Honoring the Hero's of Healthcare
Advocacy
Here’s to the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world.
The ones who never think too much or feel too little.
The ones who give more than they take.
The ones who are mission driven, heartfelt leaders..
The ones who’ve done the deep work and consistently show up.
I’m with you.
Together we can raise the consciousness of our societal norm.
Step by step, brick by proverbial brick.
- Joey Wilder
"And when I see so many broken and lonely
Soon to be entering Heaven's door
Let me count the ways
Let me count the blessings
That no man should feel lonely anymore
Let me say thank you, to the people raising families
Let me say thank-you to the men who grow the bread
And here's to dreams of a bigger, brighter future
And that we all got someone to keep the storms from our bed
"
- John Mellencamp
While I never thought this is where I would find myself after a supposed life changing procedure that failed due to proven error and fraud, it opened my eyes to the massive suffering left by our flailing healthcare system and the undercurrent of advocacy created by it.
I invite you, the reader, to meet the many who give their time selflessly in the pursuit of evoking positive change. Who, despite their personal concern, harm or losses from it, forge forward in the hopes of helping other patients avoid similar situations and potential suffering.
Worthy of so much more than just notable mention, these healthcare hero's are the reason I created this page. At the very least, these men and women deserve the acknowledgement of their hard work that often includes countless hours of research without compensation. Endless stories of harmed patients in search of answers and moral support, and a failing system that's made 'Medical Error', America's 3rd Leading Cause of Death.
If only the public realized how lucky they are to have these hero's of healthcare. They come from every walk of life, deal with unimaginable suffering, only to step forward to serve their callings with grace & dignity for the greater good.
FOUNDER , ICAN
Del Bigtree is one of the preeminent voices of the vaccine risk awareness movement around the world. He is the founder of the non-profit, Informed Consent Action Network, and host of a rapidly growing internet talk show The HighWire, boasting over 33 million views to date. Del’s multi-pronged approach incorporates legal, legislative, and media actions to expose the fraud, lies, and conflicts of interest that have allowed the pharmaceutical industry to evade standardized safety testing for vaccines. This collusion between government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry, now the most powerful lobby in Washington, has led to a dramatic increase in vaccine injuries, estimated to be as high as 5.9 million cases per year in the US alone. Despite mainstream media sources such as the New York Times and Washington Post blame so-called “Anti-Vaxxers” for the growing trend of vaccine hesitancy, Del has focused the spotlight on the real issue – the shocking lack of credible vaccine science.
Del’s foray into the vaccine issue was anything but intentional. After spending a decade celebrating great doctors, cutting edge surgeries and medical breakthroughs as a producer on The Dr. Phil Show and the CBS medical talk show, The Doctors, it was a routine investigation into the story of a whistleblower at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that catapulted Del into the vaccine debate. When every news agency in television, including The Doctors, refused to cover the story of Dr. William Thompson, a senior scientist at the CDC who had provided over 10,000 documents to support his claim that the agency had destroyed scientific evidence proving a connection between vaccines and autism, Del put his career on the line and left network television to make one of the most controversial documentaries in history: Vaxxed: From Cover-Up To Catastrophe. The film became a worldwide phenomenon when it was abruptly removed from the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival lineup under unprecedented pressure by the festival’s medical sponsor, The Sloan Foundation.
Del is now one of the most sought after public speakers in the natural health arena, often gathering audiences in the thousands who travel from around the world to be inspired by his unique blend of passion, wit, and scientific expertise. He has worked directly with the likes of Robert Kennedy Jr., Robert DeNiro, and Jenny McCarthy, and was an official member of the 2017 Kennedy Vaccine Safety Delegation at the National Institute of Health arranged by President Trump. He is the recipient of multiple awards including an Emmy Award as a producer on The Doctors, Best Drama at the New York Television Festival, and the Health Freedom Hero Award from the National Health Freedom Federation, the oldest natural health organization in America. He has appeared on several primetime news networks including ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX and has been interviewed by countless radio and Internet personalities ranging from Tom Hartman to David Knight of Infowars. Above all, Del is most fulfilled by his work with the brave mothers and fathers of vaccine injured children who are marching on state capitols around the nation to stop Big Pharma’s push to forcibly inject every American citizen with vaccines, a product the Supreme Court has described as “unavoidably unsafe.”
