On March 15, 2022, President Biden signed a law allowing for the creation and funding of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The agency received $1 billion for fiscal year 2022.
ARPA-H’s stated mission is to“accelerate better health outcomes for everyone by supporting the development of high-impact solutions to society’s most challenging health problems.” So, the federal government is tossing another billion into the black hole that is the American health care system. Okay.
We’re already spending a fortune on healthcare.
Let’s think about this for a minute. The U.S. already spends far more per capita than any other nation in the world. We spend an average of $11,495 per person, per year. Most other First World countries hover between $5000 and $6000. (source)
Health care in the U.S. represented 17.7% of the economy as of 2018, and has been projected to increase to 19.7% in 2028. That means that more than 1 in 6 dollars spent in the U.S. is being spent on healthcare.
So, is this paying off? Are Americans the healthiest people in the world?
No. We’re sick and have been getting sicker. Our life expectancy dropped again last year, to 76.4 years, which is the lowest since the 1990s. Meanwhile people in dozens of other countries can expect to live into their 80s on average, American life expectancy just continues to drop. I don’t think we’re getting what we pay for.
What’s the story, then? How is this money really going to be spent?
The goals on the official ARPA-H website are incredibly vague. Responding to the question, “Will ARPA-H focus on specific diseases?” they respond:
No. Our aim is to provide dynamic, transformative health solutions for all people across a broad range of diseases.
So, this new agency is not going to focus on cancer, heart disease, or chronic lower respiratory diseases, which alone count for more than half of the annual deaths in the U.S.
If you watch the HHS interview with ARPA-H Acting Deputy Director Dr. Adam Russell, at 11:10, he does, finally, go into a little detail about what ARPA-H has planned. Dr. Russell envisions using our own bodies to leverage and augment our own bodies’ responses and capabilities. He mentions using vaccines to fight cancer, and says, “Can we have a universal cancer vaccine?”
Dr. Russell also brings up the development of cheap, lightweight sensors and wearables that will detect early onset or impending disease at the individual or societal level. He sees the massive amounts of data being already harvested as an opportunity to identify new treatments. Dr. Russell repeatedly mentions the future of healthcare as something encompassing every level from the cellular to societal.
President Biden also mentioned a few potential research directions for ARPA-H in his Cancer Moonshot Initiative speech. He, like Dr. Russell, talked about research into cancer vaccines, as well as better cancer screening. He also brought up targeted gene therapy and research into reducing maternal mortality.
The “new templates” of healthcare
The ARPA-H website repeatedly mentions “new templates” of healthcare. President Biden says, “For example, to prevent cancers, scientists are exploring whether mRNA vaccine technology that brought us safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines could be used to stop cancer cells when they first arise.”
This means more mRNA treatments are coming down the pipeline. We discussed this recently when we talked about researchers investigating whether or not mRNA could be replicated inside plant cells. Any research involving mRNA is really hot right now, and this is probably one of the “new templates” ARPA-H plans to throw money at.
We’ve also seen the rise of various fitness gadgets on the market. The “cheap, lightweight sensors and wearables” that Dr. Russell mentioned will probably be marketed as an extension of these. And these fitness gadgets are convenient, whether you’re a serious athlete tracking your progress or someone who just wants to lose weight. Various insurance companies have been offering discounts to people that use them and submit their data. The insurers’ reasoning is that people who take care of their health by exercising regularly will cost insurers less money, which is probably true, and in a perfect world, makes a lot of sense.
There have been too many scandals about the misuse of personal data lately.
However, we don’t live in a perfect world, and we’ve been surrounded by far too many scandals lately about the misuse of online information. We found out in May that the CDC had been receiving huge amounts of data from phone companies. The CDC claimed that they were mostly just interested in using the data for research. But Colorado Gov. Jared Polis let the cat out of the bag when he told residents their compliance with lockdown rules was being monitored with cell phone data.
It’s not a big jump to imagine submitting data for the number of steps you’ve taken per day but then having the company also look at where you go. We’ve been letting our privacy slip through our fingers for quite a while now.
This emerging technology gets worse. Amazon’s Halo advertises that it can read your mood. This is being advertised as a convenient, helpful way to moderate your voice if you sound too cranky with a waitress or your coworkers. But this also means that if you laugh every time you hear the vice president on TV, if you roll your eyes and groan every time you hear the phrase “safe and effective,” someone’s going to know about it. (More on the Halo here.)
The collection of this kind of data will make it easy to identify political dissidents. It’s not hard to imagine this kind of information being used to harass people with inconvenient opinions. There have already been steps taken in this direction. A February 2022 DHS bulletin equated deviating from the official Covid narrative with domestic terrorism since it undermines faith in the U.S. government. We’re dancing on the edge of criminalizing wrongthink.
