Trump’s Picks for Surgeon General and Top Posts at FDA, CDC Earn Mixed Reviews
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 25, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees to lead three key federal public health agencies “would help the incoming president shift the priorities of agencies that are linchpins in public health” — but they’re also “controversial,” according to NPR.
Trump tapped Dr. Marty Makary to head the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Dave Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and physician Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for surgeon general.
“The roles will be key to helping to enact Trump’s second term health agenda, which could include agency reform and changes to public health policies,” Axios reported.
The three agencies report to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Earlier this month, Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), to lead HHS.
Weldon previously criticized COVID-19 vaccines and restrictions. Makary and Nesheiwat first expressed support for vaccines and other pandemic-related policies but have become more critical in recent years.
Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who has worked with the FDA as a consumer representative, addressed mainstream criticism of the nominations. She told The Defender that “the pharmaceutical and medical-industrial complex is very worried.”
She added:
“The pharmaceutical and food industries have faced little resistance from regulators and Congress. The strong pushback we’re seeing now suggests they fear what might happen under an administration willing to challenge the status quo.”
Dr. Joseph Varon, president of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, told The Defender, “Leadership in these agencies is critical for fostering trust in public health and ensuring evidence-based policies. We hope the nominees are committed to transparency, innovation and addressing the ongoing challenges in healthcare, particularly the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Makary: U.S. government the ‘greatest perpetrator of misinformation’
Makary, a public health researcher and surgeon at Johns Hopkins University, developed the surgical safety checklist, adopted by the World Health Organization and credited with saving many lives. Makary worked with the first Trump administration, including on surprise medical billing, NPR reported.
Earlier this year, Makary published “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets it Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.” The book highlighted evidence that many modern-day health crises in the U.S. were caused or hastened by the medical establishment.
According to The Gateway Pundit, “Makary was initially an advocate for the COVID vaccine but changed his perspective as more data became available.” NPR noted that Makary “voiced support for lockdowns early in the pandemic and encouraged universal masking” but later “became increasingly outspoken” against such policies.
In 2021, Makary called the Biden administration’s CDC “the most political CDC in history” for not being forthcoming with the public about COVID-19 and the vaccines. According to the New York Post, he criticized the CDC and Biden administration for their “unsupported claims” about COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness.
Makary has also been vocal about the potency of natural immunity to COVID-19, criticizing the medical establishment’s “complete dismissal of natural immunity.”
In May, he criticized The New York Times for being slow to report on the thousands of people injured by the COVID-19 vaccines.
Last year, Makary said during congressional testimony that “public health officials have made many tragic mistakes during the pandemic.” Those mistakes included ignoring natural immunity, dismissing the possibility of COVID-19 originating from a lab leak, closing schools, masking toddlers and “pushing boosters for young people.”
In September, Makary appeared alongside Kennedy at a congressional roundtable hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on the chronic disease epidemic. During the roundtable, Makary said, “The greatest perpetrator of misinformation has been the United States government.”
In his announcement, Trump said Makary would work with Kennedy to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our Nation’s food supply and drugs and biologics being given to our Nation’s youth, so that we can finally address the Childhood Chronic Disease Epidemic.”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, told The Defender Makary has a “steep learning curve regarding vaccines in general” but has taken “encouraging stances late in the pandemic about the COVID vaccine and countermeasures.”
Scott C. Tips, president of the National Health Federation, said Makary represents “a mixed bag of mainstream medicine and outside-the-box thinking.” He credited Makary for opposing “mandatory COVID-19 injection boosters” and criticizing the FDA’s rejection of natural immunity.
Epidemiologist and public health research scientist M. Nathaniel Mead praised Makary’s nomination. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a physician with a deeper understanding of what ails our healthcare system and what’s needed to restore integrity to the FDA after six decades of regulatory capture.”
“Makary seems uniquely positioned to bring meaningful change,” Witczak said. “He understands the systemic harm caused by overmedicalization and the corporate capture of healthcare. His history of challenging mainstream narratives during COVID shows he isn’t afraid to speak out.”
Weldon sponsored bill to ban mercury from vaccines
Dr. Dave Weldon is an Army veteran who served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives between 1995 and 2009.
In a statement, Kennedy praised Weldon’s experience, saying he “will bring the truth and transparency needed to restore the public’s confidence” in the CDC.
In 2007, Weldon sponsored a bill that would have banned mercury from vaccines, expressing concern about “an enormous inherent conflict of interest within the CDC,” because the agency promotes vaccination while assessing their safety.
According to Politico, Weldon also “raised concerns about the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and Gardasil, Merck’s papillomavirus virus, or HPV vaccine.
While in Congress, Weldon also introduced legislation outlawing human cloning and helped secure a deal that banned patents on human organisms, including genetically engineered embryos, according to The Associated Press.
