‘Formal, Unequivocal Apologies’ Needed to Restore Public Trust After COVID Vaccine Mandates
By Jill Erzen | The Defender | October 15, 2025
The public deserves “formal, unequivocal apologies from governments and medical bodies” for COVID-19 vaccine mandates and for “silencing truth seekers,” according to a paper published Oct. 9 in the journal Science, Public Health Policy and the Law.
Vaccine mandates and lack of transparency during the COVID-19 pandemic eroded public trust, which deepened the divide between health authorities and the people they serve, according to authors Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Andrea Lamont Nazarenko, Ph.D.
“The pandemic demonstrated that when scientific integrity is lacking and dissent is suppressed, unethical decision-making can become legitimized,” they wrote. “When this happens, public confidence in health authorities erodes.”
Trust in public health agencies plummeted during the pandemic. Confidence in decision-making at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fell from 73% in 2020 to 61% in 2025, according to polling firm KFF.
Public opinion on physicians and hospitals also suffered, with trust dropping from 71.5% in April 2020 to 40.1% in January 2024, according to a study in JAMA Network Open.
Restoring faith in public health agencies requires “long overdue” apologies, as well as “full transparency of data, independent evaluation of evidence, and accountability through both policy change and public acknowledgment of harm,” the paper’s authors said.
‘Pandemic of the vaccine injured’
The “safe and effective” narrative surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine shifted over the years toward “unsafe and defective,” according to the authors.
Policymakers’ unwillingness to acknowledge the vaccine’s emerging safety signals may be “the most egregious failure” of all. “We are currently facing what some call a ‘pandemic of the vaccine injured,’” the authors said.
In 2022, a study in the journal Vaccine found that the risk of serious harms from the COVID-19 vaccine was two to four times greater than the risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19. That same year, researchers surveyed 40,000 Germans and found a high rate of severe side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine that persisted for months or longer.
Studies from 2025 suggest the risks may not decrease over time.
- A preprint study found that genetic material contained within mRNA COVID-19 vaccines can integrate into the human genome, potentially contributing to the onset of aggressive cancer.
- An analysis of a Japanese database of 18 million people showed that people who received COVID-19 vaccines had a significantly higher risk of death in the first year after vaccination compared to the unvaccinated, and the risk increased with each additional dose.
- A peer-reviewed study published in EXCLI Journal was the first to uncover statistically significant evidence of increased cancer risk following COVID-19 vaccination in Italy.
In public health, policymakers must anchor their decisions in cumulative evidence that evolves with new knowledge, according to Malhotra and Nazarenko. “It is a profound failure of scientific and ethical responsibility to overlook these safety concerns,” they wrote.
Health systems must adjust to manage ‘psychological fallout’ of pandemic
The authors said the health risks revealed by the emerging COVID-19 vaccine studies illustrate one of the central lessons of the pandemic: evidence evolves. Policies must be adjusted as new evidence comes to light, but that didn’t happen, they wrote.
“If the full body of research ultimately shows a net harm from COVID-19 vaccination and pandemic-era policies, the greater barrier will be psychological, not scientific,” Malhotra and Nazarenko said. “Our social systems must therefore be prepared to manage the psychological fallout, responding with clarity and compassion.”
To rebuild legitimacy, institutions must actively uphold ethical principles that prioritize the public over political or corporate interests, they said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is taking steps in this direction, according to the authors.
In September, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. led two roundtable discussions on long COVID that included doctors, researchers and patients. The talks were, in part, in response to “the calls that I get almost every day from people who are suffering from long COVID across the country and don’t know where to go and feel that their voices aren’t being listened to,” Kennedy said.
In August, Kennedy canceled nearly $500 million in contracts and grants intended to develop mRNA vaccines. “We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted,” Kennedy said in announcing the move.
Restoring public trust hinges on informed consent and shared decision-making, according to the authors.
“A contributing factor to the prevalence of injury has been the extent to which government officials and public health authorities overrode the doctor-patient relationship, taking precedence over the ethics of individualized medicine,” they wrote.
Earlier this month, the CDC handed supporters of informed consent a win by updating its childhood immunization schedule to emphasize individual-based decision-making for COVID-19 vaccination in children 6 months and older.
‘Suppression may quiet critics, but it suffocates science’
In 2024, the journal Cureus retracted the first peer-reviewed paper to provide an extensive analysis of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine trial data and post-injection injuries.
“Silencing contestation is not a neutral choice; it is contrary to the methods by which science corrects itself,” Malhotra and Nazarenko said.
“Voices that push the mainstream should be encouraged, not silenced. Yet, contemporary public health often substitutes condemnation for curiosity, marginalizing dissent even when data warrant debate,” they wrote.
According to the authors, Kennedy’s critics provide “the most striking example of silencing opposition.”
Vaccine lobbyists at a leading biotech industry trade group purportedly criticized Kennedy’s “anti-vaccine stance” during an April meeting, calling him a “direct threat to public health.” A spokesperson for the organization denied the statements.