Del's internet talk show: https://thehighwire.com/
Children's Health Defense
Jefferey Jaxen is an independant journalist, writer, and researcher. Focusing on personal empowerment and alternative health, his work reveals a sharp eye to capture the moment in these rapidly changing times. You can find his latest research, information, and personal writings here: https://www.facebook.com/jefferey.jaxen.1 https://twitter.com/JeffereyJaxen
MEET ICAN ATTORNEY AARON SIRI
Meet the brilliant mind behind one of the most successful and active Legal Teams in the world of Vaccine and Civil Rights. Aaron provides legal insight on Covid vaccine mandates, shocking childhood vaccines, the Plotkin Deposition, and more.
Aaron Siri is the Managing Partner of Siri & Glimstad LLP and has extensive experience in a wide range of complex civil litigation matters, with a focus on civil rights, class actions, and commercial litigation. Mr. Siri earned his law degree at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law where he received four Prosser Prizes and ten High Honors. He was also the Editor-in-Chief and founder of the Berkeley Business Law Journal, which he developed into a nationally recognized publication, and was ranked as the leading commercial law journal in the country.
Children's Health Defense
For over three decades, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been one of the world’s leading environmental advocates. He is the founder of Waterkeeper Alliance, the umbrella group for 300 local waterkeeper organizations, in 34 countries, that track down and sue polluters. Under his leadership, Waterkeeper has grown to become the world’s largest clean water advocacy organization.
Around 2005, parents of vaccine-injured children began encountering Mr. Kennedy’s speeches and writings about the toxic mercury-based preservative thimerosal. They embraced new hope that this environmental champion would finally expose the truth about vaccine injury and win justice for injured children. Kennedy is known for his fierce and relentless brand of environmental activism and his advocacy for transparent government and rigorous science. He is now applying his tenacious energies and sophisticated strategies to exposing the fraud and corruption within the CDC and the pharmaceutical industry. Last month, he launched his new non-profit, the Children’s Health Defense, with vaccine safety advocates Lyn Redwood and Laura Bono, legends themselves among parents of vaccine-injured children. Autism File executive editor Rita Shreffler spoke with Mr. Kennedy about CDC corruption, pharmaceutical industry greed, media malpractice, and his vision for the Children’s Health Defense.
Peter McCullough Internist/Cardiologist/Epidemiologist
Dr. Peter McCullough is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, managing the cardiovascular complications of both the viral infection and the injuries developing after the COVID-19 vaccine in Dallas, TX, USA. Since the outset of the pandemic, Dr. McCullough has been a leader in the medical response to the COVID-19 disaster and has published “Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection,” the first synthesis of sequenced multidrug treatment of ambulatory patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the American Journal of Medicine and subsequently updated in Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine.
Robert Malone Virologst/Immunologist
Dr. Malone is an internationally recognized scientist/physician and the original inventor of mRNA vaccination as a technology, DNA vaccination, and multiple non-viral DNA and RNA/mRNA platform delivery technologies. He holds numerous fundamental domestic and foreign patents in the fields of gene delivery, delivery formulations, and vaccines: including for fundamental DNA and RNA/mRNA vaccine technologies.
He has approximately 100 scientific publications with over 12,000 citations of my work (per Google Scholar with an “outstanding” impact factor rating). He's been an invited speaker at over 50 conferences, have chaired numerous conferences and sat on or served as chairperson on HHS and DoD committees. He currently sit as a non-voting member on the NIH ACTIV committee, which is tasked with managing clinical research for a variety of drug and antibody treatments for COVID-19.
Pierre Kory is the former Chief of the Critical Care Service and Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center at the University of Wisconsin. He is considered one of the world pioneers in the use of ultrasound by physicians in the diagnosis and treatment of critically ill patients. He helped develop and run the first national courses in Critical Care Ultrasonography in the U.S., and served as a Director of these courses with the American College of Chest Physicians for several years. He is also the senior editor of the most popular textbook in the field titled “Point of Care Ultrasound,” a book that is now in its 2nd edition and that has been translated into 7 languages worldwide. He has led over 100 courses nationally and internationally teaching physicians this now-standard skill in his specialty.