According to NPR, Trump said Weldon would “proudly restore the CDC to its true purpose, and will work to end the Chronic Disease Epidemic,” and “prioritize Transparency, Competence, and High Standards.”
John Gilmore, executive director of the Autism Action Network, said Weldon “was sounding the alarm on failures in the vaccine system 20 years ago.” He said Weldon attended conferences like Defeat Autism Now and listened to mothers of vaccine-injured children, which is “not a behavior many doctors are inclined to do.”
Hooker said he was “very encouraged” by Weldon’s nomination, and that he’d like to know more about Weldon’s position on “the bloated vaccine schedule as well as COVID-19 countermeasures.”
He credited Weldon with helping independent thimerosal researchers gain access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a collaborative project that monitors vaccine safety and conducts studies on vaccine side effects.
Hooker, who participated in that project, said “Our access to the VSD was rescinded months later because [the CDC] didn’t like our results, which included a definitive link between thimerosal and autism. Weldon indeed will need to implement myriad changes to the flawed and fraudulent process.”
Weldon is the first nominee for CDC director who will face a Senate confirmation process, due to legislation passed in 2022, NPR reported.
Nesheiwat: ‘egregious unethical & harmful’ to add COVID shots to childhood schedule
Nesheiwat, Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, is a medical contributor to Fox News and medical director at CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey.
Nesheiwat previously promoted the benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, NPR reported. According to The Gateway Pundit, Nesheiwat has since changed her position and her “recent statements indicate a significant shift in her perspective.”
In October 2022, Nesheiwat tweeted, “If CDC approves a COVID vaccine addition to the routine schedule of vax for kids, it will mark the most egregious unethical & harmful decision to children. No mandates. Especially for a vax that can’t prevent disease.”
Nesheiwat has also questioned the efficacy of the COVID shots, tweeting in February 2023, “Covid vax does not prevent disease like we once thought it did per the cdc /Pfizer etc.,” and has tweeted in support of natural immunity.
In a statement, Trump called Nesheiwat an advocate for preventive medicine and praised her “commitment to saving and treating thousands of American lives.”
Mead said Nesheiwat’s about-face on vaccines “shows she has the ability to think critically,” which could help her “serve as a bridge builder at a time of deep division.”
A ‘historic opportunity to shake up the establishment’
Calling healthcare in the U.S. “horribly broken,” Hooker said the three nominees will face several challenges if confirmed because federal public health agencies require reforms.
Hooker said:
“Corporate influence, including the corporate capture of these agencies, is the biggest problem to be tackled. First and foremost, we need to protect children … from the highly flawed policies of these agencies.
“All influences from Big Pharma, Big Food and Big Ag need to be completely rooted out and the whole edifice should be rebuilt brick-by-brick to include only those policies that help and never harm children.”
Gilmore said public health agencies should publicize “all the data they have available.” He also called for a ban on vaccine mandates. “We have to be able to sue in a real court for vaccine injuries,” he added.
Varon called for independent clinical trials and for “independent scientific inquiry and reducing undue influence from corporate or political pressures.” He also called for promoting early treatment protocols for emerging diseases and giving physicians “the flexibility to treat patients with evidence-based approaches.”
“This moment represents a historic opportunity to shake up the establishment,” Witczak said. “After years of feeling like leaders were paying lip service — or working against the public — I finally see hope for meaningful reform. It’s time to restore these agencies’ missions to serve the public, prioritize safety, and act with integrity.”
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.
Sen. Johnson Threatens Legal Action Unless HHS Turns Over Unredacted Emails on COVID Vaccine Safety
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender |November 22, 2024
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Tuesday demanded public health agencies provide complete and unredacted documents about the development and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, after learning of extensive redactions in documents released in response to multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
In a letter sent Tuesday to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Johnson said the redactions make the documents nearly impossible to comprehend and obscure the public’s understanding of issues like myocarditis and pericarditis linked to vaccines.
He also called out the agencies for not responding to his own requests for COVID-19 vaccine safety information. He wrote:
“The lack of transparency from your agencies during the Biden presidency has been appalling. Your agencies’ refusal to provide complete and unredacted responses and documents to my numerous oversight letters on the development and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines has hindered Congressional oversight and has jeopardized the public’s health.”
Johnson, an outspoken critic of the government’s handling of COVID-19-related information, sent over 60 public letters requesting more transparency on virus origins, early treatment and vaccine safety.
“What is clear from these excessive redactions, however, is a concerted effort to obscure Congress’ and the public’s understanding of your agencies’ detection of and response to COVID-19 vaccine adverse events such as myocarditis and pericarditis,” he wrote.