Kennedy’s policies at the HHS have sparked similar claims from six former U.S. surgeons general, who said he is “endangering the health of the nation.” Several senators have made similar assertions and called for Kennedy’s resignation.
Corporations and regulatory bodies commonly use character assassination to weaken their opposition, according to the paper’s authors. Those in power silence dissent by discrediting critics with smear campaigns and labels like “anti-vaxxer,” shifting focus from evidence to identity.
“Suppression may quiet critics, but it suffocates science,” Malhotra and Nazarenko wrote. “The remedy for disagreement is better evidence and open debate — not censorship or character assassination. Robust science requires robust dissent.”
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.
No, Reuters, Climate Change is Not Threatening Europe’s Resources
By Anthony Watts | ClimateRealism | October 2, 2025
In the article, “Climate change and pollution threaten Europe’s resources, EU warns,” Reuters asserts that climate change poses a “direct threat” to Europe’s natural resources, citing an EU environment agency report, and warns of worsening droughts and extreme weather. These claims are patently false. History shows far worse droughts in the past with no appreciable trend of other types of extreme weather events becoming more common or severe. Europe’s resource problems are caused by humans, stemming from overuse and poor management, just not from human-caused climate change.
The article declares that “Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent and is experiencing worsening droughts and other extreme weather events.” It further states that more than 80 percent of protected habitats are in poor condition, blaming climate change and pollution.
“The window for meaningful action is narrowing, and the consequences of delay are becoming more tangible,” European Environment Agency executive director Leena Yla-Mononen told Reuters. “We are approaching tipping points – not only in ecosystems, but also in the social and economic systems that underpin our societies.”
The is political rhetoric couched in weak science.
The reality is far more mundane. The European Environment Agency’s own data show that water stress is primarily linked to intensive agriculture, industrial demand, and population growth. As the “Review of National Water Allocation Policies in Six European Countries” documents, many European countries continue to over-allocate water rights, creating artificial scarcity even in years with average rainfall. This is a governance problem, not a climate one. Similarly, biodiversity decline across Europe is overwhelmingly the result of land use change, habitat fragmentation, and invasive species—not a few tenths of a degree of warming over the last few decades.
When it comes to extreme weather, Reuters’ claims are directly contradicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report which notes there is little to no attribution of many types of severe weather to climate change. As Climate at a Glance: Extreme Weather summarizes, data do not support claims that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent or severe worldwide.
Further, Europe’s worst droughts occurred long before today’s modest warming. The megadrought of 1540 lasted an entire year, with contemporaneous records describing riverbeds across central Europe running dry, widespread crop failure, and thousands of deaths. More recent severe droughts struck in the 1920s and 1940s, periods that cannot be blamed on modern greenhouse gas emissions. The paper “The 1921 European drought: impacts, reconstruction and drivers” describes the 1921 European drought as “the most severe and most widespread drought in Europe since the start of the 20th century.
In “A drought climatology for Europe,” decadal trends show “greater pan-European drought incidence in the 1940s, early 1950s … and lesser drought incidence in the 1910s, 1930s” over the 20th century.
And there are many more worse droughts even further back in the past, before climate change even had a name, as this graph from the 2021 paper Recent European drought extremes beyond Common Era background variability shows:
Compared to these historical drought episodes, recent intermittent summer dry spells are far from extraordinary.
Also, as detailed in multiple Climate Realism posts on the topics neither floods, here and here, for example, nor wildfires, here and here, are more frequent or severe now than they have been in the past.
Even heatwaves are neither more frequent nor deadly now than they have been historically, with deaths from temperatures declining.
Europe’s actual environmental challenges—such as nutrient pollution in rivers, overfishing, and urban sprawl—require pragmatic policy solutions, not grandiose climate pledges. By conflating resource depletion with climate change and exaggerating extreme weather risks, Reuters has misled its audience. The problems it describes are not new, not worsening because of climate change, and not solvable by CO₂ reductions. They are solvable by better governance, better planning, and better science. Once again, journalism has been sacrificed to climate alarmism.
DR. ELIZABETH MUMPER ON AUTISM, VACCINES, AND HONEST SCIENCE
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | October 9, 2025
Pediatrician and researcher Dr. Elizabeth Mumper joins Del to discuss experiences throughout her career, including the vast increase in autism observed since she was in medical school, the clear health differences she’s seen between vaccinated and unvaccinated children, and how scientific inquiry has been captured. She explains why the upcoming film ‘An Inconvenient Study’ could mark a turning point for both doctors and parents questioning vaccine safety.
The Nature of hypocrisy: pharma-funded journals smearing independent voices
Nature alleges that I endanger public health, but it is the journal — steeped in pharma money — that ought to be looking inward.
By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | October 1, 2025
When an editor from Nature emailed me this week, it wasn’t a neutral request for comment. It was a prelude to a hit piece — filled with defamatory accusations and framed around a predetermined narrative.
According to the email, I was being lumped into an “anti-vaccine movement,” accused of “endangering public health,” and “profiting from disseminating misinformation.”
