Bettina Arndt’s Monthly Newsletter

This is Bettina Arndt’s Monthly Newsletter which may be unique in the world as putting up posts about men that is actually fair to both men and women. You should subscribe yourself. This is the email address and her various links.

E: bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au
Website: www.bettinaarndt.com.au
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebettinaarndt
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebettinaarndt

The rest is entirely from Bettina who says things found nowhere else anywhere.

Hi Everybody,

What a week. My inbox is overflowing with emails from people bombarding me with commentary on the Brittany Higgins affair – comments they uniformly tell me they don’t dare express publicly.

It’s a very telling example of how readily our mainstream media hops onboard the prescribed feminist narrative, silencing anyone who challenges their view on how this should all play out.

For those of you living overseas, or under a rock, Brittany Higgins is a young woman who last week announced, through the media, that she was raped two years ago, when working as an adviser for the Defence Minister, Linda Reynolds.

As the story unfolded, it was used to mount a ferocious attack on the government. Note the timing – coinciding with the arrival of the Covid vaccine, which should have been a high point for the Coalition which is decimating the Opposition in the polls. It is also hardly a coincidence that Higgin’s current partner, David Sharaz, is a former press gallery journalist, now working for SBS and known to be a fierce critic of the government.

My correspondents, many of whom were women, made some very telling points:

She may well be telling the truth, but the man has been convicted under ‘trial by media’. The same media who’ve repeatedly referred to the young woman having ‘been raped’ – an emotive term designed to ensure the man is denied the right to the assumption of innocence.”
“Yet another instance of allegation by public announcement which has the effect of creating a smear on all men who work in Parliament house. No proper investigation, no facts.”

“She was 24 years old – not some naive teenager. She was pissed out of her mind, and that’s how she excuses herself from culpability. He was likely pissed out of his mind – but no such excuses allowed there.  She was counselled by the Minister to report it to police but didn’t follow through, which fact does not sit congruently with her alleged fear of losing her job. Now we can expect a huge compo claim, backed by all the woke activists. This crap makes me sick!”

“How close to the truth do you think this might be? Young woman starts out on Kingston ‘pub crawl’ with a date. Accepts drinks all night off another bloke from her workplace. She allows herself to get ‘shitfaced’…goes off with the latter in a taxi which stops at PH so bloke can duck into an office to get something. Rather than stay in taxi until he returns, she goes with him for non-work purposes. He signs her in going through security as she does not have her pass with her. They both finish up on a couch in a Minister’s suite where they get it on. He leaves her to wear off the night’s activities & goes home to his own bed. She gets sprung sometime later half naked by a security guard. Caught in an extremely embarrassing situation, she makes the excuse ‘I was raped’. Now she is expecting politicians including the PM & others to salvage her dignity by doing what?”

“I notice that now, two years later, she has announced she wants a comprehensive police investigation – ‘in a timely manner as to date I have waited a long time for justice.’ Whose fault is that? Two Ministers urged her to go to the police, she made an initial report and then pulled out because she was concerned it could damage her career. And now this is the fault of the Ministers, The Prime Minister, the system, anyone but her. No one buys this twaddle except the female journalists conducting their ‘believe the victim’ witch hunt aimed at damaging the government.”

I’ve been thinking about the Higgins business and relating it to the focus on sexual assault in universities. A major campus advocate is Sharna Bremner of “End Rape on Campus” – see below one of her recent tweets, responding to idea that police should have been called. As you can see, she advocates that police only be involved if that is emphatically chosen by the victim – part of being caring and kind. But the problem with that approach is that two years later the victim can change her mind and then the institution is placed in a difficult position – was there a cover up?”

Once again, ordinary people reach their own conclusions but in public remain silent, nervously watching what happens, even to those who do their best to dance to the feminist tune. A Prime Minister ripped apart for “victim blaming” as he bends over backwards to be sympathetic to Higgins, Linda Reynolds in tears in parliament after being savaged for doing the wrong thing when handling the complaint.

