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Content created by Kaitlyn Chaisson, Morssal Azimian and Olivia Fenwick.

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By: Kaitlyn Chaisson

Definition: The red flag Mystical Energy is backed by 'science' that has no actual background information. It's supposedly scientifically but has no actual evidence. Mystical Energy is usually used by psychics and paranormal investigators when connecting with clients.

Connection: Below is a link that shows many red flags, the most prominent being mystical energy. This article created by angel fire is all about how you can tap into mystical energy and use it. The article explains three different methods used to tap into the energy around you and use it to your advantage. Critical thinking should be applied when reading through this website, the end of the article talks about creating 'psi balls' and you really need to gather more information on this. You also need to be skeptical when looking through these websites, they often try to sell you their own products to 'help' you connect with the earths 'mystical energy'.

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Manipulation of energy is the CORE of all mystical practice. Without knowledge of energy manipulation, a healer cannot heal and a mage cannot cast spells. Energy can be drawn from many sources. The easiest source to tap into is the energy present in the environment surrounding you.

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By: Kaitlyn Chaisson

Definition: The red flag All Natural is the idea that things provided by the earth, work best for the human body. It's believed by many that the 'all natural' lifestyle is better for your body overall, and to be all natural you need to stay away from things such as gmo. Meaning that people who are 'all natural' usually do not believe in vaccines and look for alternate solutions.

Connection: The following article talks about the dangers of vaccinations and all natural alternatives to prevent certain diseases. Some of their alternatives include; breastfeeding; mistake mushrooms; and your diet. Obviously these things will NOT protect someone against the measles, but anti-vaxxers who firmly believe in all natural supplements think that these do work. When looking into anything to do with all natural you NEED to apply critical thinking, evaluating evidence is key to this. Many people who believe in all natural things follow studies that show no real proof and have no actual scientific evidence.

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Ever since their inception just a couple hundred years ago, vaccines have always been a subject of heated debate. You have those who are completely against, those who are completely for, and then there are those who are either on the fence or who basically get themselves and their children vaccinated because it's "the thing to do."But are vaccines "the thing to do"? Is there any other way - and perhaps, better ways - to protect our health and keep our bodies free from disease?
The Theory Behind Vaccinations
When our bodies come in contact with a foreign substance (antigen), our immune system produces immunoglobulin (antibodies). If that antigen is a bacterium or a virus (pathogen), our body's white blood cells will then create an anti-body (T-cell) that helps fight off that bacteria or virus that can or is making our bodies sick. The T-cells remember that particular pathogen, and that T-cell then stays in our body should we ever come in contact with that pathogen ever again. This is what happens every time we get the cold or the flu.

It's thought that if we give our body small little doses of a particular antigen that our body will then create those T-cells so that in the event that we come in contact with that harmful bacteria or virus, our body will be able to quickly and effectively fight off that ailment. Vaccines give our bodies a minimal dosage of harmful pathogens and are believed by many in the medical community to help create an immunity against those particular ailments.
But Do Vaccines Work?
Those who are opposed to vaccines can quickly point to the annual flu vaccines as evidence that vaccines don't work. As a matter of fact, several studies have come out recently that prove that the flu vaccine can actually make an individual sicker than if they didn't get the vaccine. Why? Because the particular viral strain that scientists use when creating the vaccine is almost always wrong. If the viral strain that they "guess" is going to be going around this season is wrong, one is basically just willingly injecting themselves with sickness.

Now here's an argument that one will often hear: "But if it weren't for vaccines, we'd still have polio!" or "We'd still have measles!" or any other number of diseases that, while once rampant, have now basically become extinct in first world countries. It's important for people to consider the fact that these infectious diseases were on the decline before vaccines were introduced. Arguably vaccines had little or nothing to do with the disappearance or reduction of the disease; the viral or bacterial infection had run its course and was on its way out the door before vaccines had even been introduced.

The hidden secrets of making herbal medicines...right at your fingertips!

Then you have to consider what's in the vaccination. For example, most vaccines contain thimerosal, a seemingly clever code name for the heavy metal "mercury." The purpose: to help preserve the vaccine so its shelf life is extended. But what's the result on our health? Many will say that the mercury in vaccines causes autism. Mercury isn't the only material that one has to be concerned about. Other dangerous materials that are contained within vaccines include:

Aluminum (Can cause several neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease)

Formaldehyde (Carcinogen, known to cause upper respiratory tract problems and can be harmful to our lymphatic and hematopoietic systems)

Monosodium glutamate (MSG)

Sorbital (A potential liver and gastrointestinal toxicant)

Ammonium sulfate (A neurotoxicant and a potential liver, gastrointestinal, and respiratory toxicant)

Diploid cells (From aborted fetuses)

Macerated cancer cells

Detergent (Triton x100)

Animal tissues (such as rabbit brain, horse blood, and pig blood)

Most frightening of all is the fact that the side effects and fatalities that are caused by vaccines are grossly under reported, so the public hasn't been adequately informed about just how dangerous vaccinating themselves and their children in particular is.
Natural Vaccination Alternatives
What's the purpose of vaccinations? To help strengthen the immune system. So why do we need to inject ourselves with disease and other poisonous materials in order to attain a stronger immune system? One thing that we can begin doing today is strengthening our immune systems through a variety of different methods.
Breastfeeding
If you plan on having children, the best way to boost their immune system is to start their life off by breastfeeding them exclusively if possible. When a mother breastfeeds her child, she's passing her immunity to her young one, thus protecting him or her from a number of diseases that formula fed babies are not protected from. A recent study from the British Medical Journal also showed that mothers who naturally built up an immunity against a pathogen had three times the antibodies in her body to protect both her and her baby against disease, and was protected four times longer, than those moms that were vaccinated. Even more frightening was the fact that over one-fourth of all mothers in the study who had been vaccinated didn't show having any sign of antibodies to protect themselves at all.
Probiotics
If you want to stay healthy, then consuming probiotics will help keep a number of bacterial diseases at bay. Probiotics can naturally boost your immune function and beat out any nasty diseases that may otherwise attack your respiratory tract, your intestines, and your urinary tract. Stock up on foods like kimchi, yogurt, and sauerkraut, or choose a quality probiotic supplement that can be found in a number of natural health food stores.
Vitamin Supplements
Vitamin D is the first supplement that should be on anyone's list. Unless you're out in the sun frequently for short periods of time during the day - something which is nearly impossible for most of us in the Northern hemisphere - then you're probably vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D can help protect the body against a number of ailments, such as cancer, asthma, and autoimmune diseases, and it will protect us against infectious diseases.

Other vitamins and herbs that you may want to consider either supplementing in your diet or ensuring you're getting enough of include vitamin A/beta-carotene (10,000-20,000 units a day), vitamin C (500-1000 mg a day), and echinacea (10-20 drops, three times daily).
Red Reishi And Maitake Mushrooms
A non-toxic option that anyone can start taking today is a red reishi or maitake mushroom supplement. Both mushrooms have the remarkable ability to help restore the body to its normal state, so not only are you restoring your immunity to taking these supplements, but you're also restoring the functionality of all of the organs of the body.
Manuka Honey
Less than 100 years ago, every household had honey in it. Not only is manuka honey a great natural and healthy way to sweeten up foods, but it could also treat a number of ailments, such as colds and bee strings. It has the unique ability to support the immune system, and it can be taken in a number of different ways, such as straight out of the jar, spread on bread, or even used in tea.
Your Diet
The best way to protect yourself is to eat right. Having a diet that isn't loaded with preservatives, refined sugars, and unhealthy fats is just what your body is crying out for, and just what will help keep your immune system functioning at its best and protect you from a number of ailments and diseases. Really focus on consuming five to ten servings of vegetables and fruits a day, choosing foods that come in variety of different colors to ensure that you're naturally consuming all of the nutrients that your immune system needs in order to function properly. Eating enough grains ensures that you're detoxing your intestinal system (something which is a leading cause behind a number of illnesses).

Most important of all is remembering to do your research before you take any action towards safeguarding your health. Whether you're trying to protect yourself against ailment and disease through vaccinations or through natural means, always study your options and consider speaking to a person in the medical community and a homeopath to help determine which course of action is right for you and your family.

©2012 Off the Grid News

© Copyright Off The Grid News

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Natural Vaccination Alternatives For You And Your Kids

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Listen To The Article Ever since their inception just a couple hundred years ago, vaccines have always been a subject of heated debate. You have those who are completely against, those who are completely for, and then there are those who are either on the fence or who basically get themselves and their children vaccinated ...

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By: Kaitlyn Chaisson

Definition: The red flag Red Herring is when someone distracts from the original questions asked by asking their own questions and avoiding the overall topic at hand. U.S. President Donald Trump is known for using the red herring tactic in interviews and during speeches.

Connection: In the video below, it shows a compilation of Donald Trump avoiding questions asked to him, by asking his own questions. This is a great example of red herring because not once does he answer a question. He decides to shift the conversation to something he's interested in, he avoids a lot important things, like climate change. When looking into the red flag of red herring you need to be very skeptical of things because it's very easy to get lost in what people are saying. I think that red herring connects to proof by verbosity as well, there's a lot being said and it's easy to get lost.

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Post #5 ( Red Flag) : Confusion of Causation with Correlation 

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Post #5 ( Red Flag) : Confusion of Causation with Correlation 

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By: Olivia Fenwick

Definition: Confusion of causation with correlation is the false connecting of two unrelated events or things. This means creating a false connection between two unrelated things with no proof or fact connecting them.

Connection: his article talks about the reasoning behind the anti-vax movement.

The anti-vaccination movement has skyrocketed, using multiple arguments to “support” their cause. However, the connections that they make to protest vaccinations have been disproven ever since former doctor Andrew Wakefield suggested a link between vaccinations and the development of autism. This was disproven; however, people still use that argument as a reason not to vaccinate their children. It’s been shown that fear of vaccines may be rooted back to when they first came out in the 18th century (the first vaccination was created by Edward Jenner in 1796 for smallpox). People used to refer to them as “the devil’s work.”

This connects to the red flag I have chosen because the connection between autism and vaccinations is a false one, yet people still use it as a reason to not vaccinate their children.

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Introduction

Measles outbreaks in 2019 reached emergency levels in the United States, in addition to other countries such as the Philippines, Ukraine, Venezuela, Brazil, Italy, France, and Japan. The aim of our article is to provide an overview of the major social, psychological, and technological factors that led to these outbreaks in the United States. We also explore the policy landscape and potential solutions for public health researchers. Specifically, we address the social and contextual factors can provide health professionals with tools to develop an effective pro-vaccine response campaign for this highly contagious, preventable disease.

Epicenter of the Outbreak

During January 2019, a measles outbreak in Clark County, Washington, in the United States infected 72 people, 53 of whom were children aged between 1 and 10 years. This prompted the governor to declare a state of emergency. Though once eliminated, measles outbreaks are becoming increasingly common. Since 2014, public health officials have observed an increase in vaccine opposition throughout the United States, primarily concentrated in major metropolitan areas. Seventeen states allow for nonmedical vaccination exemptions. This dangerous trend renders multiple populous cities vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases. Recent resurgences of measles, mumps, and pertussis and increased mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases prompt an in-depth exploration of the social and behavioral factors that influence the "anti-vaxx" movement. Understanding these social and behavioral factors can prevent these behavioral trends from gaining additional traction throughout the United States and beyond, protecting an increasingly connected world from preventable illnesses.