No evidence was provided. No articles were cited. No definition of “anti-vaccine” was offered. No complainants were named. Just blanket accusations intended as a character assassination.
Conflict of interest at the heart of Nature
And who is casting these stones?
Nature — a journal that publishes vaccine research while pocketing revenue from pharmaceutical advertising and sponsored content.
To then assign an editor to target independent journalists who scrutinise that very industry is a glaring conflict of interest.
A medical journal acting as both mouthpiece and judge of what counts as “misinformation” is like a tobacco company funding lung health studies while attacking anyone who questions them.
The hypocrisy is staggering.
On its own website, Nature boasts of partnerships with Johnson & Johnson, Merck, AstraZeneca and other vaccine companies, dressing them up as “pioneering collaborations” to “support science.” It even publishes paid advertising features.
Meanwhile, I’ve never taken a cent from the drug industry. My work is sustained by readers who choose to support independent journalism.
Yet Nature accuses me of “profiting” — as if being funded by the public is more corrupting than raking in thousands, if not millions, from the very companies you’re supposed to scrutinise.
To test how deep the rot runs, I’ve requested that Nature disclose its advertising revenue for the past decade, broken down by pharmaceutical corporations, government agencies, and NGOs.
I will publish those figures if and when they are provided.
Loaded language
Nature’s email branded me part of an “anti-vaccine movement.” But what does that actually mean?
Is questioning regulatory capture “anti-vaccine”?
Is demanding the timely publication of safety signals “anti-vaccine”?
Is exposing the failures of the vaccine injury compensation scheme “anti-vaccine”?
Is pointing out the poor oversight of vaccine trials “anti-vaccine”?
By that logic, critics of arsenic in drinking water would be “anti-arsenic,” and anyone calling for safer driving would be “anti-car.” The absurdity is obvious, yet the label is useful to silence debate.
And the email’s language was revealing.
Phrases like “scientific consensus” and “peer-reviewed science” are waved around like trump cards, but in practice they are red flags — appeals to authority rather than evidence.
‘Consensus’ can be manufactured. And ‘peer review’ is no shield against corruption when journals themselves are compromised.
I have documented journal–pharma ties, the retraction of inconvenient studies, and the use of pharma-funded “fact checks” masquerading as science to discredit politically uncomfortable findings.
So when an editor of Nature hides behind these clichés instead of addressing the evidence I present, it tells you everything. This isn’t about protecting science, it’s about protecting a narrative.
And I’m clearly not the only target.
Dr Robert Malone — also a Substack publisher and now a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practice — received the same media request from Nature.
The journal’s smear campaign extends even to those who now sit on America’s top vaccine advisory body.
Nature insists that “anti-vaccine stances are supported by a small body of evidence compared to the larger weight of evidence for vaccination.”
But that’s probably because journals act as gatekeepers, blocking challenges to orthodoxy and shutting out novel viewpoints. Studies that raise concerns are rejected, buried or retracted, while industry-friendly findings sail through unopposed.
It isn’t the science that’s lacking — it’s the willingness of journals to let inconvenient results see the light of day. The house of cards is collapsing, and that is why the attacks on dissent are more aggressive than ever.
And those attacks often come from self-proclaimed experts who are themselves conflicted, embedded in institutions sustained by the teat of industry, and unwilling to disclose their own conflicts.
Pot calling the kettle black: the Proximal Origin scandal
Notably, while Nature postures as a guardian against “misinformation,” it bears responsibility for one of the pandemic’s most notorious scandals.
In March 2020, Nature Medicine — part of the Nature portfolio — published “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which declared the virus could not have been engineered in a lab.
The paper was splashed across headlines and weaponised to dismiss the lab-leak theory as a “conspiracy.”
But private emails and Slack chats told another story. The authors harboured serious doubts and admitted a lab origin could not be ruled out.
Hundreds of scientists now call the paper a ‘political tract’ dressed up as science, and thousands have petitioned for its retraction. Yet Nature Medicine refuses, brushing it aside as a “point of view” piece.
If that isn’t misinformation, then what is?
Even the White House has distanced itself. Its website now acknowledges that the Proximal Origin paper was used to suppress debate, and alleges the authors were nudged by Dr Fauci to push the “preferred” zoonotic origin narrative.
Time for accountability
Make no mistake, this is ‘the system’ at work.
Powerful journals with financial ties to industry unleashing hatchet men to smear independent journalists and scientists, rather than engaging with evidence.
I won’t play along. My job is to hold institutions accountable, not to curry their favour. If Nature wants to brand that “misinformation,” so be it. History shows that today’s heresy is often tomorrow’s truth.
This goes to the heart of the corruption of medical publishing — a system Robert F. Kennedy Jr has repeatedly warned about, and one that now demands scrutiny at the highest levels.
With Dr Jay Bhattacharya at the helm of the National Institutes of Health, there is finally an opportunity to investigate the conflicts of interest, selective censorship, and financial entanglements that journals like Nature have normalised.
When those who profit from pharma partnerships claim the authority to police what lies “outside the scientific consensus,” public trust in science collapses.