And barely a word about Higgin’s acknowledgement that she was so drunk she fell over even before going back to parliament. The rare exception was a carefully-worded comment piece by Jennifer Oriel, which laments our failure to stop “the scourge of rape” but bravely mentions a Royal Australasian College of Surgeons report showing excessive use of alcohol is related to about half of reported sexual assault cases. Drug and alcohol researchers point to large numbers of studies showing sexual assault is most likely to happen if both parties have been drinking.

Brittany Higgins has acknowledged she chose to speak out after seeing the Prime Minister congratulating Grace Tame, Australian of the Year, and a “survivor of sexual assault.” In turn, Higgins’ decision to speak out has inspired two other women to make allegations about the same man – both also claiming to be heavily intoxicated when the events took place – and now a fourth claiming he put his hand on her thigh whilst they were drinking in a favoured bar. And now there’s a petition which has attracted over 2000 testimonials from school girls who claim to have been sexually assaulted.

#Metoo seems to have fizzled out and been replaced by far more potent allegations about men’s abhorrent behaviour. 2021, the year of the rape victim.

Facebook censored Mother of Sons

Along with other Facebook pages across Australia, the Mother of Sons Facebook page was taken down by the belligerent media giant five days ago – despite MOS clearly not being a news organisation. And despite making official protests to Facebook, there’s no sign yet of the MOS pages being restored.

As I mentioned last week, the next Facebook live event was planned for tomorrow so the MOS mothers have postponed that event. This will now, hopefully, take place on their Facebook page next Thursday, March 4 at 7PM, AEST. So please keep an eye on that page. They have an amazing story to share with you.

Grim news for American men

If you’d like to hear my thinkspot chat last week with Cynthia Garrett about worrying developments for men under the Biden administration, here’s the link. There’s every reason to be nervous about the well-being of young American men, particularly those on campus.

That’s it for now. Cheers, Tina

Craig Kelly leaves the Liberal Party

Via Andrew Bolt:

Craig Kelly has quit the Liberal party and will sit out the rest of the term as an independent. Kelly has jumped before he was pushed – his preselection looked threatened – but now represents a danger to the Morrison Government, which now holds just 76 seats out of 151. The Liberals threw Kelly to the wolves, not having the courage to defend him from the media pack, which first savaged him for (correctly) questioning global warming alarmism, and then destroyed him for (correctly) saying studies suggested that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, when taken early and with zinc, both cut deaths from the coronavirus. Then today, a final blow: claims, strongly denied, that a staffer had sexually harassed women.

It really is a disgrace. Kelly’s views represent a good deal more of the views of the population than his sole voice in the wilderness on so many issues would have you believe.

NOW THE STORY IS IN THE AUSTRALIAN: Craig Kelly to quit Liberal Party, move to crossbench. Here are all of the first dozen of the comments under the classification as “Most Liked”.

Good luck for the future Craig, keep on fighting for what is right

Good on Craig. He has made the right move, I hope he will stand as an independent against the Liberal candidate in the next election. Morrison has been a disappointment, has shown no leadership in the culture war engulfing our nation. Craig has the common sense and the courage to challenge the climate alarmists and the woke trenders who are taking away our freedom of speech. Well done, Craig, you are in tune with the Quiet Australians.

Do we have a politician here who stands for his principles? Amazing.

There are now a number of medical papers that support Craig’s views on COVID. Makes one wonder why these solutions have been suppressed.

And to the voters of Hughes, if you’re worried at the prospect of conservative voices being marginalized, it’s time to back Craig Kelly in 100%.

Hopefully he will win his seat as an independent. He is stating the bloody obvious about the COVID treatments he has copiously researched.

I can’t imagine why any of them were shocked, they drove him out.

I’d vote for Craig Kelly. He tells the truth as he sees it.

The only one with brains.

He is an honest politician. He can really see what we need in this country. Dams, cheap power from clean coal fired power stations and the real truth about the hysteria of climate change. I hope he joins the Nationals. He is far too good to lose.

Wake up Morrison! Don’t follow in MT’s footsteps.

