immune system is to manage complex ecological relationships by distinguishing beneficial or neutral foreign entities from harmful ones. The presence of ‘harmless foreign’ elements is a mainstay in the gut, skin, and oropharynx. Moreover, the integration of viruses into the genome, sometimes with evolutionary and developmental benefits, blurs the boundary between self and foreign in a fundamental, genomic sense. Endogenous retroviral elements constitute a significant portion of human DNA, yet no robust immune aggression is mounted against these deeply embedded viral sequences. This phenomenon invites researchers to conceive of ‘self’ as including certain categories of foreign genetic material that have become symbiotic or neutral over evolutionary time.”

Before they finish, the scientists humble themselves by allowing boundaries to blur as they move freely into philosophic uncharted territory. The “magic “ is in full view, as they continue: “These concepts are consistent with the contemporary philosophy of immunology, which incorporates ecological and developmental insights, such as the observation that commensal microbes, fetal cells in the maternal circulation, or latent viruses are not automatically rejected as “non-self,” but instead coexist with the host under specific regulatory conditions.

Regardless of which road you travel, a common destination is beginning to appear on the horizon. The convergence of disciplines – Metaphysics, Immunology, Epigenetics – is no longer competitive but rather complimentary. The remaining question: Are we as a species ready for this? Can we handle the truth?

Michael Pollan obviously thinks we are. His website asks the reader to travel “the cutting edge of the field, where scientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness. A World Appears introduces us to “plant neurobiologists” searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants; scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of our slippery stream of consciousness.”

The epigeneticists are cautiously optimistic. In their words, “There’s a lot we don’t know. But that means there’s much left to discover.” But for the immunologists, with the promise of new treatments for cancer and aging, it’s full speed ahead. Their final words, “If this means embracing the ‘end of a dogma,’ it also heralds the dawn of a more integrative immunological science.’ “

The History of the 25th Amendment – a 2026 Update.

Posted on | April 15, 2026 | No Comments

Mike Magee DOWNLOAD SLIDE DECK PDF 1 HOUR VIDEO LECTURE

In 2020 I taught a course at the President’s College at the University of Hartford titled “The President’s Health and the 25^th Amendment.” The questions raised then are now in 2026 even more prescient and include: 1. What is the 25th Amendment? 2. How do you define “inability” and who defines it? 3. Has Presidential “inability” been a problem in the past? 4. What is the role of the White House physician? 5. What is his/her responsibility to the nation? 6. Is a Presidential candidate required to release medical records? 7. Have White House doctors lied to the public in the past? 8. Have Presidents lied about their health? In this abbreviated format, here are 15 selected slides from that course with brief commentary.

Slide 1. The first commentary in our Constitution did not appear until 1787. This was not simply an oversight on the part of our Founding Fathers. Rather it reflected that the issue would be thorny and complicated – as it has remained to this day. In the statement, the position of Vice President is established, and (in the case of inability of the President) his duties “devolve on the Vice President” until the Congress identifies who should take the President’s place.

Slide 2. Over the next roughly half century, the issue of succession surfaces twice. In 1792, five years after the Constitutional Convention, Congress establishes that the line of succession after the Vice-President will be first to the leader of the Senate and then to the leader of the House of Representatives. When President William Henry Harrison dies in office from Typhus 49 years later, his Vice President, John Tyler”, has a local judge swear him in as “President.” John Quincy Adams is outraged by this precedent setting move since most believed he was only entitled to serve for an interim period as “Acting President.”

Slide 3. Historically, turnover in the Executive Office has been relatively common in our history requiring frequent succession. Violence and disease have been the common instigators of these crises.

Slide 4. Formal discussions regarding how best to legislatively manage succession have often followed these acute crises. On July 2, 1881, James Garfield was shot. Though incapacitated, he (and his supporters) refused to relinquish control of the government for the next 80 days until he died. When Chester Arthur, his VP assumed the Presidency, he directed the Legislature to reconsider the issue of succession. In 1886, they passed the Succession Act. It created a line of successors in the Cabinet should a President and Vice President become disabled. The successor would be titled “Acting President.” The issue of defining “inability” and who could determine “inability” was left unaddressed.