Johnson’s latest request demands the agencies preserve and release unredacted documents, specifically three documents he said comprised “only a small fraction” of the documents on myocarditis and pericarditis that the agencies “continue to conceal.”
Johnson gave the agencies until Dec. 3 to respond, warning that if the agencies don’t comply, he would take further action, including issuing subpoenas once he becomes chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the next Congress.
CDC delayed telling public about link between vaccines and myocarditis
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) scientists Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., and Brian Hooker, Ph.D., in 2022 published a study showing the CDC delayed reporting the incidence of myocarditis to the general public for three months after the first statistically significant signal appeared in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database.
CHD, attorney Ed Berkovich, The Epoch Times and others submitted FOIA requests seeking more information about what the public health agencies knew and when.
In his letter, Johnson cited responses to those FOIA requests as examples of how the agencies obstructed attempts by the public to hold them accountable.
For example, heavily redacted documents indicate that then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky had received Pfizer documents regarding myocarditis and pericarditis by May 22, 2021. However, the Pfizer report provided via FOIA was completely redacted except for the cover page, making it impossible to decipher what Walensky learned and when.
Johnson included the FOIA documents in his letter so the public could see the extent of the redactions.
The documents showed that after receiving the FOIA data, Walensky and other CDC officials considered whether to issue a public warning about the risk of myocarditis from vaccination. They drafted a Health Alert Network (HAN) for the website, which is how they communicate “urgent public health incidents” with public information officers, practitioners, clinicians and local public health officials.
The draft alert sent to Walensky was redacted when the CDC produced documents in response to a FOIA request. A partially unredacted email to either a Moderna or Pfizer employee indicated that the agency was debating the pros and cons of issuing a HAN, but didn’t “want to appear alarmist.”
The agency never issued the alert. Instead, the CDC said on its website that there were “increased cases of myocarditis and pericarditis” reported but the CDC continues to recommend the vaccine for everyone ages 12 and up.
Johnson requested all documents about the alert, but the CDC has not provided them.
In Johnson’s third example, the Biden White House sent top public health officials 17 pages of talking points for a “tough QA” on COVID-19. In the FOIA documents, all the topics are redacted, making it impossible to know what the White House was communicating.
“Ultimately, despite your agencies’ awareness of the risks associated with the COVID-19 vaccines, the main talking point from these and other public health officials was uniform and entirely deceptive: the vaccines are safe and effective,” Johnson wrote.
Pattern of stonewalling and evading by government health agencies
Risa Evans, staff attorney at CHD, told The Defender that over the last several years, CHD has filed several FOIA requests with the FDA, CDC and National Institutes of Health seeking records connected with post-authorization safety monitoring of COVID-19 shots.
“We have found that obtaining these records is a challenge, due to a mix of denials, redactions and delays by the agencies,” she said.
When the agencies failed to respond to FOIA requests for records related to safety signals, CHD filed multiple FOIA lawsuits seeking the requested documents.
In one case the FDA requested at least 18 months to fulfill the request — after it had already delayed 14 months.
“The agencies’ failure to respond to our requests in a timely and open fashion is particularly ironic in light of recent statements by Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, calling for more transparency as a way of combating vaccine ‘hesitancy,’” Evans said.
The FDA also famously attempted to delay documents related to the licensing of Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine for 75 years.
The U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic also investigated Dr. David M. Morens, a 25-year veteran of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, after it was revealed he used his personal email address to evade FOIA requests for communications related to the origins of COVID-19.
Emails made public during that investigation also showed that Morens connected Fauci to Kaiser Health News reporter Arthur Allen through a “secret back channel.”
Jablonowski, who was among the first to detail the deception around myocarditis, told The Defender if the public health agencies aren’t compelled to be transparent, they can’t be held accountable.
He said the FDA and the CDC, “are not transparent in matters of myocarditis resulting from the COVID-19 vaccines. They are opaque, hidden behind redactions, and not accountable to the American people or members of Congress.”
“This is a rot in our government, and it spreads well beyond the confines of myocarditis, the CDC and the FDA,” he added. “How far beyond? We won’t know until we broadly investigate the actions and actors.”
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.
Healthcare workers file class action lawsuit against the Ontario government over its COVID-19 vaccine directive
The Canadian Independent | November 22, 2024
A $170-million class-action lawsuit has been filed against the Province of Ontario and its Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Kieran Moore, alleging negligence, misfeasance in public office, tortious inducement to breach contract, and violations of privacy rights related to the implementation of COVID-19 vaccine mandates for healthcare workers.
Lisa Wolfs is the primary plaintiff in the lawsuit. She was previously employed as a Clinical Nurse Educator with London Health Sciences Centre and initiated the suit on behalf of unionized healthcare workers in Ontario. At the heart of the lawsuit is the challenge to the legality of Directive 6, a public health order issued in August 2021 by Dr. Moore.
