HHS Will Link Autism to Tylenol Use During Pregnancy, Wall Street Journal Reports
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 5, 2025
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to announce that autism is linked to the use of Tylenol during pregnancy in a report expected to be released this month, The Wall Street Journal reported today.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will also likely suggest that low levels of the vitamin folate also contribute to autism. The report will propose that a form of folate called folic acid, or leucovorin, can be used to treat symptoms of the disorder, according to the WSJ.
Acetaminophen, the ingredient found in hundreds of prescription and over-the-counter medicines — including Tylenol products — is routinely recommended for fever reduction and the relief of mild to moderate pain. Pregnant women commonly take it.
The drug has long been linked to liver toxicity, and several studies over the last decade — including one published last month by researchers at Harvard Medical School — have found that children exposed to the drug during pregnancy may be more likely to develop neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD.
Shares of Tylenol, made by McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Kenvue, declined nearly 11% Friday after the WSJ published its report.
“Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of the people who use our products,” a Kenvue spokeswoman told the WSJ. “We have continuously evaluated the science and continue to believe there is no causal link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says Tylenol is safe to use in pregnancy. In 2021, as more evidence of the link was emerging, the organization published a statement opposing a consensus statement supported by a group of 91 scientists in the journal Nature Reviews Endocrinology. The scientists said that a growing body of research suggests that prenatal exposure to the drug may alter fetal development and increase the risks of neurodevelopmental, reproductive and urogenital disorders.
“ACOG and obstetrician-gynecologists across the country have always identified acetaminophen as one of the only safe pain relievers for pregnant individuals during pregnancy,” the pharmaceutical industry-sponsored medical organization insisted.
An estimated 1 in 31 (3.22%) 8-year-old children had an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis in 2022 — up from 1 in 36 (2.8%) in 2020, and 1 in 1,000 children in the 1990s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest study, published earlier this year.
Studies have also linked Tylenol use in children with permanent impairments in cognition and socialization in susceptible children, including when administered after vaccination.
“The body of evidence around acetaminophen and autism really suggests that the highest risks are not prenatal but neonatal and postnatal,” according to Children’s Health Defense Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker.
“If I were to rank the risk periods, neonatal would be the highest, postnatal next and prenatal the least, given that pregnant women will be able to help detox the acetaminophen, reducing the burden on the developing unborn child,” Hooker said.
Kennedy announced in April that the public health agencies had launched a “massive testing and research effort” to determine what causes autism.
He said the effort involves hundreds of scientists globally and promised results by this month. Kennedy said that once the environmental causes of autism are identified, “We’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”
Last month, Kennedy told President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting that his agency was on track to announce the findings of an ongoing study on the causes of autism in September.
“We’re finding interventions, certain interventions now that are clearly almost certainly causing autism, and we’re going to be able to address those in September,” Kennedy said.
Reuters reported that researchers have submitted more than 100 proposals to participate in the Trump administration’s $50 million study into possible causes of autism. A list of 25 grant winners is expected to be announced at the end of the month.
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.
While America panics, Europe quietly recalibrates Covid-19 vaccine policy
Maryanne Demasi, PhD | September 3, 2025
As of 1 September, Sweden no longer recommends Covid-19 vaccination for children unless an individual medical assessment finds they are at increased risk of severe disease.
Even then, it is only available with a doctor’s prescription.
Adults are eligible for a single dose only if they are 75 and older, or belong to defined risk groups.
It is a strikingly cautious policy — yet in Sweden, there is no sense of crisis. Public health officials describe it as a proportionate step, aligned with the evidence.
By contrast, in the United States, the temperature has been rising over the narrowing of Covid-19 vaccine policy. The medical establishment has long been hostile toward Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr, but in recent weeks the attacks have escalated.
This week in the New York Times, nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that his decisions mean “children risk losing access to lifesaving vaccines.”
On ABC TV, outgoing CDC official Dr Demetre Daskalakis intensified the rhetoric, claiming he “only sees harm coming” for America’s children. The language was deliberately alarming and intended to signal an emerging catastrophe.
Dr Demetre Daskalakis, former director, CDC National Center for Immunization & Respiratory Diseases.
In reality, though, the policies under review in the US look more like a belated effort to bring American practice closer to what Europe has already done.
The CDC’s own data illustrate why recalibration makes sense.
Figures show that the risk of children dying from Covid-19 equates to roughly 1 in 810,000 per year (0.000123%) — an infinitesimally low risk.
It’s even lower for children without underlying conditions, closer to 1 in 1.75 million (0.000057%).
Despite these tiny mortality figures, Daskalakis warned that half of infants hospitalised for Covid-19 last season had “no underlying conditions.”
But that claim paints a distorted picture.
A Covid-19 hospitalisation is defined as “a positive SARS-CoV-2 test ≤14 days before admission or during hospitalisation,” meaning any child treated for a broken arm or routine surgery but testing positive, is still counted as a Covid case.
When researchers examined hospital charts more closely, they found roughly 30% of paediatric Covid-19 admissions were ‘incidental’ – in other words, they were hospitalised with Covid, not for Covid.
CDC’s adult data showed a similar pattern.
Other countries ahead of the curve
Across Europe and beyond, other nations are moving in the same direction as Sweden.
The United Kingdom has also tightened eligibility as it heads into autumn, limiting Covid boosters to people over 75, nursing-home residents, and those with weakened immune systems.
Its guidance notes that “in the current era of high population immunity to Covid-19, additional Covid-19 doses provide very limited, if any, protection against infection and any subsequent onward transmission of infection.”
These are targeted, risk-based policies aligned to measurable benefits.
Australia, too, has shifted. In May, the Department of Health quietly updated its immunisation handbook to state that healthy children and adolescents under 18 without medical conditions no longer need the Covid-19 vaccine.
There was no press conference, no ministerial statement, no media blitz. And most notably, no outrage from the medical establishment.
Taken together, these changes show nations with advanced health systems are adjusting policies in response to the evidence.
Unlike in the US, no one accuses countries like Sweden, Britain, or Australia of ‘sacrificing children’ by narrowing access to Covid-19 vaccines.
Hepatitis B on the radar
On September 18-19, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will meet to vote on various issues, including the current hepatitis B schedule.
Daskalakis warned that at its upcoming meeting, ACIP might “try to change the birth dose,” arguing that public health only gets “one bite of that apple” to vaccinate newborns against hepatitis B.
But several advanced European programs already do not give a universal day-one dose.
Instead, they target it to babies of mothers who test positive for hepatitis B, since most are screened in hospital, and begin routine doses later in infancy.
Denmark follows this approach. It is mainstream policy, endorsed by national health authorities, and no one suggests Danish babies are being left unprotected.
Scrutiny, not sabotage
The criticism of ACIP has been fierce.
Current members are branded as “dangerous” or anti-vaccine when their real offense is pressing for increased scrutiny and asking difficult questions. That is what an advisory committee is meant to do.
Kennedy is accused of sabotaging access to vaccines, but his approach is simply a call for the ‘gold standard’ science that Americans were promised by this administration.
As FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said this week, the CDC is a “broken” agency. That is why proportional policies and humility matter.
The way forward is not to alarm Americans with talk of bans or lost access to vaccines. It is to deliver risk-based, evidence-driven recommendations, as peer nations already do, and to be candid about uncertainty.
That is how public health begins to rebuild trust…the trust Kennedy says he now hopes to restore.
