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Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part series on how the World Health Organization’s proposed pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations could strip nations and people of their health decision-making sovereignty. Read part one here.
As the World Health Organization (WHO) prepares to convene its annual World Health Assembly May 21-30, controversy continues to swirl over two proposed instruments on the agenda: the pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR).
Much of the criticism levied against both instruments pertains to how they may threaten national sovereignty.
But experts told The Defender the proposals also threaten personal medical sovereignty, including the doctor-patient relationship, medical freedom and personal autonomy.
“These instruments would inject themselves and interrupt the doctor-patient relationship,” said attorney Reggie Littlejohn. “The WHO will be saying what treatments are the ‘correct’ ones and what treatments are the ‘incorrect’ ones, and that … is an abrogation of sovereignty.”
Littlejohn, who is co-founder of the Sovereignty Coalition, founder and president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers and co-chair of the Stop Vaccine Passports Task Force, told The Defender, “An unelected bunch of foreign bureaucrats should not be telling the U.S. or any other country how to handle our health issues.”
According to Dr. David Bell, a public health physician and biotech consultant and former director of global health technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund:
“It’s exactly what we saw in COVID, where for the first time that I’m aware of, governments banned perfectly safe medications.
“It’s not the first time we’ve had vaccine mandates, but it’s the first time we had an essentially population-wide mandate, and it’s the first time that we have seen safe medicines being banned, doctors prohibited from doing what they may consider best for the patient.”
Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist and biological warfare epidemiologist who is a member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory committee, said the proposed IHR amendments include a provision allowing the WHO’s director-general to “convene an emergency committee” that could instruct countries to withhold specified treatments.
And according to Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois and a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, state and local officials in the U.S. would be obligated to follow the WHO’s diktats.
By circumventing the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, “State and local officials would be obligated to obey whatever decisions were coming out of this new body set up by the pandemic treaty. And that could go all the way down to issuing orders for your primary care physician that they would be obliged to obey,” Boyle said.
Bell said this would put doctors in the position of following the instructions of “government and higher up,” and being “instruments of them, rather than dealing with a patient in front of them as a doctor-patient relationship is supposed to, where you look at the patient and make decisions based on discussion with the patient.”
“It makes doctors organs of the state and of the WHO rather than being independent entities that are dealing with a patient’s healthcare,” Bell added.
Dr. Katarina Lindley, president of the Texas Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and director of the Global COVID Summit, told The Defender “One of the reasons I’m against the One Health, one world agenda is I don’t believe in ‘one size fits all’ … even during COVID or just the regular disease process … you have to tailor the approach to treatment based on a patient.”
Dr. Karladine Graves, a family physician, said the WHO’s authority to dictate medical advice is compromised by its ties to Big Pharma. She said:
“The WHO is heavily funded by the pharmaceutical industry as well as private groups such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Should the WHO treaty and IHR amendments be passed, no longer will the WHO be an advisory body to all 194 countries belonging to the UN, but rather, it will be a governing body without accountability which will mandate all healthcare protocols as well as medications only available through its direction.
“It means private physicians will have no alternative using any other treatments than those ‘approved’ directly by the WHO … Patients will have no say in their medical care and possibly availability to care.”
Lindley warned that the proposed WHO instruments could lead to a wide range of mandates, including “border closures, approving only certain treatments, possible new vaccinations, digital passports and all this.”
Similarly, Bell warned that the instruments could result in coerced or forced vaccinations, telling The Defender that the “purely enforced compliance with a medical procedure” seen during the COVID-19 pandemic “is what we will expect with the pandemic treaty to keep happening.”
WHO proposals tied to push for global digital ID
According to Boyle, while the WHO claims that the pandemic treaty will not be voted on by the World Health Assembly until May 2024, “We don’t know if that’s true or not. The latest version of the treaty I looked at could be ready to go at the end of the month. We just don’t know.”
Boyle said the IHR amendments “definitely will be ready by the end of this month.”
Author and podcast host Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy and co-founder of the Sovereignty Coalition, said, “There’s a number of things that have been very concerning, especially the fact that we haven’t had a proper level of transparency.”
“By and large, they have been quite determined to conceal it, which raises questions about their motivations,” Gaffney added. “What we’re dealing with is … a concerted effort on the part of all the parties that I mentioned … to really replace the U.S. as a sovereign nation with a new global order they’re marketing under the euphemism of ‘global governance.’”
In this new global order, said Gaffney, “we would just be another sort of component … and our sovereignty, constitution and freedoms would all be subject to the permissions of others. And those permissions would surely be circumscribed, if not substantially denied, on the basis of things like a world ID.”