Court documents show that Wolfs went on medical leave on September 15, 2021, was later cleared to return to work, but was terminated on August 4, 2022, under the enforcement of COVID-19 Directive 6.
Filed under Ontario’s Class Proceedings Act, 1992, the lawsuit seeks to represent tens of thousands of unionized healthcare workers across the province who were subject to the directive. The plaintiff argues that the mandate imposed unauthorized changes to her employment contract, forced the disclosure of personal medical information, and caused significant economic and emotional harm.
Directive 6 mandated that hospitals, home and community care service providers, and ambulance services implement a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy for employees, staff, contractors, students, and volunteers.
Under the directive, healthcare workers had to provide proof of vaccination, a medical exemption, or participate in an educational program to maintain their employment. Wolfs argues that these policies led to her termination after nearly 16 years of service, despite her previously exemplary record. Her lawsuit claims that her dismissal violated the terms of her employment contract, which did not include mandatory vaccination as a condition of employment or allow for unpaid leave under these circumstances.
The lawsuit accuses the Ontario government and Dr. Moore of several violations. First, it alleges negligence, claiming that the vaccination policies were implemented without sufficient evidence supporting their efficacy in preventing COVID-19 transmission.
Second, it accuses Dr. Moore of misfeasance in public office, arguing that he acted with reckless indifference or willful blindness to vaccine risks and the lack of long-term safety data.
Third, the lawsuit alleges tortious inducement to breach contract, stating that the directive unlawfully interfered with employment agreements between healthcare workers and their employers.
Finally, it argues that the directive infringed on workers’ privacy rights by requiring the disclosure of vaccination status or medical exemptions.
In addition, the suit questions the public health rationale behind the mandates, referring to Health Canada product monographs. According to the claim, these documents do not indicate that approved vaccines such as Pfizer’s Comirnaty or Moderna’s Spikevax prevent COVID-19 transmission, undermining the stated purpose of the directive. Additionally, the lawsuit raises concerns about vaccine safety, highlighting adverse events reported during clinical trials and instances of product recalls or restrictions.
Seeking $170 million in damages, the lawsuit includes $50 million for pain and suffering, $50 million for misfeasance in public office, $20 million for tortious inducement to breach contract, and $50 million in punitive damages. The claim also includes compensation for lost income, medical monitoring expenses, and legal costs.
The case will proceed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, where the plaintiff will aim to have the lawsuit certified as a class action. If successful, it could set a precedent for addressing grievances related to pandemic-era workplace policies.
Scarlett Martyn, a veteran paramedic in Ontario, reached out to The Canadian Independent to highlight this lawsuit. Martyn is a member of United Healthcare Workers of Ontario (UHCWO), a volunteer-run, not-for-profit organization representing thousands of healthcare professionals. The group advocates for health privacy, voluntary and informed consent, and non-discriminatory medical policies in Ontario and across Canada.
Martyn says that UHCWO is raising funds to support the lawsuit. She explained that the organization is crowdfunding to cover potential court costs if class certification is unsuccessful and any named plaintiffs are required to pay legal costs. She also mentioned that if they succeed at the certification stage, the funds raised will be used to cover litigation costs for the class action. You can read more about the UHCWO and donate if you wish at the link below.
Study Showing ‘High Likelihood’ of Link Between COVID Vaccines and Death Republished in Peer-reviewed Journal
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 18, 2024
The largest COVID-19 vaccine autopsy study to date has been republished in a peer-reviewed journal — after twice being censored, according to Nicolas Hulscher, the paper’s lead author and an epidemiologist at the McCullough Foundation.
Science, Public Health Policy and the Law on Nov. 17 published the study, which had been previously withdrawn from Preprints with The Lancet and Forensic Science International.
Hulscher told The Defender the study’s republication signals a “pivotal victory for transparency and accountability in science.” It also marks “a significant setback” for actors in the biopharmaceutical complex and “their Academic Publishing Cartel,” Hulscher said.
Hulscher’s co-authors include Dr. Harvey Risch, Dr. Peter A. McCullough and Dr. William Makis.
Hulscher told The Defender the study provides “robust evidence that COVID-19 vaccines can cause death. This means that the FDA’s [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] criteria for a Class I recall have been fulfilled, warranting an immediate market withdrawal.”
The FDA defines a Class I product recall as “a situation in which there is a reasonable probability that the use of or exposure to a violative product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death.”
Risch, professor emeritus of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, told The Defender that the COVID-19 vaccine spike protein “can stay around in some people and continue to do inflammatory damage in any site where it gets to through the bloodstream.”
In ‘striking act of censorship’ publishers withdraw study, shut down debate
The study’s publication in Science, Public Health Policy and the Law is the latest twist in an ongoing saga as the authors have tried to get their research out to the public and scientific community, Hulscher wrote on Substack.