Slide 5. President Woodrow Wilson is often cited as the prime example of Presidential abuse when faced with incapacity. During his second term, exhausted from campaign efforts in support of passage of the League of Nations, Wilson suffered a stroke on October 2, 1919. For the next 15 months, Wilson’s 2^nd wife, Edith Wilson, his long time Chief of Staff, Joe Tumulty, and White House Dr. Gary Grayson entered into a conspiracy to run the government and cover up his incapacity. The VP would not confront the issue fearing he’d be accused of opportunism. When the Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, finally surfaced the problem, he was fired. Wilson had to be convinced not to run for a 3^rd term. He died on March 4, 1921.

Slide 6. White House doctors through history have routinely lied about the President’s health. Wilson’s doctor was not an outlier. FDR’s doctor, Admiral Ross McIntire, actively hid FDR’s progressive and eventually fatal Congestive Heart Failure for over a year before he died in office. This included penning a rosy portrayal of the President’s health in Collier’s magazine, titled, “Unconquerable Spirit” 2 months before he died.

Slide 7. In the middle of the Cold War, on September 24, 1955, President Eisenhower suffered a massive heart attack that confined him for months out West until he could be transported back to his home in Gettysburg, PA. He reportedly insisted on waiting until he was capable of walking unaided up the airplane stairs for a photo op. The Democratic Congress at the time asked for hearings to clarify succession issues. In 1958, rather than submit to legislative changes, Eisenhower penned a letter to Nixon, authorizing a temporary and reversible transfer of power were he to declare “inability” to govern.

Slide 8. At the time, Congress raised, and Eisenhower partly addressed the issue in his letter to Nixon.

Slide 9. Senator Frederick Payne (R, ME) had this response in 1958. The key issue he said was “Who will determine ‘inability’?”

Slide 10. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy commented directly on the role of the Vice-President in declaring “inability” if a President is unable to do so himself. After JFK is assassinated, LBJ seeks clarity on the issue of succession. A junior senator from Indiana agrees to head up a Congressional committee to explore the need for a Constitutional Amendment. Few believe it will amount to much.

Slide 11. Since 1788, there have been 11,000 proposed Amendments to the Constitution. Only 27 to date have succeeded and 10 of these were contained in the original Bill of Rights. Ratification of an Amendment requires support from 2/3 of both Houses of Congress, and approval by ¾’s of the states. On January 23, 1967, the 25^th Amendment was ratified.

Slide 12. During Nixon’s second term, the 25^th Amendment gets a work out. VP Spiro Agnew resigns in disgrace. Gerald Ford is appointed by President Nixon. Nixon resigns and Ford assumes the Presidency. Ford appoints Rockefeller as his VP.

Slide 13. During his Presidency, Ronald Reagan ignores the 25^th Amendment after an assassination attempt. His PR people create an inaccurate and deceptive heroic narrative for public consumption to cover-up the seriousness of his condition. Returning a “hero” to address both Houses of Congress helps Reagan pass his “trickle down” tax cut which is partially reversed one year later.

Slide 14. When Reagan undergoes general surgery for colon cancer, he transfers power temporarily to George H. W. Bush, but specifically notes that he is not invoking the 25^th Amendment. Late in his second term, the First Lady, and White House staff (including the White House doctors) cover-up Reagan’s declining mental status. George H. Bush is the first to formally invoke the 25^th Amendment when under anaesthesia to Dick Cheney.

Slide 15. In 1992, twenty-five years after its passage, Birch Bayh and Fordham University Dean of the Law School, John D. Feerick (both of whom were involved in creating the original language for the 25^th Amendment in 1967), co-chair a committee to re-examine the Amendment, and recommend any necessary changes. They conclude it should be left as is, deciding that the issue of both “inability” and “transfer of power” is primarily a political decision, and that transferring the power to override the result’s of the body politics vote to a medical committee, the Supreme Court, or other expert body, would create more problems than it would solve. They also reinforced their faith in Section 4 of the 25^th Amendment – a succession scheme empowering the Cabinet and the Vice-President to appeal to Congress to remove an “inable” President who refuses to leave.

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Tags: 2026 > 25th amendment > trump

Easter and Passover: The Timing of These Sacred Holidays Presses Down On Us.

Posted on | April 5, 2026 | 3 Comments

Mike Magee

Eight years ago, Rabbi Daniel F. Polish wrote an article in the Jesuit magazine America titled, “Easter and Passover have more in common than you think.”

In the final summary paragraph, he wrote:

“Pesach (or Passover) and Pascha (or Easter), beneath their manifest historical and theological content, can be seen as the human reaction to the liberation from the harsh confinement of winter to the verdant restoration of life and promise that all of us feel as we experience the bursting buds and radiant colors, the soft air and beautiful scents that mark the beginning of the new season. And more, both holidays are joined at their core in finding us rejoicing in the defeat of death and the gift of life restored.”