Good luck for the future Craig, keep on fighting for what is right

This is a political beat up

This is the definition of rape according to Wikipedia:

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without that person’s consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercionabuse of authority, or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability, or is below the legal age of consent. The term rape is sometimes used interchangeably with the term sexual assault.

This post is really only about the nature of the Australian media at the moment and not really about the issues at hand. This is from The Age/SMH: Linda Reynolds doesn’t deserve criticism: her response to Higgins rape claim was textbook.

On the other hand, this is from The Australian: PoliticsNow: ‘Really sleazy’ — fourth woman accuses staffer after Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations.

Which seems more even-handed and which seems intent on damaging the Coalition? My only other question is how do we know – in fact, how do they know – that each of these women is referring to the same bloke?

More to the point, is this really the major issue facing the government at the moment. This is from The Australian.

NED-3201-NCA-Who-Knew-What - 0

Strangely, not a single member of the Labor Party apparently knew a single thing about any of it. It is also curious that the comments section at the Oz has been turned off in relation to this story.

The Age v The Oz

This post is really only about the nature of the Australian media at the moment and not really about the issues at hand. This is from The Age/SMH: Linda Reynolds doesn’t deserve criticism: her response to Higgins rape claim was textbook.

On the other hand, this is from The Australian today: PoliticsNow: ‘Really sleazy’ — fourth woman accuses staffer after Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations.

Which seems more even-handed and which seems intent on damaging the Coalition? My only other question is how do we know – in fact, how do they know – that each of these women is referring to the same bloke?

Should one take the Covid vaccine?

This is my take on this post at Callallaxyfiles.com which comes with this heading: Australians will among the first to get a vaccine …. It is the only post I have come across anywhere in the world in which the central question is whether or not to take the “vaccine”. The consensus is to wait and see. Here are some of the comments that seem to really speak to the issue at hand.

I don’t know anybody keen to rush out and get the jab. They all want to wait until all the potential side effects are identified and can be managed. This vaccine has been developed in an accelerated program and they are waiting for a whole lot of other people to be the substitute guinea pigs while the final product is calibrated to minimise side effects. I must own to being in this group.

For those who say “I’ll wait” I can assure you that a thousand times as many resources and effort will go into covering up the damage and manipulating the efficacy than was put into actually producing useful vaccines.

You will be gaslighted from start to finish – no matter how many get sick straight after the shot (even if it’s immediately after) it will *always* be “investigated” and found to be a coincidence. And of course they’ll change the PCR testing process to ensure it appears to have worked. And if you think journalists will lift a finger in pursuit of the truth then you’re an utter fool. If you want to understand what will happen, tell yourself it’s not a sacred vaccine and is instead a car. If their excuses and gaslighting would not be convincing if they were talking about a car being defective then you shouldn’t accept the same just because this is a vaccine.

Newsweek published a “fact check” which labeled claims that India had banned the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as “mostly false” despite admitting in the article that India has in fact temporarily banned the vaccine… But it gets worse. Bill Gates owns stock in Pfizer Inc. and his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated significant sums of money to help Pfizer’s development of vaccines. Interesting to note therefore that a message which originally appeared at the bottom of the Newsweek ‘fact check’ article has now disappeared. The message read; “Microsoft and partners may be compensated if you purchase something through recommended links in this article.” It is not known why that message has now vanished. This is yet another example of how ‘fact checks’ are often completely devoid of facts and are merely a way of legacy media institutions and giant corporations shutting down narratives they don’t like. https://www.infowars.com/posts/newsweek-fact-check-claims-india-vaccine-ban-mostly-false-while-admitting-de-facto-ban/

What’s the point of getting a vaccine that has been rushed and in my view with dubious testing when it will not prevent me from getting the virus and will not prevent me passing the virus onto someone else. And worse, boosters will more than likely be necessary. I will not become Big Pharma’s lab ferret. And as we know, ferrets will die when exposed to human respiratory infections.