Historical Context

In the United States, fear of vaccines emerged in the 18th century. Religious figureheads often referred to them as "the devil's work" and actively spoke against them. In the 19th century, the movement became increasingly politically motivated as passage of laws in Britain made it mandatory for parents to vaccinate their children. In response, anti-vaccine activists formed the Anti-Vaccination League in London, emphasizing their mission to protect individual liberties that were being "invaded" by government. These movements expanded to Britain in the 1970s and 1980s when parents increasingly refused to vaccinate their children against pertussis in response to a report that attributed 36 negative neurological reactions to the pertussis vaccine. This caused a decrease in the pertussis vaccine uptake in the United Kingdom from 81% in 1974 to 31% in 1980, eventually resulting in a pertussis outbreak in the United Kingdom.

However, the anti-vaccination sentiments in recent decades were also fomented by the 1998 publication of a series of articles in The Lancet by a former British doctor, Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield suggested a connection between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and development of autism in young children. Despite flawed research methodology, and conflict of interest in funding, the MMR vaccine rates continued to drop dramatically. Members of the anti-vaccine movement still cite his research as a talking point in refuting vaccinations.

There is an inverse association between nonmedical exemption rates and MMR vaccine coverage of kindergarteners in the 17 states that allow for vaccination exemptions. States with higher overall nonmedical exemption rates have lower MMR vaccine coverage, demonstrating the dangerous and lasting influence of Wakefield's publication.

The anti-vaxx movement may also be situated within economic and social movements in the United States. Sociological research on parental perception about vaccination decision-making reveals that gender, resources, and norms influence medical decision-making. As Reich points out, ideas about neoliberalism and skewed perceptions of feminist concepts of bodily autonomy and parental decision-making trumps medical expertise. Reich's data and findings suggest that upper-class women may adopt anti-vaxx sentiments as a means for expressing independence-while tragically undermining the value and science behind herd immunity. The landscape of vaccination is complex. Lack of access to regular healthcare- for low-income families, can reduce vaccination compliance (Chen et al., 2018).

The Role of Social Media in the Anti-Vaxx Movement

Another reason skepticism has begun to flourish over vaccinations is due to the spread of misinformation on social media. Medical knowledge that was once held exclusively by medical professionals is now accessible to anyone and can be shared in posts that become "viral." According to an analysis of YouTube videos about immunization, 32% opposed vaccination. Perhaps more concerning, these videos had higher ratings and more views than pro-vaccine videos. In addition, a study that explored the content of the first 100 anti-vaccination sites found after typing "vaccination" and "immunization" into Google revealed that 43% of websites were anti-vaccination. Skeptics also use online platforms to advocate vaccine refusal; as many as 50% of tweets about vaccination contain anti-vaccine beliefs. Research suggests that it only takes 5 to 10 minutes on an anti-vaccine site to increase perceptions of vaccination risks and decrease perceptions of the risks of vaccine omission.

Among these social media influencers are parents who attribute the deaths of their children or illnesses they contract to "vaccine injury," and they often take to the Internet to discuss their experiences and warn other parents. Indeed, a substantial part of the vaccine discussion takes place on anti-vaccine website discussion boards such as Age of Autism, Say No to Vaccines, and Naturalnews.com. Even on mainstream social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, anti-vaccine discussions are flourishing as these groups have closed their forums to anyone who describes themselves as "pro-vaccine." According to Shelby and Ernst, these parents and other anti-vaccine activists "have relied on the profound power of storytelling to infect an entire generation of parents with fear and doubt".

Perhaps the most common trope told by this group is the "overnight autism" narrative, in which a parent takes their child in to get the MMR vaccine only to watch them digress cognitively almost immediately after. In the anti-vaccine community, these stories serve as cautionary tales that vaccines are dangerous without accurate information to refute their claims. Additionally, the widespread involvement of bots and malware promoted by foreign powers in online public health discourse is skewing discussions about vaccination. In 2015, DARPA's (the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Bot Challenge asked researchers to identify "influence bots" on Twitter in a stream of vaccine-related tweets, focusing heavily on the actors behind the content. Researchers studied #VaccinateUS, a Twitter hashtag linked directly to Russian troll accounts connected to the Internet Research Agency-a company backed by the Russian government that specializes in online influence projects. One of the primary tactics used by these influence bots is to use the vaccine debate to target socioeconomic tensions that are unique to the United States. For example, anti-vaccine tweets from this source will often blame elite groups for forcing vaccine on low-income people. In addition, it was determined that "93% of tweets about vaccines are generated by accounts whose provenance can be verified as neither bots nor human users yet who exhibit malicious behaviors." This amplifies the misinformation that parents are exposed to, and it fuels the belief that the science behind vaccine efficacy and safety is still debatable.

Psychological Factors and Beliefs

In tandem with access to information, components of social psychology play a key role in understanding the escalation of the anti-vaccine movement. After surveying 1000 parents of children younger than 13 years of age who were living in the United States, researchers found that the morals of purity and liberty were most associated with vaccine hesitancy. Those who place high value on liberty are most concerned with individual freedom, resenting government mandates that demand parents vaccinate their children. Similarly, those who value purity disapprove "of acts that are deemed 'disgusting' or 'unnatural,'" which they associate with vaccination. Indeed, anti-vaccination websites and other propaganda often claim that vaccines contain "contaminants." According to epidemiologist Amin, this finding is significant because many pro-vaccine arguments and campaigns are grounded on the values of harm and fairness. For example, they usually strive to remind parents that getting immunized helps prevent outbreaks, or they frame it as an obligation to protect those who cannot be vaccinated. Understanding the sociobehavioral variables that influence vaccine-hesitant parents is critical because it will allow the public health community to develop a more targeted and effective response campaign that will prevent this dangerous movement from growing.

Mitigation Against Misinformation

Despite these strides, groups are still finding ways to spread misinformation. For example, one can still find anti-vaccine content on Pinterest by instead searching for "measles vaccine." While Facebook's new policies are making it more difficult for a lay person to come across anti-vaccine propaganda, the platform is not banning the groups altogether. Twitter has yet to make any formal announcements regarding action against anti-vaccine related content.

Education and Anti-Vaxx Movements

Effectively countering the anti-vaccine movement should be addressed through understanding mechanisms for increasing trust between the medical community and parents. Issues of mistrust began with the way in which the measles vaccine campaign was introduced in the United States in 1967. Concerned by the relationship between socioeconomic disparities and infectious disease incidence, the Johnson administration made federal funds for measles vaccination available starting in 1965. A mass measles eradication began in 1967, which did not allow popular confidence around the vaccine to take hold. In addition, early side effects left some parents skeptical.

In the United States, most of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Vaccine Information Statements parents receive before vaccination dedicate almost half of their information to detailing risks of the vaccines and providing information to parents on how to report negative vaccine reactions to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. This does little to reassure parents who may feel fearful or skeptical. Information in these statements should also contain content about the benefits of vaccinations. Outreach efforts should also focus on communities and marginalized group that may have higher levels of mistrust in government-based medical services. It is also important to acknowledge the harm caused to racial minorities by government trials such as the Tuskegee Study in the United States (Reverby, 2017). Eroded trust can still be a factor today in medical decision-making, and this historical context should be considered when working with communities for vaccination promotion.

Policy Implications

The anti-vaccine movement poses several implications for the future direction of public health policy. Developing public policy that closes vaccine loopholes is critical. Despite all 50 states having legislation requiring vaccines for students, almost every state allows exemptions for people with religious beliefs against immunizations. Specifically, 17 states grant philosophical exemptions for those opposed to vaccines because of personal or moral beliefs, and 45 permit "conditional entrance" on the promise that children will be vaccinated. Rarely do schools follow-up. Indeed, lifetime exemption is as easy as obtaining a notarized letter.

Long-Term Solutions

To address the root causes of the measles outbreak, social science can inform community-based interventions and policies.

Additionally, social media platforms should play an active role in monitoring and banning false information. Second, medical and public health professionals must take a different approach in informing skeptical parents about vaccines that includes outreach for vulnerable communities. Finally, K-12 policies on vaccines and common loopholes should be addressed through policy change.

These longterm programs should be carried out through collaborative efforts. Research by sociologists, psychologists, public health researchers, and other scholars should be integrated with strategies launched by nonprofits, state-level health initiative, and community health promotion efforts.

Footnotes

Contributed by

Author Contributions: Both authors contributed to the writing for this article. The first author (Benecke) wrote initial drafts of the content and the second author (DeYoung) provided guidance on revisions and organization of content.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical Approval and Informed Consent: Ethical approval or informed consent was not needed for this article because human subject data were not gathered for this research.

Funding: The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD: Sarah Elizabeth DeYoung https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8420-8762

References

6. Reich JA. Neoliberal mothering and vaccine refusal: imagined gated communities and the privilege of choice. Gender Soc. 2014;28:679-704. [ Google Scholar]

7. Reich JA. Of natural bodies and antibodies: parents' vaccine refusal and the dichotomies of natural and artificial. Soc Sci Med. 2016;157:103-110. [[ PubMed] Google Scholar]

9. Schwartz JL. Vaccines and the Trump administration-reasons for optimism amid uncertainty. Am J Public Health. 2017;107:1892-1893. doi:0.2105/AJPH.2017.304111 [[ PubMed] PMC free article] [ Google Scholar]

11. Broniatowski DA, Jamison AM, Qi S, et al. Weaponized health communication: Twitter bots and Russian trolls amplify the vaccine debate. Am J Public Health. 2018;108:1378-1384. [[ PubMed] PMC free article] [ Google Scholar]

14. Amin AB, Bednarczyk RA, Ray CE, et al. Association of moral values with vaccine hesitancy. Nat Hum Behav. 2017;1:873-880. [[ PubMed] Google Scholar]

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Anti-Vaccine Decision-Making and Measles Resurgence in the United States

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Measles outbreaks in 2019 reached emergency levels in the United States, in addition to other countries such as the Philippines, Ukraine, Venezuela, Brazil, Italy, France, and Japan. The aim of our article is to provide an overview of the major social, psychological, and technological factors that led to these outbreaks in the United States.

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By: Olivia Fenwick

Defintion: Confirmation bias is only seeing and accepting evidence that supports your favoured side of an argument. An example of this is using only evidence that supports your argument to try and sway others to believe the same as you.

Connection: DISCLAIMER: I know this is a sensitive topic, but I feel it’s important to address the confirmation bias that is shown in the case of abortion, specifically the pro-life argument. I am not here to attack personal belief. I’m simply pointing out the obvious fallacy that is appealed to when many groups or people form their arguments in this debate.

When pro-life organizations are arguing that it’s “always better not to abort”, they use examples of women who kept their babies from an unexpected pregnancy and ended up having quite successful and happy lives. However, they conveniently don’t showcase examples where women have had their children taken from them or been deemed unfit mothers or ended up homeless because she couldn’t afford to raise the child. They choose to showcase success stories to make it seem like it will always be easier and happier if you choose not to terminate your pregnancy. In many cases, these organizations paint women who abort as villains.

My example is from a pro-life organization in Toronto. They choose to post stories of women who regretted their abortions and women who kept their babies to support their arguments. However, there are no posts of women whose lives were improved or sustained by terminating pregnancies. The argument has not taken into account women in abusive relationships, sexual assault victims, teen pregnancies, birth defects that could harm both mother and baby, and the extreme cases like incest.

In conclusion, many pro-life groups paint a beautiful picture of what it will be like if you choose not to terminate your pregnancy, and don’t address the negative effects because they don’t support their arguments.

I have attached a pro-life “meme” shared by the owner of the pro-life organization CHOICE42, located in Toronto. This meme depicts Michelle Williams accepting her golden globe. Williams spoke about how her abortion was the reason she was there that day accepting her award. This meme is stating that because Williams had an abortion, she didn’t “win”, but the woman who kept her baby did.