In the body of the article, Polish makes the case for common themes including:

Liberation: From Egyptian slavery for Jews, and from sin for Christians.

Messianic aspirations: “Next year in Jerusalem” for Jews, and the risen Christ for Christians.

Rebirth: Return to ancestral land for Jews, and the rebirth of the Son of God for Christians.

The timing of these most sacred holidays presses down on all Americans today, isolated and separated, brave and fearful, discouraged but somehow hopeful that we together will find a way to reassert “our better angels.”

Emotions are raw, self-reflection abundant, the future uncertain. But what is certain is that the same issues drug up by this wayward Administration are at the core of Pesach and Pascha – life and death have center stage.

Here are my reflections:

Death is not popular but it is inevitable. The only question is whether it is part of our lineage or something stolen away in the night.

Death is not our choice in time or place. But life can be lived with death included.

Those who never contribute never live fully. Their lives are like a series of small deaths, death to potential, death to promise, death to exploration.

Life deserves to be lived each day, considering the unpredictability of death. That death is at the end should not be feared as much as a halted life at the beginning.

Life is a continuum – being, doing, doing without. Things wear out. They break or get broken by events beyond our understanding.

Life is short. But the art of living is long. When we change, there is a sadness for what we leave behind, but a joy as well for what lies ahead. It’s a trade-off.

Losing a love along the way, that is the pain, depopulation, a hole in your world. Can it ever be filled? Perhaps not, but is that not a tribute to the one who’s gone, to the memory of the one whose pleasures made?

No time to fret. No need to rush it. Death will stop for you so why watch out, or dwell on it. A better rest, and well-deserved, a joining ‘wither thou goest’ are in your future too.

________________________________________________________

With thanks and attribution to Ruth 1:16-17, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Jean Paul Richter, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Alphonse de Lamartine, Anatole’ France, John Morley, John Henry Cardinal Newman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joan Baez, and Hippocrates.

Category: Uncategorized

Dyslexia Bites A Schoolyard Bully.

Posted on | March 27, 2026 | Comments Off on Dyslexia Bites A Schoolyard Bully.

Mike Magee

Back in 2019, Professor Harriet Feinberg Ed.D , a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education took a close look at Trump’s 1st term linguistic behavior and came to the conclusion that “Dyslexia may explain a lot about the twisted behavior of the president.”

Feinberg pegged Trump’s reading level at 5th grade – “enough to tweet and to follow a teleprompter, but not enough to comprehend a longish article in the Wall Street Journal. . . He could never have read his textbooks at Wharton School. Someone would have had to read them aloud to him or create bullet points she would grasp the main ideas.”

This past week, Donald Trump decided to get into a war of words with a person with dyslexia. His target was the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, who has struggled with the learning disability since the age of 5.

The President’s action was premeditated and intended to take the potential Democratic 2028 Presidential contender down a peg. It got pretty personal pretty fast. Trump was direct as is his way. He said simply, “Everything about him is dumb.”

In response, the governor broadened the conversation to include young Americans with the condition with these targeted words of encouragement, “To every kid with a learning disability: don’t let anyone — not even the President of the United States — bully you. Dyslexia isn’t a weakness. It’s your strength.”

Trump seemed surprised by the blowback from his “dumb” remark. It drew a stern rebuke from the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity which reminded the President that approximately 20% of the US population is challenged by some form of this condition.

Fellow dyslectic, author and political commentator, Molly Jong-Fast, quickly connected the political dots to current events: “Mr. Trump is a bully, but beyond that he tries to flatten things. Sometimes voters respond to this flattening, this simplification of complicated issues, but ultimately his refusal to see nuance in things, his inability to plan ahead, to see second- or third-order effects is his undoing (see: this war he has gotten us into).”

As the Yale experts put it, “Reading is complex. It requires our brains to connect letters to sounds, put those sounds in the right order, and pull the words together into sentences and paragraphs we can read and comprehend. People with dyslexia have trouble matching the letters they see on the page with the sounds those letters and combinations of letters make. And when they have trouble with that step, all the other steps are harder.”

Neuroscientists couldn’t agree more. Language is indeed complicated. At least five areas have been identified as role players in coordinating human capacity for language and speech.

