Trump Orders U.S. to Withdraw From World Health Organization
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 21, 2025
Within roughly 8 hours of taking his oath of office, President Donald Trump on Monday signed an order to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Trump’s executive order cited numerous reasons for pulling the U.S. out of the WHO, including:
“The organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic … and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.”
The WHO also “continues to demand unfairly onerous payments” from the U.S., the order stated. “China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has 300 percent of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.”
Commenting on the news, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland told The Defender:
“I applaud President Trump’s decision to leave the World Health Organization. It hasn’t been transparent, based on science, or serving the U.S. interest in public health.
“The World Health Organization is not a reformable institution. Its proposed Pandemic Treaty is a nightmare and would lead to more gain-of-function research and pandemics.”
Holland said she hopes the move “will lead to a global reconsideration of how to handle public health and international crises.”
Public health physician and biotech consultant Dr. David Bell told The Defender, “WHO needs a radical shake-up.”
Bell, a former medical officer and scientist at the WHO, said the WHO needs a “massive downsizing” and “to return to basic public health rather than the profit-driven false agenda of rising pandemic risk that WHO has embarked on.”
For instance, Bell criticized recent WHO efforts to push the mpox vaccine in Africa, diverting resources from addressing far more deadly health issues, such as malaria, malnutrition, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
“If WHO does not respond by a total reversal of direction and values,” Bell said, “then we should hope that this withdrawal goes forward and others join.”
Trump’s move came as no surprise. As early as December 2023, his transition team was pushing for an exit from the WHO on day one of the new administration.
U.S. law requires a one-year notice and the payment of any outstanding fees when the country withdraws from the WHO. That means the final full withdrawal will take effect in early 2026.
Monday’s executive order came as a follow-up to Trump’s efforts during his first presidential term to withdraw from the WHO.
In July 2020, Trump moved to officially withdraw the U.S. from the WHO by submitting a notice of withdrawal to the United Nations’ (U.N.) secretary-general.
The withdrawal would have taken effect July 6, 2021. However, Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, who on Jan. 20, 2021, retracted Trump’s withdrawal notification letter.
Monday’s executive order revoked Biden’s letter. It also said the secretary of state would immediately inform the U.N.’s secretary-general — again — of the U.S. intention to withdraw.
The order also revoked another order Biden issued in January 2021 that called for a U.S. federal response to COVID-19 that included “engaging with and strengthening the World Health Organization.”
U.S. government personnel or contractors working “in any capacity” with the WHO will be recalled and reassigned, the order stated.
Investigative journalist Whitney Webb cautioned against reading too much into Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO.
She wrote in an X post:
“To be fair, Trump also left the WHO in mid-2020 and then just redirected what was once WHO funding to the Gates-funded GAVI vaccine alliance. While leaving the WHO is positive, it is not the slam dunk some are advertising, especially considering Gates’ recent comments on Trump’s enthusiasm for his ‘vaccine innovation’ proposals.”
U.S. is WHO’s biggest funder
The U.S. is by far the WHO’s largest financial backer, Reuters reported, providing roughly 18% of the organization’s overall budget.
The WHO’s most recent budget, for 2024-2025, was $6.8 billion.
The next-largest state donor — when combining mandatory fees and voluntary contributions — is Germany, which provides around 3%, Reuters said.
Germany’s health minister today said that leaders in Berlin will try to talk Trump out of his decision.
When asked about Trump’s order, Guo Jiakun — a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry — said today at a regular press briefing that the WHO’s role in global health governance should be strengthened, not weakened.
“China will continue to support the WHO in fulfilling its responsibilities, and deepen international public health cooperation,” Jiakun said.
The WHO said in a statement that it regrets Trump’s decision. “We hope the United States will reconsider.”
WHO pandemic treaty would have ‘no binding force’ in U.S.
Although the full withdrawal by the U.S. from the WHO won’t take effect until January 2026, Monday’s executive order said U.S. negotiations on a WHO-led pandemic treaty or amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) will cease immediately.
Independent journalist James Roguski pointed out on Substack that there aren’t any negotiations underway.
Negotiations stopped last May when negotiators failed to submit final texts for the two documents before the May 24 deadline.