Dr. Marik has special knowledge and training in a diverse set of medical fields, with specific training in Internal Medicine, Critical Care, Neurocritical Care, Pharmacology, Anesthesia, Nutrition, and Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Dr. Marik is currently a tenured Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia. Dr. Marik has written over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles, 80 book chapters and authored four critical care books. He has been cited over 43,000 times in peer-reviewed publications and has an H-index of 77. He has delivered over 350 lectures at international conferences and visiting professorships. He has received numerous teaching awards, including the National Teacher of the Year award by the American College of Physicians in 2017.
Serving Justice
With Integrity
Ezra Levant is a Canadian writer, activist and media personality who became best known as the founder and former publisher of the Western Standard. He has also worked as a columnist for Sun Media and as a host on the Sun News Network. He earned a commerce degree from the University of Calgary and a law degree from the University of Alberta. He created The Rebel Media website in February 2015.
The writer and media personality has written several books on politics and public policy. One of which is Shakedown: How our government is undermining democracy in the name of human rights which was a 2009 polemic against human rights commissions operated by the federal and provincial governments in Canada.
He also wrote Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oil Sands in 2010, which argued a moral case for developing the Athabasca oil sands rather than importing oil from nations with bad records concerning human rights and the environment and won the 2011 National Business Book Award.
CEO and owner of Rebel News
Ezra Levant is a Canadian writer, activist and media personality who became best known as the founder and former publisher of the Western Standard. He has also worked as a columnist for Sun Media and as a host on the Sun News Network. He earned a commerce degree from the University of Calgary and a law degree from the University of Alberta. He created The Rebel Media website in February 2015.
The writer and media personality has written several books on politics and public policy. One of which is Shakedown: How our government is undermining democracy in the name of human rights which was a 2009 polemic against human rights commissions operated by the federal and provincial governments in Canada.
He also wrote Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oil Sands in 2010, which argued a moral case for developing the Athabasca oil sands rather than importing oil from nations with bad records concerning human rights and the environment and won the 2011 National Business Book Award.
Peter Aleff is an engineer who spent much of his career separating fact from fiction in technical reports. While managing a factory that cured printing inks with ultraviolet light, he studied the U.S. Occupational Safety Guidelines for exposure to retina-damaging irradiation and discovered that the same principles applied to the visible light from the fluorescent nursery lamps which had blinded his prematurely born son. He also found that the neonatologist doctrine about this blinding is based on rigged research that flunks even the most basic smell.
Aside from his efforts for awareness with Baby-blinding Retinopathy, Peter has actively worked outside his interests to offer his fellow advocates on social media, a welcome, helping hand. He's an incredible, wealth of knowledge and worthwhile fact checker. Peter is an absolute asset to our growing advocate community.
You can more of his work here: http://retinopathyofprematurity.org/
Suzan has been a tireless advocate for patient safety since her mother died of medical errors in 2003. Suzan experienced medical harm herself during surgery in 2012, resulting in a long-term disabling condition. Despite the many daily challenges her condition presents, Suzan created and passionately nurtures a grassroots Facebook page to confront medical harm. In 2015 she founded Medical Error Transparency Plan. The group is a welcoming place to share unique personal experiences and frank viewpoints for about 1,500 men and women who experienced serious harm in the health care system. For over a decade Suzan worked on medical harm issues with Consumers Union Safe Patient Project. She is a Board member of Health Watch USA and credits both organizations for mentoring her on the critical need for safer patient care. Suzan is also the co-founder and Team Leader of HospitalWatchDog.org
You can find her FB group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Medicalerrortransparencyplan/
Meet healthcare advocate Michelle Massey.
After suffering the unfathomable loss of her daughter Jessie Marie in 2003 from a completely, treatable/preventable illness that was misdiagnosed in the ER, Michelle's transition into advocacy was sudden and rudely awakened as she came to realize how much an old, outdated law, would affect her ability to seek justice in her daughters untimely passing.