For the dyslexic, it’s a problem with language processing. The learning issues vary widely and can include difficulties with word recognition, numeracy, spelling, writing, reading, word and symbol recognition. Taken together, these difficulties often translate into deficits in organization, motor skills, visual discernment, planning, social interaction, and short term memory. A common early flag is delayed literacy.

Gavin has been nothing short of an open book when it comes to dyslexia. On tour in support of his new memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” last month, he revealed the challenge of being a politician unable to read a speech. In Atlanta recently, he said, “I’m no better than you. You know, I’m a 960 SAT guy.”

In Dr. Feinberg’s experience, dyslexia doesn’t predict every individual’s fate. Personality has a huge impact on future outcomes. In her view, Trump couldn’t measure up as a child, and likely began faking it at age 6 or 7 and never stopped. Early failures were covered up, paved over, and sheltered by family wealth and connections.

Dr Feinberg summarized succinctly her evaluation during Trump’s first term. She said he likely “faked and falsified his way to fame and power and enjoys overlording it over so-called ‘smart’ people and thwarting their hopes. I am suggesting that Trump’s lifelong experience with dyslexia, instead of increasing his capacity for compassion, has instead combined with problematic elements in his personality, including a penchant for revenge that was apparent even when he was a young adult.”

Attacking Gavin Newsom for an inherited disability that the governor had the courage to disclose has come back to bite a President already under siege. Fakery, grandiosity, and cruelty work well for a media personality. But governing a nation by shelving expertise and knowledge, rejecting deep cultural experience and diplomacy (while surrounding yourself with loyal sycophants who you enjoy publicly torturing as you once did in the schoolyard, or under the glare of your fake televised boardroom) is clearly not a recipe for success.

According to Dr. Feinberg, dyslexia is the key to solving the mystery that is Donald Trump. In her expert opinion, he is “a boy with a penchant for revenge.”

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: dyslexia > Gavin newsom > harriet feinberg > trump

Dyslexia – Newsom vs. Trump

Posted on | March 24, 2026 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

Under President Trump, learning disabilities – especially discussions related to syntax and the quality of language in general – have risen to epic proportions. In a recent “tit for tat” that pitted the Governor of California against the President of the United States, the language disability, dyslexia, received a thorough press airing.

Governor Gavin Newsom has been generally aware of his language learning disability since the age of 5. But over the past month, perhaps in part to address the issue before a 2028 Presidential run, he’s been leaning into his diagnosis of dyslexia stating: “To every kid with a learning disability: don’t let anyone — not even the President of the United States — bully you. Dyslexia isn’t a weakness. It’s your strength.”

His swipe at Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. Over the past week, Trump has attempted to cut his competition down to size by challenging him on cognitive terms, not once or twice but three times. Not that the critique was particularly erudite. This past week, the president simply said, “Everything about him is dumb.” That drew a stern rebuke from the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity which reminded the President that approximately 20% of the US population is challenged by some form of this condition.

Fellow dyslectic, author and political commentator, Molly Jong-Fast,connected the dots to current events: “Mr. Trump is a bully, but beyond that he tries to flatten things. Sometimes voters respond to this flattening, this simplification of complicated issues, but ultimately his refusal to see nuance in things, his inability to plan ahead, to see second- or third-order effects is his undoing (see: this war he has gotten us into).”

In contrast, experts at the Yale Center cites Governor Newsom as a “success story” in part the result of harnessing his unique approach to human language and speech, and life in general. As Newsom puts it, “One of the things you learn with dyslexia is that you’re going to fail often and you’ve got to appreciate that; as they say, failures are a portal of discovery.”

On tour in support of his new memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” last month, he revealed the challenge of being a politician unable to read a speech. He made a point of telling his Atlanta audience, “I’m no better than you. You know, I’m a 960 SAT guy.”

Experts like K-12 educational leader, John White, former state superintendent of education in Louisiana, thinks leaning into language is a smart move. He sees fertile political ground, adding “Literacy is a complicated issue, not like cutting taxes or landing a new corporate headquarters.”

Scientists couldn’t agree more. Language is indeed complicated. At least five areas have been identified as role players in coordinating human capacity for language and speech. French neurologist and anthropologist, Paul Broca, in analyzing patients with traumatic brain injuries in 1861 was the first to pinpoint the inferior frontal gyrus as critical to speech or language articulation. These days, “Broca’s area”remains poorly understood but is viewed as one of the central processing centers for segmenting and codifying syllables, words and phrases.

