(NaturalHealth365)  In case you ever wondered, here is the standard dictionary definition of informed consent: “permission granted in the knowledge of the possible consequences, typically that which is given by a patient to a doctor for treatment with full knowledge of the possible risks and benefits.”

As you might imagine, knowing the expected ratio of risks vs benefits before consenting to take a drug – which is not the same as being coerced into taking a drug under threat of financial hardship, termination of employment, or banishment from public space – is an important piece of information that every person should have access to while making a personal medical decision.  But when it comes to the COVID shot, some critics argue that we now can see that the risks of the mRNA jabs far outweighed the potential benefits for the majority of people who agreed to (or were forced to) take them.

CDC reports exponential rise in deaths over past two years – but simply can’t put all the blame on COVID-19

In a newsletter sent earlier this month to his readers, osteopathic physician and favorite mainstream media scapegoat Dr. Joseph Mercola nicely summarized a swath of evidence that he says indicates that the mRNA COVID jabs from the likes of Pfizer and Moderna likely caused more harm than good for most people who took them.

Among the data he cites, Dr. Mercola references recent figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealing that there were more than 1 million excess deaths in the past two years (excess deaths meaning more in that same amount of time than the historical average).

While death related to chronic health conditions including dementia, heart disease, and high blood pressure also rose during this time, these conditions (as well as COVID-19 itself) cannot account for all this excessive mortality.

Could another contributor be the rapid and mass dissemination of a novel gene therapy, that was a very short time ago still considered experimental?

To answer this question, Dr. Mercola points readers to the alarming trend that death rates are rising in tandem with the rollout of COVID shots, and that areas of the world with the highest jab rates also have higher rates of excess death and COVID-related deaths.

Indeed, it doesn’t even seem clear that these jabs offer any sustainable benefits at all in terms of preventing infection and the spread of disease.  Walgreens data from April 2022, for example, suggests that people who have received three of their mRNA jabs (two doses plus a “booster”) were actually more likely to end up testing positive for COVID-19.

“U.K. government data,” Dr. Mercola adds, “show the all-cause mortality rate is between 100% and 300% greater among people who got their first COVID shot 21 days or more ago.”

Risk-benefit ratio matters – and that ratio isn’t the same for every person

Age, lifestyle, and the number of comorbidities (especially obesity, which has been shown to affect the efficacy and safety of some drugs) are factors that will influence whether an individual gets a “benefit” from the COVID jab or not.  The truth is: many people receiving the shot still get COVID symptoms or, even worse, experience direct harm from the COVID jab (e.g., myocarditis, vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, Guillain-Barré, etc.).

With this in mind, the question is posed again:

Given the known and more importantly UNKNOWN harmful effects of these drugs, including their long-term impact, should policy surrounding these drugs be compulsory?  Is it ethical to coerce people into injecting themselves with drugs under any circumstance?  Or should true informed consent be honored?

Sources for this article include:

Mercola.com
CDC.gov
Academic.oup.com
Substack.com
NBCnews.com
Medrxiv.org
NIH.gov