Instead, member states on June 1, 2024, agreed to a smaller package of amendments.
Monday’s order closes the door to the possibility that the U.S. might resume negotiations during the next year — or implement the few IHR amendments passed last June. Trump’s order stated:
“While withdrawal is in progress, the Secretary of State will cease negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the amendments to the International Health Regulations, and actions taken to effectuate such agreement and amendments will have no binding force on the United States.”
Roguski said Trump should go further by issuing a letter that revokes the amendments the WHO adopted on June 1, 2024, and clarifies that the U.S. “is also exiting the International Health Regulations.”
In May 2024, 22 state attorneys general said in a letter that they would refuse to comply with a WHO-led pandemic treaty or IHR amendments. They cited concerns about national sovereignty and civil liberties.
Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst told The Defender she was “delighted” by Trump’s announcement.
Terhorst said that she and other international lawyers who worked to stop the WHO’s “power grab” discovered that the U.S. delegation had been the “primary force behind the power grab.”
Trump also signs order to end gov’t censorship
Other orders signed Monday include one that restores free speech and ends federal censorship of U.S. citizens.
“Over the last 4 years,” the order said, “the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.”
It continued:
“Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.
“Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.”
That can’t happen anymore, the order said.
Citing the First Amendment, the order outlined what will now be the policy of the federal government when it comes to free speech. The government’s job is to:
(a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;
(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;
(c) ensure that no taxpayer resources are used to engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; and
(d) identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.
No federal agency, department or worker can use government resources for an activity that contradicts that job, the order said.
The order also called on state attorneys general to investigate whether the Biden administration engaged in censorship of Americans’ views. It directed them to write a report about its findings that includes “recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken based on the findings.”
It is unclear how the order may affect ongoing litigation related to federal censorship.
That’s because the order’s final clause states that the order is not intended to — and does not — “create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.”
On Jan. 6, CHD petitioned the Supreme Court to hear its case against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
“The record in CHD v. Meta,” Holland said, “clearly shows Facebook’s close collaboration with the White House to censor vaccine-related speech, even pre-COVID.”
CHD General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg told The Defender she is “certainly pleased” to see the new administration take quick action to address the “rampant censorship by the government over the past four years and to investigate governmental wrongdoing.”
“However,” Rosenberg said, “CHD’s censorship cases will continue. We have provided the courts with substantial evidence of wrongdoing by the government and by social media companies against CHD.”
“The executive order — while a significant positive step — does not remedy the harms done to CHD,” she added.
Related articles in The Defender:
- Is Trump Transition Team Pushing for WHO Exit on Day One?
- WHO Approves First Mpox Vaccine for Adults in Africa — Then Says Babies Can Get It, Too, Despite No Clinical Trials
- WHO Passes ‘Watered-down’ IHR Amendments, Plans to Revisit Pandemic Treaty ‘Within a Year’
- 22 AGs Oppose WHO Pandemic Treaty, Citing Threats to Sovereignty and Civil Liberties
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Moscow comments on Trump’s ‘only two genders’ move

RT | January 21, 2025
The decades-long US promotion of the diversity and inclusion agenda should be investigated on an international level, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
Zakharova made the remarks on Tuesday, a day after newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump ended protections for transgender rights and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within the federal government.
“Can you imagine how many people’s lives have been ruined over the years of promoting this nonsense?” Zakharova wrote on Telegram.
“What should hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people do now, who have been forced to accept the ideology of amputating healthy genitals and replacing them with artificial ones?” she added.
Zakharova stated that officials in Washington have been forcing other countries “to show solidarity with what they called anti-scientific narratives,” which in essence was “the very propaganda that kills both the body and the soul.”
This “inhumane doctrine” was linked with aid, sanctions, and political and financial pressure, as well as the “humiliation of human dignity and bullying,” Zakharova claimed.
On his first day back in office, Trump repealed 78 executive orders signed by his predecessor, Joe Biden, including at least a dozen measures supporting racial equity and combating discrimination against gay and transgender people.
Federal US agencies and departments have 60 days from the order’s signing to end DEI-related practices.
The order followed a promise Trump made during his inaugural address earlier on Monday, when he vowed to end “the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life” in favor of a society that is “colorblind and merit-based.”