And that collapse is not the fault of independent journalists asking hard questions. It is the fault of journals that serve industry interests over science.
New Book: Covid Through Our Eyes
Review by Maryanne Demasi, PhD | September 28, 2025
When Covid hit, governments, health agencies and the media marched in lockstep. Their united front was sold as “consensus.”
In reality, it was compliance by coercion. Dissenters were punished, questions suppressed, and the public was fed slogans instead of science.
Covid Through Our Eyes tears away that façade.
This collection of essays—written by doctors, scientists, lawyers, journalists, economists and ordinary Australians whose lives were upended—restores the voices silenced during the pandemic.
Each chapter forms part of a collective testimony. And in a final act of principle, not a cent of the book’s sales goes to the authors; all proceeds support Australia’s vaccine injury class action.
A chorus of voices
Editors Robert Clancy, an immunologist, and Melissa McCann, a physician, have gathered an extraordinary range of perspectives.
Among them, British oncologist Angus Dalgleish describes patients relapsing into aggressive cancers after years in remission. He argues that repeated boosters and chronic spike protein exposure created a “pro-cancer milieu.”
Vaccinologist Nikolai Petrovsky recounts how his homegrown vaccine, built on decades of expertise, was cast aside in favour of untested mRNA technology.
Statistician Andrew Madry lays out devastating evidence of excess mortality and the government’s refusal to investigate the causes.
Other contributors highlight phenomena dismissed at the time: immune system imprinting, shifts in antibody subclasses, and persistence of mRNA in the body.
Regulatory expert Philip Altman details how the Therapeutic Goods Administration ignored clear safety signals, choosing convenience over caution.
Lawyers and doctors tell of their battles in the courts and on the streets against vaccine mandates—small victories, bitter defeats, and governments that seemed more determined to silence critics than to defend their policies with evidence.
Clancy himself turns a sharp eye on Australia. Once a nation of independent scientists—from Burnet to Fenner, with pandemic plans crafted at the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories—by 2020 it had surrendered to bureaucracy.
He argues that recovery depends on restoring the doctor–patient relationship and returning vaccine development to proven antigen platforms, not experimental technologies rushed to market.
The media that failed
My own chapter in the book examines how mainstream media collapsed.
Newsrooms abandoned their adversarial role and parroted government lines. Contradictory evidence was buried. Scientists who asked questions were branded fringe. Patients who reported harm were cast as public health risks.
The press did not simply fail; it became an enforcer. That betrayal corroded trust, and the damage persists today.
Stories of loss
The most haunting chapters are personal.
Antonio DeRose, left in a wheelchair after transverse myelitis, describes doctors who refused to acknowledge the cause.
Queenslander Caitlin Gotze died six weeks after her second Pfizer dose, with her myocarditis misdiagnosed as asthma.
Actor and writer Katie Lees collapsed from clotting linked to AstraZeneca; her death was reduced to a single line on a regulator’s website.
These are stories of grief, stark reminders of what happens when agencies, designed to protect, instead deny responsibility.
This book matters
Covid may have slipped from the headlines, but its consequences have not.
Excess deaths remain unexplained. Injured families still fight for recognition. Trust has been squandered. And this nation has yet to hold a Royal Commission into Covid.
Covid Through Our Eyes is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what really happened to Australians—a nation of people once known for their laid-back spirit, now grappling with a legacy of coercion and injury.
Buy it, read it, and judge for yourself.
AN INCONVENIENT STUDY: THE PUSHBACK
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | September 25, 2025
Del confronts legal pushback from Henry Ford Medical over the upcoming film “An Inconvenient Study,” which highlights what we believe is a significant study showing health outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Watch to see the new trailer, highlighting hidden camera footage from the study’s lead author.
Media’s psyop against climate scientists
By Vijay Jayaraj | American Thinker | September 23, 2025
A coordinated offensive unfolded with precision September 2 against five scientists questioning the popular media’s most sacred bogeyman — the hypothesis that human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide threaten to overheat the planet.
The scientists attacked had written a report published in July by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.”
Delivering virtually identical narratives, proclaiming that 85 “climate experts” had discredited the DoE report, were CBS, NPR, ABC, CNN, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Reuters and others.
Language in the news reporting was nearly indistinguishable, and the focus identical: a number (“85” or “dozens”), a designated group (“scientists” or “experts”) and a verdict (“flawed,” “lacks merit,” “full of errors”). This is not the natural variance of independent newsrooms pursuing a story. This is the result of a shared press release, a common source or a backroom agreement to push a common storyline.
It was a master class in singing the same tune that would make any propaganda ministry proud — a calibrated flash mob of climate-fear messaging in an explicitly partisan tone.
Fooling the Public
The first volley of the assault was a classic ad hominem attack. The authors of the DoE report, five of the world’s most distinguished and academically rigorous researchers of climate issues, were immediately branded as the “Trump Team.”
This is a deliberately dishonest tactic. The authors — doctors John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer — are not political operatives. They are scientists with decades of experience and hundreds of peer-reviewed publications.