This is an example of confirmation bias because it influences the viewer to think that the reason Williams didn’t “win” is because she had an abortion, which is what the poster believes and wants the viewer to believe as well.

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Babies are the best gift. Always choose your baby over anything else.

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Post #9 (Reason for Belief) : Patternicity

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Post #9 (Reason for Belief) : Patternicity

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By: Morssal Azimian

Definition: Paternal origin.

Connection: This article talks about Shroud man and the naked eye.

According to the article the most “distinctive characteristics” triggers the unanswered question “What “caused” a front to back linear mirror image of an adult male to be formed on a linen burial cloth?”

There is no science to be able to prove this and give an actual response to this unanswered question. This connects Christ and the purpose he had in the world. By studying to Analyze, and revered. Shroud of Turin is the most studied artifact in the world according to the article.

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Above Photo: The face of the Shroud man as it appears to the naked eye and as a photographic negative ( positive.) Shroud Photographs ©1978 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA, Inc
The Shroud of Turin is a rectangular linen cloth comprised of flax measuring 14.6 feet long and 3.5 feet wide. It bears a faint yellowed image of a bearded, crucified man with bloodstains that match the wounds suffered by Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in all four gospel narratives. Since 1578 the Shroud has resided in Turin, Italy, thus the name, the Shroud of Turin. The holy relic is housed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Millions of Christians from all denominations believe that the Shroud is the authentic burial cloth used to wrap Jesus after his death on the cross, and found by his disciples in the empty tomb after his resurrection.

The Shroud's most distinctive characteristic triggers the most frequently asked and still unanswered overarching question: What "caused" a front to back linear mirror image of an adult male to be formed on a linen burial cloth? The fact that science has yet to produce a definitive answer explains why the Shroud of Turin is the most studied, analyzed, revered, and controversial artifact in the world. Connecting Christ to his purported burial Shroud is a process addressed by the following questions and answers:

What does the Bible say about what happened to Christ's body immediately after his death on the cross?
Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus (John 19:38).

How was the body of Jesus prepared to be entombed?
The question of whether Joseph of Arimathea wrapped Christ in "strips of linen" or "linen cloths" is an important point of contention for those who contest the Shroud's authenticity. Depending on the Bible translation, the words "strips of cloth"- "cloths" - "cloth" are all used, contributing to the controversy. Many researchers think that strips were used to bind the chin, the wrists, and the feet. Moreover, Joseph of Arimathea would have needed strips of cloth to bind Christ's body to the 14-foot burial shroud because "Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds" (John 19:39).

Scripture says: Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs" (John 19:40).
The Shroud of Turin as it appears on a photographic negative (positive). Front and back views with side by side vertical orientation. Shroud Photographs ©1978 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA, Inc.
When and Where Was the Shroud of Turin Found?

All four gospels state that Joseph owned the cloth used to wrap Jesus before he was entombed. However, only the Gospel of John mentions the apostles finding the burial cloth(s) in the tomb after Christ's resurrection on that Sunday morning in Jerusalem. The following passage begins the mystery about the Shroud of Turin:

" Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself" (John 20:6-7).

It is reasonable to assume that the twice mentioned "linen cloths" (along with the words "strips" or "wrappings" in some translations) describe what is now called the Shroud of Turin. But what then is the "handkerchief that had been around His head."? The "handkerchief" or "napkin" (in some translations) is thought to be what is named the " Sudarium of Oviedo."
Sudarium of Oviedo: The "handkerchief" or "napkin" thought to have covered the face of Jesus. Shroud Photographs ©1978 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA, Inc.
What Is the Sudarium of Oviedo and How Is it Connected to the Shroud?

The Sudarium is another revered, yet controversial cloth residing in the Cathedral of Oviedo, Spain. Similar to the Shroud, evidence suggests the Sudarium -a smaller piece of linen measuring 34 by 21 inches -touched Jesus after his death. According to the aforementioned Gospel of John, this cloth was "around his head." Speculation is that out of respect for the dead, the cloth was placed on the face of Jesus immediately after the crucifixion before he was wrapped in his burial Shroud.

The key difference between the Sudarium and the Shroud is that the former does not display a man's image. Nonetheless, the "handkerchief" is stained with blood, and other human secretions of suffering that recent scientific studies have determined are a perfect forensic match to the face wounds found on the Man of the Shroud. The Sudarium is often called the " companion" to the Shroud and thought by scientists to authenticate the Shroud because of the bloodstains on both cloths test as the rare Type AB.

Timeline of the Shroud's Mysterious and Scientific Properties

Scientific and technological breakthroughs -starting in the 19th century with the advent of photography and into the 20 th century - led to startling discoveries revealing that the Shroud possessed unexplained properties. We can also surmise that as technology advances, more "unexplainable" properties will be discovered, and the Shroud will continue to baffle scientists well into the future.

1898: The Shroud was photographed for the first time by an Italian named Secondo Pia. His pictures led to a startling discovery: The cloth's faint yellowed image of a man, as seen with the naked eye, is actually a negative image that, when developed, turns into a detailed black and white positive. Pia's unexplainable discovery startled him, along with Church authorities and the scientific community. It also stimulated worldwide interest in the Shroud. The modern era of Shroud science had begun.

1931: Thirty-three years, later given the advancement of photography, Guisseppe Enrie was commissioned by the Church to photograph the Shroud for a second time. Enrie confirmed Pia's finding that the Shroud is a negative image that develops as a positive. (Pia, still alive, was vindicated after his photos had been questioned by Church authorities.) Copies of Enrie's photos were circulated throughout the world. His prints prompted more scientific inquiry and increased general interest in the mysterious cloth with the unforgettable face of a deceased, crucified man.

1950: " A Doctor at Calvary" was published by Dr. Pierre Barbet, a prominent French surgeon. His book documented 15 years of medical research on the Shroud image, often in gruesome detail. Dr. Barbet described the physiology and pathology of the crucified man on the Shroud as "anatomically perfect."

1973: Max Frei, a noted Swiss criminologist, was given permission to take dust samples from the Shroud that contained numerous pollen spores. He discovered 22 pollen species from plants unique to areas around Constantinople and Edessa, (where the Shroud was thought to have traveled after leaving Jerusalem) as well as seven pollen species from plants common only in Israel. The pollen trail appears to corroborate the historic trail.

1975: Air Force scientists John Jackson and Eric Jumper, using a VP-8 Image Analyzer designed for the space program, discovered the Shroud image contained encoded 3-D data not found in ordinary reflected light photographs. Their discovery indicated that the cloth contained "distance information" and must have wrapped a real human figure at the time the image was formed. (In 2010 the History Channel first aired what was to become a popular, long-running documentary, " Real Face of Jesus?" The film interfaced the Shroud's 3-D data, first found in 1975, with 21st-century computer graphics to construct the "real" face of the man depicted on the Shroud.)

1978: The Shroud was on public exhibit for six weeks for the first time since 1933. At the close of the exhibition, nearly 30 scientists (headed by John Jackson and Eric Jumper) comprised the Shroud of Turin Research Project known as STURP. The scientists, representing numerous areas of expertise, analyzed the Shroud for five continuous days using state-of-the-art technology at the time.

John Jackson, Prof. Luigi Gonella and Eric Jumper prepare to begin the examination of the Shroud of Turin in 1978. Shroud Photographs ©1978 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA, Inc

1980: National Geographic magazine published a landmark article on the Shroud. Utilizing STURP photography, National Geographic propelled the cloth into the science and mainstream limelight after calling the Shroud, "One of the most perplexing enigmas of modern times."

1981: After three years of analyzing the scientific data collected in 1978, the STURP scientists' publicly shared their findings at an international conference in New London, CT. All the scientists agreed to the concluding statement: "Thus, the answer to the question of how the image was produced or what produced the image remains, now, as it has in the past, a mystery." The final paragraph of STURP's written report read:

" We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist. The bloodstains are composed of hemoglobin and also give a positive test for serum albumin. The image is an ongoing mystery, and until further chemical studies are made, perhaps by this group of scientists, or perhaps by some scientists in the future, the problem remains unsolved."

1988: STURP's conclusions led to an interest in the date of the cloth, and the Vatican authorized testing. A small corner of the Shroud was cut and radiocarbon dated (C-14) by three laboratories in Oxford, Zurich, and Arizona. The labs determined a date range from between 1260 to 1390. This earth-shattering news contradicted STURP's conclusions that supported the Shroud's possible authenticity.

Additionally, the C-14 test results shocked the global Shroud scientific community who, in general, from day one, was highly suspicious of the medieval date due to the test's questionable protocols. It is these extremely controversial 1260 to 1390 dates that birthed the phrase; the "Shroud is medieval hoax," which negatively impacted and denigrated the Shroud for decades. (Keep reading for important 2005 and 2019 updates about the raw data used in the 1988 test.)

Press conference British Museum, on Oct. 13, 1988 announcing the 1260 -1390 Shroud dating, shocking the world and the Shroud scientific community. Photo is public domain.

1997: Avinoam Danin was a prominent Israeli Botanist and professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He confirmed the presence of flower images on the Shroud verifying 28 different pollen species and plant images - many that grow only around Jerusalem. Danin famously wrote, "March-April is the time of year when the whole assemblage of some 10 of the plants identified on the Shroud is in bloom." Danin's book, " Botany of the Shroud," was published in 2010.

2004: Textile expert Mechthild Flury-Lemberg revealed that the stitching of a seam on the Shroud that runs the entire length, known as the " side-strip," is typical of Jewish burial shrouds found in the ancient fortress of Masada in southern Israel. She verifies the Shroud as a style of textile used in First Century Israel.

2005: Raymond Rogers was Director of Chemical Research for STURP. He was a renowned American thermal chemist who, for over three decades, worked at the prestigious Los Alamos National Laboratory. Rogers obtained thread samples from the same outer corner of the Shroud that in 1988 was C-14 tested - along with thread samples from the interior of the Shroud. After conducting additional micro-chemical and spectroscopic tests, he proved that the samples were not the same.

The key to Roger's finding was that the area cut for C-14 dating appears to be from a medieval reweave instead of the original Shroud. Rogers study concluded: " The radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud."

Rogers's results, published in a peer-reviewed journal, confirmed the concerns of the Shroud's scientific community, and in 2004 he answered the most frequently asked questions about his study. Rogers' breakthrough study provided the answers as to why the 1988 C-14 test results were so suspect. It turned out that the C-14 test labs violated the original sampling protocol established in 1985. Three different samples were to be cut; instead, only one sample was used. Ignoring caution from archaeologists, the test administrators cut the test sample from the most handled area of the cloth - the outside corner edge. That area is exactly where, for centuries, the Shroud had been held and handled by royalty and Church authorities for public celebrations and exhibitions. Therefore, the Shroud cloth sample tested was cut from the area with the most potential for contamination, damage, and, as Rogers believes, may have been repaired.

2011: European researchers with the Italian ENEA (National Agency for New Technologies) replicated the depth and coloration of the Shroud image using a 40 nanosecond burst from a UV excimer laser. This test is the first time any aspect of the image has been reproduced using light. An ENEA News report dated Dec.21, 2011, was headlined: " Scientists Suggest Turin Shroud Authentic." The opening paragraph read:

" A team of researchers from the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), Italy, has found that the Shroud of Turin is not a fake and the body image was formed by a sort of electromagnetic source of energy."

2013: Researchers with Padua University in Italy obtained a dozen samples from other linens of a known age ranging from the current era to 3000 BC. They were able to develop a predictable rate of chemical and mechanical decay. By comparing fibers from the Shroud, they determine an estimated date range of 280 BC to 220 AD that includes the First Century. The test results are widely reported throughout the world in the secular media.