Trump also said it will be official US policy that “there are only two genders: male and female.”
The order is meant to create “equal treatment” and requests “a plan to dismantle the DEI bureaucracy,” a Trump aide told the New York Post. More actions on DEI are reportedly coming soon that would impact private business.
The rollback of DEI programs drew an immediate backlash from civil rights groups, who promised to “fight back against these harmful provisions.”
Some corporations, including the largest US private employer, Walmart, had already started reversing DEI initiatives in the weeks following Trump’s election in November. Meta recently dismantled its DEI department, citing a shifting legal and policy landscape. McDonald’s has scaled back diversity targets for senior leadership. Other companies such as Costco and Apple reportedly remain committed to diversity policies.
The Practicing Physician’s Case for Kennedy
By Clayton J. Baker, MD | Brownstone Institute | January 20, 2025
I am a practicing physician. I see patients, and I diagnose and treat their illnesses. I have been doing so for more than a quarter of a century. It is how I earn my living.
I heartily endorse Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The fact that I take care of patients distinguishes me from the overwhelming majority of the captured politicians, legacy media pundits, and Pharma lobbyists who are trying to torpedo Mr. Kennedy’s nomination.
The uproar surrounding this nomination is telling in itself. Since when has there been such crying and gnashing of teeth over a nomination for the Secretary of Health and Human Services? How many Americans can even name the last three HHS Secretaries? I’m a physician who follows these things, and off the top of my head, I could only recall the last two – former Congressman Xavier Becerra and former Pharma executive and lobbyist Alex Azar.
When a public figure is being viciously attacked from all sides, as Mr. Kennedy is at present, we should consider the attackers. Depending on who they are, such extreme disapproval may in fact represent the strongest possible endorsement.
Consider Mr. Kennedy’s Attackers
On the Democrat side, Kennedy has been attacked by the likes of Massachusetts Congressman Jake Auchincloss. On CNN, he said that if Kennedy were named HHS Secretary, with respect to American children, Kennedy would “give them polio.”
Auchincloss is a lawyer, so his total ignorance of pathophysiology might be forgivable. However, his father is Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, who served as none other than Anthony Fauci’s right-hand man at NIAID, the NIH agency over which Fauci wielded immense and almost complete power for decades, and through which he funded Ralph Baric and the Wuhan Institute’s genetic manipulations of the SARS CoV-2 virus that caused Covid, using our tax dollars. If there is one HHS department that best exemplifies the capture, corruption, and unaccountability of the present medical-industrial complex, it is NIAID. Hugh Auchincloss left NIAID in 2024.
But wait, there’s more. Auchincloss’s mother is Dr. Laurie Glimcher, former president and CEO of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In 2021, the Boston Globe exposed her simultaneously serving on the boards of multiple Big Pharma companies, including Bristol Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline, while in charge of Dana-Farber. Furthermore, in 2024, multiple research papers Glimcher had authored were exposed for falsification of data, and at least 6 of the papers were retracted. Laurie Glimcher resigned as head of Dana-Farber in 2024.
On the Republican side, there is Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who stated on television that a Kennedy HHS “will cost lives in this country.”
Many may recall Gottlieb as the FDA commissioner during much of the first Trump administration. Gottlieb left the FDA in 2019, shortly before the pandemic, and quickly joined the Board of Directors at Pfizer, where he remained throughout the pandemic and still is today. A more thorough review of his history shows multiple prior stints at the FDA. Over the years, he has bounced back and forth between that key HHS regulatory agency and Big Pharma and healthcare venture capital firms – the exact industries the FDA should be overseeing.
These are the kinds of people who want to stop Mr. Kennedy from leading HHS. Their prime motivation, it seems, may not be positive reform of medicine or the well-being of patients.
If prominent figures such as these revile Mr. Kennedy, why do I endorse him?
Because medicine desperately needs reform. Mr. Kennedy has been nominated to be a quintessential reformer. He has deep knowledge of the problem, and he has a proven track record of success in reforming corrupt systems. He is being viciously attacked because the last thing that those currently in control of medicine want is meaningful reform.
Medicine Is a Mess, and Desperately Needs Reform
I can tell you from nearly three decades of first-hand clinical experience what the state of medicine is right now.
It’s a mess.