Wrong, CBS and Other Media Outlets, Abrupt Antarctic “Climate Shifts” Are Not New or Necessarily Catastrophic
By Anthony Watts and H. Sterling Burnett | ClimateRealism | August 29, 2025
A recent CBS News article, “Abrupt Antarctic climate shifts could lead to ‘catastrophic consequences for generations,’ experts warn,” claims that Antarctica is on the brink of irreversible collapse due to climate change, warning that sea levels could rise by meters and that “catastrophic consequences for generations” are looming. This is false or, at best, deeply misleading. The actual data and history of Antarctic ice show that “abrupt changes” are neither unprecedented nor a reason to panic. Natural variability and cyclical shifts are being ignored in favor of sensational headlines pushing the increasingly untenable climate crisis narrative.
CBS was not alone in pushing the Antarctic climate crisis narrative. On 21 August 2025, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) joined the chorus of media outlets with alarming headlines warning of pending ice collapse, publishing a report claiming Antarctica is undergoing “rapid, self-perpetuating changes” that are “potentially irreversible.” Each of the reports cited a new Nature review led by Professor Nerilie Abram, as the source of the information for their alarming articles.
ABC’s article presents Antarctica as being in a state of runaway decline, with imminent threats to emperor penguins and global sea levels, parroting language from the Abram paper as if it were observed fact, rather than the speculative synthesis of research papers that the Nature study cites. CBS, ABC, and other media outlets are covering this story as if a tipping point is upon us—but a closer look at the evidence reveals otherwise.
CBS News warns:
Abrupt and potentially irreversible changes in Antarctica driven by climate change could lift global oceans by meters and lead to ‘catastrophic consequences for generations,’ scientists warned Wednesday. … After increasing slightly during the first 35 years that satellite data was available, Antarctic sea-ice cover plunged dramatically over the last decade.
Australia’s ABC News, meanwhile, uncritically repeats Abram’s claims and, describing the Antarctic as “rapidly, self-perpetuating” on the cusp of collapse, while offering little discussion of data—leaning instead on worst-case modeling and literature reviews.
Antarctic data and an examination of its history show that such events have happened previously, long before anyone was worried about human-caused climate change, and they are not self-perpetuating but rather, seem cyclical in nature.
The CBS article claims that “Antarctic sea-ice cover plunged dramatically over the last decade,” citing a “regime shift” since 2014. ABC News, echoing the same theme, refers to a sudden and supposedly “irreversible” decline. But both articles omit key facts, among them:
- The “Abrupt” Decline Follows Decades of Expansion. Satellite measurements of Antarctic sea-ice began in late 1978. For most of the next 36 years, Antarctic sea-ice was stable or increasing, setting multiple record highs between 2007 and 2014. In October 2014, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported: “Antarctic sea-ice extent set an all-time record high for the third straight year.” This expansion occurred for more than 30 years during the period when the Earth was warming, contradicting claims that warming inevitably reduces Antarctic sea-ice.
- The recent sharp declines since 2016 are real, but as the most robust satellite records show, these represent a regime shift within a variable system—not evidence of permanent or “runaway” collapse as one recent paper detailed.
- Evidence of Antarctica’s history shows that natural variability dominates changes in Antarctica. Longer reconstructions, stretching back to 1905, confirm that Antarctic sea-ice has experienced periods of large growth and subsequent declines over the past century. One 2020, study demonstrated that natural variability, including the influence of atmospheric and oceanic circulation, have likely played a role in any recent changes, as they drove such changes in the past.
As importantly as all this is, concern for the recent decline in sea ice is largely misplaced since, as even CBS news acknowledged in its story, [f]loating sea ice does not significantly add to sea level when it melts . . ..” As a result, neither the “record setting” expansion of sea-ice spanning the late 20th and early 21st century nor the recent decline significantly effect sea levels.
Perhaps that’s why the new stories tried to tie the sea-ice decline to rising seas indirectly saying the sea ice retreat, “ . . . does replace white surfaces that reflect almost all of the sun’s energy back into space with deep blue water, which absorbs the same amount instead.”
The problem here is, there is no evidence the earlier multidecade expansion of sea-ice or the recent decline has a causal connection to ice growth or expansion on mainland Antarctica, the latter of which could impact sea levels. Indeed, the record indicates that for some of the period when sea-ice was expanding, Antarctica was losing mass, and now, while it is in decline, Antarctica is gaining ice on net, reducing sea level rise.
Shifting focus from sea-ice to Antarctica’s mainland, the CBS and ABC News shift attention to recent ice losses on the West Antarctic ice sheet and in particular the declining Thwaites glacier.
When discussing ice sheets, both outlets repeat claims that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has crossed a point of no return. But they fail to mention that West Antarctica sits atop a tectonic rift system with elevated geothermal heat flux, which drives melting from below, regardless of atmospheric conditions. In short, subsurface volcanic activity or heating from tectonic shifts is melting the region’s ice from below, and causing increased flow into the sea.
Indeed, Direct borehole measurements, aeromagnetic surveys, and radar-based research confirm anomalously high heat flow in the region from beneath the mass. This subglacial influence helps explain why areas like Amundsen and Thwaites behave differently from the stable East Antarctic.
Also, the northern Antarctic Peninsula, which is frequently highlighted for its instability, extends north of the Antarctic Circle into sub-Antarctic latitudes. Its climate and dynamics cannot be generalized to the rest of the continent according to NASA Earth Observatory in 2014.
Climate Realism has previously discussed the causes and consequences of ice loss on the Antarctic peninsula and in the West Antarctic multiple times previously, here and here, for example, in each case debunking a media claim that humans are behind the loss.
Antarctica’s ice loss is important, CBS and ABC tell us, because the Antarctic Ice Sheet’s collapse could “raise sea levels by meters,” threatening “hundreds of millions.” But the actual rate of global sea level rise, measured by satellites and tide gauges, is about 3 millimeters per year as detailed in Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise. At this rate, it would take 333 years to reach even a single meter of rise.
The idea of meters of sea level rise by 2100 is rooted in computer models, not observation. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concedes that melting the East Antarctic Ice Sheet would require thousands of years and temperature increases far beyond any plausible scenario this century:
Loss of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) is very unlikely over this century and beyond under scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions considered in this report. Complete loss of the EAIS would require sustained global warming significantly above the levels projected for this century, and would take thousands of years.
Putting the supposed amount of Antarctic glacier loss in context is important, because as a percentage of the continent’s total ice volume, recent reported losses from the continent are miniscule, contrary to media hype. See the figure below, as presented at Climate at a Glance Antarctic Ice Melt.
Figure: Comparison of satellite data for Antarctic ice mass loss. Cumulative ice mass loss on the left and that same data compared to the total mass of ice on the right.
Data source: http://imbie.org. Graphs originally by Willis Eschenbach, adapted and annotated by Anthony Watts.
Describing the ice changes in Antarctica as “irreversible” or “runaway” is nothing more than alarming speculation that ignores evidence to the contrary.
CBS, ABC, and the other mainstream media outlets touting the study’s warnings about the future also ignore the fact that contrary to the implication of the study, Antarctica is actually gaining ice at present and has for the past couple of years.
As discussed at Climate Change Weekly, In late April and early May, mainstream media outlets ran dozens of stories discussing the findings of a recent study that showed Antarctica’s ice mass was growing. The outlets called the ice and snow gain “astonishing,” “surprising,” and “shock[ing]” and said it “startled the scientific community.” That’s right, recent research shows that the Antarctic has not warmed over the past seven decades and that the vast bulk of Antarctica experienced substantial ice growth in the past couple of years, reversing the decline reported in Nature that ABC, CBS, and other outlets are writing about. Glacial melt which had been contributing to sea level rise reversed itself over a period of three years, adding mass and cutting Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise.