So we already know that the experimental gene therapy, otherwise known as mRNA ‘vaccine’, is at least twenty times more dangerous to recipients than the flu vaccine. (Look up CDC’s own numbers if you don’t believe me. According to their VARES system, they were up to about 453 CV vaccine-related deaths by the end of January, while there were only 20 for the flu.)

We also know that according to the manufacturers themselves, these jabs will not only not protect us from getting ConVid-1984, but they won’t stop us from passing it on either.

It is no secret that there has never been a successful coronavirus vaccine. There was quite a lot of experiments done on cats some time ago (yes, they can get these viruses too), with the results being less that optimal – namely, most of the cats died when they were next exposed to the live virus and the vaccine-created antibodies started attacking the animals’ own immune systems (known as ADE or ‘antibody-dependent enhanced’ infection.)
See here for a summary of this condition.

Further, we know that should we suffer serious side effects or die, neither we nor our relatives can sue anyone. Bad luck – the politicians allowed Big Pharma to ‘accelerate’ the development of this stuff and then granted them immunity from any f*ck ups. Compare, for example, to the measles vaccine, which took 10 years from development, to trials, to deployment. At least this is one guaranteed ‘immunity’ the ‘vaccine’ provides, I suppose! And last, we know beyond dispute that around 99.7% of people who get the virus will survive; really no different to mildly bad flu season.Check out the definitive Ioannidis et al study (Stanford) if you need convincing. So the question is: Is that the best you can say, Sinclair? Or are you just taking the proverbial? I wouldn’t actually even joke about this. And no, I’m far from being an anti-vaxxer. In my view, the misuse of this word is now not dissimilar to ‘denier’ for those who dare doubt the climate scam.

By the way, having just checked again the CDC VARES reporting system, it seems corona vaccine adverse effects in the USA are now up to 929 deaths. That’s deaths, not just feeling very sick. Of those, there have so far been more than 14 thousand cases. Anyone interested, here you go: https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html Click ‘I agree’. Click on ‘Request Form’ tab Scroll to section 3, select COVID19. Scroll to section 5 Event Category. Select the first 3: Death, Life Threatening and permanent disability

A couple of jurisdictions have already announced that vaccination will not be compulsory for frontline health workers etc., but there was still equivocation and weasel words in the media today about compulsion in the future – I heard it more than once, so at the very least, it was an unsubtle attempt at bluff (or worse). If it’s not essential for frontline health workers to be vaccinated then it should not be for the general public and that should be made absolutely clear, NOW and it should likewise be made clear that waving a little card received after injection will not become an internal passport in this country. Aside from anything else, the scope for fraud with such a system, once we get to the stage of vaccinations by GPs and pharmacies, will be considerable and will be much increased if privileges flow from being vaccinated.

2020: 800 COVID & 100 flu deaths = 900 deaths
2019: 900 flu deaths
2018: 900 flu deaths
2017: 1700 flu deaths….                                                                                              And for this, our freedoms have gone & they want us all to get vaccinated – they can fuck off. I don’t know anyone who has died from COVID let alone anyone who has had it. I hope we never get a real pandemic……

Why weren’t SARS and MERS declared pandemics. We are told that so many millions worldwide have died from Covid 19. We also know, as has been stated, that whatever you went into hospital with, if you died, it said Covid on the death Certificate. We also know that the flu has virtually disappeared this year. We also know that over 99% of people suffered mild symptoms, just like the flu. We also know, just like the flu, if you have other diseases or conditions, the symptoms can be much worse. Covid 19 was very convenient in 2020 to instil fear in people, lockdown countries and collapse economies. All part of the globalist playbook.

The TGA admits it couldn’t even round up enough people with COV19 to run a proper clinical trial. But its the Most Rigorous Testing EVER. The multi-year approval process previously was just the TGA being slow and corrupt. No politics and influence at work in their decision at all. “No pressure guys, it’s just that if you don’t approve this drug we’re going to keep everyone including you imprisoned for life, and the Americans are watching, and so are the companies who will miss out on billions of dollars all over the world because of you people personally, I’m sure you’ll make the right decision!”