Dr. Koonin served as Undersecretary for Science in the Department of Energy under President Obama, a fact conveniently omitted from most of the media’s hit pieces. Drs. Christy and Spencer are world-renowned for developing the first global temperature dataset from satellites, for which they received NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
No mention that Ross McKitrick is a Canadian academic with no political ties. No mention that Judith Curry stepped away from academia partly because of the politicization of climate research and previously had been much sought after for her research into hurricane intensity.
Most critically, the authors themselves have stated that there was no oversight or compulsion from anyone in any government department during the creation of their report. They say they crafted the report independently, with no interference from Energy Secretary Chris Wright. But the media gloss over that. Instead, the scientists are derided as the “Trump team.”
In stark contrast to the vilified DoE authors, the 85 individuals who signed the critical letter were anointed as “climate experts” and “leading scientists.” Yet, the list of signers is padded with individuals whose specializations are, to put it generously, tangential to the core issues of climate science.
The strategy is clear: assemble a gaggle of academics, label them “climate experts” and use the sheer number to create an illusion of overwhelming scientific consensus against the DOE report.
Sell Lies, Instill Fear With a ‘Black Mirror’
Adding to the theater, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has announced a panel to review the DoE report. But here’s the twist: The panel is headed not by a climate scientist, but by a biologist. Out of the panel’s members, only a few have direct expertise in atmospheric science. Yet the announcement was trumpeted as if the nation’s top climate experts were mobilized.
Predicting catastrophe is a media business model. NPR warned of “irreversible” sea-level rise in 2023, ignoring tide gauge records that show no acceleration beyond historical norms. News outlets regularly report on “unprecedented” floods, yet data indicate no uptick in floods due to climate change.
If everybody believed climate impacts were manageable, the case for sweeping carbon taxes, bans on fossil fuels and subsidies for wind and solar energy would collapse. That’s why the DoE report — noting forecasting uncertainty, adaptation possibilities and economic trade-offs — is so threatening. It undermines a narrative of an “existential” threat or imminent collapse. So, the media did not debate the five scientists; they sought to destroy them and their report. Not with data, but with labels.
This is a psyops initiative like that depicted in the Netflix dystopian series “Black Mirror.” The media outlets are not mirrors reflecting reality; they are black screens projecting a manufactured one. They have become instruments of a political agenda, sacrificing journalistic integrity to enforce a specific viewpoint on climate change. They operate not as individual watchdogs but as a wolf pack. They decide what you should think and seek to broadcast it in unison until you do.
I’d encourage you to read the DoE report for yourself or at least countervailing opinions of it. Scrutinize the credentials of those who attack it. Ask the hard questions that the journalists refuse to. The black mirror can only hold power over you if you consent to stare into it. It is time to look away and see the world as it is, not as they tell you it is.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
Will Vaccines Prevent 1.1 million Deaths? No.
More CDC junk science
Injecting Freedom by Aaron Siri | September 18, 2025
At my recent Senate hearing, the minority witness submitted testimony claiming that “The CDC estimates that vaccines given to children born between 1994 and 2018 will prevent … 936,000 deaths over their lifetimes.” That claim has also been levied against Secretary Kennedy. Here is why it is a junk claim. (Note that portions of this response are taken directly from my new book Vaccines, Amen.)
Newsletter + Selection Bias
First, this claim is an updated version of a 2014 MMWR report. MMWR is essentially CDC’s newsletter. CDC’s own guidelines for the MMWR only permit publishing articles that align with CDC policy, which results in the worst form of selection bias. As explained by the CDC’s policies for publishing an MMWR report: “By the time a report appears in MMWR, it reflects, or is consistent with, CDC policy.” Hence, this article would only be published until it was massaged to assure that it aligned with the CDC’s policy that vaccines are safe and effective. That approach is not science — it is the perversion of science.
No Confidence Intervals
Second, like the WHO advertising report I discussed yesterday, this is an “advertising report” for CDC’s immunization program and has no confidence intervals for its estimates. This is because they are just unreliable guesswork. The true rate could be that the vaccines caused 2 million deaths between in the United States from 1994 to 2023 because the report provides no bounds for its claims. Again, absent bounds for its claims, it could be equally true that vaccines resulted in causing 2 million extra deaths instead of a net saving in lives.
Ignores All Confounders
Third, it’s even worse, because the 2023 report explains that “factors other than immunization (e.g., hygiene…) might have contributed to lower disease risks in recent decades, and reductions resulting from these contributions have not been incorporated into the model” (emphasis added). Meaning, it did not account for any other advancement or factor that may have improved health outcomes. Nothing. This alone renders this CDC promotion “study” junk science. It is also why it has no bounds for its estimates because it cannot calculate them with any confidence.
The Hard Data Shows The 1.1 Million Claim Is Nonsense
Finally, just a simple review of the data shows how preposterous the numbers are. While it claims vaccines saved 1.1 million lives between 1994 and 2023, it takes only looking at the actual real-world data to see this figure is nonsense. Let’s look at three diseases the report claims account for almost the entire 1.1. million lives purportedly saved: diphtheria, hepatitis B, and measles.