Any reporting that omits the physics, history, and current trends is incomplete and misleading. And any story that blames global warming for glacier melt in Antarctica and subsequent sea level rise, when the continent has not experienced warming, glaciers on the whole are growing and thus reducing sea level rise, is just false.
Both ABC and CBS also point to emperor penguin breeding failures as a result of climate change, implying an existential threat across the species. Yet the 2025 study making these claims conducted a regional and local survey of selected colonies from 2009 to 2024, reporting a 22 percent decline in those specific locations. It didn’t look at the health of emperor penguin colonies across Antarctic as a whole. The authors themselves specifically cautioned that their results may not represent the entire Antarctic coastline—a vital caveat that ABC and CBS’s stories lack. With emperor penguins living for decades, a 15-year record is simply too short to establish population trajectories. These penguins have survived warm and cold phases across the Holocene. To suggest continent-wide extinction risk by 2100 is not supported by the available evidence.
In the end, history shows that the expansion and contraction of Antarctic sea-ice are natural features of a highly variable system. Short-term losses are not proof of a “runaway” tipping point; rather, they are well within known ranges of natural variability.
CBS, ABC, and other media outlets are constructing a narrative of Antarctic collapse by cherry-picking short-term declines, ignoring decades of stability and increase, omitting key physical context, and leaning on speculative reviews. Climate Realism has factually debunked similar media scare stories in the past, here and here. The actual Antarctic observational record reveals a dynamic system—one that expands and contracts, shaped by natural variability, oceanic and atmospheric cycles, and unique geographic barriers.
The catastrophic claims ABC and CBS are parroting are not only unsupported, they fly in the face of decades of data and scientific understanding. Had the mainstream media displayed a little investigative curiosity, it would have questioned the recent study’s findings, since the evidence clearly shows Antarctic “climate shifts” are not a harbinger of doom but another chapter in a long story of natural change.
RFK JR. LAUNCHES HHS PROBE INTO SSRIS, SCHOOL SHOOTINGS
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 28, 2025
The tragic mass shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school by a 23-year-old shooter, who identified as transgender, has reignited concerns about a possible connection between SSRIs and violent mass shootings. HHS Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the National Institutes of Health will investigate whether these widely prescribed antidepressants may play a role in fueling such acts of violence.
IPCC Likely to Start Blaming Humans For Weather as Friederike Otto Takes Key Role
The foxes are now firmly in charge of the chicken coop
By Chris Morrison | The Climate Skeptic | August 24, 2025
Last December the Daily Sceptic published an article reporting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could be preparing to start blaming humans for individual bad weather events. Straws-in-the-wind stuff, based on an IPCC press release claiming a century of burning hydrocarbons had resulted in “more frequent and intense extreme weather events”. To date, the IPCC has failed to detect that humans using hydrocarbons have led to worse bad weather on the simple scientific ground that it is impossible, with current data sources, to remove the overwhelming role of natural variation. Our story was prescient. It’s all change at the IPCC, with the appointment of Attribution Queen Friederike Otto and a troop of fellow attributionists to take charge of writing a new chapter on extreme weather for its forthcoming seventh climate science assessment report. With the foxes now in charge of the chicken coop, political order can be restored, with the IPCC science more closely aligned with current Net Zero political requirements.
Dr Otto, who runs the Green Blob-funded World Weather Attribution (WWA) operation out of Imperial College, has been appointed the co-leader of the extreme weather chapter. “It will be a lot of work, but it also gives a lot of opportunity to shape the structure and focus of the chapter”, she notes. WWA paymasters who include the Grantham, European Climate and Bezos Earth foundations will no doubt be delighted with this news. Helping her shape the narrative going forward will be a number of writers who are all in on the single event attribution game. The science writer Roger Pielke Jr notes that the team is “stacked” with people who focus on extreme event attribution (EEA) – “far out of proportion to their presence in the field”. Few of the authors, if any, he adds, have expertise in the IPCC’s conventional framework for detection and attribution (D&A), and some have no publications on either detection or attribution. He points out that nine out of 20 of the authors focus their research on EEA, including two of the three coordinating leads.
One-off weather attribution is a pseudoscience based mostly on the flimsy findings of computer models. Two imaginary atmospheres with different levels of carbon dioxide are compared, and, hey presto, claims are made that a weather event is x times more likely to be caused by humans.
Complete with a suitable large multiple, the results are distributed to ‘join-the-dots’ merchants such as Jim Dale, as well as mainstream media climate desks. Worldwide publicity is given to ‘science’ findings that obviously fail the Popperian principle in that they cannot be tested and falsified. The non-peer-reviewed information is pushed out quickly in a press release, with the disaster fresh in the media minds. Climate fear levels in the general population are kept nicely topped up – job done. Climate ‘deniers’ can be dismissed with a head-in-the-hands sigh and a “can’t you even see the evidence outside your own window?” Of course, the entire unquestioning media meltdown is based on the false notion that computer models produce ‘evidence’, when in reality they just supply opinions.
In 2019, the former BBC Today editor Sarah Sands wrote a foreword for a WWA journalist guide to reporting extreme weather. She recalled the time when the UK politician Nigel Lawson managed to slip into a BBC broadcast that there had been no increase in extreme weather. “I wish we had this guide for journalists to help us mount a more effective challenge to his claim,” she gushed. These days, she enthused, attribution studies have given us significant insight into the horsemen of the climate apocalypse.
In the past, the IPCC has failed to detect and attribute most extreme weather to human involvement, and it did not expect to do so for the rest of the century. It is becoming increasingly obvious that computer models are poor at replicating the complex atmosphere and offer little guidance for future climate projections. Detecting changes in the climate requires many decades of observation. The idea that one event can shortcut an understanding of a long-term trend, when there is no way of knowing if it is a statistical outlier, is for the birds. Collecting one-offs from a number of different weather types and claiming that humans control the weather would just be silly if it wasn’t designed to induce mental anguish and screw oil and gas firms in court.
With many of the poster scares of climate collapse having to be retired – even melting Arctic sea ice has gone on strike for 20 years – the desperation of activists is getting noticeably worse. One of the last throws of the dice is running bad weather scares. Net Zero is dead in the United States, and a recent official government report stated that computer models offered “little guidance” on how the climate responds to higher CO₂ levels. It also noted that most extreme weather events are not increasing, while weather attribution claims are challenged by natural climate variation, along with an admission that they were originally designed with ‘lawfare’ in mind.
WWA was set up in 2014 by Otto and Dr Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, with Green Blob-funded Climate Central providing support and help with securing funding. These days, the operation notes that its methods have been developed over time and “peer reviewed in dedicated methods publications”. A link to the claimed peer review is helpfully provided on its website, and this brings up a paper titled ‘Pathways and Pitfalls in Extreme Event Attribution.’ Interestingly, the first peer reviewer is Dr Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, while the fifth is Dr Friederike Otto.
In 2022, a group of four Italian scientists led by Professor Gianluca Alimonti published a paper in Nature based on data used by the IPCC that concluded there had been little change in extreme weather events. Such findings and data are easy to find, although mainstream media is mostly absent from the search. On the basis of their factual findings, the Italians suggested there was not a climate crisis. All hell subsequently broke loose, and an alliance of activists, journalists and scientists managed to get the paper retracted a year later. One of those activists was Otto who said the authors were “of course” not writing their paper in good faith. “If the journal cares about science they should withdraw it loudly and publicly, saying that it should never have been published”, she added. At the time of the infamous affair, Pielke observed: “The abuse of the peer-reviewed process documented here is remarkable and stands as a warning that climate science is as deeply politicised as ever with scientists willing to exert influence on the publication process both out in the open and behind the scenes”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
‘Medically Reckless’: AAP Pushes Mental Health Screenings for Kids as Young as 6 Months Old
‘Parents must know they have the right to refuse these screenings’
By Jill Erzen | The Defender | August 27, 2025
Children as young as 6 months old should begin regular screenings for mental or developmental issues at every well-child visit, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said in a clinical report released Aug. 25.
