Why Did Berenson Attack Malone?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jan. 15, 2022) — In an appearance on “The Ingraham Angle” Friday night, Dr. Robert W. Malone, MD, key innovator of mRNA technology, and Alex Berenson, former New York Times writer and author/researcher, discussed with host Raymond Arroyo a campaign recently launched by 270 scientists, physicians and others to ban a December 31, 2021 “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast on which Malone was the sole guest.

Malone’s bio on the podcast page reads:

Dr. Robert Malone is the inventor of the nine original mRNA vaccine patents, which were originally filed in 1989 (including both the idea of mRNA vaccines and the original proof of principle experiments) and RNA transfection. Dr. Malone, has close to 100 peer-reviewed publications which have been cited over 12,000 times. Since January 2020, Dr. Malone has been leading a large team focused on clinical research design, drug development, computer modeling and mechanisms of action of repurposed drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. Dr. Malone is the Medical Director of The Unity Project, a group of 300 organizations across the US standing against mandated COVID vaccines for children. He is also the President of the Global Covid Summit, an organization of over 16,000 doctors and scientists committed to speaking truth to power about COVID pandemic research and treatment.

In his 3+-hour appearance, Malone discussed safety concerns over COVID-19 vaccines; his own adverse events following his second dose of the Moderna vaccine; those labeled “anti-vaxxers”; the concept of “mass formation psychosis”; and whether or not children need to be vaccinated against the virus, among other related issues.

The show has reportedly garnered approximately 50 million views.

Several weeks before, Dr. Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH was Rogan’s guest voicing similar concerns in a podcast which reportedly garnered “more than 40 million views.”

Arroyo began the discussion Friday night at 20:40 with, “Nearly 300 scientists are demanding that Spotify censor Rogan’s podcast, which is the number 1 in the world. They call Rogan and his guest’s questioning of vaccines and COVID policies ‘medically and culturally dangerous,’ and they also claim Spotify, by hosting the podcast, is responsible for a sociological issue of devastating proportions.”

The undated letter to Spotify, which made headlines on Friday, states, in part:

On Dec. 31, 2021, the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE), a Spotify-exclusive podcast, uploaded a highly controversial episode featuring guest Dr. Robert Malone (#1757). The episode has been criticized for promoting baseless conspiracy theories and the JRE has a concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals. JRE #1757 is not the only transgression to occur on the Spotify platform, but a relevant example of the platform’s failure to mitigate the damage it is causing.

We are a coalition of scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators spanning a wide range of fields such as microbiology, immunology, epidemiology, and neuroscience and we are calling on Spotify to take action against the mass-misinformation events which continue to occur on its platform. With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence. Though Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, the company presently has no misinformation policy.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine. He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are “gene therapy,” promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 (contrary to FDA warnings), and spread a number of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. In episode #1757, Rogan hosted Dr. Robert Malone, who was suspended from Twitter for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. Dr. Malone used the JRE platform to further promote numerous baseless claims, including several falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and an unfounded theory that societal leaders have “hypnotized” the public. Many of these statements have already been discredited. Notably, Dr. Malone is one of two recent JRE guests who has compared pandemic policies to the Holocaust. These actions are not only objectionable and offensive, but also medically and culturally dangerous.

According to Bloomberg Equality on Friday, “Since the start of the pandemic, Spotify has removed 20,000 podcast episodes that contained Covid misinformation. The company has deleted more than 40 episodes of Rogan’s podcast to date. It prohibits infringing and illegal content, as well as hate speech, on its platforms. But that hasn’t barred some creators from spreading false information. Critics say Spotify doesn’t have robust policies to combat misinformation, like Alphabet Inc.’s Youtube, Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and other social media companies have adopted in recent years.” 

On Saturday morning, the topic trended off and on the Twitter platform:

For months, Malone has voiced dissent and alarm over the growing push for vaccinations, particularly in children, against COVID-19 given concerns over the risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, high blood pressure, and other side effects which have been reported by Malone himself and more than a million others to the VAERS system following receipt of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Malone’s patent history is posted on his website. On a page titled, “The History of mRNA Vaccines,” Malone’s wife, Jill Glasspool Malone, PhD, wrote, in part:

Dr. Malone is the inventor of mRNA vaccines (and DNA vaccines). He also discovered lipid mediated and naked RNA transfection technologies.

It all started when he was at the Salk Institute in 1987 and 1988. There, he pioneered in-vitro RNA transfection and also in-vivo RNA transfection (in frog embryos, as well as mice).

This resulted in his seminal paper: Cationic liposome-mediated RNA transfection RW Malone, PL Felgner, IM Verma. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 86 (16), 6077-6081

His filed patent and disclosures from the Salk included in-vivo RNA transfection, mRNA as a drug, mRNA production, transient gene therapy and also methods for mRNA stabilization. These are available for review and can be found in the link below this statement.

When he left the Salk Institute, he moved his research over to Vical in 1988. He brought over mRNA, constructs, reagents that were developed at the Salk institute by Dr. Malone. The first in-vivo mammalian rat experiments were designed by Dr. Malone in January, 1989: this included dosing amounts for the in-vivo experiments. As he had brought his constructs, plasmids, reagents from the Salk Institute, he was easily able to ramp up his research program at Vical – where he was the only employee actually working on this technology at the time. The first in-vivo mouse experiments were performed in February, 1989 when mRNA and DNA was sent to Dr. Jon Wolff via Fedex. Dr.Wolff and his technicians at the University of Wisconsin injected mice and rats. The initial patent disclosures for RNA and DNA vaccination were written by Dr. Malone in 1988-1989. Dr. Malone was also an inventor of DNA vaccines in 1988 and 1989. He wrote the patent disclosures (again found in the the link below) and helped design the initial experiments, which were carried out by Dr. Gary Rhodes – in consultation with Dr. Malone.