Medicine has been in decline for decades. Autonomy has been gradually stripped away from physicians and patients, as protocols and guidelines have replaced clinical decision-making. Doctors have become employees rather than independent professionals. The doctor-patient relationship has been eroded as care has been fragmented and as the Electronic Medical Record has intruded. Most importantly, control of the entire medical industry has been seized by Big Pharma, captured and corrupt government agencies, and the insurance industry.
Then Covid happened, with two results – one intentional, the other accidental. First, the entire medical system was intentionally hijacked by what was really a military operation. The pretense of a medical emergency was used to shut down both society as a whole, and the routine practice of medicine in particular. Second, this takeover accidentally revealed who actually controls the medical industry – and it sure isn’t doctors and patients.
Patients have caught on. For patients, trust in physicians and hospitals and acceptance of vaccines have both cratered. This is not due to “anti-science” stupidity or “misinformation.” It is due to the fact that patients have simply been lied to too many times. It doesn’t matter how much money and power you have – you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Patients know – some explicitly, others intuitively – that the official narrative of Covid was riddled with lies. They know that they were deliberately made to live in fear. They have friends and family who suffered and even died from the excesses of the lockdown policies, and others who were injured or even killed by the hospital protocols and the mandated shots. They know that Big Pharma and their Government were behind it. They know that their own local hospitals and even their own healthcare providers were complicit to some extent.
Patients also know that health care is captured. Patients know that Big Pharma and other corporate and ideological forces drive health care policy and messaging – all they have to do is turn on their TVs to see the endless barrage of idiotic commercials for drugs.
Patients know the NIH, CDC, and FDA are corrupt, and captured by Big Pharma. Patients have wearied of the constant fear-mongering about “pandemics” that they now know are almost always man-made. Most importantly, patients realize that none of this is intended to improve their health.
How do I know that patients know all this? They tell me every day.
What about rank-and-file doctors? Most clinical physicians I speak with privately acknowledge the excesses of the Covid era. I’m not aware of a single practicing doctor who has taken all the CDC-recommended Covid boosters. I have copious evidence, both from my patients and from communications with other doctors, that the extreme virophobia and vaccine fervor of 2021 and 2022 has faded among my colleagues just as it has in the rest of the population.
Most doctors have heard the news that public trust in them and their profession has nosedived. Most realize that the system is in chaos in many respects – all one has to do is stop by any emergency room to see that. Many acknowledge that the profession of medicine and the healthcare industry have been hijacked by Pig Pharma and other malign forces. Many who can are leaving the profession altogether.
However, beyond those already speaking out, I see few new colleagues calling out for reform. Like many other people, it seems that most rank-and-file doctors just want the nightmare to end. A great many don’t really know how things got so bad. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, they know something has happened, but they don’t know what it is.
For these reasons, meaningful reform of medicine will not come from a groundswell from the rank and file. They saw what happened to those who spoke out during Covid and want no part of that. They wouldn’t know where to begin to fix a system in which they have very little agency. However, I truly believe the great majority of physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals would welcome and support meaningful reform.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is the very best choice to lead medical reform. If you doubt his expertise on the subjects of the corruption and capture of medicine, and the regulatory capture of agencies like the CDC, NIH, and FDA, I recommend his books The Real Anthony Fauci and The Wuhan Cover-Up. Not only do these books demonstrate his encyclopedic knowledge of the problem, but as Joe Rogan and others have pointed out, they have never been directly challenged by the medical establishment – because they are factually accurate.
Furthermore, given his experience and successes as an environmental lawyer, including against large corporations such as Monsanto, DuPont, and Ford, Mr. Kennedy has the know-how to affect meaningful reform.
Rest assured that under a Kennedy-run HHS, medicine will not revert to the time of Galen. Polio will not run rampant, although vaccines may finally be held to the same standards as other drugs – which of course should have always been the case. Even a partial reversal of the nearly total capture that Big Pharma and its allies have over medical research, academia, education, medical licensing, and certification will only benefit doctors and patients.
Medicine is in desperate need of thorough reform. It must be decoupled from the control of Big Pharma, captured governmental agencies, and other rich and powerful forces that currently dominate the industry. Patient autonomy and the doctor-patient relationship must be restored as central to the practice of medicine. Informed consent must be re-established as the inalienable and fundamental value of the profession as encoded at Nuremberg.