Critics of the report fear the recommendations will lead to misdiagnosing and further overmedicating children.
“It is alarming that pressure is being put on pediatricians by the AAP to actively look for signs of depression in a 2-year-old,” Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at MIT, told The Defender.
Pushing mental health screening for children leads to the expectation of psychiatric problems being woven into standards of care, said Robert Whitaker, author of “Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.”
“And the screening instruments the pediatricians will employ will have been constructed to identify a certain percentage of children as being in need of treatment,” he said.
The AAP report, published online in the journal Pediatrics, recommends that mental health screening begin at 6 months old and continue as part of well-child visits at ages 1, 2 and 3. After age 3, screening would continue annually.
The report said as many as 1 in 5 children in the U.S., including kids as young as 2, have mental or behavioral issues such as depression, anxiety, ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) or suicidal thoughts.
However, studies show mental health issues are commonly misdiagnosed. Depression has been falsely diagnosed 66% of the time, and generalized anxiety disorder has been incorrectly assessed 71% of the time.
“Parents should be more than just skeptical,” said Whitaker. “They should be alarmed by this push for ‘early detection.’ Screening of children, starting when they are very young, will of course lead a significant percentage to be diagnosed with one disorder or another.”
That diagnosis then “serves to pathologize the child, and that diagnosis may stick to the child for years, possibly through childhood and into adulthood,” he said. And a diagnosis “often will lead to a prescription for a psychiatric drug, and the scientific evidence on this is quite clear: over the long term, this will harm the child.”
Whitaker added:
“Or to put it another way, while screening and early detection is presented to the public as an effort to help the child, in reality it serves as an assault on the child’s right to be — to grow up without being tagged as ‘abnormal’ and forced to take a drug that will change the child’s capacity to experience the world.”
Screening toddlers for psychiatric disorders is ‘medically reckless’
The AAP claims rates of mental, emotional and behavioral problems in the U.S. are rising, and early detection will lead to intervention.
However, an August 2022 study in Preventive Medicine concluded that screening adolescents for depression does not reduce their treatment for suicidal behaviors.
A 2017 review found no evidence that screening children improves mental health outcomes, but instead raises the risk of potential harm and wasted resources.
“Screening babies, toddlers and schoolchildren for psychiatric disorders is medically reckless,” said Jan Eastgate, president of Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) International, a mental health industry watchdog.
She added:
“The questionnaires are based on a subjective and unscientific diagnostic system that pathologizes normal childhood behavior. Instead of helping families, they funnel children into a pipeline of psychiatric drugging — substances that can be addictive, damage the heart, and even drive them to suicide.”
The AAP, which represents 67,000 pediatricians in the U.S., stated that pediatricians are best equipped to work with families to identify issues early and provide children with the necessary help.
The AAP is also a lobbying organization. It spent between $748,000 and $1.18 million annually over the previous six years to advocate for its members, according to Open Secrets.
Some of the AAP’s biggest financial contributions come from major pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly, GSK, Merck, Moderna and Pfizer.
In January 2024, an AAP study published in Pediatrics found that more children were being subjected to restraint drugs — antipsychotics used to sedate — because more children were being admitted to mental health facilities.
During the 2016-2021 study period, the analysis found a 141% increase in the use of restraint drugs overall, and longer inpatient stays. Pharmacological restraints tend to be used with greater frequency on autistic children, low-income children and children of color.
According to the mail-order pharmacy Express Scripts, prescriptions for antidepressants for teenagers increased 38% from 2015-2019.
The AAP has been diagnosing and medicating children for decades, and the data show it doesn’t benefit children, Whitaker said.
He added:
“Early detection will just amplify the harm that is already being done to so many children by diagnosis plus drug treatment.
“What we should be doing if so many of our children are struggling, starting at an early age, is fixing the environment for raising children in our country. The children’s struggles don’t tell of a problem within the child, but within our society, and diagnosing the child just puts the blame inside the child.
“This promotion of early detection. … It’s an assault on our children.”
‘Alarming list of serious side effects’
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a first-line medication for children diagnosed with moderate to severe depression and anxiety. However, these medications carry a black box warning for a potential, though low, increased risk of suicidal thoughts, according to the AAP’s webpage, Antidepressants: Pediatric Mental Health Minute Series.
“SSRIs have an alarming list of serious side effects, the most egregious of which might be serotonin syndrome, which can cause death,” Seneff said. SSRIs raise levels of serotonin — a hormone and neurotransmitter that regulates mood.
While common side effects of SSRIs include diarrhea, headache, sleepiness and weight gain, the medications are also associated with serious adverse events, including heart rhythm changes, bleeding and thoughts of suicide or self-harm.
The risks of prescribing antidepressants are greater in children than in adults, Seneff said:
“A child’s developing brain will respond to these drugs in unpredictable ways. Early exposure to SSRIs could lead to permanent but currently unknown disruptions in brain development. We should rather be devoting our efforts to figuring out why so many kids are so emotionally disturbed today.”
Studies show benefits don’t outweigh risks
A 2025 study examined the link between antidepressant medications and fatal heart events. Researchers reviewed the death records of every adult ages 18-90 living in Denmark in 2010. In all age groups, the longer people used antidepressants, the more likely they were to die from sudden cardiac death.
In June 2022, the International Journal of Risk Safety Medicine published a study raising concerns about the first U.S.-approved SSRI antidepressant, fluoxetine. The authors reviewed several core studies used as the basis for the drug’s approval, and found that “the two pivotal trials showed that fluoxetine is unsafe and ineffective.”
Fluoxetine is the only SSRI antidepressant approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating major depression in patients as young as 8 years old. Yet, the FDA warns that children treated with antidepressants should be closely observed for agitation, irritability, suicidality and unusual changes in behavior.
The benefits of SSRIs have not been shown to outweigh the risks.
In 2022, FDA researchers published an extensive review of antidepressant studies in the BMJ. In total, the data from 1979-2016 covered 73,388 patients with diagnosed depression.
The analysis found that antidepressants outperformed placebo in just 15% of patients, and the benefit was almost entirely limited to people with the most severe forms of depression. For everyone else, the improvement was likely due to belief and expectation, not the drug itself.
The AAP recommendation for mental health screening was announced just weeks after Illinois became the first state to mandate mental health screenings for students in grades 3-12.
The Illinois law, set to take effect in the 2027-2028 school year, requires schools to conduct self-screenings annually using either digital or paper forms.
CCHR International said such subjective screening has shown an 84% “false positive” rate that could lead to teens being prescribed antidepressants, which in turn have been linked to an increase in suicide and/or acts of violence.
The source of such screening questionnaires can also be suspect, according to CCHR International.
The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) was first developed in 2001 and administered as a universal intervention in high schools to identify and treat depression, according to CCHR International. It was developed through a grant from Pfizer, the manufacturer of the antidepressant Zoloft (sertraline).
In 2010, the company made both its PHQ-9 and General Anxiety Disorder questionnaire available to primary care doctors “without copyright restriction and at no charge.” Prescriptions of sertraline jumped 33%, from almost 29 million prescriptions in 2004 to over 38 million in 2020.