2014: The linen decay research continues to be peer-reviewed and a leading member of the Padua University research team, Professor Giulio Fanti publishes a book, "Turin Shroud: First Century A.D." According to the book's press release, "The new dating methods are published in prestigious international journals, and no one has yet pointed out methodological errors."

2015: A respected Shroud researcher and author Mark Antonacci writes a breakthrough book: " Test the Shroud: At the Atomic and Molecular Levels." Antonacci proposes that a new series of sophisticated, minimally-invasive tests be performed on the Shroud at the atomic and molecular levels. His hypothesis is published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and although it involves a miraculous event consistent with the resurrection, its occurrence can be scientifically tested. Antonacci asserts that these proposed tests could prove whether the Shroud was irradiated with particle radiation; whether the source was the length, width, and depth of the crucified corpse in the cloth; when this event happened; where it occurred; the age of the Shroud and its blood; and the identity of the victim. Antonacci brings his testing request to the Vatican.

2018: The results of "blood flow tests" make headlines around the world: " New Forensic Tests Suggest Shroud of Turin is Fake." The tests, using blood on mannequins and volunteers, determine that the blood flows, as seen on the Shroud, differed from their tests. These led to the conclusion that the Shroud is fake. The tests are highly criticized by numerous, distinguished members of the Shroud's scientific and scholarly community. The conclusions also contradict STURP's findings and that of several forensic pathologists. The wide mainstream news coverage of the test results is out of proportion to the methodology and validity of the study. The coverage also does not detail the known bias of the group who conducted the study.

2019: The 1988 radiocarbon test (C-14) concluding that the Shroud dated between 1260 -1390 is subjected to new scrutiny. The controversial results of the C-14 tests published in the prestigious scientific journal "Nature" in 1989, did not publish all the data because it was not provided by the British Museum. And, for 30 years, Shroud scientists had accused the museum of hiding the raw data.

In 2017 French researcher, Tristan Casabianca filed a legal action against the British Museum, which oversaw the C-14 testing labs in 1988. The museum complied and finally releases all the raw data. Casabianca's research team ran new tests and conclude in their 2019 report that there were numerous dates that fell outside the range published in "Nature." They prove that the Shroud cloth sample is not homogenous, and the 1988 results, famously reported with "95% confidence" are suspect. Casabianca's team supports the widely-held belief that something went awry with the C-14 tests, which for the ensuing decades discouraged Shroud research and disparaged the Shroud as a medieval fake. Casabianca and his team are advocating that the Vatican authorize a variety of new 21 st-century testing methods not available in 1988 or 1978 during STURP's testing.

Science Cannot Explain the Shroud's Mysterious Characteristics and Properties

The Shroud is fascinating to scientists, the religious community, and the general public because of the numerous mysteries contained on, in, or NOT on, in, the cloth. All the cloth's unexplained mysteries point to two overarching questions:

- Is the Shroud the authentic burial cloth that wrapped Jesus?

- Is the Shroud proof of Christ's resurrection?

Four decades ago, for the first and only time, King Umberto II (then owner of the Shroud)authorized comprehensive testing providing STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) with hands-on access to the cloth. Today, STURP's 1978 findings still stand as the primary scientific source cataloging the Shroud's unique properties.

Below is a partial list found by STURP's team of over 30 distinguished scientists:

No substances manually applied to the cloth.

No artistic substances such as paint, ink, dye, pigments, or stain were used to constitute the image.

No collagen binder as would be used with paint.

No fibers cemented to each other as with paint.

No capillary action -- meaning no liquids were applied to form the image.

No substances found between threads, as with a dust rubbing.

Bloodstains on cloth test positive for heme, bile, serum albumin, and other human blood components. The blood is male type AB.

" The blood marks seen on the shroud are consistent with a contact transfer to the cloth of blood clot exudates that would have resulted from major wounds inflicted on a man who died in the position of crucifixion." Dr. Al Adler-Blood chemist STURP Team

The following are image characteristics found on or about the Shroud:

- The image is purely superficial. It does not penetrate the cloth - only rests on the top two micro-fibers. (Analogous to the Shroud image resting on the hairs of your forearm.)

- The image is a photographic negative that develops as a positive.

- The image contains 3D "distance information" similar to a topographical map.

- No directionality to the image, as found with a brush or any substance application tool.

- No variation in the depth of the image. (Virtually impossible with human hands.)

- The yellowing of the image is uniform in intensity.

- No outline or defined edges to the image.

STURP conclusion: "There are no chemical or physical methods known which can account for the totality of the image, nor can any combination of physical, chemical, biological, or medical circumstances explain the image adequately."
Front image of Shroud Man with blood marks highlighted. Shroud Photographs ©1978 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA, Inc
Are the Marks on the Man of the Shroud Compatible with the Gospel Accounts of Christ's Suffering?

Medical forensics determined by STURP concluded that the cloth wrapped a human corpse. Blood chemistry indicates human blood from actual wounds. Botanical studies concluded that the cloth originated in Israel. Alternate dating methods (Professor Giulio Fanti, 2013-14) include the First Century within the range. However, can it be proved that the image of "the Man of the Shroud" is Jesus Christ? Only by inference according to the four gospels:

- Bloodstains on the head compatible with a crown of thorns.

- Over 120 scourge (whip) marks compatible with Roman flagrum.

- Nail wound in the wrists (more anatomically correct to hold the weight of the body than the palm of the hand).

- Nail wound in the feet. (The man's feet were on top of each other.)

- Legs are pulled up due to rigor mortis. (A stiffness of muscles that sets in quickly after death and lasts less than four days.)

- Blood is sourced from actual wounds showing evidence of gravity from a vertical position. (On the cross?)

- No stains of body decomposition. (Resurrection happened on the third day before decomposition had time to occur?)

- Wound in the side compatible in size with a Roman spear tip.

- Post-mortem blood flow from the side wound that also flows across the back.

- Legs of the man were not broken. (Old Testament prophecy fulfilled)

The last three points are interconnected and worthy of explanation. Unique to Jesus was that he was horrifically scourged before he was crucified. As stated in the Apostles Creed: "He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried." Pontius Pilate thought that if he had Jesus brutally scourged - then brought him before the Jewish High Priests and the crowd - that they would not also demand his crucifixion.

By Roman design, crucifixion was a long torturous process ending in asphyxiation. But Jesus so weakened by his pre-crucifixion ordeal, died faster than the two thieves beside him. With the Sabbath hour fast approaching, the Jewish authorities demanded that all three bodies be taken down from their crosses. However, the two thieves were still alive when the order was given to break their legs - making them unable to push their bodies up to breathe.

But, Jesus had already died, so his legs were left intact - compatible with the legs of the Shroud man - fulfilling the previously mentioned Old Testament prophesy. And to confirm Jesus' death, the Romans pierced his side with a spear- another unique characteristic seen on the Man of the Shroud as recorded in John 19:34. Except for Jesus, there is no man in recorded Roman history who was severely scourged and crucified. Normally, it was one punishment or the other. The Man of the Shroud endured both as written in the gospels.

Shroud History Timeline

The most important fact to know about the history of the Shroud is that there are two timelines: The first is before 1356 -based on circumstantial evidence, legend, art, and coins. The second is after 1356,when the Shroud's trail is documented and accepted by historians.

A Reconstruction of the Shroud's Trail Before 1356:

Early First Century - Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Empire. Legend and folklore speak of a mysterious cloth with healing power, bearing an image of Jesus that arrived in Edessa (now Urfa, Turkey) circa First Century AD. The Apostle Jude Thaddeus, one of the original Apostles of Jesus Christ, is associated with bringing the cloth from Jerusalem to Edessa.

Early Second Century - Christian persecutions in the Second century were supposedly the reason why the cloth was hidden inside the fortified wall surrounding the city of Edessa.

525 A.D. - After a severe flood destroyed most of Edessa, the cloth was rediscovered when the walls -where the cloth had been hidden for over 400 years -were being rebuilt. The cloth became known as "The Image of Edessa" and later was called "The True Likeness of Christ not made by human hands." All Orthodox icons of Jesus and Byzantine coins dramatically change to conform to the True Likeness featuring long hair, full beard, large eyes, and flattened nose-all stylistically similar to the Shroud image.

Byzantine era coin dating from AD 692 shows Jesus on a cross bearing a remarkable resemblance to Shroud face.

944 A.D. - The Byzantine Imperial Army invaded Edessa for the express reason of retrieving the cloth from the city which had fallen to Islam. It was taken to Constantinople (now Istanbul) and presented to the Emperor.

1204 A.D.- Constantinople was invaded by the Fourth Crusade, and the revered cloth disappeared. Some historians believe, and 2009 Vatican research supports long-time rumors that the Shroud was held in secret possession by the Knights Templar before 1356 when the cloth was displayed in France.

Note: There is a significant piece of physical evidence that a burial cloth with an image resembling the man depicted on the Shroud was in Constantinople prior to 1204 A.D. (Before supposedly being stolen by the French during the Fourth Crusade.) This "proof" is known as the Pray Codex or Hungarian Pray Manuscript, a collection of medieval manuscripts with imagesdated to the late 12th to early 13th centuries.

The Codex resides today in the National Széchényi Library of Budapest.

Documented History Begins

1356 A.D. - Geoffrey DeCharney first exhibited the Shroud in Lirey, France. Evidence indicates that members of DeChaney's ancestral family were also leaders within the Knights Templar organization. For a detailed history of the Shroud by century, visit the full history page on Shroud.com.

Highlights of the Shroud's Documented History That Today Impacts the Shroud of Turin:

December 4, 1532: The Shroud is folded in 48 layers inside a silver reliquary in Sainte Chapelle, Chambéry, France. A fire breaks out, and drops of molten silver burn through the cloth's outer folded edges. Miraculously the entire cloth was not destroyed, but the burning silver drops left those distinctive linear markings that line both sides of the Shroud image that we see today. Here are first-hand accounts of the fire from a report of the Chambery nuns dated 1534.
The folding of the Shroud in its casket -- This model shows the results of the fire of Dec. 4, 1532 Credit: Professor Jerome Lejeune The burns left from the 1532 fire as seen on a vertical contrasted black and white image. Shroud Photographs ©1978 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA, Inc.
April 16, 1534: Chambéry's nuns repair the Shroud's fire damage. The nuns sew the Shroud to a backing cloth and sew patches over the most unsightly damaged areas. With repairs completed in May 1534, the Shroud is returned to the Savoys' castle in Chambéry, France, owners of the Shroud.

Note: The royal Savoy family owned the Shroud from 1450 to 1982 until the former King of Italy, Humberto II passed away and willed the Shroud to the current living Pope.

September 14, 1578: The Shroud arrives in Turin, heralded by a gun salute from the local artillery. The cloth has remained since that time and why it is called the Shroud of Turin.

Second World War 1939 - 1946: On April 8, 2010, the day before the Shroud was going on rare public display, it was revealed and widely reported that in 1939, the Shroud was secretly moved from Turin to Montevergine Abbey in southern Italy. Reportedly, the Shroud needed to be hidden from Hitler. It remained there until 1946 when the Shroud was quietly returned to Turin. Documents found at the Abbey confirmed that the Shroud was "hidden under the altar of a small chapel" with only a select number of authorities knowing that the Shroud had even been moved from Turin.

April 11-12 1997: A destructive fire breaks out in Turin's Guarini Chapel, quickly threatening the Shroud housed in a bulletproof display case. Fireman Mario Trematore uses a sledgehammer to break open the case and rescue the Shroud. Later, arson is determined to be the cause, but the Shroud is found to be unaffected by the fire.