Diphtheria
Around 750,000 of the 1.1. million lives (over 68%) that CDC claims were prevented are from diphtheria. That means that it claims 25,000 lives were saved per year by this vaccine. That figure is nonsensical. Here is why.
The first vaccine for diphtheria was introduced in 1926. Between 1900 and 1926, as the population rose, the death rate from this disease had already declined 81%, from 40.3 to 7.8 deaths per 100,000 individuals. A vaccine had nothing to do with this sharp decline since no vaccine of any kind for diphtheria existed until 1926. The further decline from 1926 until at least the mid-1940s also had little or nothing to do with the vaccine because it was rarely, if ever, used outside of certain demographics in major cities, and diphtheria mortality declined at a similar rate in areas with or without its use.[1]
Below is an official government chart reflecting same. So, even as the population increased, the data clearly shows an 81% mortality decline from 1900 to 1926, a 97.3% decline from 1900 to 1940, and a 97.8% decline from 1900 to 1948; hence, no matter how you look at it, vaccination had little to do with almost all of the decline in mortality from diphtheria in the last century:[2]
Finally, in 1949, DTP was first licensed, and coverage of this vaccine began to improve. The year prior, in 1948, there was a total of 634 deaths from diphtheria. Yet, this MMRW report nonsensically claims the diphtheria vaccine is now saving 25,000 lives a year in the United States. (Also note that in 1985, the coverage for only three doses, let alone the six recommended today, was still only 63.6%.)
This claim becomes more absurd when you consider that even after six childhood doses, adults require a booster dose every ten years in adulthood, and about 40% of adults skip these boosters. Despite a large portion of adults not receiving boosters, the last case of respiratory diphtheria in the United States was nearly three decades ago. This almost certainly reflects the extensive literature which supports that any harmful effects by the diphtheria toxin are counteracted by iron, vitamin C, and vitamin B3, and deficiencies of these vitamins and minerals have mostly been eliminated in developed countries.
There are diseases that had a high mortality in the United States that disappeared without a vaccine. For many of these diseases, researchers sought to develop a vaccine but failed. For example, scarlet fever was one of the deadliest infectious diseases for children in 1900, with a death rate of 9.6 deaths per 100,000 children. Researchers furiously sought to develop a vaccine but repeatedly failed. By the 1950s, deaths from scarlet fever had significantly declined and by the late 1900s, deaths from scarlet fever were essentially non-existent.
Had a vaccine for scarlet fever been developed in the 1920s, 40s, or 60s, that vaccine would almost certainly still be on the childhood schedule today, and its use would be considered essential for controlling scarlet fever; undoubtedly, this same CDC advertising article would be estimating that its use is now saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States.
In fact, scarlet fever and diphtheria are similar in that each is caused by a bacterium that releases a potentially harmful toxin when the bacterium has been “infected” by a certain virus. Both diseases cause sore throats, and many doctors, without a lab test, will confuse diphtheria with scarlet fever, and vice versa. These two diseases also have something else in common: both declined at nearly the same rate beginning in 1900. The primary reason why public health officials and the medical community behave differently with regard to these two diseases is that a vaccine was developed for diphtheria, but not for scarlet fever. If a vaccine for diphtheria had not emerged, this disease would have likely gone the way of scarlet fever and other childhood diseases that effectively disappeared without a vaccine.
Even if it would not have disappeared on its own, the article’s claim that 750,000 lives have been saved from diphtheria between 1994 and 2023 is absurd given the failure to account for the actual mortality data, other factors that reduced morality from diphtheria, the lack of any bounds to its claim, the lack of population-wide immunity and disappearance of the disease anyway, and the objective big picture reality regarding this disease; it truly requires a true religious fervor that suspends all reason and thinking to conclude that this vaccine has saved 25,000 lives per year between 1994 and 2023. The reality, based on the real-world data, is likely far closer to what occurred with scarlet fever absent vaccination.
Hepatitis B
As another example, the CDC advertisement article claims Hep B vaccines saved over 90,000 lives from 1994 to 2023, amounting to over 3,000 lives purportedly saved per year. This claim again defies data and reason. By way of background, the first Hep B vaccine was introduced in 1981 and was made with human blood plasma from donors who were chronically infected with the Hep B virus; and in 1986, a new Hep B vaccine using recombinant DNA technology without human blood was licensed. With that background, the mortality from Hep B climbed after introduction of the 1981 vaccine, continued to climb after the introduction of the 1986 vaccine, and has never returned to pre-vaccination levels. In 1980, there were 294 deaths in the United States from Hep B. Today, there are around 1,700 deaths per year. Yet, somehow, CDC claims that Hep B vaccine has saved over 3,000 lives per year between 1994 and 2023. It defies reason.