“Parents must know they have the right to refuse these screenings,” Eastgate said. She added:
“Signing an ‘Opt-Out’ form is essential to protect their child from being falsely labeled with a mental disorder and drugged. Informed consent belongs to parents — not to a psychiatric screening checklist that has no scientific foundation and is often developed by pharmaceutical interests.”
Related articles in The Defender
How the American Academy of Pediatrics Betrayed Children Everywhere
By Clayton J. Baker, MD | Brownstone Institute | August 25, 2025
The prime directive of Western medicine, its golden rule, is expressed by the Latin maxim primum non nocere – first, do no harm. Unfortunately, the Covid era taught us that from the patient’s point of view, a better motto for our times might be caveat emptor – let the buyer beware.
Every medical student is taught that, first and foremost, they should not cause harm to their patients, and every doctor is familiar with this maxim. It is echoed in the Hippocratic Oath, and it forms the basis for the four pillars of medical ethics: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice.
This rule, and the core tenets of medical ethics that it underpins, were all abandoned during the Covid era. They were replaced with a brutal, inhumane, and unethical martial-law-as-public-health approach to medicine. The results were unconstitutional lockdowns, prolonged school closures, suppression of early treatment, mandated vaccinations, and silencing of dissenting views. These abuses were justified by constant propaganda and lies from public health authorities, the medical establishment, the mainstream media, and medical professional associations.
Enter the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is the largest professional association for pediatricians in the United States. Nearly one hundred years old, the AAP’s motto is “Dedicated to the Health of All Children.” But as with so much of the medical establishment, the Covid era revealed that the AAP has abandoned its stated mission, and in the process, it has betrayed children everywhere.
During the Covid era, no group was harmed more – or more unnecessarily – than children, who lost multiple years of education, socialization, and normal growth and development. Many millions of kids also received the fraudulently tested, toxic, experimental mRNA-based injections that were coercively imposed upon the population at large. Countless children have been harmed or killed by these products, with myocarditis being only the most universally acknowledged of the many toxicities associated with the shots.
Adding insult to injury, it was known from the beginning of the pandemic that the gain-of-function-produced SARS-CoV-2 virus affected children very mildly, rarely causing severe illness, and almost never killing them. Even at the height of the pandemic, an article in the preeminent journal Nature described pediatric Covid deaths as “incredibly rare.” A very large population-based Korean study from 2023 found the case-fatality rate in children from Covid to be well under 1 death in every 100,000 cases.
If no segment of the population was harmed more egregiously than children during the Covid era, few medical organizations betrayed their patient population more thoroughly than the American Academy of Pediatrics.
While the AAP has for many years taken questionable stances on a variety of issues, including the ever-enlarging pediatric vaccine schedule, “gender reassignment,” and others, at one early point during Covid, the AAP did attempt to advocate appropriately in the interest of children. It didn’t last long, however, and a review of this incident shows how the AAP, like so many other medical professional organizations, effectively sold its soul during Covid.
Summer 2020: The AAP Changes Its Tune on In-School Learning
From mid-March 2020, when the Covid lockdowns began, until the end of that school year in June, most American schoolchildren had been kept completely out of school. On July 9, 2020, the AAP released a statement arguing forcefully for the return of American schoolchildren back:
The AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school. The importance of in-person learning is well-documented, and there is already evidence of the negative impacts on children because of school closures in the spring of 2020.
The July AAP statement went on to say that school closure “places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality.” It went even further to state that:
… the preponderance of evidence indicates that children and adolescents are less likely to be symptomatic and less likely to have severe disease resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection. In addition, children may be less likely to become infected and to spread infection.
All of these claims the AAP made in July 2020 were known to be true to those who did the proper research (as the AAP apparently had done), and they have been repeatedly and definitively confirmed in the following years.
I was acutely aware of that July 9, 2020, AAP statement. I used it as an important resource in my own advocacy during the summer of 2020 to try to get schools reopened for full-time learning in New York State by the fall. The July AAP document was a well-researched, well-constructed, and well-argued advocacy tool that supported all children’s best interests.
So far, so good. Very soon thereafter, however, the AAP shamefully succumbed to pressure from public health officials, teachers’ unions, and others pushing for continued school closures. By August 19, 2020, with school reopening imminent, the AAP suddenly “revised” their recommendations. The AAP dramatically changed its tune, stating that they would go along with whatever measures public health officials decreed:
… many schools where the virus is widespread will need to adopt virtual lessons and [AAP] is calling for more federal funding to support both models.
“This is on us – the adults – to be doing all the things public health experts are recommending to reduce the spread of the virus,” said AAP President Sara “Sally” H. Goza, M.D., FAAP.
In an act of cowardice and dereliction of duty, the AAP surrendered. It abandoned the strong and sound advocacy for normalizing children’s education contained in its July document. As a physician actively following the issues of the day surrounding Covid and publicly fighting for school reopening, I can testify that nothing changed regarding our knowledge of the virus that justified the AAP’s abdication of its responsibility to children. In fact, multiple foreign countries had already returned children to school without ill effect. The AAP’s capitulation significantly undermined school reopening efforts, especially in Blue states.
The AAP’s sudden and craven volte-face regarding in-school learning was just one of many disgraceful acts committed by medical associations during the Covid era, and it acted to the severe harm of schoolchildren across the nation. Millions of American schoolchildren continued to languish in “remote” or “hybrid” learning for the entire 2020-2021 school year. Many thousands simply dropped out of school, never to return.
In retrospect, the AAP cannot claim that they “didn’t know” enough to push for school reopening. Their July 2020 document proves they knew the correct course of action – before caving in to the establishment’s false narrative, and then subsequently devolving into just one more shameless shill organization, pushing for the mass inoculation of children with the toxic Covid mRNA injections.
Why would the AAP have done such a thing?
Money, for one thing. And plenty of it.
The AAP’s Federal Funding Windfall During Covid
As the Covid vaccine push intensified, the AAP became one of the trusted legacy medical associations that was handsomely rewarded to “push vaccines and combat ‘Misinformation’.” By 2023, the year for which data is most available, the AAP was absolutely raking it in.
As journalist Michael Nevradakis explains:
AAP… received $34,974,759 in government grants during the 2023 fiscal year, according to the organization’s most recent tax disclosure. The grants are itemized in the AAP’s single audit report for 2023-2024. Documents show some of the money was used to advance childhood vaccination in the U.S. and abroad, target medical “misinformation” and “disinformation” online, [and] develop a Regional Pediatric Pandemic Network.
In summary: in July 2020, the AAP ever-so-briefly and correctly sided with the lockdown dissenters, in service of its self-proclaimed motto to serve “the health of all children.” But by mid-August, the AAP switched sides and subsequently got a massive payout to do so. In fiscal 2023 alone, the AAP was receiving $35 million of tax money, much of it directly tied to pushing the Covid mRNA shots in children and to silence dissenters, whom it knew were telling the truth.
Unfortunately, this is unsurprising. Years before Covid, the AAP had already morphed into a highly compromised organization, straying far from its stated goal of being “dedicated to the health of all children.”
The Dinosaurs Sell Themselves to Survive
The business model for the old establishment medical professional organizations, like the AAP, is a dinosaur. The value of paid membership to these organizations has disappeared over the years, causing income from membership fees to fall. Individual paid subscriptions to their flagship journals have nosedived as well. Their financial survival increasingly relies upon Big Pharma largesse and, as we saw above for the AAP during Covid, government payouts.