Humans are autonomous individuals with rights. Patients must not be “managed” like herd animals, as the current population-based public health approach to medicine insists. Covid proved this approach to be a disaster, and it must end.
This is why I, a practicing physician, heartily endorse Robert F. Kennedy as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.
C.J. Baker, M.D. is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018 he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester.
FDA BANS RED FOOD DYE; NEW SCIENCE LINKS HFCS AND SEED OILS TO CANCER
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | January 16, 2025
NEW STUDY CONFIRMS FLUORIDE’S TOXIC EFFECTS
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | January 16, 2025
The tide may have finally turned with mainstream news on fluoride safety after a recently published study on the significant association between fluoride exposure and lower IQs in children reaffirms previous findings.
YouTube Removes Barrister’s Legal Submission at Official UK Covid Inquiry Amid Censorship of Vaccine Injury Discussions
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | January 15, 2025
YouTube’s decision to remove a barrister’s legal submission from the UK Covid Inquiry has intensified concerns over widespread censorship of vaccine-related discussions on major social media platforms.
Anna Morris KC, who represents families claiming injury from Covid-19 vaccines, disclosed that YouTube deleted a video of her preliminary remarks to the inquiry in September 2023, citing violations of its medical “misinformation” policy. Although the platform later reinstated the video, it failed to provide a clear explanation, admitting only that “it sometimes makes mistakes.”
This act of censorship has been condemned as part of a larger pattern of silencing voices critical of vaccine safety and government health policies. As reported by The Telegraph, during the inquiry’s Module 4 session — focused on vaccines and pharmaceutical measures — Morris directly addressed this issue, stating, “The inquiry must understand the stigma and censorship for the vaccine injured and bereaved.”
She revealed that a poll of affected families found that 74% had been censored when discussing vaccine injuries on social media platforms.
Morris further criticized the suppression of information, noting that doctors were instructed to withhold concerns from both the public and their own patients. Her removed statement emphasized that “the treatment of the vaccine injured in this country has historically been a source of shame.”
Morris argued that those harmed by vaccines have been systematically “dismissed, ignored, censored,” and subjected to hostility when seeking acknowledgment and support.
She condemned the ongoing silencing of vaccine-injured individuals as a severe barrier to accountability and transparency, adding, “Unfortunately, this censorship has continued years after the pandemic and into our engagement with this inquiry.”
Despite repeated requests for a review, YouTube justified the video’s removal by citing its medical “misinformation” policies, a rationale that critics argue is increasingly being used to suppress legitimate concerns and experiences. This censorship has fueled calls for a reevaluation of how social media platforms regulate content related to public health, especially when it involves dissenting voices.
An emotional impact video shown during the inquiry highlighted the tragic story of pharmacist John Cross, who took his own life after suffering paralyzing complications from a Covid vaccine and being denied compensation. His story underscores the devastating consequences of dismissing those seeking recognition and support.
ICAN’s INVESTIGATION INTO GEOENGINEERING, MILITARY SPRAYING & SELF-SPREADING VACCINES
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | January 16, 2025
Siri & Glimstad Attorney, Catherine Ybarra, Esq., presents ICAN’s assessment of the science behind geoengineering and transmissible vaccines. Discover the lengths the research team went to, to uncover the government agencies involved in current and future weather modification, and a few surprising discoveries they made along the way.
MAINSTREAM STOKES FEAR OVER BIRD FLU
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | January 10, 2025
Legacy media and world health agencies continue to ratchet up the bird flu fear factor, despite the fact not a single human death has been caused from the virus. With mere days left for the Biden Administration in office and stockpiles of outdated H1N1 vaccines at the ready, skeptics are concerned it’s not just coincidence.
No Proof MMR Vaccine Is ‘Safer’ than Measles, Mumps or Rubella Infection, Physician Group Says
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 14, 2025
The risk of permanent disability or death from the MMR vaccine may be greater than the risk posed by measles, mumps or rubella infection because large enough vaccine safety studies haven’t been done, according to a collection of new documents released by Physicians for Informed Consent (PIC).
