We should all take a strong interest in the ways that polls shape public opinion. Notice that I said shape, not reflect. I put it this way for a reason. Many polls are structured to do exactly what they do; that is, they pregame the answers that the pollster is contracted to provide. The hope is that you, the observer, will adjust your own opinions based on new perceptions of what others supposedly believe.
This is a very powerful impulse.
I did not always understand this. I believed that a poll was necessarily designed to elicit true information about what the public thinks. Not so. Very often, polls are designed to mold public opinion rather than discover it.
The results show exactly that.
“Americans voice greater confidence in major professional health associations to provide trustworthy information in matters related to public health than they do in federal health agencies,” the summary says.
Might there be a motive force behind such a poll? Certainly.
You only need to use common sense to see how these results are distorted. The background is the meaningful change that is taking place in public health agencies, away from the bureaucracies that lorded it over the country during the COVID-19 pandemic era and created such a calamity with ongoing damage. Of course, there had to be a pushback, and the Trump administration is delivering just that.
But these changes have profoundly disturbed industrial interests that have benefited from the status quo for many decades. Stock valuations are at stake. Huge investments in new technologies are at risk. Advertising and funding networks are terrified for their future, and that includes many media venues that depend on them. A reckoning is exactly what they fear the most.
The strategy on the part of industry is to rally around the professional organizations that they fund as a fallback to changes taking place at the governing level. The point is to nudge the public to trust once-credible professional organizations against the new advisories coming from the agencies led by Kennedy. This new approach digs deep into Washington’s dark ways and provides real insight into the real way that government and public opinion are crafted by well-oiled machines.
Now to the poll in question. Imagine going up to a regular person and saying, “Which do you trust more, the American Pediatric Association, the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, or a government agency?” What do you suppose the answer will be? It’s rather obvious that anyone would naturally feel pushed to embrace the professional association.
And this is precisely what the poll seems to reveal: more confidence in these named organizations than agencies, from which we are supposed to conclude that they have more credibility than Trump’s appointees, who are trying to change the system.
The strategy is obvious to anyone who takes a moment to think about it. I don’t think that this is just my conclusion. Anyone could guess the poll results. The reason is that the poll is weighted in a way that generates the right answer.
You only have to imagine your mother or neighbor answering such questions. You can know in advance how they would likely answer, especially without knowing, for example, that the American Pediatric Association very recently endorsed sex-change surgery and pharmaceuticals for minors, even without parental consent, which is an absolute fact.
There is not your mother’s APA.
Frustrated by the sheer ubiquity of such deceptive polling efforts, Brownstone Institute and Health Freedom Defense Fund set out to discover what the public actually thinks about serious matters of freedom and the right to bodily autonomy. We spent several days crafting 30 questions with an eye toward absolute objectivity without any bias. We contacted the polling firm John Zogby Strategies to help with a nonpartisan poll.
It’s the first poll I’ve ever backed, and my own motivations were simple curiosity. I wanted to know what people really think about these crucial matters. I’m aware of plenty of other polls, but none seemed objective. This one was indeed.
- 87.9 percent agree that individuals have the right to refuse medical treatment (58.8 percent strongly agree).
- 87.2 percent agree that the right to make one’s own medical choices is a basic human right protected by law (59.5 percent strongly agree).
- 88.1 percent agree that doctors should be able to discuss vaccine concerns openly without fear of backlash from medical boards (64.5 percent strongly agree—one of the highest levels of strong agreement).
- 80.4 percent agree that adults should have the right to refuse vaccines (50.5 percent strongly agree).
- 70.6 percent agree that personal medical or vaccine decisions should never lead to employment denial (47.3 percent strongly agree).
- 76.1 percent agree that health insurance should cover chosen treatments, including holistic and alternative options.
- 65.7 percent agree that parents should have the right to refuse vaccines for their children or dependents.
- 54.5 percent agree that parents should be able to opt their children out of school vaccine mandates (rising to 66.7 percent among parents with children younger than 17, with 42.8 percent strongly agreeing).
- 65.4 percent agree that college students should not have been expelled for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine (44.4 percent strongly agree).
- 77.8 percent support investigating the effects of certain ingredients used in medical products (such as thimerosal, aluminum, polysorbate-80, polyethylene glycol, and formaldehyde), with 47.8 percent strongly supporting it.
- 68.6 percent agree that the Health and Human Services Department should conduct additional vaccine safety research.
Agreeing here is Leslie Manookian, president of Health Freedom Defense Fund.
“The poll demonstrates that support for medical freedom is not fringe—it’s mainstream,“ she said. ”Voters want candidates who protect individual rights, insist on honest science, and hold institutions accountable. This should reshape how political strategists and media view these issues.”
This is where American people actually stand on issues of health and medical freedom. The other polls I’ve seen are fatally flawed by agendas, and dangerously so. Please be aware of the way that these polls are attempting to mold your mind. It’s guerilla warfare out there, and the industrial interests don’t play according to fair rules. The only way to counter them is with truth and fairness.