In return for Big Pharma and government money, these professional organizations function less and less as champions for their professional members and their patients. They become mouthpieces for government initiatives and advertisers for Pharma. If you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor, they have become a strange species of dinosaur-prostitutes.
The AAP in particular is deeply tied to and heavily subsidized by Big Pharma, especially in the area of vaccine promotion.
Starting with the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA), which effectively eliminated tort liability for vaccine manufacturers, the CDC pediatric vaccine schedule has ballooned from 7 vaccines in 1985 to 23 vaccines (and over 70 total doses!) in 2024. Since then, the AAP has largely been in the vaccine promotion business.
In accordance with the CDC vaccine schedules, the Federal government purchases huge quantities of the recommended vaccines from pharmaceutical companies. The shots are promoted to the public and to physicians through well-paid organizations like the AAP, and administered by pediatricians, many of whom receive payment – essentially kickbacks – to do so. Every step of the way, palms are greased.
As a result, American children have become what Dr. Meryl Nass calls “a delivery system to transfer taxpayer funds to big pharmaceutical companies, via your child or grandchild’s arm.”
As HHS Secretary Kennedy recently noted, the AAP posts on its own website its financial indebtedness to its corporate “donors.” Lo and behold, the four top vaccine manufacturers for the products on the pediatric vaccine schedule – Merck, Pfizer, Moderna, and Sanofi – stand at the top of the AAP’s corporate “donor” list. (The total amounts of the payouts the AAP receives are not disclosed.)
The AAP, originally created a century ago to advocate for pediatricians and their patients, has devolved into an advertiser and lobbyist for the corporate interests that fund their operations. So much for “dedicated to the health of all children.”
The AAP Goes All-In Against Reform
Fast forward to the present. The second Trump Administration and its reconstituted Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., are attempting to implement much-needed reforms to the corrupt and thoroughly captured Federal regulatory systems for healthcare.
HHS has begun to review and revise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended vaccine schedules, including the pediatric schedule. As mentioned above, since the passage of the NCVIA, which provided broad legal immunity to vaccine manufacturers, the pediatric schedule has exploded, from 7 recommended shots in 1986 to an incredible 23 in 2024. For over 3 decades, the AAP has agreed with the recommendations of the CDC with regard to the recommended pediatric vaccines, without argument.
Absolutely no cumulative safety testing for this bloated schedule has ever been performed, and products based on the highly controversial mRNA platform, including annual recommended shots for Covid, have recently been added to the schedule. The CDC pediatric schedule is much larger than those of most other developed countries, many of which boast significantly better pediatric (and general population) health than the United States.
Kennedy’s HHS replaced the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) that reviews vaccines for the schedules, due to documented conflicts of interest that many prior members were found to have.
In May 2025, Kennedy’s HHS announced changes to the Covid-19 vaccination recommendations for children. The changes are in fact modest. Regarding the Covid shots, CDC currently recommends “shared clinical decision-making” between parents and providers for healthy children ages 6 months to 17 years.
How has the American Academy of Pediatrics responded? With actions so blatantly pro-Pharma, and so spitefully anti-parent, anti-patient, and anti-child, that their August 2020 betrayal of schoolchildren seems like, well, child’s play in comparison.
On July 28, 2025, in its flagship journal Pediatrics, the AAP released a policy statement calling for a nationwide end to all religious and other nonmedical exemptions for all mandated vaccinations for children, announcing “The AAP advocates for the elimination of nonmedical exemptions from immunizations as contrary to optimal individual and public health.”
Note that the AAP calls for a blanket ban. It makes no distinction between different vaccines, different educational settings, or different reasons for seeking exemptions. According to the AAP, all mandated vaccines are equally essential to both “individual and public health.” All nonmedical exemptions are totally invalid.
The lead author of the policy statement, one Dr. Jesse Hackell, told MedpageToday that
“We recognize that excluding a child from public education does have problems, and yet, we reach the conclusion that, on balance, assuring the safety of the school and daycare environment outweighs that risk because there are other educational opportunities available.”
What an appalling shift in the AAP’s attitude toward in-school learning. What happened to their July 2020 stance, when barring kids from school “places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality?”
The AAP’s message to parents and children is crystal clear. They don’t give a damn about your beliefs, your personal autonomy, your Constitutional rights, or even your well-being. You want to go to school? Shut up, line up, and take the shots we tell you to take. Every last one of them. On August 19, 2025, the AAP released its own pediatric vaccination schedule, which is at variance with the Kennedy HHS’s current schedule. The AAP’s website states:
“The biggest difference between the AAP and CDC schedules is around COVID-19 vaccination. The CDC no longer recommends routine vaccination for healthy children, although children can get vaccinated after a conversation with their doctor. In contrast, the AAP recommends all young children ages 6-23 months get vaccinated.”
It is telling that after decades of placid agreement with the CDC as the pediatric vaccine schedule continually expanded, the AAP has decided to take the drastic step of releasing its own childhood vaccination schedule, at variance with the CDC’s, over the issue of “shared decision-making.” Apparently, only slavish adherence to mandatory vaccination suffices for the AAP.
This is the AAP’s stance, despite rapidly declining uptake of the Covid shots in the population, the miniscule risk of Covid to children, and the mountains of evidence building that demonstrate the toxicity of these shots. In addition to myocarditis, peer-reviewed studies are demonstrating numerous autoimmune and immune system toxicities in children receiving these shots. Michael Nevradakis lists some of these:
According to a peer-reviewed study published in Pediatric Rheumatology in May, children and adolescents who received at least one Covid-19 vaccine had a 23% higher risk of developing autoimmune disease compared to unvaccinated children.
A study published in the journal Immunity, Inflammation and Disease in April found that young adults who received a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine showed elevated spike protein production a year or more after vaccination — significantly longer than the spike protein was expected to remain in the body.Children ages 5-11 who received two doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine had heightened levels of a type of antibody suggestive of an altered immune system response one year after vaccination, according to a peer-reviewed study published last year in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
Regarding the Covid injections and the CDC vaccine schedule in general, the AAP holds a weak hand, and yet their leadership is going all-in anyway. The AAP’s insistence on annual Covid shots for children is absurd at best, and murderous at worst. As public relations, it appears arrogant, mercenary, and utterly tone deaf. Morally and ethically, it is indefensible.
The Betrayal Is Complete
The leadership at the American Academy of Pediatrics has apparently decided that they would rather torch any residual credibility on the altar of vaccinology than acknowledge any past or present mistakes, or suffer the pain of needed reform. In so doing, with their arrogant and grossly irresponsible attitude to the safety of children, they demonstrate that primum non nocere is not in their vocabulary, and that their motto “dedicated to the health of children” is, quite frankly, a lie.
Such destructive (and self-destructive) actions reveal the AAP’s near-total dependency on the vaccine industry, and its desperation to perpetuate that gravy train at any cost. The American Academy of Pediatrics has sold its soul. Sooner or later, the devil will come to collect.
The AAP’s deep betrayal of its stated core purpose is hardly unique. The AAP is just the poster child for the corruption and corporate capture that have consumed other legacy medical professional associations (the American Medical Association and the American College of Gynecology come to mind).
The Federal Government must stop all funding to medical professional organizations like the AAP. This was always bound to corrupt them, and hard experience has demonstrated that it has. Furthermore, these organizations should be prohibited from accepting Pharma largesse, or at the very least be required to publicly disclose all income from such sources.
Perhaps some of these organizations will choose to reform. Public admission of past wrongdoing, complete divestiture of all Pharma support, and eliminating government subsidy would be the essential, bare-minimum steps to re-establishing independence and credibility.