April 19 - June 24, 2015: The Shroud's last public display. A history of the most recent Shroud public exhibitions, starting in 1898, is found here.

2025: Next Shroud public exhibition? Shroud exhibition dates are set by the Pope. There is speculation that the next one will be in 2025. Watch this " official" Holy Shroud site for confirmation and tickets. (Google will translate this Italian site into English.)

What Is the Catholic Church's Official Position on the Shroud of Turin?

Author Myra Adams posed this question to Catholic priest, Father Andrew Dalton, an international Shroud expert and speaker with the Legionaries of Christ. Dalton is also an Assistant Professor of Theology at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome, Italy. Dalton replied: " The official opinion of the Catholic Church is that she does not have an official opinion. Since there is no dogma regarding the Shroud, Catholics are free to accept or reject its authenticity."

Dalton continued: " That said, one cannot fail to notice the consistent veneration of the Shroud in the Catholic Church down through the ages. Today, the sacred linen is housed in the side altar of Turin's cathedral, where it is covered by a beautiful cloth. An embroidered expression reads in Latin, 'TUAM SINDONEM VENERAMUR, DOMINE, ET TUAM RECOLIMUS PASSIONEM,' which means, 'We venerate your Shroud, O Lord, and we meditate upon your Passion.' All the recent Popes have spoken publicly about this veneration. Nevertheless, Catholics are ever aware that our veneration terminates, not in the cloth itself, but in the divine Person of Jesus Christ, to which it directs us."

It must also be noted that the Catholic Church has never declared the Shroud to be the authentic burial Shroud of Jesus. Divergent statements from the current, recent, and past Popes about the Shroud of Turin seem to support what Father Dalton described as a lack of "official opinion." For example, here is an excerpt from the remarks given by Pope John Paul II when he visited the Shroud at St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Turin, Italy on Sunday, May 24, 1998:

" The mysterious fascination of the Shroud forces questions to be raised about the sacred Linen and the historical life of Jesus. Since it is not a matter of faith, the Church has no specific competence to pronounce on these questions. She entrusts to scientists the task of continuing to investigate, so that satisfactory answers may be found to the questions connected with this Sheet, which, according to tradition, wrapped the body of our Redeemer after he had been taken down from the cross."

Pope Benedict, when he visited the Shroud on public display in May 2010, called the Shroud an "icon," saying that the cloth, " wrapped the remains of a crucified man in full correspondence with what the Gospels tell us of Jesus."

Pope Francis, when paying homage to the Shroud at its last public display in June 2015, said, " The icon of this [Jesus'] love is the shroud that even now, has attracted so many people here to Turin." During those same remarks, Pope Francis famously connected the Shroud to worldwide suffering and persecution when he said, " The Shroud draws [people] to the tormented face and body of Jesus and, at the same time, directs [people] toward the face of every suffering and unjustly persecuted person."

The Protestant Perspective on the Shroud

There is not one definitive stance on the Shroud from any Protestant dominations. However, in general, non-Catholic believers in Christ tend to view the Shroud with more skepticism. Is that because the Shroud is owned by the Catholic Church? For more specific reasons, here is a 2016 essay, " Five Reasons Why Some Christians are Shroud Skeptics." The author, Barrie M. Schwortz, is the founder of Shroud.com. Schwortz was the 1978 STURP team photographer and is a leading, internationally renowned Shroud expert.

Final Thoughts about the Shroud

Whether or not the Shroud is authentic, physical evidence is never needed or necessary for faith in Jesus Christ. However, in my writings, I have associated the Shroud with the proof needed by a modern-day " Doubting Thomas," the apostle who insisted on seeing Christ's wounds before he would believe that Christ was resurrected. Here is what we know for sure about the Shroud:

- The DNA of Jesus is not available, so the Shroud can never be 100 percent proven to be his burial cloth. (Although many would argue that the Sudarium of Oviedo provides a blood and stain match.)

- The Shroud is a "living" cloth because, as in the past, new technologies will reveal new mysterious properties contained within the Shroud.

- The Shroud still exists, and we would argue for a divine reason. And by its very existence, proves that the cloth has been "protected" after being hidden in a wall in Edessa for over 400 years and then surviving through crusades, wars, numerous fires, and even Hitler.

In the end, science cannot render a clear verdict, and the Shroud remains the world's greatest unsolved mystery.

"The Shroud is either the most awesome and instructive relic of Christ in existence, or it is one of the most ingenious, most unbelievably clever products of the human mind and hand on record. It is either one or the other; there is no middle ground." -Historian John Walsh

Myra Adams is a media producer and a conservative political and religious writer with numerous national credits. She is also founder and Executive Director of SignFromGod.org, a ministry that evangelizes the Shroud of Turin. Myra and the SignFromGod board members are acting as principal advisers to the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., for their groundbreaking exhibition about the Shroud targeted for February 2021.

Russ Breault has been researching and lecturing on the Shroud for over 30 years and has appeared in numerous documentaries, including Mysteries of the Ancient World on CBS, The Real Face of Jesus on History Channel, and The Holy Winding Sheet on EWTN and was an adviser for Finding Jesus on CNN. He has been interviewed for Good Morning America and ABC's World News Tonight and has lectured at some of the nation's leading universities, including Duke, Johns Hopkins, Penn State, and many more. His highly acclaimed comprehensive presentation known as Shroud Encounter has been seen by thousands. He is President of the Shroud of Turin Education Project, Inc. and is on the board of directors of SignFromGod.org. His primary website is www.ShroudEncounter.com

For more information or questions about the event, exhibition any of the content contained within the body of the piece contact, [email protected]

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What Is the Shroud of Turin? Facts & History Everyone Should Know

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The Shroud still exists, and we would argue for a divine reason. And by its very existence, proves that the cloth has been "protected" after being hidden in a wall in Edessa for over 400 years and then surviving through crusades, wars, numerous fi...

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Post #7 (Reason for Belief) : Unexplained

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Post #7 (Reason for Belief) : Unexplained

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By: Morssal Azimian

Definition: Unclear of the situation or something

Connection: One of the things that are unsolved in this article is what is dark matter, and why can’t we see it?

To summarize it explains what dark matter is, and what is visible and what is not, yet it is still unexplained as to why we cannot see dark matter, but we know the information about it.

According to the article the observations scientists have been making are that dark matter exists and they can’t figure out why we are unable to see it. And they would like to figure out why.

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Humans have made a staggering amount of scientific and technological progress over the past century. We've created technology that has transformed our society; scientific advances have helped us answer fundamental questions about who we are and the world that we inhabit. And, yet, mysteries persist.

Why are we compelled to sleep every night? Why are we still not able to "see" dark matter? And where the heck are all the aliens?

People have debated questions like these for decades - sometimes centuries. Fortunately, our unfaltering will to uncover the world's mysteries has brought us closer to some answers than ever before. Here are six mysteries that still keep scientists up at night, and how close they are to solving them.

Why Do We Need Sleep?

Why do we need sleep? This may seem like a straightforward question, but the answer is far more complex than you might think. There have been countless attempts to find a definitive reason as to why humans need to sleep every night, but scientists are still unable to offer a single, definitive answer.

Findings in sleep science have shed some light on the intricacies of sleep stages and brain activity, but ultimately, they have merely offered pieces to an ever-growing, incomplete puzzle. It doesn't help that we don't have much to compare ourselves to - as sleeping patterns and brain activity in other animals often deviate significantly from those of humans, further mystifying our understanding of sleep.

Jerry Siegel, a psychiatry professor at UCLA's Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior, has been studying the sleeping habits of animals to understand why humans need to enter a hibernation-like state every night.

"Our understanding and orientation [of sleep] is different than in any other animal because most of us would like to stay awake 24 hours a day. But in the natural world, animals that use a lot of energy are not going to survive," Siegel tells Futurism. Nature values inactivity - for instance, winter hibernation allows certain animals to recover and store energy when it is not needed. "Across species, energy savings is the main evolutionary impulse for sleep," Siegel explains. African elephants, for example, only sleep for two hours a day in the wild, likely because they need the rest of that time to feed in order to give their large bodies enough energy to function.

The energy saving theory is one of several that scientists use to explain why we sleep. As scientists have created tools that can track brain activity during the act of sleep, they have come closer to finishing the puzzle and uncovering all of sleep's mysteries.

For example, the brain has mechanisms in place allowing it to purge itself of unnecessary information during sleep."Sleep is the price we pay for learning," Giulio Tononi, a psychiatry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison tells New Scientist. Tononi and his team conducted experiments on sleeping mice and found that, after sleep, synapses were significantly smaller than those before sleep.

Tononi's team concluded that the brain needs to allow this activity to diminish in order to solidify information it gathered while it was awake. The brain is bombarded with information during the day, and it reinforces it with strong neural connections. To mix the new information in with all of the existing information, those connections need to weaken to "absorb" it. In other words, sleep allows the brain to make new information pliable enough to fit in with all of the old.

While this theory elegantly describes the brain's process of making new information stick during sleep, Tononi and other neuroscientists have yet to prove that sleep is actually required for this to happen.

To fully understand sleep, sleep scientists need a better sense of the neurobiological processes of the brain during both wake and sleep cycles. For instance, how come some of us are able to sleep through extremely noisy environments, and some of us can't? Once we are able to measure exactly how awake or asleep the human brain is, it will bring us even further to knowing all there is to know about sleep.

But one thing has remained clear as ever: Without sleep, we are far worse off. "We know that, if you are sleep-deprived, you have lapses in attention that are actually correlated with intrusions in sleep," Siegel says. Not getting enough sleep has a direct affect on how much attention you can pay to the world around you. "Certainly when you are driving, losing alertness just for two seconds can be lethal."

What Is Dark Matter, And Why Can't We See It?

We don't know what it looks like. We can't see it. But it makes up more than 26 percent of the matter in the known universe. Since Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn hypothesized its existence in 1922, we have come to know it exists because of how it interacts with the matter we can observe, but dark matter is still mysteriously invisible to us.

Most of the matter that's visible to us is made of neutrons, protons, and electrons. But dark matter does not adhere to these classifications. It's made up of different types of particles we haven't yet been able to categorize and that interact with light and matter in a completely different way. Dark matter does not absorb, reflect, or emit light. But its gravitational influence does bend light as it passes nearby - that kind of observation is how scientists know that dark matter exists.

Researchers have been studying this phenomenon, trying to unravel its mysteries, almost since its inception. More recently, the Large Hadron Collider at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) has brought us closer to actually doing so - researchers there are working to identify the invisible material by accelerating tiny particles and then studying the energy and momentum involved in their movements when they collide at high speeds.

Recent studies suggest that gravitational wave detectors could allow us to "see" dark matter for the first time. But the truth of the matter (so to speak) is that we are still very much in the dark about one of the most abundant entities in our universe.

How Was the Universe Created?

We are inching closer to piecing together the earliest moments of the universe, but its true origin is still a mystery. "Any theories or models of 'creation' are incredibly speculative at this point," Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University and chief scientist at the Center of Science and Industry, tells Futurism.

Perhaps the best-known theory about the beginning of the universe is the Big Bang theory, in which the universe expanded from an extremely hot and dense singularity around 13.8 billion years ago. But people misunderstand if they think that matter simply exploded into being from nothing, Sutter says. "The Big Bang happened everywhere in the universe simultaneously; it's not an explosion in space but an explosion of space." Yet, the exact process of what caused this (and of course, what was there beforehand) remains unknown.