Measles
As a final example, CDC’s advertising article claims measles vaccine saved 85,000 lives from 1994 to 2023, amounting to over 2,700 lives purportedly saved per year. This claim again defies data. The first measles vaccine came on the market in 1963. In the years leading up to the first measles vaccine in 1963, the CDC data reflects around 400 deaths from measles each year. There were also around 4.2 million births each year in the late 1950s and early 1960s, whereas there was around 3.8 million births each year between 1994 and 2023. Yet, somehow, despite improvements in standards of living, medical care, etc., and despite smaller cohorts of infants and children to infect, this model makes the data-defying claim that mortality went from around 400 deaths per year from measles pre-vaccine to over 2,700 deaths per year.
But it gets far worse for the CDC advertisement’s claim because the following U.S. government chart shows the decline in the measles death rate by over 98% from 1900 to 1960, three years before the first measles vaccine was introduced in the United States in 1963. Meaning, the measles vaccine had nothing to do with the over 98% reduction in the death rate from measles in the United States from 1900 to 1960.
Taking a closer look, the CDC data reflects that in 1900, the rate of mortality from measles was 13.3 deaths per 100,000 individuals. By 1960, it was 0.2 deaths per 100,000 individuals. The same was true for 1961 and 1962. And as noted above, a similar decline of over 99% in measles deaths occurred between 1900 and 1967 in England and Wales, and it was only after that decline that the first measles vaccine was introduced there in 1968—five years after its introduction in the United States.
Hence, the same factors that caused measles mortality to decline by over 98% from 1900 to 1962 would, absent the vaccine interrupting the ecology of measles, likely have continued to cause a further reduction in the measles mortality rate after 1962. Meaning, at least a portion of the decline in the 400 deaths per year after the vaccine was available is no doubt attributable to the same factors that caused a steady decline in the measles death rate for decades prior to the introduction of the measles vaccine. Therefore, even without the measles vaccine, the death rate would have, no doubt, continued to decline after 1963.
In pockets of the country with poor nutrition, sanitation, and water, deaths from any pathogen, including measles, can occur at a higher rate. Those conditions still existed in some pockets of the United States in the early 1960s. As living conditions in those pockets of America improved with the introduction of clean water, improved sanitation, and better living conditions, deaths from measles declined, which is what typically occurs when these conditions improve. Let’s also not ignore that health care, especially the management and treatment of acute infections, has vastly improved since the 1960s. Doctors readily concede this point, unless you are talking about vaccines.
Yet, CDC claims that measles vaccines would have saved a data defying over 2,800 lives a year from measles in the United States between 1994 and 2023. CDC’s advertisement study, of course, also doesn’t account for the increase in deaths from heart disease and cancer due to the elimination of measles, as discussed in my previous post and reflected by studies that did not engage in estimates.
In sum, this CDC self-promotion article, that is not peer-reviewed and must conform to CDC policy to be published, does not account for any external factors, does not account for actual mortality data related to these diseases, and lacks any confidence intervals because its claims have zero reliability. Anyone citing this study claiming 1.1 million lives were saved is spreading propaganda. Not science.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1997101/pdf/pubhealthreporig01174-0001.pdf (“The simultaneous decline in diphtheria morbidity and mortality rates in all age groups of individual States located in different sections of the country, which began after a cyclic increase in incidence between 1915 and 1925, suggests the operation or influence of other factors besides, or in addition to, artificially induced immunity. Studies such as that included in the 1930 White House Conference on Child Health and Protection indicated that immunization programs were reaching a relatively large proportion of children in some areas or cities and a very low proportion in others as late as 1930. In spite of this wide variation, both morbidity and mortality began to decline rapidly after 1925 in all States simultaneously.”); https://www.cdc.gov/pinkbook/hcp/table-of-contents/chapter-7-diphtheria.html (“[D]iphtheria toxoid-containing vaccines became available in the 1940s” and “universal childhood vaccination program which included diphtheria toxoid-containing vaccines beginning in the late 1940s.”).
[2] The death rate per 100,000 individuals in the United States in 1900, 1940, and 1948 for diphtheria was 40.3, 1.1, and 0.4, respectively, for tetanus it was 2.4, 0.4., and 0.3, respectively, and for pertussis it was 12.2, 2.2, and 0.8, respectively. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/vsrates1940_60.pdf.
The Pandemic of Fake Psychiatric Diagnoses
By Peter C. Gøtzsche | Brownstone Institute | September 17, 2025
On 12 September, UK child and adolescent psychiatrist Sami Timimi published “When mental-health diagnoses become brands, the real drivers of our psychic pain are hidden” in the Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper.
In his superb article, Sami carefully explains how he arrives at his painful conclusion:
You see there is a truth that we (in the mental-health business) hope no one will notice – we literally don’t know what we are talking about when it comes to mental health.
An obvious problem is that all definitions of psychiatric disorders are subjective. They are not objective facts such as a broken bone is. This means they can be expanded in a myriad of ways to capture a kaleidoscope of distress, alienation, and dissatisfaction, and that psychiatric diagnoses are consumer brands, not medical diseases.
In medicine, a diagnosis is aimed at determining which disease explains a person’s symptoms and signs, which enables effective matching of a treatment to address specific disease processes.
This is not the case in psychiatry. And all psychiatric drugs have nonspecific effects that are not directed against some cause of a disease. Their effects are similar to those of alcohol, narcotics, and other brain-active substances.