And some states are ahead of the federal government; California, for example, will start punishing any doctors disseminating “misinformation or disinformation” about Covid They are threatening to revoke the medical licenses of any physicians not complying with whatever the government wants. It’s not paranoid to be concerned about this mass data collection.
Attempts to harvest data are everywhere.
And some bad ideas just won’t go away. DARPA’s LifeLog project, an attempt to record everything people said, did, watched, or heard, was discontinued in 2004. But, as chance would have it, somehow in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg came up with Facebook, where people voluntarily share all kinds of information.
Governments around the world tried really, really hard to implement some combination of vaccine mandates and health passports in 2021. One by one, most programs have been dropped after intense pushback.
Facebook succeeded where DARPA failed in getting people to volunteer all kinds of information about their social lives online. Governments failed in forcing citizens into accepting health passports; I don’t think it’s coincidental that now ARPA-H is now being formed, with a very large budget and a view of presenting mass biometric data collection as the next phase in healthcare.
What can we do and why does this matter?
So, what are freedom lovers supposed to do about this attempt to push our lives online and harvest every last bit of data? And why should preppers care?
Preppers need to be situationally aware. We need to understand the world around us to the best of our ability, even if all we can do is work on improving our mindset to avoid sinking into depression. The OP had a great article on using herbs for mental wellness just recently. If you’re a gardener, I’d tag that article this year.
And, if nothing else in the past three years has convinced you, this should be a real wake-up call to take responsibility for your health. I’ve known plenty of doctors over the years, and they all say the same thing. Proper diet and exercise would prevent 90% of the issues they see. If you’re fairly sedentary, starting to take long walks through your neighborhood can make a big difference. And if your neighborhood is unsafe, YouTube has tons of workout videos. My daughter and I did Jazzercise for years in our living room. It’s free, fun, and really improved our flexibility.
The more you can stay healthy on your own, the less you will have to interact with people likely to push you into data collection schemes.
Where will it lead?
I’m not sure where all this will lead. Huge, grandiose plans like this always fall apart at some point. But it’s important to be aware of what direction we’re being nudged in. If you’re still looking for a New Year’s resolution for 2023, I think getting healthy and cementing your real-life, in-person relationships would be a good place to start.
What do you think about the mysterious goals of ARPA-H? Are you concerned about data-mining in medical care? Do you have a sinking feeling about the next big thing in healthcare? Alternatively, are you excited for the advances that are coming? Let us know what you’re thinking in the comments section.
About Marie Hawthorne
A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her.
Eeegads, what could go wrong?! I make it known to my kids who have the ‘stupid’ watches (I refuse to call them smart), Echos & Dots how dangerous they are. I tell them what can be used for good can be used for bad too. But they laugh. The EMFs alone on these wearables is incredibly dangerous. Do we really need a watch telling us when we ovulate?? Grab a calendar.
I have noticed that my husband’s iphone microphone seems to turn on by itself often. Not sure what’s up with that. I’ve got 2 kids that work in SCIFs at their jobs but they laugh at me & think I’m conspiratorial regarding gadgets.
As far as healthcare…I want a refund. 😉 We overpay for insurance & never use it since we use supplements, exercise & eat very well. The last 3 years have solidified that the medical mafia cannot be trusted.
Then count yourself lucky if you pay for health insurance and don’t need it. That’s why it’s called “insurance”; ordinary people can’t manage risk the way big companies can, and so one car accident, one serious illness, wipes us off the map financially (unlike other first world countries… but that’s another thread). When healthy, young people forego insurance the “death spiral” for insurance happens. And then, yeah, you hear about that person in their 20s, healthy, who gets in a car accident, comes down with cancer, etc., and they’re not insured because they’re immortal, right? Too bad they didn’t pay for insurance.
So count yourselves lucky if you haven’t had to use it YET. And yet… you don’t know the future. You could get hit by a truck tomorrow, have a stroke, trip and break your hip, or have any number of things happen. And when they do, declaring bankruptcy and starting a GoFundMe is not a plan we should have to resort to in a humane, intelligent, wealthy, compassionate country.
My younger sister, who was naturally slender her whole life, exercised and ate right, got sufficient rest, never smoked/drank/used drugs, exercised, took supplements, had excellent health insurance, got all her mammograms and preventative care, died of breast cancer in October. And now our mother is in chemo.
So, yeah, the mortality rate of life is 100%. Something is going to take each one of us down. Even if society was perfectly to your liking, with the “right” people in office and some kind of gun-loving Christian utopia, it wouldn’t save you. So if this new office is going to examine things that are more “big picture” public health issues that will result in longer term savings as people smoke less, exercise more, get weight and blood pressure and blood sugar and depression better controlled, I’m all for it. We throw away enough on health care for stupid things as it is — an agency that is charged with thinking more big picture and long term (things that don’t seem to register with profit-driven healthcare in this country, who only look to making shareholders happy in that quarter), I’m all for it. If it could have bought my sister another month, week, or day of quality time, I’d let them track me all they want and answer Facebook’s daily “what kind of potato are you” or other type quiz.