The Australian government banned Hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid positive patients. What’s more of an unknown, Hydroxychloroquine or Bill Gates brand new gene-modifying vaccine?Gladys says the vaccine lowers symptoms.

If 99% of people already don’t know they have Covid or have very mild symptoms why would you stick an unknown, untested vaccine into your body when the vast majority are not ill in the first place. The lefties argument is caring for your fellow man. Well if the vaccine doesn’t stop you carrying or spreading the virus, WTF is the point.

This isn’t a vaccine, it’s gene therapy. The experimental mRNA gene therapy injections have never been released to use on the mass population ever, until now. This is very new, and calling it a “vaccine” is typical wormtongue speak. It is a “not vaccine”. People that are not in a high risk group that take this new mRNA genetic therapy are largely only doing it because an authority figure said to, to avoid social shame, and to keep getting stuff (airline travel, public transport, govt benefits, etc). Do not take it – as you may suffer some horrible unintended consequences.

It doesn’t matter how complex you believe immunology to be if you want to present yourself as an expert you have to be in a position to hurt if and when you get things wrong. Even public servants (outside Health Departments) have to be accountable for their mistakes. Indeed, in most areas of medicine doctors themselves are accountable. But in the case of vaccines, there is zero accountability. None. From anybody. Not immunologists, not virologists, not epidemiologists, not doctors, not politicians. How can you know this fact and still maintain your belief in these clowns?

I’m sorry, but in my professional experience, I formed the opinion that something was off when various state governments banned the use of hydroxychloroquine; azithromycin and downplayed the effectiveness of an ivermectin drip and Vitamin D. Any medical procedure (including vaccines), needs to take into account factors that are unique in an individual. When bureaucrats are involved in the practice of medicine, it ceases to be medicine and instead becomes politics. I could site a myriad of studies in medical journals for the aforementioned ethicals, but for whatever reason, the government seeks to shut down any real discussions of these. MD’s, like in every other profession, have excellent practitioners, good practitioners, poor & dreadful practitioners. Unfortunately what we have seen in 2020/21 is that excellent/good practitioners who have dared to question the official narrative, have been labelled as crackpots and been threatened by the state health authorities, whilst dreadful practitioners who have echoed the official narrative, have been elevated to prominent/formally prestigious positions (no names, but take a guess). As for myself, I will not be taking the vaccine until 1)politics has ceased to be a primary driver in the practice of medicine; 2) They stop threatening people with consequences who choose not to participate (for legitimate medical reasons that are none of the Governments business; or because an individual may be just a crackpot). I’ll just get put on the register suggesting that I have taken the vaccine and go about my life. Unfortunately, not everyone can do this, but hey, that’s politics.**For the record, questioning the efficacy/risk of a new vaccine for a new virus is not being an anti-vaxxer, it was, however, an integral part of medical risk minimisation. Unfortunately, this process has been subverted.

Interestingly enough, the Chinese have apparently declined to grant the permission for the mRNA vaccines to be used in their country. Their own vaccine, similar to the Russian Sputnik 1, is based on the more orthodox methodology of using actual viral matter, rather than just the spike protein. Take from this what you will, but I think the more important issues remain: 1) The strong possibility of antibody-dependent enhancement reaction – i.e. the reason why there has never in the past been a successful coronavirus vaccine. This would only show up further down the track, possibly even after a few years, when another version of this virus comes along. A nice little time bomb, in other words. Maybe that’s why it normally takes up to a decade before new vaccines are allowed to be used in humans? 2) The guaranteed future mutations, quite normal for this type of virus, which will make the vaccine ineffective and will presumably require another version to be administered, further exacerbating the possibility of ADE. 3) IMHO the most important part of this, which is the fact that COVID is not particularly dangerous and we have somehow managed to survive this far with the annual flu, without locking everyone up repeatedly and without forcing them to take the flu vaccine. So, has every one of our Dear Leaders lost their mind, are they really this stupid, or is there some other agenda?