According to Gaffney, a digital global identification system “would be advanced as a vehicle for monitoring public health worldwide” but would in fact “achieve a surveillance operation of our people, among others, the world over.”
Independent journalist and researcher James Roguski told The Defender that “the sneaky part” of the proposed IHR amendments is a provision for a global digital health security certification network that would not only create digital vaccine passports but also “expand it to include testing certificates or recovery certificates or prophylaxis certificates.”
This could serve as a de facto lockdown for those lacking such documents. “If they can get every nation to agree to have travel restrictions on foreigners, well then, effectively everybody’s in lockdown,” Roguski said.
If a country like the U.S. did not wish to go along with this global certification network, Roguski said its citizens may be “trapped,” because other countries would still be enforcing the certificates as an entry requirement.
Gaffney said a global digital certificate “becomes the perfect vehicle for essentially putting all of your data on that ID and using it as the Chinese Communist Party does in its social credit system.”
This would allow government and global authorities “to not just surveil or monitor, but to control those who have these IDs, and use them to enforce not just their mandates on health issues, but whatever else they want to do … including the access to your money, or travel or employment opportunities,” according to Gaffney.
Gaffney warned that the WHO already showed its teeth during the COVID-19 pandemic, even though its recommendations to countries were non-binding.
“I think most of us don’t think it worked out okay,” Gaffney said. “The lies the WHO told us about the origins of the virus, about the nature of it, the transmissibility of it and the appropriate response to it did incalculable harm to our country.”
“What it imposed [was] the China model,” Gaffney said, “which was the masks and quarantines and lockdowns and vaccinations with inadequately tested gene therapies, and the digital means of forcing those mandates [through] vaccine passports.”
He added:
“We saw how this worked, even though the WHO had only advisory authorities. That was a warning … of what might befall us if this organization actually has the authority that it’s now seeking, to dictate to us what is a PHEIC, a public health emergency of international concern, or how we have to respond to it.”
Littlejohn noted that in the proposed IHR amendments, there are provisions for an “implementation committee” and a “compliance committee,” and that as a potential sanction for non-compliance, the WHO and national governments could take advantage of the surveillance mechanism they plan to develop.
“They’re going to be surveilling your social media account and if you say things that are against the edict that’s coming down from the WHO … they could cancel you from social media [or] cut you off from your credit cards and your bank account,” she said.
“These globalists, together with the WEF [World Economic Forum] and the World Bank … could levy some kind of severe economic sanctions on countries that are not going with the flow,” said Littlejohn. “Especially if we have a worldwide central bank digital currency … if we had a president that would actually resist this, then they could try to cut us off financially.”
Experts: U.S., other countries must exit the WHO
The most feasible way to stop the implementation of a potential pandemic treaty and/or the proposed IHR amendments is for nation-states, including the U.S., to leave the WHO, experts said.
Gaffney, describing the negotiations for the two proposed instruments as a “rigged game” that is “unlikely to be stopped,” said that this has prompted the Sovereignty Coalition “to adopt the position that what we have to do is to get out of the WHO.”
Roguski, who launched ExitTheWHO.com, said that the WHO may not even wait for the formal approval of the two instruments. He referred to a WHO document titled “Report O,” which “uses language to the effect of, they are operationalizing the things that are being negotiated … they’re just building the systems, they’re doing it.”
For instance, Roguski said:
“They’re building out a global digital health certification network, treaty or amendments be damned. They’re just doing it. Who’s going to stop them?
“They’re busy building out the pathogen access benefit system. They want to build out the logistics network. Anything you can imagine, they’re operationalizing it so that by the time they get around to signing a treaty, they’re going to be able to say ‘oh, look, we already have this network in place all over the world.’”
Roguski also told The Defender that the ongoing negotiations regarding the IHR amendments include a proposal that could allow the WHO to claim that nation-states themselves are the ones implementing WHO obligations, rather than the WHO doing so directly.
According to proposed amendments for Article 4 of the IHR, submitted by Russia:
“States Parties shall enact or adapt legislation to provide National IHR Focal Points with the authority and resources to perform their functions, clearly defining the tasks and function of the entity with a role of National IHR Focal Point in implementing the obligations under these Regulations.”
As a result, “The World Health Organization will not need to enforce the regulations directly. The ‘National IHR Focal Point’ would be authorized to implement the obligations under the regulations,” Roguski said. He added:
“This directly addresses the question of how the amendments would be enforced … by legislation, regulation or executive orders in each nation.
