Book Reviews

Book Reviews Master Manipulator: The Explosive True joined by Dr. Diana Schendel, a career separation between Congress, CDC, FDA, Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and government scientist, and Coleen Boyle, NIH, and big pharmaceutical producers. Government Betrayal at the CDC, by Ph.D., of Agent Orange cover-up fame. James O. Grundvig, hardcover, 296 pp, The story’s tension is provided by the James F. Coy, M.D. $17.33, ISBN 151070843X, New York, N.Y.: increased awareness of the mercury- Fruitland Park, Fla. Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. autism connection by tens of thousands of victims, and the economic needs of the The Kingdom of Speech, by Tom Wolfe, As Sir Francis Bacon wrote, vaccine industry. As Grundvig summarizes, hardcover, 183 pp, $26, ISBN 978-0-316- “Knowledge is power.” I commend this CDC had a choice to either do a full- 40462-4, New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and book to anyone seeking understanding. blown study to prove or disprove a link, Company, 2016. James Grundvig, coincidentally of or to report “no adverse effect.” Based on Scandinavian (Norwegian) descent, extensive research, Grundvig exposes the Groundbreaking journalist and best- worked for 30 years in engineering as details of making the latter choice. selling novelist Tom Wolfe, author of The a project manager, developing skills As early as 1992, a renowned scientist Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, and he would use to research how, who, wanted Merck to minimize mercury in I Am Charlotte Simmons, now applies where, when, and why, after his son was Scandinavian vaccines, and single-dose his virtuosity to the source of all of diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. mercury-free vaccines were introduced humanity’s achievements. As he describes Very skillfully, using a technique there. CDC exploited Denmark’s low it, the inspiration came from surfing resembling a mixed genre of cynical autism rate, not mentioning that its the internet and coming upon a web romance novel weaving in and out of the vaccines had been mercury-free for many node about “The Mystery of Language macabre, Grundvig introduces characters years; used Merck’s creative data, not Evolution.” The article announced that in “Erecting the Monolith,” builds his case mentioning that it concerned adults, not heavyweight evolutionists—linguists, bio- in “The Cult of Vainglory,” and treats us children; mingled government scientists logists, anthropologists, and computer to exposure of the horrific problem of with industry; published questionable scientists—are giving up on answering “Cracks in the Monolith.” studies in non-prestigious journals the question of where language comes He begins the story at a meeting in from and how it works. Puerto Rico at which data on the danger without allowing opposition; and used CDC’s public relations techniques instead “The most fundamental questions of aluminum to the human body is about the origins and evolution of our discussed. He notes that the meeting was of science. Cracks were bound to appear in the foundation of the “Monolith” that linguistic capacity remain as mysterious not open to the press—shortly after a as ever,” they wrote. The biggest name in meeting in Maryland that discussed the would not withstand the strain. the history of linguistics, Noam Chomsky, dangers of mercury to the human body Grundvig is quite kind to characterize concluded that despite an explosion got some bad press. A third meeting the CDC as suffering from R.O.T. (redundant, of research on the problem in the last that soon followed in Norcross, Ga., obsolete, and trivial information). My 40 years, what it had produced was a known as the Simpsonwood Retreat, was characterization would be more like private. There, officials from government corruption. Among the incriminating colossal waste of time by some of the agencies mingled with pharmaceutical details is the “Lilly Rider” inserted by Rep. greatest minds in academia. industry people. They needed to Dick Armey “at the twelfth hour” into Wolfe writes: “Now, that was odd…. formulate the message that vaccines do the Homeland Security Act of 2002. This I had never heard of a group of experts not cause autism, and finding the right protects the producers of thimerosal coming together to announce what messenger became the priority. The (mercury) from tort liability. Government abject failures they were.” candidate would need to play ball, be a at all levels of the Executive Branch appears Wolfe then delves into the theory of foreigner, be known in CDC (Centers for culpable. evolution, including a far-from-flattering Disease Control and Prevention) circles, Grundvig describes how our villain portrait of Charles Darwin. He notes and work from a script. continues to thrive in anonymity, safely that the originator of the theory was Using the literary tragedy