More likely, the dinosaurs will be replaced by a species of smaller, independent, and uncompromised organizations that incorporate safeguards against the corruption that destroyed their predecessors.
Any legacy medical professional organizations that do not thoroughly and sincerely reform do not deserve the support of physicians, credibility in the eyes of the public, or trust of patients. May they go the way of the dinosaur.
C.J. Baker, M.D., 2025 Brownstone Fellow, 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.
HHS REINSTATES VACCINE TASK FORCE
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 21, 2025
Aaron Siri reveals how ICAN has fought HHS since 2017, relentlessly exposing and litigating the agency’s decades-long neglect of its legal duty under the 1986 Act to ensure vaccine safety. After disbanding its safety task force in 1998—following just one report—and failing to submit even a single required biannual report to Congress, HHS is finally being forced back to the table. Now, with RFK Jr. at the helm of HHS, the task force is being revived—and ICAN is ready with decades of overdue recommendations.
DR. PAUL THOMAS VS. THE CDC
CDC Hit With Lawsuit Over Failure to Test Cumulative Effect of 72-Dose Childhood Vaccine Schedule
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 18, 2025
Two doctors who lost their medical licenses because they questioned the CDC’s vaccine recommendations for children are suing the agency for failing to test the cumulative effect of the 72-dose schedule on children’s health.
Drs. Paul Thomas and Kenneth P. Stoller and Stand for Health Freedom filed the lawsuit last week in federal court, alleging the lack of safety testing violates federal law and children’s constitutional rights.
The lawsuit names Susan Monarez, Ph.D., in her official capacity as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Attorney Rick Jaffe, who represents the plaintiffs, said the lawsuit “goes to the heart of the CDC’s childhood immunization program — a 72-plus dose medical intervention schedule that has never been tested.”
According to the complaint, the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule “is only based on an evaluation of short-term individual vaccine risks,” as the CDC “has never studied the combined effects and the accumulating dangers of administering all of the vaccines.”
The lawsuit states:
“The facts establish a continuing public health outrage hiding in plain sight: America administers more vaccines than any nation on earth while producing the sickest children in the developed world. Yet CDC demands proof of harm while refusing to conduct the studies that could provide it.”
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 21, 2025
Dr. Paul Thomas, author of Vax Facts, opens up about his controversial “vaxxed vs. unvaxxed” study, which showed healthier outcomes in unvaccinated children. After publishing the data, his license was suspended — but he continues to speak out, now suing the CDC over its untested vaccine schedule. He warns that pediatricians have become blind enforcers of pharma policy, while parents are waking up to the harms.
In 6 years, have any healthy Alabama students died from Covid?
I’ve gone back through my Covid archives and want to make sure everyone remembers how ridiculous the school lockdowns were
By Bill Rice, Jr. | August 12, 2025
The late Will Fowler overcame serious disabilities to become an honor’s student and band member at Cullman High School. This young man was the only named K-12 student in Alabama I can find who reportedly died “from Covid.” The lone source is a Facebook post made by his cousin who said Will tested positive for Covid before his death in the second year of Covid.
I’m working on a story that will try to debunk a non-sensical and specious claim made by the Alabama Education Association that “sixty five” Alabama educators died from Covid in the fist 18 months of the pandemic.
While researching this story, I decided to take another stab at ascertainingwhat the real Covid mortality rate for Alabama students has been over the past six years.
***
According to Google AI, approximately 814,000 students attend K-12 public and private schools in my state every year.
Since approximately 374,000 students have graduated from K-12 schools in the last six years, this means approximately 1.2 million current and former Alabama students could have contracted and died from Covid in the past six years.
Regarding the Covid Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) for Alabama students, I have found only two students who may have reportedly died from Covid in the past five-plus years.
If one assumes that 85 percent of students have now contracted the original Covid or its many variants, this would mean that approximately 1 million Alabama students have already had a “case” of Covid.
If only two students (allegedly or reportedly) died from this disease, this translates to a COVID IFR for Alabama students of approximately 1-in-500,000 (0.0002 percent).
Alabama’s only known Covid student death had serious co-morbid conditions …
I should note that I researched these two Covid deaths and was able to come up with the name of only one former student who passed away “from Covid.”
On August 17, 2021, Will Fowler, who was going to be a senior at Cullman High School, passed away and, in a Facebook post, his cousin said Will had “tested positive for Covid.”
Will seems to have been an inspiring young man as he battled severe, life-altering medical conditions his entire life. He suffered from Muscular Dystrophy and was confined to a wheel chair and also, like many children with severe disabilities, was extremely heavy.
Per logic, I also deduced that Will had not contracted Covid from classmates or from anyone at his school as he died (presumably in the hospital) only five days after school had started at Cullman High (and, one assumes, must have been ill and not at school in the days before his death).
I also found one other quote from the superintendent of Birmingham City Schools who said a student at Jackson Olin High School had “died from Covid” but I could find no name or article providing any details about this student’s death.
This is par for the course
Indeed, in five-plus years researching Covid cases and victims, I’m struck by the almost universal absence of key medical details about alleged victims of Covid.
For example, readers seeking important information might be interested in learning when a victim first developed Covid symptoms. What were these symptoms? What was the period of time from the appearance of first symptoms to death? When did the victim(s) test positive for Covid? What treatment protocols did medical staff administer (or fail to administer)?
Were family members of victims present during hospital or ICU stays or were they kept away from their loved one?
I assume, at some point, most alleged Covid victims did “test positive” for Covid, but was it really Covid that caused their deaths?
Needless to say, I’d also like to know who did and didn’t get a Covid vaccine and, also, how many victims might have gotten a flu shot before they developed “flu-like symptoms.”
A key ‘Covid death’ with virtually no important details provided
An example of this lack of details would be the circumstances of the death of Robert Thacker, Jr., the only crew member of the USS Teddy Roosevelt air craft carrier who reportedly “died from Covid” after an “outbreak” on that ship in March and April 2020.
(Note: Positive antibody tests in late April 2020, showed that at least 60 percent of the crew of 4,800 had previously had Covid. A U.S. destroyer and a French aircraft carrier also had outbreaks at the same time with similar positive rates and no fatalities. The Covid IFR on these three vessels was approximately 1-in-4,500, which is 4.5x lower than the flu IFR of 1-in-1,000.)
While I’ve performed a diligent search, all I’ve learned is that this ordnance specialist tested positive for Covid on March 30th, 2020 was placed in quarantine quarters in Guam and was later “found unresponsive” in a wellness check (a couple of days after he’d been to the local hospital, where he’d been discharged).
To this day, no member of the public knows the full and comprehensive details of this 41-year-old crew member’s medical crisis, which is common with the vast majority of “Covid victims.” For me at least, it seems like the only sailor who died after “outbreaks” on three large Naval vessels should have been the focus of copious media attention.
One great oddity of “Covid cases” is the public almost never learns such details as it’s apparently taboo to ask such common-sense questions.
Expressed differently, if evidence exists that someone, perhaps, didn’t really directly die from Covid, this evidence isnot going to be revealed by corporate journalists or pubic health officials.
Disparate lethality numbers among the young and older …
I should also note that, via an email query, I asked the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) media affairs spokesperson “how many Alabama students have died from Covid?” and was told this information was not available or the ADPH didn’t know – a non-answer which strikes me as extremely odd.
Maybe I imagined it, but I seem to recall a somewhat heated debate over whether school should be cancelled and how long schools should remain closed. It seems to me that a firm answer on the number of students who had died from Covid would be very important information for the public to know.