If the worst thing in your life is that you pay for health insurance you never use, well, then, I want your life. Please.
I am sorry for your loss. Just FYI, a lot of information about cancer is already gathered by cancer data abstractors and goes into state and then national databases. Each state has a cancer registry and publishes information about incidence and more. More than 200 data points are gathered in many abstracts (patient names and private information are not included), including date of diagnosis, treatment type, cell type of cancer, and more. Researchers use this data to see if treatments work, if cancer detection needs to occur earlier, and more. Cancer patients are tracked for years so that is where your cancer statistics come from–again, no private information attached. The treatment recommendations physicians follow are outlined in the NCCN (National Comprehensive Cancer Network). The patient version is here:
https://www.nccn.org/patientresources/patient-resources/guidelines-for-patient
I realize many people also look at alternative treatments, but I encourage people to learn as much as they can about their cancer type at NCCN since this is what your physician is likely considering.
We have learned a great deal about breast cancer and many people live a long time with it–or go into remission completely. I am sorry that your sister was not one of them. Some types of breast cancer have a genetic component, so I am assuming your female family members will be tested–should your sister have had one of those types. Many types do NOT have this component, so they are a mystery as to their origin. Again, I am sorry for the death of your sister and send best wishes for your mother.
Lorraine, you sound like you are still grieving the loss of a very dear person to you. But allowing Big Government, Big Medicine and Big Pharma to continue in their destruction of, not only America, and what little freedom we still have, but the march toward the destruction of “humanity” itself would be an even worse outcome. I am truly sorry for the loss of your dear sister, but allowing that vast destruction to be moved forward will never bring her back. No, what is needed is for people to take responsibility for their own health. Stop expecting this sorry excuse for a government we have to “fix” everything! The only thing those in government are interested in is “money” and how much of it they can garner for themselves! They don’t give a d@mn about you, your sister, or anyone else for that matter. And to expect that is sheer stupidity. You are not stupid, your just hurting from loss. A loss that should never have happened, because cures for cancers of all kinds do exist, they have just been buried and that information has been destroyed! Why, you ask, for other reason than “to cure Cancer was not as profitable and causing it”, and then putting forward txs that do not cure it so the rape of humanity can continue unabated, as we are experiencing now! I say these things from the vantage point of one who worked in the field of science and medicine for 50 years! Please don’t allow them to finish the job they started out to do.
I appreciate your condolences, and YES I am still struggling. This morning at Mass I broke down crying in the middle of it for no apparent obvious reason. That keeps happening to me.
As for the end of your comment, no one in the world who’s important in a worldly way or has any influence cares a whit about me or my family or what we are going through. So, don’t worry about me “letting” anyone do anything. I am powerless in all of this.
I don’t think about what the government wants to do with my body unless they tell me to.
The amount of money they get is irrelavent. There only mission is to support and promote “transhumanism” which is the foundation of the new world order economy.
Great post Marie. It all comes down to how much privacy we are willing to give up to the government’s desire to control our lives
no longer a matter how much we are willing to give up….its gonna be taken from us, regardless!
Nothing good can come out of those agencies these days. But DARPA-net was the beginning of the internet, which has united humanity and revealed so many things that were hidden. It is torture to face what power elites have done to children, but all the revelations (or should that be Revelations) are sparking The Great Awakening.
It is possible that the claimed breakthroughs really will be a positive thing once we get rid of censorship and hang or jail the wicked ones.
The story of government abusing medical care goes a long way back. Doctor Benjamin Rush, a signer of our Declaration of Independence, warned us about the serious omission in the new US Constitution’s Bill of Rights in that there was no separation provided between medicine and state (in contrast to a stated separation between church and state). He warned that omission could result in terrible tyranny (not his exact words, but you get the point).
Fast forward to the early 1900s when the FDA was created in order to rig medicine in every way possible to benefit the oligarch-owned mega-pharmaceutical houses. Thousands of years of proven naturopathic/holistic medical knowledge was forcibly buried as much as possible. Medical schools that taught that body of knowledge were destroyed. Doctors who used those skills had their practices ruined. Some were run out of the country. Some were even murdered — and that destruction continues even to our present day.