“Our own bureaucracies would be likely to attempt to enforce the WHO’s future dictates in much the same way as they attempted to enforce the WHO’s ‘recommendations’ over the past three-plus years — except, they would be able to point to international obligations and newly legislated ‘authority.’”
In the U.S. for instance, “The Health and Human Services’ Secretary’s Operations Center is the ‘national focal point’ responsible for reporting events to WHO,” and would presumably play this role in implementing the amended IHR, Roguski noted.
Boyle: The WHO Withdrawal Act would protect us
Boyle told The Defender that a U.S. departure from the WHO could be accomplished via proposed legislation, the WHO Withdrawal Act, currently before Congress. Sponsored by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), it pulls the U.S. out of the WHO, terminates all U.S. funding for the WHO and “revokes that joint resolution of Congress.”
“I think if we got that legislation, that would be it, and we’d be protected,” Boyle said, adding that there is also growing state and local opposition to the proposed WHO instruments. He cited, for example, Collier County, Florida, which “adopted an ordinance and a resolution” to this effect.
Littlejohn said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) sponsored the No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act, requiring any treaty passed by the WHO to only be implemented “with the advice and consent of the Senate.”
However, according to Littlejohn, “the Senate itself voted it down,” along party lines.
But this proposed legislation would “not do the trick” anyway, Boyle said, because of the existing set of documents and legal provisions that are in place. “What is only going to do the trick,” said Boyle, “is the recent legislation introduced by Congressman Biggs to immediately terminate U.S. membership in the WHO.”
Boyle said that House Republicans have the power to do this because they “control the House, which means they control the budget and appropriations.” As a result, “they can use that control to put pressure on the WHO on this matter.”
Gaffney said the Sovereignty Coalition has recommended “that the U.S. government ceases funding the WHO [and] gives formal notice that it is withdrawing from it.”
While this is a process that requires one year’s notice, Gaffney argued that “if they’re changing, fundamentally, the nature of the organization and the arrangements by which it operates, I think we have to get out of it immediately … and that’s what we’re recommending to Congress.”
Gaffney said, however, “It’s just been stunning that the U.S. Senate has been so indifferent to the possibility that we’d have these sweeping changes that would be done without their advice and consent.”
Littlejohn, who also called for a U.S. exit from the WHO, noted that former President Donald Trump had initiated that process, but that Joe Biden, who became president before the one-year withdrawal position was completed, reinstated the U.S.
Similarly, Boyle said, “I’m not saying I support Trump … Trump correctly pulled us out of the WHO, but there was six months’ notice. Biden got elected, rescinded the pullout, and then put us back into the WHO [and] will make sure we’re still in the WHO.”
Littlejohn added:
“We could argue that healthcare is not an enumerated power that goes to the federal government; it remains with the state, and so, if the federal government’s executive branch doesn’t have the power to govern healthcare, then they don’t have the ability to give it away to the WHO.”
However, Littlejohn said such legal arguments are “uncharted territory,” while Gaffney noted that the UN General Assembly soon “intends to do much the same thing [as the WHO] with respect to its authorities … that would essentially give the secretary-general the right to respond to … non-public health crises.”
Boyle argued that “all these government officials and scientists, and the news media, are saying another pandemic is coming. That’s right. They know another pandemic is coming. It’s coming out of their BSL3 [biosecurity level 3] and BSL4 laboratories. And so, they are paving the way already for the next pandemic.”
Referring to One Health, which is extensively mentioned in the pandemic treaty and with which Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are actively involved, Boyle said that it violates existing international law. He referred to Article 12, Paragraph 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which states:
“The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”
“There are 171 States Parties” to the covenant, Boyle said, adding that it “is the relevant standard of international law and international human rights law when it comes to repudiating One Health.”
“You will note this language is unequivocal and peremptory,” Boyle said. “It says nothing at all about animal health or the environment,” Boyle said, arguing that “Enactment of One Health would violate Article 12(1) of the Covenant … and would defeat the object and purpose of this covenant.”
With the World Health Assembly meeting looming, the Sovereignty Coalition has declared May “Exit the WHO Month,” launching a letter-writing campaign to members of Congress and federal agencies, and an “American Sovereignty Declaration” and signature drive that has garnered the support of prominent politicians and medical experts.
“We need some kind of Congressional action between now and the end of the month,” Littlejohn said, adding:
“The Constitution is not a self-executing document. It can’t defend itself. We have to defend it. We can’t just rely on a piece of paper to save us.
“The Constitution is an instrument to protect our freedom, and we have to deploy that instrument to protect our freedom, because it won’t do it for itself. People cannot be passive in this situation. We need to be active.”