As it is, I’m left with the apparent conclusion that maybe just two Alabama K-12 students have died “from Covid” in the entire pandemic … although I’m not sure if Covid actually caused their deaths (because no reporter ever wrote an in-depth story on particulars of these cases).
Assuming these figures are correct and the deaths of these two students can only be explained by Covid, I still can ascertain the dramatic difference in Covid deaths among students and “educators.”
Approximately 65 educators allegedly died from Covid (out of 89,000 to 100,000 educators in our state). Only two students – out of 1.2 million – reportedly died from the same disease.
If educators were contracting Covid from students, they were contracting this disease from a virus that very possibly had a 0.0000 percent mortality rate for “healthy” students.
In Alabama, the simple mortality rate for “healthy” students seems to be 1-in-1.2 million (as Will Fowler had numerous life-altering medical conditions and could not have been considered a “healthy student.” For purposes of this illustration, I’m assuming the unknown other student might have been in perfect health before his/her death).
Context for a hypothetical ‘informed consent’ conversation …
Per Google AI, I learned that the probability a random citizen will be struck by lightning in a given five-year period is approximately 1-in-200,000
This would mean that “healthy” Alabama K-12 students were approximately five times more likely to be struck by lightning as they were to expire from Covid in the last five years.
This “context example” would seem to be very relevant in any “informed consent” conversation parents might have with doctors before getting their children vaccinated.
Doctor: “Mrs. Jones, I can tell you that your child has a 1-in-200,000 chance of being struck by lightning in the coming five years and an approximately 1-in-1-million chance of dying from Covid.
“Still, on advice of the American Pediatric Association, I strongly recommend your child get today’s shot and stay current with future boosters every year.”
Of course, it’s doubtful any APA dues-paying doctor will tell parents what their child’s chances of death from all causes will be in the next five years if they get this shot.
Or, even more likely, the chance a child might develop any serious adverse event(s) over the next five years if a child goes ahead and gets his “life-saving” injection.
As noted, in Alabama, I’m pretty sure I know the odds any healthy child will die from Covid is approximately 1-in-1-million.
The odds a vaccinated male child might develop myocarditis are maybe 1-in-17,000 to 1-in-34,000 (and this is just one life-threatening adverse event.)
As I’ve noted repeatedly, we now live in a “crazy world,” so my guess is that if many parents think they can reduce the odds their child might die from Covid from 1-in-1 million to 0-in-1-million, they are going to take their pediatrician’s advice and reduce those terrifying (sarc) odds.
Most parents will also never ask their doctor, “how many vaccinated people later died from Covid?”
If a bold parent did ask this question, the doctor would probably lie and reply “zero” and tell this inquisitive mother that the shots are “100-percent effective at preventing Covid deaths.”
Part 2 …
In my next story, I’m going to show that the vast majority of the 65 Alabama educators who allegedly died from Covid died in the fall of 2021 – well after most educators had already been vaccinated and, bizarrely, in the second year of this pandemic.
Also, I’ll show that all Alabama educators were wearing (mandatory) masks every day for seven hours, meaning most educators were allegedly double protected (mask and vaccines).
Part 2 of this story will also show that most of these educators clearly didn’t get Covid from their students.
In fact, I think almost all 65 probably died from a combination of iatrogenic hospital protocols, vaccine injuries and perhaps got sick and had to go to the “killing zones” (hospitals) after they’d gotten that year’s flu shot, which might explain many ILI and Covid symptoms.
I also think most teachers were NOT afraid of this virus. IMO, what clearly transpired was an orchestrated spin campaign originating from state and national teachers’ unions, which were key actors in a global Psy-Op designed to produce mass fear.
Students certainly faced no mortality risk from being in school. In fact, the only parents terrified of a virus that posed 0.000-percent mortality risk to their children must have been products of the intentionally dumbed-down education they’d once received in the same schools.
The good news is that some parents somehow got a quality education and could identify “Covid theater” fear-mongering when they saw it.
Featured Video
Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘one single cause’: Israel
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Excerpt
Leslie Wexner’s Inner Demon
BY WHITNEY WEBB |
UNLIMITED HANGOUT| JUNE 10, 2022
This short excerpt from Whitney Webb’s upcoming book “One Nation Under Blackmail” examines an obscure media profile of Leslie Wexner, Jeffrey Epstein’s mentor, from the 1980s that contains disconcerting revelations about Wexner’s personality and his inner world. … continue
Blog Roll
Recent Comments
Coronistan on Why can’t western leaders acce… John Edward Kendrick on German government ‘embezzling’… loongtip on Von der Leyen to have new secu… papasha408 on First Gaza, then the world: Th… papasha408 on Is Nixing Aid to Israel a Pois… papasha408 on Japan to Sign Up For NATO’s Uk… Redracam on Iran Willing to Dilute Enriche… loongtip on When Threats Replace Evid… loongtip on Zelensky tried to kill the cha… eddieb on I might get killed for posting… Bill Francis on I might get killed for posting… loongtip on Beijing cancels Panama deals a…
Aletho News- Israel Demanding that Iran Limit the Range of Missiles to 300 Kilometers
- Why can’t western leaders accept that they have failed in Ukraine?
- German government ‘embezzling’ taxpayer money to fund Ukraine – veteran politician
- Russian Soldiers Tortured in Secret Ukrainian Prisons
- Tensions between Hungary and Ukraine could lead to a new regional conflict
- Russia preparing oil lifeline to Cuba – embassy
- Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘one single cause’: Israel
- Instagram suspends Track AIPAC, watchdog tracking pro-Israel lobby spending
- Nouri al-Maliki defends Hashd al-Shaabi as inseparable part of Iraqi security system
- First Gaza, then the world: The global danger of Israeli exceptionalism
- If Americans Knew
- Jewish terrorism, apartheid rule the West Bank – Not a ceasefire Day 125
- Why Israel persecutes children like my son Shadi
- In Gaza, One Man Is Searching for the Remains of His Family With a Flour Sifter
- Horrific situation in Gaza, West Bank – Not a ceasefire Day 124
- Mysterious ‘peace’ groups are sending Americans pro-Israel texts
- Epstein files: Western media must stop burying the Israel connection
- Software developer exposes Israeli nonprofits’ massive spending to influence Americans
- Israel preparing for another, more intense Gaza offensive – Not a ceasefire Day 123
- Ronald Lauder’s son-in-law Kevin Warsh emerges as the next Fed chair
- A 14-year-old Palestinian Bled to Death for 45 Minutes as Israeli Soldiers Stood Nearby
- No Tricks Zone
- German Gas Crisis…Chancellor Merz Allegedly Bans Gas Debate Ahead of Elections!
- Pollen Reconstructions Show The Last Glacial’s Warming Events Were Global, 10x Greater Than Modern
- Germany’s Natural Gas Storage Level Dwindles To Just 28%… Increasingly Critical
- New Study Rebuts The Assumption That Anthropogenic CO2 Molecules Have ‘Special’ Properties
- Climate Scientist Who Predicted End Of “Heavy Frost And Snow” Now Refuses Media Inquiries
- Polar Bear Numbers Rising And Health Improving In Areas With The Most Rapid Sea Ice Decline
- One Reason Only For Germany’s Heating Gas Crisis: Its Hardcore-Dumbass Energy Policy
- 130 Years Later: The CO2 Greenhouse Effect Is Still Only An Imaginary-World Thought Experiment
- New Study Affirms Rising CO2’s Greening Impact Across India – A Region With No Net Warming In 75 Years
- Germany’s Natural Gas Crisis Escalates … One Storage Site Near Empty …Government Silent
Aletho News 