Evidence-Based Information and Analysis
Laurel FitzhughGut Foundational Reference Laurel Fitzhugh — September 16, 2026 | Status: Working document The gut system is the second major constitutional factor in this clinical picture. It is tightly coupled to the CNS system through the gut-vagus connection and through continuous inflammatory signaling originating at the intestinal barrier. LPS translocation increases the inflammatory load while … Read more
Iron-Triggered Dysbiosis — Working Hypothesis and Current Status Laurel Fitzhugh — September 16, 2026 This document describes the gut system immediately before the 2023–2024 iron infusions, the infusions themselves as the proximate trigger, the mechanistic reasoning connecting iron exposure to microbiome collapse, and the evidence that led to the working hypothesis that the resulting dysbiotic … Read more
Helminthic Therapy — Personal Reference Laurel Fitzhugh — September 16, 2026 Necator americanus (human hookworm) colonization has been maintained since August 2020. This document covers its mechanism relevant to this patient’s picture, clinical response history, the change in apparent effect following the 2024 escalation, current status, and its relationship to vagus nerve stimulation as a … Read more
Pharmacological Phenotype: Laurel Fitzhugh 20 May 2026 | Updated: September 16, 2026 The Pattern Over decades of managing a complex multi-system autoimmune disease, a consistent and unusual pattern has emerged in how my system responds to medications. The pattern has two distinct components that sometimes appear together and sometimes independently. First, my system frequently responds … Read more
The Root Cause Protocol (RCP) promises a hidden “real” explanation for chronic illness through minerals and metabolism. It attracts many people who have been failed by conventional medicine and who appreciate the use of natural healing practices.
However, this protocol’s sweeping claims and one-size-fits-all approach can and does cause real harm to many.
We spend more for fragmented healthcare than comparable countries do for universal care, and get far worse outcomes.
“Medicare for All” is a phrase with a lot of political baggage, so set it aside. What it describes is simpler: extending a system Americans already built to the rest of the population. This piece uses “universal healthcare” from here on, because that’s what it is.
Medicare works. It covers every American over 65, regardless of employment status or health history. It operates with administrative overhead of roughly 2%, compared to 12-15% for private insurers. It negotiates prices, it pays claims, and it has done so for sixty years. We know how to do this because we already do it.
Healthcare doesn’t work like a normal market.
You can’t comparison shop during a cardiac event. You don’t choose when to have a stroke. Every wealthy country that looked honestly at these conditions reached the same conclusion: healthcare cannot be organized around market competition.
The American system has grown around a different goal. The administrative apparatus — prior authorizations, claim denials, billing complexity — exists to protect revenue, not deliver care. The clinical judgment of a trained physician is overruled by a clerk or algorithm with no medical expertise and every financial incentive to deny.
Health insurance is a mechanism for pooling risk. Medicare for All is a proposal for extending an existing version of that mechanism to everyone. This piece explains both — how insurance works, where it went wrong, and what “Medicare for All” actually means.
Health insurance is a mechanism for spreading financial risk across a large population so that no single person bears the catastrophic cost of serious illness alone. Everyone pays in, and everyone draws down when needed. Across a lifetime, most people are sometimes healthy, and sometimes need medical care. The function of insurance is to spread the cost of care across users. Insurance functions differently from a normal consumer market.
A productive market system (fair profit for a valuable service) requires something insurance cannot provide: a real exit option. A functioning market depends on customers who can walk away — who can comparison shop, switch providers, or go without. Competition disciplines prices and quality only when exit is possible. Remove the exit and you remove the mechanism that makes markets work.
Social Democracy Is Not Socialism Democrats struggle to make that distinction in the public mind. This piece, published on Substack, examines the difference between social democracy and socialism — two distinct systems that have been deliberately confused for fifty years. It covers the historical record of social democratic governance, how “socialism” became a political weapon, … Read more
A set of audio recordings is circulating across Latin America right now. They have been forensically authenticated. They document sitting heads of state coordinating a funded disinformation operation targeting elected governments in the region. The operation is being built on American soil.
You probably haven’t heard about it.
This article was originally published on Red, Blue & Real, the author’s Substack publication. The version below includes sources and further reading.
Money in politics is a classically American conflict. In 2010, business interests gained an entirely new level of legal power. The change was not simply more money. It was a different kind of money, operating under different rules, in quantities that made the previous system look small by comparison.
Two federal court rulings that year dismantled major parts of a century of campaign finance law. One allowed corporations to spend directly on elections. The other created the super PAC system — unlimited independent spending, unlimited contributions, no effective ceiling.
The results reshaped American politics. Outside groups spent roughly $4.5 billion in the 2024 election cycle.5 Super PACs alone raised more than $5 billion.5 Dark money — political spending that does not disclose its original source — reached record levels approaching $1.9 billion.8
Fifteen states have now developed a legal theory intended to close the corporate spending door. The super PAC door is another matter entirely.
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