"The earlier we go in the history of the universe, the less we understand," Sutter says. While we have caught brief glimpses of the universe when it was only 300,000 years old, scientists are still speculating about the extreme forces at play during the universe's first moments.

Like all good mysteries, a question that seems simple yields more questions that must be solved before we can find the answer to the initial question. "We're prevented from knowing the very earliest moments (like, less than 10^-40 seconds) because we don't fully comprehend the quantum aspects of gravity," Sutter says.

To this end, to fully understand the creation of our universe, we will need to have a comprehensive understanding of the laws of physics that govern matter and antimatter. This is a bit of a problem, as CERN recently confirmed that the Standard Model of particle physics may have to be turned on its head, as it doesn't account for the majority of the matter the Big Bang produced.

Once we have fully understood the nature of antimatter and how it interacts with matter, we won't have a final answer to the origin of the universe, but we will come much closer to understanding how it came to be.

Where is Planet Nine?

Beyond the Kuiper belt, a mysterious cluster of objects is orbiting the Sun. They orbit even more distant from the Sun than Neptune, but some of the objects' trajectories don't seem to fit the expected pattern. Most of them circle around Neptune, kept in the planet's orbit by its powerful gravity. But a handful of these objects seem to be pulled out of place by something with much greater mass.

Konstantin Batygin, assistant professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology, believes that these peculiarities are at least partially caused by the existence of Planet Nine - a yet-to-be-discovered ninth planet in our solar system.

Think of the solar system as a giant disc. The orbits of these strangely behaving objects seem to bend the disc upwards at its edge. Planet Nine needs to be massive to have this kind of influence - a bigger mass than Earth, even. However, despite its apparent mass, we have not yet been able to prove its existence. In part, this is because we only just started looking for it; scientists first started theorizing about its existence in 2014.

However, that's not the only reason that the planet remains undiscovered. "We haven't found it yet because it is staggeringly dim," Batygin says. "With the best telescopes around, we could just barely detect it, we think." Infrared analysis is out of the question because the instruments are simply not sensitive enough. That forces astronomers to look for reflected light - an even more challenging task than infrared analysis. This is because any light that Planet Nine reflects has to travel from the Sun to the far reaches of the solar system, bounce off Planet Nine, and then arrive back to Earth. Reflected light diminishes exponentially as it crosses a distance; the properties of reflected light are stacked against us finding Planet Nine.

However, with advancements in technology, a more sensitive telescope may be able to register light reflected from it, once and for all confirming Planet Nine's existence. Astronomers are also using computer simulations to estimate its orbit to get a better sense of where it will be and when. It's possible that Planet Nine may be simply at a point in its orbit that makes it too distant to be observed.

Why Do These Sounds Make My Brain Tingle?

You might have encountered them on YouTube: thousands of videos narrated in hushed voices and accompanied by soft sounds, like massaging a textured piece of fabric or the faint hum of a hair clipper. A specialized microphone gives you the sensation that you are there. For some people, the sound creates the sensation of a scalp massage.

The result of this experience: a relaxing, tingling sensation in the brain in about 90 percent of the population. But why it happens, and why it doesn't work for everyone, is still unknown.

Craig Richard, a professor of biopharmaceutical sciences at Shenandoah University and founder of ASMR University, has been studying this peculiar sensation since 2013. "We are at the very beginning of unraveling the science behind ASMR," Richard tells Futurism. While past biological studies have shown that functional connectivity (regions of the brain that light up on a fMRI) is different in brains that experience ASMR than in those that don't, ASMR remains a mystery. Why is it that only a certain percentage of humans experiences it? Why does it even exist? "I don't think there will ever be one explanation that satisfies everyone," he says.

Where Is Intelligent Alien Life?

The universe is billions of years old. Considering the age and sheer vastness of our cosmos, it's hard to comprehend why we haven't found other signs of intelligent life. Basic probability indicates that we should have found extraterrestrials by now, so where are they?

Astronomers and physicists have put forth many theories in their attempts to explain. One theory suggests there is a great cataclysmic event that stops any civilization from ever making contact, while another proposes that aliens are trapped beneath thick layers of ice and roc k on distant moons.

If extraterrestrial life does exist in our solar system, researchers suggest that it is likely microbial, as opposed to intelligent alien life. These alien organisms are thought to be on small, icy planets, such as the moons of Saturn or Jupiter. Scientists at NASA have conducted studies to investigate the composition and stateof the large oceans on these moons because, they predict, the presence of abundant water might allow alien life to thrive. But so far, these are only educated guesses based on findings of NASA's Galileo satellite and extensive scanning and observation. NASA is planning to get a closer look by traveling to Jupiter's icy moon Europa within the next decade.

But even if we did find alien life, would we be able to recognize it? Looking for familiar carbon-based lifeforms that use water as life support might limit us in our quest to find alien life. Scientists must be able to fully distinguish alien messages from all the other noise in space - and even that is far from simple. What if their message is indistinguishable from other frequencies? What if they don't want to be found?

In any case, the search is far from over. In fact, in many ways, the search is only just beginning.

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It's 2018. Here are six scientific mysteries we still haven't solved.

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Humans have made a staggering amount of scientific and technological progress over the past century. We've created technology that has transformed our society; scientific advances have helped us answer fundamental questions about who we are and the world that we inhabit. And, yet, mysteries persist. Why are we compelled to sleep every night?

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Post #8 (Reason for Belief) : Idealogical Support

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Post #8 (Reason for Belief) : Idealogical Support

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By Morssal Azimian

Definition:  It is an Adjective that describes political, culture or religious beliefs.

Connection: This article talks about global action and rising noncommunicable disease.

This connection explains public health values, and how the new constitutionalism may or may not constrain public health legitimacy.

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Trade and investment policy has the capacity to support or undermine global action on rising noncommunicable disease (NCD) rates. This article will employ a political science approach to explore how ideology, institutions and interests within the trade and investment policy space may constrain policy recommendations made in the World Health Organization's Global Action Plan (GAP) on NCDs. Specifically, it details how neoliberal ideology may constrain public health values, how the new constitutionalism may constrain public health legitimacy and how disparities in money, power and resources between elite economic actors and public policy actors may constrain the capacity of public health to influence trade and investment agreement negotiations. The implications of these constraints on the implementation of the GAP-NCDs are discussed.

Introduction

In 2007, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that '[t]he boundaries of public health have become blurred, extending into other sectors that influence health opportunities and health outcomes' ( Chan, 2007). The rising rate of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) - responsible for 70% of global deaths in 2015 - is an example of one such public health outcome that has been heavily influenced by an array of economic, social, environmental and political determinants of health ( WHO, n.d.). Recommendations from the WHO on how to combat NCDs in its Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases (GAP-NCDs) require multisectoral action across a range of actors and levels of governance, and thus cooperation and policy coherence will be critical to its success. International trade and investment policy is one area that will either support or undermine global action on NCDs, and one that public health has paid increasing attention to in recent years with high-profile regional negotiations such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

This heighted attention has resulted in a growing body of empirical studies producing evidence on the association between trade and investment liberalisation and drivers of rising NCD rates ( Baker et al., 2016; Barlow et al., 2017; Schram et al., 2015; Stuckler et al., 2012). A recent review of the literature explored evidence indicating that trade and investment agreements influence NCDs through: market liberalisation, which increases the availability, accessibility and desirability of NCD risk factors (e.g. tobacco, alcohol, unhealthy food and beverage products); enhanced market protections for patented medicines that reduce the affordability of treatment for NCDs; and regulatory reforms that can make it increasingly complex and financially risky for states to regulate NCD risk factors ( Schram et al., 2017). Additionally, a number of authors have demonstrated how specific trade and investment treaty provisions may undermine the aims and objectives of the GAP-NCDs ( Thow et al., 2015), the Sustainable Development Goals ( Ruckert et al., 2017) and a public health agenda more generally ( Labonté et al., 2016) - illustrating the importance of developing policy coherence across sectors.

Yet, much of the health sector's engagement in public policy to date has still been rooted in traditional disciplinary perspectives - defined by a continued commitment to evidence and normative values such as justice and equity, but little substantive incorporation of the complexities of public policymaking ( Gagnon et al., 2017; Lee, 2012). Accordingly, public health has continued to produce increasingly robust and valuable evidence of the health impacts of trade agreements and deepen knowledge and analysis of treaty language. However, arguments for treaty reform to reduce negative health externalities grounded in it being 'the right thing to do', even when based on robust evidence, have not been sufficient to align trade and health agendas. Consequently, it has been recommended to anchor public health policy analysis in political science approaches to enhance understanding of how public health is integrated into complex policy processes and the constraining effects this may have on public health policy advocacy ( Gagnon et al., 2017).

This article aims to contribute to our understanding of that integration by exploring how public health may be constrained within the trade and investment policy space, and how this could impact policy coherence for action on NCDs. The analysis uses a political studies approach that breaks down policy development into three mutually constituted features: (1) the ideas that shape policy development, including the knowledge that is drawn on and the values reflected; (2) the institutions that shape policy development, including the rules and structures in place; and (3) the interests that shape policy development, including the actors, their agendas and their relative power and influence ( Gauvin, 2014; Hall, 1997; Pomey et al., 2010). The first section will begin by introducing neoliberalism as the dominant ideology in the trade and investment system, and how neoliberal ideology may constrain policy developed on public health values. The second section explores the new constitutionalism as an institutional structure in the trade and investment system that has established rules and norms which may constrain public health legitimacy in this space. The final section looks at the interests of elite actors in the trade and investment space and how relative inequities in power, money and resources may constrain the influence of public health on trade and investment policy development. Each section will draw on objectives and recommendations in the GAP-NCDs to demonstrate how these constraints might interfere with developing a trade and investment policy agenda that is coherent with public health recommendations for action on NCDs.

Ideology in the trade and investment system

Ideology captures one's knowledge and beliefs about what is and values about what should be ( Pomey et al., 2010). It drives what gets problematised and how by relevant actors and the range of policy options given consideration ( Gauvin, 2014). Ideology can act as a form of invisible power, contributing to the internalisation of status quo and shaping the boundaries of how people think about their place in the world and future possibilities that are envisioned ( Gaventa, 2006). Neoliberalism has been the dominant ideology of the most powerful state and non-state actors that drove the foundational agreements of the international trade and investment system and the most recent period of regional negotiations.

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism has been shaped by the fundamental values of classical liberalism. For classical liberalists, there is no collective 'public interest' beyond the interests of the individuals who comprise that community - and achieving the central goal of maximising individual liberty and freedom requires a constitutional government with limited powers, rule of law, private property rights and the free movement of people, goods, services, capital and ideas ( Freeman, 2017). While classical liberalism is conceptually well developed in the literature, neoliberalism has been described as a term that is '... oft-invoked but ill-defined ...' ( Mudge, 2008: 703) and has ranged from being a '... conceptual trash heap capable of accommodating multiple distasteful phenomena' ( Boas and Gans-Morse, 2009: 156) to a more carefully explored construct positioned as a dominant or hegemonic ideology ( Flew, 2014; Harvey, 2005).