THE INITIAL mRNA VACCINE EXPERIMENT EVER PERFORMED WAS FIRST CARRIED OUT IN 1989 AND IS WRITTEN UP IN THE ORIGINAL PATENTS. THERE ARE IMAGES OF THESE EXPERIMENTS FROM THE PATENTS FOUND AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

This body of work resulted in nine patents and numerous publications, yielding about 7000 citations for this work.

“Alex, you, too have been subjected to the censorious bullies,” Arroyo brought in Berenson after Malone’s initial comments. “What’s happening here? This seems to be a trend, particularly as concerns the evolving COVID information that we’re all learning about day by day.”

“Yes, you’re absolutely correct,” Berenson responded. “Listen, I don’t think Dr. Malone does himself or those of us who are trying to raise questions about the vaccines any favors when he refers to himself as the inventor of mRNA technology; that’s clearly a large exaggeration, and I don’t think he does us any favors when he says that ivermectin has been proven to work; I think that’s a huge overstatement of the case. But these are debates we should be having; he should be allowed to say whatever he wants, wherever he wants, on Twitter or anywhere else, and so should I, and Joe Rogan provides us a platform to talk, and that is why they’re going after him…”

Underneath Berenson’s response, Arroyo could be heard saying, “This is not ‘Get the guest’…” (22:58)

Arroyo then provided Malone an opportunity to respond to Berenson’s claims. “Yeah: nine issued patents, all filed in 1989, all covering this technology…I would call that ‘the original inventor,’ and I wrote the initial disclosures, Alex. That was a low blow.”

As for the use of ivermectin against the coronavirus, Malone reported that one of his colleagues “just came back from Uttar Predesh,” a province in India which has reportedly virtually eviscerated COVID-19 as a result of widely-distributed ivermectin. Uttar Pradesh “has flatlined their disease,” Malone said.

“Both of your statements are going to fail with the test of time,” Malone further addressed Berenson, “but that’s not this discussion.” He then turned the conversation back to the “270 malcontents whining because of people speaking the truth on Joe Rogan.”

The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC.org) considers ivermectin “a core medication in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19” and presents patient testimonials to the drug’s efficacy. According to the organization:

Ivermectin is a well-known, FDA-approved anti-parasite drug that has been used successfully for more than four decades to treat onchocerciasis “river blindness” and other parasitic diseases. It is one of the safest drugs known. It is on the WHO’s list of essential medicines, has been given 3.7 billion times around the globe, and has won the Nobel prize for its global and historic impacts in eradicating endemic parasitic infections in many parts of the world. Our medical discovery of a rapidly growing published medical evidence base, demonstrating ivermectin’s unique and highly potent ability to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication and to suppress inflammation, prompted our team to use ivermectin for prevention and treatment in all stages of COVID-19. Ivermectin is not yet FDA-approved for the treatment of COVID-19, but on Jan 14, 2021, the NIH changed their recommendation for the use of ivermectin in COVID-19 from “against” to “neutral”. (see our  press release).

In March 2020 we created our life-saving  MATH+ Hospital Treatment Protocol for COVID-19, which is intended for hospitalized patients. In October 2020 we developed the  I-MASK+ Prophylaxis & Early Outpatient Treatment Protocol for COVID-19, which is designed for use as a prophylaxis and in early outpatient treatment, for those who test positive for COVID-19. The protocols complement each other, and both are physiologic-based combination treatment regimens developed by leaders in critical care medicine. All the component medicines are FDA-approved, inexpensive, readily available and have been used for decades with well-established safety profiles. Both protocols are available in several languages.

While the FDA recommends against the use of ivermectin for COVID-19, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has published a number of papers reporting trials conducted into the repurposed drug’s efficacy against the virus, with both favorable and unfavorable viewpoints expressed among the authors.

A paper published March 17, 2021 in the International Journal of Innovative Research in Medical Science (IJIRMS) co-authored by McCullough titled, “Early Ambulatory Multidrug Therapy Reduces Hospitalization and Death in High-Risk Patients with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)” includes ivermectin as a therapeutic agent.

In a post further responsive to Berenson’s criticism published late Friday night, Malone wrote:

Alex Berenson goes on Fox News and directly calls me a liar to my face and says I didn’t invent RNA vaccines.

Unprofessional, rude and an a**hole to boot.

But beyond that, I think we can all assume CONTROLLED OPPOSITION.

He then listed examples of his research, patents and papers with hyperlinks to publishers on the subject of “RNA transfection” and other historical data on Malone’s mRNA technology development while he worked for Vical and The Salk Institute.

Comments on Berenson’s Substack regarding his appearance Friday night offer a wide range of opinions.

Update, 6:26 p.m. EST: On Saturday evening Berenson issued a new article titled, “The Daily Beast asked me to comment about the Fox News interview last night” with the subtitle, “And how Dr. Robert Malone had called me ‘controlled opposition’ (or, as he put it, “CONTROLLED OPPOSITION”). Lolcatz”.

He began the article with:

I doubt most of you read the Daily Beast, so I figure I’ll put my response here too.

I’ll have more to say about ivermectin soon.

Malone termed Berenson “controlled opposition” in his blog post following the Fox News interview and did not raise the prospect of ivermectin use at either time.

In a graphic, Berenson went on to accuse Malone of “grandiosity” and of “touting ivermectin,” “which is no more a magic bullet for Covid than the mRNA vaccines he didn’t invent…”

In September, Malone said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” that he had used ivermectin himself (2:13), although he did not say for which condition. “Ivermectin is potent; it’s not a perfect drug, but when administered early, it can really mitigate disease,” he said.

The comments responsive to Berenson’s latest were largely critical of his perceived unprovoked castigation of Malone.