Thirteen years after Broca’s observations, German physician Carl Wernicki (in 1874), while studying a patient with aphasia (the inability to speak), pinpointed several loci in the temporal lobe as critical to language comprehension. Subsequently, “Wernicki’s area” was proven essential to word retrieval, repetition and reading aloud.

Nowadays, Broca and Wernicki areas are seen as only part of a much broader and complex system. For example, for visual memory, verbal coding of numbers, and turning written language into spoken language, the angular gyrus is expert at semantic processing. And the insular cortex is the focus in generation of language and sound which requires motor neuron coordination and interlinks with the sensory and limbic brain areas.

Speech and language disorders come in many shapes and sizes. Injury to Broca’s area can interrupt speech production, while injury to Werniche’s area is often associated with loss of speech recognition. And the list goes on.

As for dyslexia, it’s a problem with language processing. The learning issues vary widely and can include difficulties with word recognition, numeracy, spelling, writing, reading, word and symbol recognition. Taken together, these difficulties often translate into deficits in organization, motor skills, visual discernment, planning, social interaction, and short term memory. A common early flag is delayed literacy.

But as Gavin Newsom reminds all in his travels around the nation, if someone calls you dumb, consider the source. Victimhood is a choice. Instead, the Governor of California promotes self-awareness and personal responsibility.

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: braca center > dyslexia > john white > language processing > molly yong-fast > newsom > trump > werniche area > yale

Judge Pauses Kennedy CDC .

Posted on | March 17, 2026 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

In early December, 2025, President Trump directed HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy to review the standing childhood immunization schedule. That schedule has historically guided the state school-entry requirements for vaccines as well as mandating no out-of-pocket costs to parents from vaccine insurers.

The order had followed Kennedy’s summary dismissal of all members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices replacing them with a suspect group of vaccine skeptics without any peer review.

Professional organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association quickly challenged the action in court. This week, the U.S. District Court Judge in Massachusetts, Judge Brian E. Murphy, dealt Trump and Kennedy a severe blow. Not mincing word, he labeled the assault on scientific integrity to be “fundamentally problematic.”

Judge Murphy suspended the appointment of 13 of the 15 new panel members, and stated that only 6 of the 25 “even under the most generous reading, have any meaningful experience in vaccines.” The swift rebuke followed the evaluation of the new groups work output by an independent coalition of scientific researchers which documented 60 misleading or false segments and vaccine claims in their inaugural December meeting.

AAP President Andrew Racine M.D. was quick to applaud the court’s decision, stating “This decision effectively means that a science-based process for developing immunization recommendations is not to be trifled with and represents a critical step to restoring scientific decision-making to federal vaccine policy that has kept children healthy for years.”

The action couldn’t come soon enough according to state Public Health officials across the country who have been struggling to turn around a Measles epidemic tied to lax vaccination rates. The first outbreak was reported by the Texas Department of State Health Services in West Texas in late January, 2025. By August, 2025, 762 cases had been confirmed. Ninety-nine of the patients had been hospitalized. There were two fatalities in school-aged children who lived in Gaines County, Texas. The children were not vaccinated and had no known underlying conditions.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has been tracking the spread nationwide and the results are pretty scary. In 2025, there were 2213 cases throughout the nation. 11% of the patients have required hospitalization, and several children have died of complications. In just the first 2 1/2 months of 2026, public health officials have reported 1513 cases. In the past two weeks, nearly 300 new cases have been reported. Major outbreaks are currently occurring in South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Arizona. 94% of the cases hav occurred in unvaccinated patients.

We’ve known about the disease for a long, long time. The first published account dates back to Persia in the 9th century. It’s connection to a blood-born infectious agent was confirmed by Scottish physician, Francis Home, in 1757.

By 1912, the US Public Health Service deemed it a serious enough threat that reporting was now required. Over the next decade, 6000 cases on average were reported each year. By mid-century, 3 to 4 million people were infected each year, and approximately 50,000 were hospitalized and 500 died.

The first effective vaccine was licensed in 1963 by John Enders, and further refined in 1968. By 1989, it became clear that a booster would be required to reinforce waning immunity to the disease. By 2000, measles was declared eliminated thanks to an effective immunization program which reached 91% of the US population. But according to the AAP “as misinformation about vaccine safety has spread, vaccination rates have gone down and measles cases have gone up.”