The study results were first made public on July 5, 2023, as a preprint with The Lancet on SSRN, an open-access research platform.
However, Preprints with The Lancet removed the study from the server within 24 hours, posting a statement that the study’s conclusions were “not supported by the study methodology,” The Daily Sceptic reported.
McCullough told The Epoch Times that the study was experiencing “hundreds of reviews per minute” before its removal.
Preprint servers offer a place for the public to view scientific reports and papers while they undergo peer review, making scientific findings available immediately and for free and opening them up to broader public debate.
The authors subsequently posted on the Zenodo preprint server, while the review underwent peer review at Forensic Science International. It was downloaded over 130,000 times.
On June 21, 2024, after successful peer review, Forensic Science International published the study.
Within weeks, the study became the top trending research paper worldwide across all subject areas, according to the Observatory of International Research, Hulscher recalled.

“Unfortunately,” Hulscher wrote on Substack, “in a striking act of censorship, Elsevier and Forensic Science International withdrew the article on August 2nd, 2024 in flagrant violation of their own withdrawal policy and COPE guidelines.”
He said they “left no traces behind, completely wiping our paper from the webpage.”
Elsevier and Forensic Science International said that “members of the scientific community” — who remained anonymous, Hulscher pointed out — cited numerous concerns about the study, including inappropriate citation references, inappropriate methodological design and a lack of factual support for its conclusions.
The concerns were “unfounded,” Hulscher wrote. The study authors wrote a rebuttal defending their study and submitted a revised manuscript. However, Elsevier and Forensic Science International rejected the revised manuscript.
Hulscher noted that Elsevier and Forensic Science International “failed to follow the proper scientific discourse method of allowing debate in Letters to the Editor.” Instead, they shut down the possibility of debate by censoring the study.
“This type of academic censorship poses a serious threat to the progress of scientific discovery,” he said.
73.9% of deaths reviewed by authors linked to COVID vaccines
As The Defender previously reported, the study authors did a systematic review of studies on autopsy findings following COVID-19 vaccination.
They first searched PubMed and ScienceDirect for all published autopsy and necropsy — another word for autopsy — reports related to COVID-19 vaccination in which the death occurred after vaccination.
They screened out 562 duplicate studies among the 678 studies initially identified in their search. Other papers were removed because they lacked information about vaccination status.
Ultimately, they evaluated 44 papers containing 325 autopsies and one necropsy case. Three physicians independently reviewed each case and adjudicated whether or not the COVID-19 shot was the direct cause or contributed significantly to the death reported.
They found 240 of the deaths (73.9%) were found to be “directly due to or significantly contributed to by COVID-19 vaccination.” The mean age for death was 70.4 years old.
Primary causes of death included sudden cardiac death, which happened in 35% of cases, pulmonary embolism and myocardial infarction, which occurred in 12.5% and 12% of the cases respectively.
Other causes included vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, myocarditis, multisystem inflammatory syndrome and cerebral hemorrhage.
Most deaths occurred within a week of the last shot.
The authors concluded that because the deaths were highly consistent with the known mechanisms for COVID-19 vaccine injury, it was highly likely the deaths were causally linked to the vaccine.
They said the findings “amplify” existing concerns about the vaccines, including those related to vaccine-induced myocarditis and myocardial infarction and the effects of the spike protein more broadly.
They also said the studies have implications for unanticipated deaths among vaccinated people with no previous illness. “We can infer that in such cases, death may have been caused by COVID-19 vaccination,” they wrote.
The authors acknowledged some potential biases in the article.
First, they said, their conclusions from the autopsy findings are based on an evolving understanding of the vaccines, which are currently different from when the studies evaluated were published.
They also noted that systematic reviews have bias potential in general because of biases that may exist at the level of the individual papers and their acceptance into the peer-reviewed literature.
They said publication bias could have affected their results because the global push for mass vaccination has made investigators hesitant to report adverse events.
They also said their research did not account for confounding variables like concomitant illnesses, drug interactions and other factors that may have had a causal role in the reported deaths.
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.
Your Local Epidemiologist is worried. This is reassuring…
Mainstream “experts” are panicking about what is in store for public health with vaccine realists at the helm. Here’s my response.

By Madhava Setty | An Insult to Intuition | November 10, 2024
Katelyn Jetelina, PhD is an epidemiologist, biostatistician and mother of two little girls. She writes the “Your Local Epidemiologist” newsletter on substack which boasts over a quarter million subscribers. Those familiar with her content know that while well-intending, she serves as a mouthpiece for the CDC, explaining in easy to follow language what “the experts” are saying.