technique outside the U.S., awaiting a justice that is actually Alfred Wallace, a self-taught of introducing the main character by not likely to come from the government British naturalist who suffered an attack an event at the beginning of the end, that produced him. Issues left for the of malaria while studying the flora and Grundvig reveals that Poul Bak Thorsen’s reader to probe include the lack of fauna of a volcanic island off the Malay trail has been uncovered on his first vaccine safety testing. Archipelago. During the paroxysmal day on the job of the director of Aarhus Grundvig states that the “Weapon- fevers, he came down with a fervid University in Denmark. More than $1 ization of Government” is about “taking desire to record the revelation that had million in grant money from the American over your lives at a very young age…and occurred to him about how evolution CDC has gone missing. vaccines are the first place to start.…” He works. He wrote up a 20-page manuscript Grundvig introduces the data- speaks of the “Vaccine Deep State,” (a term “on the tendency of varieties to depart massaging players, led by Dr. Thorsen, we are hearing a lot lately), which has no indefinitely from the original type,” the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 22 Number 4 Winter 2017 125 first description ever published of the that the creature can take advantage of earth. We have the animal kingdom, evolution of the species through natural the organ’s full power.” the vegetable kingdom, the mineral selection. He sent it with a cover letter to Based on these, there are two main kingdom, and now regnum loquax, the Charles Darwin, with a humble request to features of humanity that cannot be kingdom of speech, inhabited solely by pass it along to others if he felt it worthy. explained by natural selection, Wolfe Homo loquax. And people still do not Darwin was aghast. This outsider, explains: the skin, and the “organ of even know quite what speech is. a barely educated “fly catcher,” had speech.” “To say that animals evolved into independently come up with his idea! Man has been called the “naked ape.” man is like saying that Carrara marble Darwin rushed his Origin of Species into Other primates, even in the tropics, have evolved into Michelangelo’s David,” Wolfe print, and managed to establish his own hides or coats of hair that protect them states. Wallace and Everett provided the priority despite gentlemanly gestures to the point of making them waterproof. intellectual ammunition to demolish that appeared to generously give some But the virtually hairless back of humans Darwin and Chomsky, and Tom Wolfe’s credit to Wallace. makes them highly vulnerable to wind, biting wit uses it to deadly effect. His Wolfe obviously lacks respect for cold, and rain. This cannot possibly have inimitable style is speech at the pinnacle Darwin’s cosmogony or “Theory of an advantage. For time immemorial, of its power. Everything.” He compares it with that of mankind has been using animal hides or A reviewer of the German translation the Algonquians, the Apaches, the Tlingit other things to clothe himself. writes that science has made colossal natives of the American Northwest, and Then there was the fatal flaw: speech progress in the past 150 years but has even Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. He and the capacity for abstract thought. foundered on the most pressing question observes that the Egyptians visualized After Darwin failed to explain the origin of human history: What is the origin the dung beetle as the creator, and the of speech in his book, The Descent of Man, of human speech? Researchers from Navajo Indians cast the biting midge in the subject of the origin of language Charles Darwin to Noam Chomsky, he that role. A later cosmogony was “a dead “entered a dark age that was to last for states, have never stopped announcing ringer for the Navajos’,” Wolfe writes, seventy-seven years,” Wolfe writes. The grandiose successes that amounted except that the creator was even smaller, to nothing, defaming critics instead of namely, a single, undifferentiated cell—or silence ended with Noam Chomsky, “four or five” of them. It’s the only theory who introduced a radically new theory admitting their own errors, and generally recent enough that people knew the of language in the 1950s. Man was born describing the emperor’s new clothes in name of the storyteller: Charles Darwin. with a built-in “language organ,” Chomsky the scintillating colors. But speech, the Darwin did try to explain everything, proposed. The organ contained a “deep foremost accomplishment of mankind, including speech. Animals, after all, have structure” and a “universal grammar.” is not to be explained either with the their forms of vocal communication, Chomsky is a philosophical giant, a theory of evolution or with scientific some of them quite complex.

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