In 1918 when the Rockefeller organization made a meningitis vaccine available to the US army at Ft. Riley, Kansas, the GIs who were forced to take that vaccine began to get sick. Even though it mutated at least a couple of times, that wasn’t enough to stop its sale to several other countries around the world. Wartime censorship kept any truth about it out of the newspapers in all countries that were part of the war. But Spain was not a participant so when reports of the sick and dying appeared in Spanish newspapers the US government saw that as the perfect cover story to protect the Rockefellers by calling the ailment (that eventually killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide) the mysterious “Spanish Flu” of unknown origin. It even killed more German soldiers than combat. That lie about the man-made pandemic’s origin has been maintained by our government ever since.
In the 1930s an electronic method to treat and erase cancer was invented by a Dr. Rife. Since that remedy would destroy the market for pharmaceutical treatments, Dr. Rife was run out of this country — even though his technology continues to be highly successful in other countries around the world in our era. In the early 1930s Groucho Marx did a comedy/satire movie called “Duck Soup” which was intended to humiliate fascist Mussolini in Italy — fascism being when oligarchs get in bed with governments to rig laws and markets for those insiders’ benefit. It’s worth remember how fascism operates when we realize how mega-pharmaceuticals like Pfizer, Moderna, etc get legal exemptions from the US Congress despite the growing death count from their “vaccines.” The revolving door of high paying jobs for CDC and FDA staffers who, if they behave in Big Pharma’s best interests, is a too-persuasive lure to those staffers to then go to work at Big Pharma. Never mind that lots of clinical trials at the FDA are funded by Big Pharma, etc.
The Covid plandemic is just one example of such corruption. It should be no surprise that the Rockefellers did a pandemic study back in 2010 — given their long experience in creating global death counts and being able to cover up their century-old guilt ever since.
Useful history books about this might include “Murder By Injection” by Eustace Mullins and “Monumental Myths of the Modern Medical Mafia and Mainstream Media and the Multitude of Lying Liars That Manufactured Them”, by Ty M. Bollinger, Nov 5, 2013.
It could also help to read about the Iron Law of Bureaucracy per this link:
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Jerry_Pournelle's_Iron_Law_of_Bureaucracy
which explains how such organizations divide into two groups of people — those who are dedicated to the organization’s original mission versus those who seek to grow and corrupt it forever. That’s a pitiful divide that explains government agencies at many levels. … and why they can never be trusted.
–Lewis
Well Lewis I commend you on your research and understanding of history…most of which has been destroyed unless you know where to look. I am a retired nurse of over 50 years in practice ( I still practice when needed at my own discretion). I began that practice in 1969, retired my license in 2019 ( before TSHYF publicly anyway). Your comment is the first to actually address the article. Thank you for your input.
Barbara J. Douglas
I am always suspicious when we have to start another government agency. I always wonder why we don’t use the EXISTING agencies we have. Couldn’t one of them broaden their focus? Couldn’t the NIH work on a project that examines these types of questions? As a nation, we are broke. Truly broke. We just don’t know it yet. If we want this NEW agency, we need to trim the budget of several government agencies that may no longer be needed.
Another problem is that data can be used for “good” purposes, but it is so valuable for “other” purposes that it is difficult to restrict its use. For example, what if our precision medicine profile indicates a TON of information about us–such as a high likelihood of developing pancreatic cancer by age 45? Maybe we could scan for that cancer earlier and have a better chance of saving our life? Or maybe it shows we have a higher likelihood of having a child with a birth defect. Maybe we can then decide if we want to have children at all or take the risk that the birth defect can be treated in the womb?
This information is useful to us, but there are other entities who would ALSO like to be in the know. Maybe an employer–who might not want to saddle their health insurance with a baby who will need surgery and preemie care? Maybe an employer who doesn’t want to train someone for an executive position who is likely to die young? Maybe a life insurance company–who won’t offer you insurance at all? Our health data privacy laws have not kept up with these scenarios.
Or maybe such an agency will just be used to push treatments that are liked by our healthcare-industrial complex, ones that make lots of money. I am pretty sure there will still be a linkage between government and healthcare. This area is extremely lucrative to both sides. It is not going to go away just because we have this government agency. In fact, it might be made worse. (Think revolving door.)
So these are my concerns about a new agency that has some pretty vague parameters.
The “outrage” is rather humorous. For years information has been collected – long before cell phones and the internet. You thing Rand McNally just made maps? And like today, most was willingly given. Make “need to know” your mantra and don’t give out information unless required by law or needed. You may not be able to avoid all of it (some not avoidable due to the (is it really) Patriot Act which was pushed by most posters most favorite party). Does your physician *really* need to know the health history of your family – so what if mom died at age 95 of cancer.
Keep a burn phone to give out your phone number when you absolutely have to do so. While staying totally invisible is darn near impossible (search JJ Luna), one can keep oneself under the radar quite a bit. Some think GPS can’t find their property. Ex-military have a nom de plume but I’d bet money Uncle Sam knows where you are.