Her followers are passionate about her work. This is evident from the preponderance of comments which paint her as a true hero of the pandemic. Notably, she only allows comments from paid subscribers. She has created a massive echo chamber and one that pays her some serious dividends. If I remember correctly she has well over ten thousand paying subscribers, earning her an income that far exceeds mine as a full-time anesthesiologist.
I don’t mean to imply that she is a shill who exploits her audience by creating content that she knows is misleading or false. She believes in what she is doing, but she is suffering from the same cognitive blocks that many did four years ago: the experts know the most, we need to listen to them and grant them leniency when they get things wrong.
I have been a paid subscriber to her newsletter for almost two years. I pay to leave comments, hoping to encourage her audience to regard her position with a more critical eye. I have occasionally made some arguments that received a great deal of support from her non-paying readers. Those who contribute materially to her substack, on the other hand, usually respond with rebuke.
She has often derided the work of Children’s Health Defense. A year ago, I outed myself in her comment section, informing her that I was involved with the content RFK Jr’s organization produces as the science editor for The Defender. I expected that she would respond to my questions and critiques. What an excellent opportunity to dismantle the biggest “misinformation spreader” in front of her large audience. She never did.
Not surprisingly, her camp is in full crisis mode now. Here’s her latest:
In this brief article she encourages her audience to be strong, citing the following strategies:
- Building bridges instead of manning the barricades by finding common ground, which requires active engagement and humility. (It always helps me focus on one fact: No one wants to die. Then I move from there.)
- Recognizing what you say matters. That is, if you want people to hear you. Through literally the words we use, the framing, and the approach.
- Communicate with empathy, as anger and shame will only drive people further away.
- Listening (not simply hearing) so we can respond better to the needs on the ground. Americans need their questions answered, not to be told what to believe.
- Making strategic choices about which battles to fight, at what time, and at what level of government. Political capital is as scarce as financial resources—and needs to be allocated carefully.
This is a sensible strategy for everyone on both sides of the public health/vaccine debate. However she continues to double down on her basic hypothesis: The rise of vaccine skepticism is the direct result of misinformation.
I think she is wrong. Vaccine hesitancy and distrust of the medical orthodoxy is the direct result of true information that has finally percolated into public discourse despite the greatest effort to censor dissent I have ever witnessed.
Here is the comment I left on her article:
“Please don’t panic folks. We are witnessing a shift towards transparency and rigor from our agencies of public health. I understand why this readership is freaking out. This is an echo chamber. The real voices of clarity do not pay for a subscription here so you haven’t heard from them, and you don’t seek them out. You are only listening to voices like Katelyn’s who echo CDC PSA’s and their data as if it cannot be questioned.
I am a physician and an engineer. I left my practice in 2021 to work for RFK Jr’s Children’s Health Defense as the Senior Science Editor for The Defender, CHD’s on-line publication. I have since left, but I still stand behind every single article I have written and edited for that organization. I have been leaving comments on this substack for two years. Katelyn has never responded to any of my questions and critiques.
Isn’t that odd? One would think that she would be able to dismantle everything I share here in this public forum for the greater good.
Let me explain why there is such a growing “antivax” movement championed by Bobby and highly published physicians like Joe Ladapo. It has very little to do with so-called misinformation spreaders. It has to do with the public finally being informed about some difficult truths. The public is a lot smarter than you think.
1) Vaccine manufacturers cannot be sued if their products are found, even in an isolated case, to have caused harm. There is no other product like that. Obviously, there is much less incentive to do the proper safety testing if there are no consequences. The public knows this.
2) Nobody can deny that there has been an explosion of childhood diseases concomitant with the expansion of the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule following the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. OF COURSE correlation doesn’t equal causation. But if there was some causation, this is EXACTLY what we would be seeing. The public knows this.
3) The CDC could easily dispel all suspicion by doing a large retrospective study examining the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children with regard to chronic disease rates. They have the data. They have not done the study and they refuse to release the data. Why?? There is no reasonable answer to this question except for the obvious: They don’t want to know the answer. The public knows this too.
4) During the Covid pandemic, the mRNA shots were authorized after an initial observational period of only six weeks on average. Note that the median observational period was two months. Mathematically, that means that half of the 40,000 participants were observed for less than four weeks at most. There is NO WAY to make any claim about long term safety yet the CDC simply states that these shots have been rigorously tested for safety. That is a lie. The public knows this now.
5) I have never met a single person, scientist or otherwise, who has read RFK Jr.’s “The Real Anthony Fauci”, who could debunk any of his claims. That book was released at the height of the pandemic and excoriates the record of the pandemic czar, yet no defamation lawsuit was ever filed. Why is that? Obviously it is because everything is true and the receipts are there for all to see. The last thing the CDC and vaccine manufacturers want would be to have the evidence for Kennedy’s claims appear in open court. Their strategy is to keep the evidence out of the public’s eye. It is an extremely effective strategy that has worked for decades.