But, as Sami explains, increasingly, youngsters are getting diagnosed with ADHD, trauma, depression, anxiety, PTSD, autism, and often several such diagnoses. Their conversations may address gender identity, neurodiversity, and “having” a mental health disorder such as ADHD.
The facts are that virtually no one is in doubt about whether they are male or female; neurodiversity is a meaningless concept used by psychiatrists to impress the public about how knowledgeable they are but it just means that all people are not the same; and one cannot “have” ADHD, which is just a name for a subjective description of rather common behaviours and therefore cannot explain anything.
What people should realise is that it is part of being human to have difficulties that can be handled better if we don’t give people psychiatric diagnoses and drugs. Difficulties often have a cause that has nothing to do with being ill, e.g. poverty, trauma, inadequate housing, social injustice, marital problems, discrimination, exclusion, bereavement, unemployment, and financial insecurity. Life is not easy, but if you have difficulty coping with its challenges, you can easily get one or more psychiatric diagnoses.
There is a lot of misinformation that leads people astray, in scientific articles, newspapers, TV, radio, and social media. When youngsters look up descriptions of people who say they “have” ADHD on social media, they may be convinced they “have” it too and may even self-diagnose. There is an element of social contagion in this, and the criteria for ADHD are so vague and ludicrous that when I lecture and ask people to use the adult ADHD test on themselves, it never fails that one quarter to half the audience test positive.
Often, authoritative information is also seriously misleading or even mendacious, which I have documented in my books and articles, most recently in my freely available book, “Is psychiatry a crime against humanity?” and in the freely available article, “The only medical specialty that survives on lies.”
Sami mentions a patient information leaflet on antidepressants produced by a British national mental health service that includes the following advice:
It can sometimes take weeks, months or even years, to get the right medicine at the right dose for you. Think of it as a bit like dating. Some make you feel sick or sleepy; some are great to start with but wear off; others may not be much to start with but after a while grow on you. Then you might have found the one that makes you feel good long-term. So don’t lose hope if the first one doesn’t work.
It is an illusion to think that if you wait long enough and try enough drugs, one will work for you. Most mental health issues become better with time, without any treatment, which is misinterpreted as a drug effect, and research has shown that it doesn’t help to change drugs or increase the dose of drugs (see my freely available “Critical Psychiatry Textbook”).
The illusion that it helps to try several antidepressant drugs comes from the STAR*D trial, a $35 million fraud funded by the US National Institute of Mental Health.
Sami writes that he is impressed by the extraordinary ability of even the most severely afflicted of the young patients he sees to recover functionality and meaning in their lives. His advice to parents with troubled kids is that they should not agree to having their children assessed for ADHD, autistic spectrum disorder, or anxiety (or depression, as depression drugs double suicides). We should be able to talk about how we feel without jumping into panic mode and imagining that what we’re describing could be the onset of some mental disorder. Sami goes on to say that,
As we are launched into a seemingly never-ending search for the right diagnosis and treatment, we start collecting labels and accompanying interventions. Each step in this journey has the potential to make it harder to accept your child (or yourself) just the way they are with all their uniqueness and the mysterious wonderful variety of ways they might thrive in this maddening world. Be patient and categorize psychological problems in the sphere of the ordinary and/or understandable… Our duty as parents (and to each other as adults) is not to prevent our children from experiencing distress (which is impossible), but to be there and take the time and have the patience to be with them and support them when they do.
Beware of concept creep. As what I call the Mental Health Industrial Complex has burrowed its way into day-to-day language and “common sense,” concepts have been popularized that encourage us to view behaviours and experiences in pathological ways. We no longer become sad or miserable, we get depressed… You and your children’s experiences nearly always sit in the realm of the ordinary and/or understandable… Arming yourself with some knowledge to help you avoid the prolific spread of scientism (faith masquerading as science) could save you or your child becoming another number in the growing crowds of those who are deemed to have lifelong and incapacitating mental disorder/illness. These conditions were never meant to be a life sentence.
If all doctors heeded Sami’s advice, fewer people would kill themselves and fewer people would become permanently disabled. But in a world where healthcare is heavily influenced by the drug industry’s corruption of doctors, it is reasonable to ask: Are psychiatrists more mad than their patients? I have responded in the affirmative.
Like me, Sami is a member of the Critical Psychiatry Network based in England. My experience with lecturing for psychiatrists has led me to believe that over 99% of psychiatrists are uncritical towards their practice. Think about it. This is why psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death and why psychiatry as a profession does far more harm than good.
Don’t our kids and friends deserve better than this?
Dr. Peter Gøtzsche co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration, once considered the world’s preeminent independent medical research organization. In 2010 Gøtzsche was named Professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis at the University of Copenhagen. Gøtzsche has published more than 97 over 100 papers in the “big five” medical journals (JAMA, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, and Annals of Internal Medicine). Gøtzsche has also authored books on medical issues including Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime.
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From the Archives
The New Baghdad Pact
By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban | February 23, 2017
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
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