The collection includes disease information statements for measles, mumps and rubella, and a vaccine risk statement for the MMR vaccine.
According to the Mayo Clinic, measles is a viral infection typically accompanied by a skin rash, fever, cough, runny nose, sore throat, inflamed eyes and tiny white spots on the inner cheek.
Mumps and rubella also are viral infections. According to PIC, all three viral infections typically resolve on their own with proper rest and hydration in almost all cases.
Dr. Shira Miller, PIC’s founder and president, told The Defender, “The main takeaway is that the MMR vaccine has not been proven safer than measles, mumps and rubella.”
PIC is a nonprofit that delivers data to doctors and the public so they can “evaluate the data on infectious diseases and vaccines objectively, and voluntarily engage in informed decision-making about vaccination.”
Miller explained that the MMR vaccine clinical trials didn’t include enough subjects to be able to prove that the risk of permanent disability or death from the vaccine is less than the risk of permanent disability or death from measles, mumps or rubella.
The number of measles, mumps or rubella infections that result in permanent disability or death is so low that researchers would need to have at least 50,000 subjects in a clinical trial to be able to show that the vaccine is safer than the disease.
The MMR vaccine’s clinical trials fall very short of that benchmark, according to PIC’s statement on MMR vaccine risk.
Prelicensure clinical trials for vaccines, including the MMR shot, are “relatively small and usually last no longer than a few years,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) 2024 “Manual for the Surveillance of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases.”
The 2024 edition of the CDC manual doesn’t specify exactly how many subjects are in these “relatively small” trials. However, the 2011 edition stated that “relatively small” meant that such trials are “usually limited to a few thousand subjects.”
The rate of disability or death among healthy children from any of those three diseases is incredibly rare. PIC wrote:
“For children under age 10 at normal risk (i.e., with normal levels of vitamin A and infected after birth), the pre-vaccine annual risk of death or permanent disability from measles, mumps, and rubella respectively was 1 in 1 million, 1 in 1.6 million, and 1 in 2.1 million. …
“Therefore, the cumulative annual risk of a fatal or permanently disabling case of any of those diseases was about 1 in 500,000, and the risk over a 10-year span was 1 in 50,000.”
In other words, clinical trials would need at least 50,000 subjects to detect one case of death or disability from a measles, mumps or rubella infection.
Meanwhile, no safety studies on the MMR vaccine have been done that looked for possible genetic mutations, impaired fertility or cancer, according to the product’s package insert.
Also, seizures from the MMR vaccine occur five times more often than measles-related seizures.
Dr. Liz Mumper, a pediatrician, praised PIC for releasing the collection of data on measles, mumps and rubella, and on the MMR vaccine.
“Most parents have not had access to the information contained in the thoughtful analysis done by Physicians for Informed Consent. Parents should recognize that the risk of bad outcomes from a measles infection — if their child lives in a developed country with clean water and is not immune-deficient — is extraordinarily rare, as PIC reports.”
Unfortunately, she added, recent U.S. media reports “sensationalized” the risks of measles.
What’s typically missing from measles media reports
PIC’s statement on measles cited numerous facts commonly overlooked in many media reports on measles outbreaks, including:
- The U.S. measles mortality rate dropped dramatically before a measles vaccine was introduced in 1963.
- Immunity from the MMR vaccine wanes so that by age 15, roughly 60% of vaccinated children are susceptible to subclinical measles virus infections.
- Studies have suggested a link between a naturally acquired measles infection and a reduced risk of Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas.
- Studies also suggested a link between a naturally acquired measles infection and a lower risk of asthma, eczema and hay fever.
- Malnutrition — particularly vitamin A deficiency — is a primary cause of over 100,000 measles deaths in underdeveloped countries.
Mumper said that the risk of bad outcomes from a measles infection drastically declined with improved public health and better nutrition long before MMR vaccines were available.
“The risk of bad outcomes has always been more for children in developing countries who are more likely to have nutritional deficiencies including vitamin A and lack access to clean water,” Mumper added.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

A roving reporter who covered Italy’s top politicians explains to The Grayzone how his country was reduced to a joint US-Israeli “aircraft carrier,” and raises troubling questions about an Israeli role in the killing of Prime Minister Aldo Moro.