6) RFK Jr.’s message is finally getting out, and he is making sense. Why on earth would anyone be against having vaccines tested by the same standards we use for medicines? Instead of pointing out the obvious, that that is an excellent idea for public health, the media runs hit piece after hit piece on this man. For every person who reads those character attacks and smiles a knowing smile, there are two more that see this as a desperate attempt to squelch some difficult truths.
7) Every other commercial on legacy media is for some sort of pharmaceutical product. It’s a joke. These companies don’t pay hundreds of millions of dollars to run ads to sell more product. They are buying good media coverage. People are seeing this too.
8) The idea that the pharmaceutical industry is out to improve public health is ridiculous. These are for profit companies and their executives’ first priority is to the shareholders. They don’t make the most money curing diseases. That eliminates demand for their product. They aren’t trying to kill everybody. That also decreases demand. Whether you are willing to consider it or not, the most profit is made when the public suffers from a chronic disease epidemic. That is what we have. Our Covid mortality rates were among the highest of any country despite access to the shots and our overpriced health care system. This is staring us in right in the face.
I have no animosity towards those who disagree with me. I am just calling it as I see it. This is the way the public is starting to see it too. Every effort to discredit the movement towards a healthy America with pejoratives like “antiscience” and “antivax” is going to backfire more and more. The public is waking up. Relax and give people like Kennedy and Ladapo a chance. Let’s see what happens. We all want our kids to grow up healthy and happy.
Madhava Setty, MD
Rationality Triumphs over Fear in Federal Court
By Harvey Risch | Brownstone Institue | November 17, 2024
In a landmark decision in federal court, after a hung jury in the first hearing, the second jury found in favor of fired BART workers who had sued their employer after termination for filing vaccine mandate religious exemption applications. Each of the six plaintiffs in the case was awarded more than $1 million by the jury.
During the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments and employers both private and public across the country instituted vaccine mandates requiring employees to have completed “full vaccination,” typically two doses of the mRNA vaccines, by set dates in fall 2021. Similar vaccine mandates were ordered for military personnel as well as college and university students.
In general, these mandates allowed that mandated individuals could file exemptions based on sincere religious objections or medical necessity, and if these exemptions were granted, employers were then required to seek, in good faith, accommodation positions where the exempted personnel could still work but would pose less of an infection risk to other employees, patients, customers, students etc. This process of exemption and accommodation was covered by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) rules.
According to the EEOC rules, as interpreted after the Groff v. DeJoy Supreme Court case which was decided in June 2023, employers have been required to establish that employees not satisfying vaccination mandates would create “undue hardship” in order for the employer to terminate the employee. The EEOC rules specify that infection risk, such as that occurring during the Covid-19 pandemic, constitutes a valid hardship risk, but what is in question is whether such risks constitute “undue” hardship as stated in Groff v. DeJoy.
In a sound and rational analysis, the EEOC rules (section L.3) attempt to quantify the degree of infection hardship risk:
“An employer will need to assess undue hardship by considering the particular facts of each situation and will need to demonstrate how much cost or disruption the employee’s proposed accommodation would involve. An employer cannot rely on speculative or hypothetical hardship when faced with an employee’s religious objection but, rather, should rely on objective information. Certain common and relevant considerations during the COVID-19 pandemic include, for example, whether the employee requesting a religious accommodation to a COVID-19 vaccination requirement works outdoors or indoors, works in a solitary or group work setting, or has close contact with other employees or members of the public (especially medically vulnerable individuals). Another relevant consideration is the number of employees who are seeking a similar accommodation, i.e., the cumulative cost or burden on the employer.”
These rules provide a framework for evaluating the degree of infection transmission risk posed by employees, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, in a workplace. What is remarkable here is that EEOC used the “does,” not the “can,” criterion. “Does” is rationality; “can” is fear.
In legal cases at deposition or testimony, science and medical experts are frequently asked questions such as “Doctor, can drug X cause bad event Y?” Medical and science experts live in a mental universe of science theories, and of course, there might be some possible circumstance where drug X could cause bad outcome Y. We were taught in medical school, “Never say never.”
The question however is not really asking whether, in theory, drug X could cause bad outcome Y, but rather whether here on planet Earth, such outcomes actually do happen. The opposing attorney is trying to get a sound bite from the expert that the drug is potentially harmful. So while the question as posed asks “could” (or “can”) the drug do damage, the correct answer from the expert is, “In theory, the drug could do this, but in real-life applications, the drug does not do this.” “Does” conveys a quantitative estimate of how often things actually happen, whereas “can” is a theoretical question with major fear potential.