But suffocating grief could not stifle Michelle’s need to know: WHY? And the answers just weren’t coming. Eventually, she learned the appalling truth: Jessie’s doctors hadn’t done what they were asked to do, and they’d lied about it. Jessie was dead because of negligence, and incompetence. And nobody would be held accountable. Along with hundreds of other parents, California’s MICRA law would keep Michelle from having her day in court. However, her epic struggle to expose the injustice of MICRA would win Michelle the CAOC’s “Consumer Advocate of the Year” award (the Erin Brockovich Award) for 2005.
Michelle’s efforts for awareness and change haven’t wavered and 16 years later, she’s become a well known and well respected healthcare advocate in our growing arena.
Find her on social media here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/frivolous.group/
Meet The E-Sisters
Credited with not only connecting thousands of Essure Contraceptive suffers together in support groups around the world, these ladies painstakingly, for seven years, collected invaluable data to build their case to present to the FDA.
These ladies, and their families, have suffered through countless hours of research, long tiring (and costly) trips without reimbursement, to share their stories. They've toiled tirelessly as a team in an effort to keep other women from suffering the same fate.
Many many sacrifices were made by these ladies in their gallant efforts to raise awareness. However, their efforts were not without reward when the FDA was forced to concede to the sisters and removed Essure Contraceptive from the (US) market.
Countless thousands will never know the pain and suffering thanks to the E-Sisters pictured below.
Angie Firmalino
Angie Firmalino holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Metal smithing from Syracuse University, an Associate’s in Psychology from Syracuse University, and an Associate’s in Jewelry Design from FIT. She also studied abroad in Florence, Italy.
After being harmed by Essure, Mrs. Firmalino founded a support and advocacy group in 2011, called Essure Problems. She continues to run Essure Problems along with a strong team of women, and founded ASHES nonprofit in 2015. As President of ASHES, Angie serves as the face of the organization and runs and oversees it's functions. Often the organizer and facilitator of the group, she has strong leadership skills. Angie often attends most ASHES functions and has spoken or presented at many events.
Madris Layne Tomes
Ms. Tomes is the pioneer and creative force behind Device Events, an innovative medical device surveillance and metric reporting system. Since the company’s founding in 2015, Ms Tomes has been transforming the way patterns of adverse events in medical device usage are identified and tracked - a process that significantly helps healthcare professionals mitigate risk and make safer, more informed healthcare decisions for their patients.
Ms Tomes’ expertise stems from an extensive background in public health. Prior to founding Device Events, she served as the FDA’s Adverse Events Subject Matter Expert for Devices and Unique Device Identification (UDI), where her leadership yielded two major initiatives. She spearheaded a team of architects in the development of a UDI system (the Global UDI Database), and oversaw the internal replacement of Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) (the Center for Devices and Radiological Health’s adverse event reporting system).
She appeared in The Bleeding Edge, a Netflix documentary produced by Amy Ziering, Amy Herdy and Kirby Dick (director of The Hunting Ground). Over 50 award-winning journalists worldwide use Device Events to identify risky devices on which to report.
Her work has been featured on CNBC’s Power Lunch and CNN, and in the New York Times, Washington Post Magazine, and the British Medical Journal. She also maintains an active speaking schedule presenting to numerous FDA public workshops and industry conferences, educating healthcare audiences nationwide about the importance of medical device surveillance.
Medical Devices Casualties
A space dedicated to the knowledge and discovery of the toxicity of heavy metals and its effects on human health. We tell the testimonies of toxic conditions and possible treatments. We want to involve all people interested in the cause. Do not let others do what they have done to you. Think and demand knowledge
Maria Fiore & Luca veg Alghisi
(Representing advocacy in Italy)
Maria and Luca, in 2016, discovered that a medical device, called Essure, sold by the Bayer pharmaceutical company, was bringing serious health consequences to her and many thousands of other women around the world. So they started researching this device, which led them to establish relationships with different activists from different countries. Subsequently Maria became passionate about everything related to medical devices in general, because she realized that many of them arrive on the market even before being tested. Luca, speaking English as a second language, contributes to the translation into Italian of some videos or documents that can help Maria and many people who have problems with implants in Italy. Maria created a closed FB group, which is called "victims of dental implants and other medical devices", with the hope of also creating a network of aware people, so that the condition of toxicity from heavy metals is recognized as a pathology of multidisciplinary interest.
Dr. Claudia Bottino