Neoliberalism's roots lie in a series of debt crises in the 1970s, which created opportunistic conditions for a re-emergence of 19th-century economic liberalism, which advocated that freedom from state intervention in markets is necessary to promote economic growth and full employment ( Gilbert, 2013). A key moment was the election of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom in 1979 and Ronald Reagan in the United States in 1980, as a result of which conservative politicians sympathetic to neoliberal ideas gained power in two of the world's most dominant market economies ( Peck and Tickell, 2007). The 1990s saw the systematic spread of a set of neoliberal policy preferences throughout the developing world as conditionalities for loan and debt relief provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank ( Ruckert, 2008). These neoliberal policy preferences are referred to as the Washington Consensus, and include (1) increased fiscal discipline to limit budget deficits; (2) reduced public expenditure, moving away from subsidies and administration towards fields with high economic returns; (3) tax reform, broadening the tax base and moderate marginal tax rates; (4) financial liberalisation, allowing interest rates to be market-determined; (5) competitive exchange rates, either undervalued or correctly valued; (6) trade liberalisation; (7) increased foreign direct investment through reduced barriers; (8) privatisation of state enterprises; (9) deregulation, the abolition of regulations that impede the entry and exit of goods, services and capital, not in the areas of safety, environment and finance; and (10) secure intellectual property rights ( Williamson, 2008).

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that 'the market' delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes. Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth into every organ of the public sector. ( Monbiot, 2016)

Neoliberalism as a constraint on public health values

Neoliberalism has played an important role in shaping the dynamic between states, society and the market. It presents markets as the morally neutral and depoliticised counterpart to the state. The state, by contrast, is a political space appropriated by the self-interests of politicians and bureaucrats, prone to illegitimacy and abuse of power, where even promising policy is ultimately subverted by individual interests to retain political power ( Reis, 2012). As suggested by Dugger (1992), this bifurcation of the state and the market has been used as a way of making the market appear to be a source of productivity and economic growth, and the state a source of interference in the otherwise self-regulating system of free markets.

Neoliberalism thus discounts the complex range of state actions that shape the economy and society, including the implementation and enforcement of legal and regulatory instruments and investment incentives, as well as substantive policy formation that structures the education, health, social services, urban design, land use, mobility, science and development landscape within a country. States are thus in an ongoing position to shape the foundation from which markets grow and the workforce and consumer base to produce and reproduce them. Consequently, and contrary to neoliberal viewpoints, the state does not act as an obstacle to the market, the state enables and defines the market, and the larger economy within which markets operate ( Reis, 2012). Equally, under neoliberalism, society is, in Harvey's (2005) terms, 'economised' to individual consumers and market actors whose personhood is valuated through the lens of 'hard working' producers or 'responsible' consumers ( Clarke, 2008). Neoliberalism has hence been described as 'an articulation of state, market and citizenship that harnesses the first to impose the stamp of the second onto the third' ( Wacquant, 2012: 66).

Implications for action on NCDs

These collisions will impact the successful execution of the GAP-NCDs, including objectives such as raising the priority accorded to the prevention and control of NCDs in global, regional and national agendas and internationally agreed development goals, through strengthened international cooperation and advocacy. One of the policy recommendations under this objective is to encourage inclusion of NCD actions in economic development policies, which includes trade and investment agreements. Getting NCDs on the agenda for economic policy development would require addressing a number of ideological conflicts. First, the market logic of neoliberalism that treats all goods as ordinary commodities runs counter to the public health logic to frame some goods in relation to their health-promoting or health-harmful status. Moreover, so long as economic growth remains the primary objective of any economic policy, regardless of whether that growth is healthy or equitable, the public health agenda to slow or reduce growth in tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food industries may threaten economic growth objectives in some countries.

Additionally, while some health agendas may be more disposed to alignment with economic policy, for example, antibiotic research and development which involves investment into a marketable product of importance to health, NCDs are more antagonistic to markets and neoliberal values. Action on NCDs generally requires less consumption of things like tobacco, alcohol and processed food and beverages, all highly profitable products - posing a direct threat to consumer markets. Likewise, action on NCDs challenges a number of neoliberal values in relation to individualism and limited government. Not only does public health socialise outcomes such as obesity - highlighting the role of obesogenic food environments over individual behaviour on the grounds that food choices are conditioned and constrained by availability, affordability and manipulative marketing techniques - it even portends that the state has a responsibility to regulate these environmental drivers for the public good. This is met by extreme opposition from a range of individuals, consumer groups and corporations operating on neoliberal values and resisting a paternalistic state. In order to put an international health agenda like the GAP-NCDs on the trade and investment policy agenda, public health actors will have to appreciate the constraining role of ideology and find ways to either work within it or work around it. While traditional public health disciplinary perspectives will dictate that producing robust evidence on the relationships between trade conditions, market conditions and health outcomes is the best way to drive change - such tactics will inevitably produce a slow battle with mixed results.

Institutions of the trade and investment system

Institutions are inclusive of '... the formal and informal rules, norms, precedents, and organizational factors that structure political behaviour' ( Hall, 1997; Hall and Taylor, 1996; Pomey et al., 2010: 709). A full exploration of the formal and informal systems that govern trade and investment policymaking is outside the scope of this piece. Instead, the focus here will be on exploring the implications of one influential normative process in the development of trade and investment policy: constitutionalism.

Constitutionalism

Orthodox views on transitions to constitutionalism contend that it is the inevitable outcome of a state transitioning to democracy and the best approach to protecting individual rights by guaranteeing freedoms that no elected government can change ( Hirschl, 2004; Limbach, 2001). For some, this explains the surge in constitutionalism following the wake of human rights violations in World War II ( Dworkin, 1990). As constitutions cannot be amended by any ordinary legislation, thereby binding successive governments to its laws, they require an intermediary to equally enforce the rules of the game for all political actors ( Hirschl, 2004). It is argued that such a role can only effectively be fulfilled by an apolitical body of independent arbiters of the law. In such a system, the state remains the highest authority of the social course of the nation, but is subject to the constraints imposed by the constitution and its traditions, as interpreted by the courts ( McLachlin, 2003).

Alternatively, it has been argued that the primary purpose for transitioning to a constitutional system, particularly one modelled on the US constitution, was the promotion of broader liberal values such as the rule of law and limited government. More specifically, fostering economic growth by developing predictable laws for the marketplace, protection of property rights and capital accumulation, and legal recourse through independent courts if these laws and protections are violated ( Weingast, 1993, 1997). Accordingly, constitutionalism enshrines these rights and protects them against future political regime changes that may result is a less-friendly investment climate, which would negatively impact economic growth ( Hirschl, 2004). Critical historical investigations of US constitutionalism on the other hand suggest that this model secured a particular type of liberty and property rights for a particular class of people and entrenched the dynamics of master over slave, capital over labour and colonist over native ( Di Muzio, 2014). The US constitution safeguarded the right to accumulate wealth beyond one's needs and cemented those rights against future challenges from an increasingly radicalised and politically inspired majority ( Di Muzio, 2014). Indeed, the transition to constitutionalism has been argued as a way to protect states against the tyranny of majority rule and to insulate policymaking from democratic, majoritarian politics shielded behind beliefs of an impartial judiciary ( Dworkin, 1990).

The new constitutionalism

Roots of the modern trade and investment system lie in the post-World War II years and a period of expanding constitutionalism through supranational institutions, such as the IMF, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (which would later evolve into the World Trade Organization [WTO]). These institutions and their formative treaties were promulgated as opportunities to mutually develop peace and prosperity for all nations, based largely on the premise that greater economic interdependence would serve as a deterrent to future conflict. They represented an evolution of public international law from a 'law of coexistence' to a 'law of cooperation' ( Cottier and Hertig, 2003). This new cooperation necessarily demanded some level of transference of state sovereignty in traditionally domestic policy domains to supranational governance structures that could then be arbitrated on by some form of judicial body. This new generation of international agreements was made in the image of liberal constitutionalism, necessitating an abandonment of constitutionalism as conceptually bound to the nation state, and embracing it as a process 'extending constitutional structures to fora and layers of governance other than nations' ( Cottier and Hertig, 2003: 264). International trade - a pivotal area for post-war economic development and integration - was a natural entry point for an emerging constitutionalism between states.

This new constitutionalism ( Gill, 1998; Gill and Cutler, 2014) - inclusive of but not restricted to international trade and investment agreements - has been considered a part of the neoliberal project that seeks to transform macroeconomic and microeconomic policy in order to (1) expand and entrench private property rights as well as the privatisation of public assets, including land and water, and public services; (2) safeguard private property from state measures that may directly or indirectly expropriate such property, including 'locking-in' the above reforms with financial penalties for any violations; and (3) shelter such policy formation from democratic scrutiny and contestation from the masses, for example, presenting trade and investment agreements as purely economic matters to dissuade the general public from developing interest, alongside high levels of secrecy around negotiations ( Gill and Cutler, 2014).

The rights of individuals and private property once enshrined solely at the national level by constitutions were transformed to the protection of investor rights and intellectual property rights at the transnational level through a series of international trade and investment agreements ( Gill and Cutler, 2014). One of the significant changes brought about by constitutionalism is the increased role of the judiciary in policymaking, a concept referred to as judicial empowerment ( Hirschl, 2004; Woods and Hilbink, 2009). While constitutionalism within states empowers national judiciaries to protect citizen rights against violations from the state, the new constitutionalism empowers international arbitrators to protect foreign investor rights against actions of the state. The new constitutionalism has thus entrenched a type of transnational neoliberalism built on privatisation and liberalisation as structures for economic development, and the belief that national policies that inspire investor confidence and support capital accumulation will result in economic growth and wealth creation for all members of society ( Gill and Cutler, 2014).

New constitutionalism as a constraint on public health legitimacy

The second, related, implication is that this absence of health policy actors can translate to an absence of the range of knowledge, values and agendas of health policy actors in these agreements. As noted earlier, liberal constitutionalism was designed to protect a set of negative civil-political human rights, and while fundamental, the values of the public health discipline commonly extend to the provision of positive rights that permit or oblige action. An equity framing, adopted by many in public health, advocates for what have been referred to by Vasak as the second generation of human rights, or socio-economic human rights. These can include the right to the provision of goods meeting social needs (e.g. nutrition, shelter, education) or economic needs (e.g. fair wages, social security) ( Vasak, 1977). The largely impotent environment and labour protection chapters in the TPP agreement ( Wilson, 2016) demonstrate that attempts to embed positive socio-economic human rights into a structure designed to enforce negative civil-political rights may be destined for failure.

Implications for action on NCDs

These constraints on the legitimacy of both public health actors and a public health agenda will have implications for implementation of the GAP-NCDs. For example, another objective of the plan is to strengthen national capacity, leadership, governance, multisectoral action and partnerships to accelerate country response for the prevention and control of NCDs. Within this objective, the action plan calls for the establishment of public health institutions to deal with the complexity of issues relating to NCDs, including trade. Development of such institutions has been executed within intergovernmental organisations, such as the WHO's unit on Trade, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy and Health. The mandate of this unit is to work 'to achieve greater policy coherence between trade and health policy so that international trade and trade rules maximise health benefits and minimise health risks, especially for poor and vulnerable populations'. Its efforts are focused on improving intersectoral collaboration between ministries of health and ministries of trade, commerce and finance by providing health actors with the capacities required to shape and manage the trade policy environment for health.

Interests in the trade and investment system

Public policy has been described as an 'equilibrium reached in the struggle among competing group interests at a given moment' and that 'policies change as a result of changes in the configuration of interests and power' ( Pojani and Stead, 2014: 2404). Power relations are an important component as different actors pursue self-interests and must compete to get their issues on the agenda and keep competing issues off. The more powerful the actor within the given context, the more likely they are to be able to advance their interests ( Birkland, 2014). The final section of this article explores actors in the trade and investment policy space, specifically elite economic actors supported by elite political and judicial actors that are able to use disparities in money, power and resources to keep competing public health interests off the agenda.