To add to my post above above, our very own researchers, testing the effectiveness of asthma inhalers, have found (quoting directly): “When we first began the trial back in March [2020], we were hoping for 50 per cent reduction [in risk of developing serious symptoms], which itself would have been very high,” QUT associate professor Dan Nicolau said. “We got 90 per cent, which even with only a few hundred people is off the charts. “And it’s not just the overall result – their temperatures are less, they get less fever, and they recover faster.” Clinical trials with health workers in the USA have found that the therapy of Ivermectin, plus topical treatment (nasal & bucal) with iota carrageenan resulted in precisely zero new infections. Say again, why are we having the ‘COVID vaccine for everyone’ conversation?

Like many others I prefer to see the vaccination proven in the general population before I deliberately subject myself to it. And that’s the point – the decision to be vaccinated, or not, is a personal decision and one that must not be mandated, and for the following reasons: 1. There are virtually no new cases of COVID in Australia apart from the virus being shared between members of very specific populations, and even then very few and very low incidences of mortality 2. Vaccine trials are on very small populations, and so any adverse effects may not be known until the general population starts receiving it 3. For most people who have had COVID they have recovered very well 4. If there is an outbreak of COVID, it seems we can control it quite well (at least while the scale is small) 5. Having a needle jabbed into your arm is not a risk-free exercise. The benefits need to outweigh the risks. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t See 2 above. So, I prefer to wait and see, since I’m hardly at risk, nor am I risk to others. Nothing to do with 5G and other crackpot, tin-hat conspiracy theories. While I trust that the TGA are doing their job, I also accept they are under pressure to approve COVID vaccines and may have got it wrong. Time will tell.

Marriner Eccles

Marriner S. Eccles was another of the early Keynesians of which there were quite a few. Keynes wrote the book but the ideas were in the air then as they remain today. This is from Wikipedia.

Marriner Stoddard Eccles (September 9, 1890 – December 18, 1977) was an American bankereconomist, and member and chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.Eccles was known during his lifetime chiefly as having been the Chairman of the Federal Reserve under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He has been remembered for having anticipated and supporting the theories of John Maynard Keynes relative to “inadequate aggregate spending” in the economy which appeared during his tenure. As Eccles wrote in his memoir Beckoning Frontiers (1951):

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth … to provide men with buying power. … Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. … The other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped….

Eccles was and is seen as an early proponent of demand stimulus projects to fend off the ravages of the Great Depression. Eccles was famously rebuked by Congresswoman Jessie Sumner (RIL) during a House of Representatives hearing on the increasingly liberal policies of the Roosevelt administration and the Federal Reserve, when she said, you just love socialism.” He became known as a defender of Keynesian ideas, though his ideas predated Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). In that respect, he is considered by some to have seen monetary policy having secondary importance and that as a result he allowed the Federal Reserve to be sublimated to the interests of the Treasury. In this view, the Federal Reserve after 1935 acquired new instruments to command monetary policy, but it did not change its behavior significantly. Further, his defense of the Federal Reserve-Treasury accord in 1951 is sometimes seen as a reversal of his previous policy stances.

Economic clowns at every turn

Fascinating title from an article in the Financial Times: Why economists keep being wrong on policy. It comes with a bit of interesting content in its description of the nature of economic theory and policy:

The abiding sin threaded through it all was that of certitude. Perfectly plausible but untested theories, whether about the money supply, fiscal balances and debt levels, or market risk, were elevated to the level of irrefutable facts. Economics, essentially a faith-based discipline, represented itself as a hard science. The real world was reduced by the 1990s to a set of complex mathematical equations that no one, least of all democratically elected politicians, dared challenge.

Thus detached from reality, economic policy swept away the postwar balance between the interests of society and markets. Arid econometrics replaced a measured understanding of political economy. It scarcely mattered that the gains of globalisation were scooped up by the super-rich, that markets became casinos and that fiscal fundamentalism was widening social divisions. Nothing counted above the equations.

And what is the conclusion?