A quarter of a century later, our nation finds itself in a “back to the future” quagmire. Judge Murphy has injected some sanity and paused action on all votes that were taken by the new advisers. As Trump and Kennedy complain of “judicial overreach” and a desire for “intellectual diversity” (yes, they actually have used the term), 27 states (including the Republican led states of Alaska, Mississippi, New Hampshire and Nevada) have formally announced they intend to follow the recommendations of the AAP on vaccine scheduling, and ignore a CDC that appears to be “off its rockers.”

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: AAP > ama > CDC > measles > robert kennedy jr. > vaccine policy

The American Problem: Comfort With Moral Contempt

Posted on | March 9, 2026 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

“The (American) problem runs deeper. Americans are not just skeptical of institutions. Many appear increasingly likely to judge their fellow citizens as morally bad. That is a different and more corrosive problem. Distrust can make people cautious. Moral contempt makes cooperation feel naive, compromise feel dangerous, and reform feel futile. They dehumanize so that cruelty becomes manageable.”

Kyle Saunders Ph.D.

This past week, the Pew Research Center, trusted source of high-quality research, released a public-facing study destined to shock (if not surprise) public policy leaders nationwide. In a survey of 25 nations across the planet “more people said that others in their country have somewhat or very good morals than say their compatriots display somewhat or very bad levels of morality” – except one nation, the United States.

To be specific, 53% of the American respondents described the morals and ethics of others living in the country as bad, while 47% labeled them as good. For contrast, 92% of citizens in our northern neighbor, Canada, believed its neighbor’s morals and ethics to be good, with only 8% labeled them bad.

Back in December, 2025, Professor Saunders, Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University, wrote that our nation appeared to have settled into a “low-trust equilibrium”, which was bad enough. As he explained back then, “My earlier piece argued that low institutional trust warps political cognition. High-trust environments produce debates about effects: Will this work? Who benefits? Low-trust environments produce debates about motives: What are they really after? Who is this meant to punish?”

But the recent Pew results have shifted his analysis. Pew’s prior work tracking changing perceptions comparing 2016 to 2022 had detected that “growing numbers of both Republicans and Democrats describing people in the other party as immoral.” As he sees it now, “Distrusting your government is a political position. Concluding that your fellow citizens are morally deficient is closer to a civilizational verdict…That’s a different animal.”

Connecting the social and political dots is Saunders job. And as an American political scientist, he doesn’t like what he sees. In his words, “This isn’t just ‘think Democrats are bad’ or ‘think Republicans are bad.’ It’s ‘I think Americans are bad.’ The target has generalized. The moral condemnation has leaked out of its partisan container and settled into the air everyone breathes.”

Professor Saunders isn’t the first to raise these concerns. In the classic 2010 New Yorker article titled “Tocqueville in America” by literary critic James Wood, the writer picked apart some of Tocqueville’s less flattering observations about the nation he visited as a French aristocratic traveler in 1831. Considering the epic two volume “Democracy in America,” he prophetically lets loose with these words, “In the book’s second volume, he warns that modern democracy may be adept at inventing new forms of tyranny, because radical equality could lead to the materialism of an expanding bourgeoisie and to the selfishness of individualism… In such conditions, we might…meekly allow ourselves to be led in ignorance by a despotic force all the more powerful because it does not resemble one…”

This weeks billionaire numbers and their political impact do nothing to reassure. The top 1% in the U.S. now possess $56 trillion. and 300 billionaires and their families made 19% of all U.S. 2024 political contributions with roughly 2/3 going to Republican candidates.

Sadly, Wood’s words remind us of another influential essayist, Kenneth Burke, whose 1939 masterpiece, The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle, is required reading for graduate students from English to Philosophy, and from Political Science to History and Religious Studies. The piece’s main focus involves a critical analysis of Hitler’s Mein Kampf (“my struggle”) which includes this stark warning. Leaders of the free world, Burke says, “need to discover what kind of ‘medicine’ this medicine-man…concocted, that we may know, with greater accuracy, exactly what to guard against, if we are to forestall the concocting of similar medicine in America.”

Professor Saunders believes that humans “dehumanize so that cruelty becomes manageable.” He sees dehumanization as a strategy, a first move with a targeted endpoint. For him, “Dehumanization isn’t the result of violence, hatred, or moral failure. It’s a precondition — a cognitive reorganization that makes harm possible by eliminating the friction that would otherwise prevent it. People don’t dehumanize because they’re already cruel. It’s a prerequisite first step on the path to cruelty.”