Elite actor interests

Within the constitutionalised space of trade and investment agreement negotiations, some of the primary interests reflected are those of the economic, political and judicial elite ( Hirschl, 2004). The dominant interest of economic actors within any policy-domain, including trade and investment policy, is promoting and protecting their capacity to maintain or increase wealth and profit ( Frieden et al., 2010). It has been suggested that just as domestic economic elites once entrenched liberal values through national constitutionalism ( Hirschl, 2004), transnational economic elites now entrench neoliberal values and policy preferences that support their interests through the new constitutionalism. The economic elite have been successful in using the current period of transnational neoliberalism to produce macroeconomic policy that has kept wages low or stagnant, trade unions and legislatures weak, inequality high, finance strong and mobile, and allowed capital's share of gross domestic product to reach historic highs ( Blyth and Matthijs, 2017).

In comparison to economic actors, political actors have a more varied set of potential motivations and interests in the policymaking process, including re-election or retention of office, ideology and achieving policy goals ( Frieden et al., 2010). It is likely that some elite political actors are 'true believers' in the neoliberal ideology and see it as the path to economic prosperity for their country. It has been suggested that neoliberalism is '... now so deeply embedded in the reflexes of the world's ruling elites and line managers that they have difficultly conceiving the world in any other way' ( Tribe, 2009: 69). It is also possible that some elite political actors believe that in a globally integrated economy, if they do not facilitate the flow of goods, services and capital across their border and provide a set of expansive rights for investors, they may lose economic growth and employment opportunities to more competitive countries. This is an extension of the 'race-to-the-bottom' theory that suggests that countries undercut each other, particularly in labour and environment standards, to attract investment from transnational companies ( Davies and Vadlamannati, 2013; Mehmet and Tavakoli, 2003; Olney, 2013).

It may also be that in some cases, the distinction between the political elite and the economic elite is increasingly blurred. This possibility draws upon evidence of the 'revolving-door' between government and the private sector and the provision of political contributions that may fund special interests over public welfare ( Draca, 2014; Luechinger and Moser, 2014). For example, during an important vote in the United States on the TPP, the US Business Coalition for the TPP contributed US$1,148,971 to political campaigns with an average contribution of US$19,673 to Republican candidates and US$9,689 to Democratic candidates ( Gibson and Channing, 2015). Recent appointments in the Trump administration epitomise the revolving door and corporate political influence, such as former Goldman Sachs executives Gary Cohn, now director of the National Economic Council; Steven Mnuchin, now Secretary of the Treasury; Steve Bannon, now a special adviser to Trump; Rex Tillerson, former chairman of ExxonMobil, now the Secretary of State; and Betsy DeVos, billionaire investor in for-profit education companies, now Secretary of Education ( Weissman, 2017). Discerning political interests from economic interests in such a cabinet will prove problematic, if not impossible.

Economic interests in this system also extend to the judicial elite that have built and maintained the investor-state dispute settlement system. The international system of arbitration provided for in international trade and investment agreements, while generating considerable expenses for governments and tax-payers, has been a windfall for the legal industry. The legal industry has been the second largest profiteer of the system, earning over US$1.7b to date or US$8m per case ( Van Harten and Malysheuski, 2016). An elite group of judicial actors have built and secured a multimillion-dollar industry that they have promoted as necessary to attracting foreign investment, about which they have controlled the academic discourse and lobbied against reforms, and within which they have acted as negotiator, litigator and arbitrator ( Eberhardt and Olivet, 2012). In short, the interests of the dominant actors in this policy space boil down to money, power and resources - how to secure what they already have and how to find opportunities to potentially gain more.

Interest-based constraints on public health influence

Trade and investment negotiations have a range of power dynamics at play. From the asymmetrical trade-negotiating capacity, resources for participation and inequalities in bargaining power between high-income and low-income countries, to the disparity in access between financial ministries and public policy ministries within state actors, to the disproportionate capacity to influence negotiations between private corporate actors and private civil society actors. In a commanding display of the financial power of elite economic actors of transnational corporations, it was revealed that the combined capital of the five largest tobacco corporations, over US$400b; the five largest food and beverage corporations, over US$600b; and the five largest pharmaceutical corporations, over US$800b dwarfs 124 states with a gross domestic products of less than US$100b ( Ottersen et al., 2014). This market power readily translates into political power, as demonstrated by the approximately 600 corporate lobbyists appointed as official advisers by the United States during the negotiation of the TPP agreement ( Bowie, 2015; Swenson, 2014), while actors with mandates and expertise relevant to public health seldom participate in trade negotiations ( WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health, 2008).

The discrepancy in influence between corporate and civil society actors in the trade and investment space is also illustrated in committees and groups associated with the trade and investment policy space. The Codex Alimentarious Commission, a joint body of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the WHO, has a mandate to develop and promote international food standards and guidelines that protect consumer health and ensure fair practice in food trade. The body gained prominence when under the WTO the Codex became the referent international standard in the event of a trade dispute. While objectively derived guidelines are essential to ensuring that these baselines are in the best interest of consumer health, as far back as 1993, this committee has been disproportionately influenced by private economic actors, with 662 representatives from industry and only 26 from public interest groups ( Friel et al., 2007), a trend which has continued over time ( Duquet and Geraets, 2012). Public health simply does not have the money, power or resources to compete with elite economic actors in this space, including their ability to secure the support of elite political or judicial actors profiting handsomely from this system.

Implications for action on NCDs

The interests of powerful economic actors will have implications for the feasibility of implementing the GAP-NCDs. For example, the objective to reduce modifiable risk factors for NCDs and underlying social determinants through creation of health-promoting environments includes recommendations for policy measures to reduce the level of sodium, saturated fat, trans-fats and sugars in prepared or processed food products as well as to limit excess calorie intake and portion sizes. These types of policy measures represent a threat to the profits of multi-billion dollar industries and the role of consumption in neoliberalism more generally. Of all of the issues discussed in this article, the formidable opposition from powerful market actors is the most recognised within public health. Former director-general of the WHO, Margaret Chan, has explicitly acknowledged that action on NCDs challenges the business interests of Big Tobacco, Big Food, Big Soda and Big Alcohol. She went on to highlight that these industries have a wealth of tactics to influence policy, including

front groups, lobbies, promises of self-regulation, lawsuits, and industry-funded research that confuses the evidence and keeps the public in doubt ... contributions to worthy causes that cast these industries as respectable corporate citizens in the eyes of politicians and the public [and] arguments that place the responsibility for harm to health on individuals, and portray government actions as interference in personal liberties and free choice. ( Chan, 2013)

Industry interference in public health policy is neither novel nor unexpected. Policy measures within this objective, such as a ban on trans-fats for example, will be executed within traditional public health policy space, where regulatory reform will continue to face industry opposition as it has for decades. Where coherence with trade policy is required is to ensure that agreements do not undermine policy measures at the domestic level, including protection of policy space, resistance to enhanced access for private industry, and protection from investor-state dispute settlement ( Labonté et al., 2016). The exclusion of the tobacco industry as a direct participant in the TPP negotiations, due in part to the success of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, may have been a contributing factor in the inclusion of a tobacco carve-out mechanism in the final agreement. Moreover, it may indicate the type of progress that can be made when big industry, and not public health, is denied a seat at the table.

Conclusion

Action on NCDs is a global priority and structural policy areas such as trade and investment agreements have the capacity to support or detract from policy actions such as those prescribed by the GAP-NCDs. Although public health has produced valuable research empirically connecting trade and investment agreements to health outcomes and identifying incoherence between health agendas and trade and investment provisions, it has been recommended that public health would benefit from incorporating political science models into policy analysis as a way of integrating the complexity of public policymaking. This article aimed to implement that recommendation by using a political science approach to explore key ideological, institutional and interest-based factors within trade and investment policy that may constrain coherence with the GAP-NCDs.

It is first proposed that neoliberalism drives the economisation of social and political life, promoting liberal values of individualism, privatisation, and separation of market and state that collide with public health values of equity and justice. The privatisation of health outcomes and promotion of consumerism and consumption at the behest of markets poses considerable barriers to action on NCDs. The new constitutionalism is then introduced as an institutional structure that reinforces the separation of market and state, as well as liberal values through a process of judicial empowerment. The legacy of constitutional structures has contributed to the legitimisation of certain actors and certain agendas within trade and investment negotiations which constrains the legitimate participation of public health actors. Finally, the article has highlighted the disparity in money, power and resources between public interest actors and elite economic actors, for whom neoliberal ideology and institutional structures have been highly profitable. Thailand provides a model of institutional change at a national level that supports collaboration among a diverse network of actors to enhance the legitimacy and influence of public health actors and values in the trade and investment policy space. This type of complex systems change will be fundamental in working towards trade and health policy coherence. Until such time, public health's evidence-based policy reforms will continue to be stymied by neoliberal structures promoted by self-interested actors, that is, so long as the 'invisible doctrine of the invisible hand is promoted by invisible backers' ( Monbiot, 2016).

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the members of my doctoral thesis committee, Profs. Ronald Labonté, J. Anthony VanDuzer, Marie-Josée Massicotte and Dr. Arne Ruckert and my colleagues at RegNet for the many invaluable discussions and constructive feedback while developing the ideas in this paper.

Funding
The work was supported by the Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship, Canadian Institutes for Health Research (291585).

Notes

1.
The term Washington Consensus was coined by John Williamson in 1989 to describe the set of ideas on economic development established by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. According to Williamson, 'I made a list of ten policies that I thought more or less everyone in Washington would agree were needed more or less everywhere in Latin America, and labeled this the "Washington Consensus"' ( Williamson, 2008: 14).

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Author biography

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
When evidence isn't enough: Ideological, institutional, and interest-based constraints on achieving trade and health policy coherence - Ashley Schram, 2018

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Trade and investment policy has the capacity to support or undermine global action on rising noncommunicable disease (NCD) rates. This article will employ a political science approach to explore how ideology, institutions and interests within the trade and investment policy space may constrain policy recommendations made in the World Health Organization's Global Action Plan (GAP) on NCDs.

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By: Olivia Fenwick

Confusion of Correlation with Causation-Vaccinations

STEP 1- DEFINE PROBLEM

The problem is as follows: Do vaccinations cause autism?

STEP 2-GATHER INFORMATION

I went to the CDC to find statistics on rise of preventable diseases in the united states. I also researched Andrew Wakefield’s claim that vaccinations cause autism. My evidence is listed below, along with the evaluation.

STEP 3-EVALUATE EVIDENCE

The claim made by Andrew Wakefield that vaccinations can cause autism- proven incorrect and blatantly false, yet it is still used as “evidence” to this day

There were over 1000 confirmed individual cases pf the measles in the United States in the year 2019 alone. This was the highest case count in the United States since 1992. The majority of patients were not inoculated with the measles vaccine. This information was gathered from the CDC, which is the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html

Using this evidence, I can conclude that the anti-vax movement established in 1998 has done more harm than good, increasing the spread of preventable diseases for no actual reason.

STEP 4-RECOGNIZE ASSUMPTIONS, EMOTIONS, AND BIASES

I understand that I do have a bias, because I have my vaccinations myself and have not been affected by the things that anti-vaxxers use as their defenses (i.e. Autism or reactions or reduced immune system).  I also need to recognize that some religious backgrounds hold the belief that certain medical procedures such as vaccinations are unorthodox.

STEP 5-SYNTHESIZE EVIDENCE, IDENTIFY ALTERNATIVES

It is entirely possible for the confusion to  be made. This is because autism is usually discovered later in life, not at birth. This means that it is more than probable that people discovered their children’s autism AFTER they vaccinated them. However, this does not mean that the two are linked.

STEP 6-SELECT BEST ALTERNATIVE

In conclusion, I have decided to go with the argument that vaccinations do not cause autism. I believe that any link is purely coincidental, as autism is a genetic abnormality that occurs during cell division in utero.