And now? After Donald Trump, Brexit and Covid-19, it seems we are back at the beginning. Time to dust off Keynes’s general theory.

It does make me laugh. Donald Trump created the greatest economic upturn in American history but that remains completely invisible to these clowns. It would never occur to them to examine just what happened and why it might have worked. But the notion that Keynes and his General Theory have been absent from policy and need to be brought back may be the most stupid comment I have seen on economic theory and policy in a very long time.

Harry Harlow’s experiments on love and affection

Rhesus monkey clings to surrogate mother.

I have  just run across this experiment in the psychology of mother love and it is fascinating. This is from Harlow’s Classic Studies Revealed the Importance of Maternal Contact. What amazes me is the criticism he endured for his supposed cruelty to animals.

Infant rhesus monkeys were taken away from their mothers and raised in a laboratory setting, with some infants placed in separate cages away from peers. In social isolation, the monkeys showed disturbed behavior, staring blankly, circling their cages, and engaging in self-mutilation. When the isolated infants were re-introduced to the group, they were unsure of how to interact — many stayed separate from the group, and some even died after refusing to eat.

Even without complete isolation, the infant monkeys raised without mothers developed social deficits, showing reclusive tendencies and clinging to their cloth diapers. Harlow was interested in the infants’ attachment to the cloth diapers, speculating that the soft material may simulate the comfort provided by a mother’s touch. Based on this observation, Harlow designed his now-famous surrogate mother experiment.

In this study, Harlow took infant monkeys from their biological mothers and gave them two inanimate surrogate mothers: one was a simple construction of wire and wood, and the second was covered in foam rubber and soft terry cloth. The infants were assigned to one of two conditions. In the first, the wire mother had a milk bottle and the cloth mother did not; in the second, the cloth mother had the food while the wire mother had none.

In both conditions, Harlow found that the infant monkeys spent significantly more time with the terry cloth mother than they did with the wire mother. When only the wire mother had food, the babies came to the wire mother to feed and immediately returned to cling to the cloth surrogate.

This is what he said in reply to his critics:

Remember, for every mistreated monkey, there are a million mistreated children. If my work will point this out, and save only one million human children then I can’t get overly concerned about ten monkeys.

At least his colleagues seemed to understand the nature and importance of his work.

In 1958, Harlow was elected president of the American Psychological Association. At the APA’s annual meeting on August 31 of that year, he delivered a seminal paper titled “The Nature of Love,” cited in Love at Goon Park (public library) — Deborah Blum’s masterful chronicle of how Harlow pioneered the science of affection.

This is the experimental result that mattered.

His most famous experiment involved giving young rhesus monkeys a choice between two different “mothers.” One was made of soft terrycloth but provided no food. The other was made of wire but provided nourishment from an attached baby bottle.

Harlow removed young monkeys from their natural mothers a few hours after birth and left them to be “raised” by these mother surrogates. The experiment demonstrated that the baby monkeys spent significantly more time with their cloth mother than with their wire mother.

In other words, the infant monkeys went to the wire mother only for food but preferred to spend their time with the soft, comforting cloth mother when they were not eating. Harlow concluded that affection was the primary force behind the need for closeness.

I suspect this is as much true for adults as it is for children.

Children at the Home Hospital for Irrecoverable Children in Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania, in September 1992

But no sooner to I come across that, I came across this: 30 Years Ago, Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact. And there, in the midst of the story there was this:

Neuroscientists tended to view “attachment theory” as suggestive and thought-provoking work within the “soft science” of psychology. It largely relied on case studies or correlational evidence or animal research. In the psychologist Harry Harlow’s infamous “maternal deprivation” experiments, he caged baby rhesus monkeys alone, offering them only maternal facsimiles made of wire and wood, or foam and terry cloth.

Why use monkeys when you can use real children.

By design, 68 of the children would continue to receive “care as usual,” while the other 68 would be placed with foster families recruited and trained by BEIP. (Romania didn’t have a tradition of foster care; officials believed orphanages were safer for children.) Local kids whose parents volunteered to participate made up a third group. The BEIP study would become the first-ever randomized controlled trial to measure the impact of early institutionalization on brain and behavioral development and to examine high-quality foster care as an alternative.

And then they were assessed and then re-assessed again.

When the children were reassessed in a “strange situation” playroom at age 3.5, the portion who displayed secure attachments climbed from the baseline of 3 percent to nearly 50 percent among the foster-care kids, but to only 18 percent among those who remained institutionalized—and, again, the children moved before their second birthday did best. “Timing is critical,” the researchers wrote. Brain plasticity wasn’t “unlimited,” they warned. “Earlier is better.”

The benefits for children who’d achieved secure attachments accrued as time went on. At age 4.5, they had significantly lower rates of depression and anxiety and fewer “callous unemotional traits” (limited empathy, lack of guilt, shallow affect) than their peers still in institutions. About 40 percent of teenagers in the study who’d ever been in orphanages, in fact, were eventually diagnosed with a major psychiatric condition. Their growth was stunted, and their motor skills and language development stalled. MRI studies revealed that the brain volume of the still-institutionalized children was below that of the never institutionalized, and EEGs showed profoundly less brain activity. “If you think of the brain as a light bulb,” Charles Nelson has said, “it’s as though there was a dimmer that had reduced them from a 100-watt bulb to 30 watts.”

And then later in the article we come to this.

As early as 2003, it was evident to the BEIP scientists and their Romanian research partners that the foster-care children were making progress. Glimmering through the data was a sensitive period of 24 months during which it was crucial for a child to establish an attachment relationship with a caregiver, Zeanah says. Children taken out of orphanages before their second birthday were benefiting from being with families far more than those who stayed longer. “When you’re doing a trial and your preliminary evidence is that the intervention is effective, you have to ask, ‘Do we stop now and make the drug available to everyone?’ ” he told me. “For us, the ‘effective drug’ happened to be foster care, and we weren’t capable of creating a national foster-care system.” Instead, the researchers announced their results publicly, and the next year, the Romanian government banned the institutionalization of children under the age of 2. Since then, it has raised the minimum age to 7, and government-sponsored foster care has expanded dramatically.

But in the end, both sets of children ended up damaged. This is a passage towards the end of the article.

The neuropsychologist Ron Federici was another of the first wave of child-development experts to visit the institutions for the “unsalvageables,” and he has become one of the world’s top specialists caring for post-institutionalized children adopted into Western homes. “In the early years, everybody had starry eyes,” Federici says. “They thought loving, caring families could heal these kids. I warned them: These kids are going to push you to the breaking point. Get trained to work with special-needs children. Keep their bedrooms spare and simple. Instead of ‘I love you,’ just tell them, ‘You are safe.’ ” But most new or prospective parents couldn’t bear to hear it, and the adoption agencies that set up shop overnight in Romania weren’t in the business of delivering such dire messages. “I got a lot of hate mail,” says Federici, who is fast-talking and blunt, with a long face and a thatch of shiny black hair. “ ‘You’re cold! They need love! They’ve got to be hugged.’ ” But the former marine, once widely accused of being too pessimistic about the kids’ futures, is now considered prescient.

Federici and his wife adopted eight children from brutal institutions themselves: three from Russia and five from Romania, including a trio of brothers, ages 8, 10, and 12. The two oldest weighed 30 pounds each and were dying from untreated hemophilia and hepatitis C when he carried them out the front door of their orphanage; it took the couple two years to locate the boys’ younger brother in another institution. Since then, in his clinical practice in Northern Virginia, Federici has seen 9,000 young people, close to a third of them from Romania. Tracking his patients across the decades, he has found that 25 percent require round-the-clock care, another 55 percent have “significant” challenges that can be managed with adult-support services, and about 20 percent are able to live independently.

Harry Harlow was not just right, he was more right than he would ever know. It is common sense and indeed obvious; it is very hard to provide warmth outside a family relationship.

Bo Snerdley speaks

Plus this, which really is beyond even the normal level of disgusting.