In 2021, it was not just the general public that had been propagandized to excessive fear of Covid-19, but companies and governments were also made to be afraid. Thus, many company decisions were based on fear, on supposed “worst-case scenarios,” that disregarded the range of effects of the decisions in favor of supposed benefits for reduced risks of Covid infection transmission.
Compounding this problem, the vaccines did appear to reduce risks of Covid transmission during the first half of 2021, giving employers empirical evidence to support their thinking about vaccine mandates.
However, by the time the vaccine mandates were implemented in the fall of 2021, the widespread Delta strain of Covid-19 infection had largely escaped vaccine immunity (remember the first booster campaign?) and thus the evidence of Covid-19 transmission risk reduction for “full vaccination” required by the mandates was virtually gone—except that medical experts for the defendants in the BART and other cases were still using the earlier stale evidence to support their scientific assertions. This also violates EEOC rules which require the use of the latest scientific evidence.
Thus in retrospect, as I had discussed in my testimony as an epidemiology expert for plaintiffs in the BART case, the jury appears to have eventually apprised the circumstances accurately: the small numbers of religiously exempt employees did not pose a major infection transmission risk in comparison to the large BART workforce or to the even larger BART ridership—patrons who themselves were not required to be vaccinated in order to ride the BART trains. In the case’s initial verdict form, the jury unanimously concluded, for each of the six plaintiffs, in response to the question, “Has BART proven that the plaintiff could not be reasonably accommodated without undue hardship?” they wrote, “NO, not proven by BART.”
That is, the fact that such individuals “could” pose infection transmission risks, did not establish an undue hazard that they “would” pose inordinate infection transmission risks. According to the rules laid out by the EEOC, rationality prevailed over fear in this case. One hopes that this legal precedent informs the many similar cases pending, of employees, students, and service members irrationally and unjustly terminated because of fear, not evidence.

Harvey Risch, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a physician and a Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. His main research interests are in cancer etiology, prevention and early diagnosis, and in epidemiologic methods.
As Cancer Rates for Young Adults Continue to Climb, Are Doctors ‘Dancing Around the Elephant in the Room’?
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender |November 13, 2024
Cancer rates among Generation X (Gen X) and millennials are on the rise. A USA Today report cited environmental and dietary changes as possible contributing factors — but some experts say that’s only part of the story.
Dr. Mike Varshavski, a family medicine physician and health influencer, told USA Today the factors are “usually so complex and multifactorial” but that “one of the major drivers of cancers [are] the rising rates of obesity in the United States and across the globe.”
However, Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, said the USA Today story “dismantles its own solution” — because some doctors noted that their younger cancer patients were frequently “healthy” before their diagnosis.
“The U.S. is ranked fourth in the world for age-standardized incidence of cancer — 367 per 100,000 — and 19th for adult obesity (42.7%),” Jablonowski said. “The cancer epidemic is way beyond diet and exercise.”
USA Today cited figures from an American Cancer Society (ACS) study, published in The Lancet in August. According to the study, 17 types of cancer — including breast, colorectal, liver, gastric, ovarian and pancreatic cancer — are rising among younger adults. Mortality trends connected to some cancers have also increased.
USA Today also listed celebrities with recent cancer diagnoses — including Princess Kate, Elle Macpherson, Jenna Fischer and Olivia Munn — all Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980) or millennials (born between 1981 and 1996).
The article recommended younger adults be vigilant about their health. Experts who spoke with The Defender welcomed this message. However, they criticized what they said was an attempt to normalize rising cancer rates among young adults while ignoring other possible underlying causes, including vaccines.
“If you normalize a disease, you will alter the health behaviors addressing the disease,” Jablonowski said. “If you believe cancer is inevitable or occurs at random, then you believe your health behavior has no impact on the chances of developing cancer.”
Dr. Margaret Christensen, a clinical educator and co-founder of the Carpathia Collaborative, said USA Today’s recommendations that younger people engage in “fine-tuning” their “diet and exercise routines,” stay up-to-date on cancer screenings and visit their doctor regularly, are important.
“But where is the information on prevention?” Christensen asked. “Nothing is mentioned about the toxic chemicals and ultra-processed foods and antibiotics in the food supply that are impairing our immune system to begin with.”
There’s been a ‘sea change in the cancer message’
Many doctors and scientists noted the timing of rising cancer rates among young adults.
Dr. Angus Dalgleish, professor of oncology at St. George’s, University of London, told The Defender, “Colorectal [cancer] has been slowly rising in young people for well over a decade and probably more. However, there has been an inflection in the rate of rise from mid-2021. This is worldwide.”
John Beaudoin Sr., author of “The Real CdC” and “THE CDC MEMORANDUM,” told The Defender that while incidence rates for such cancers have risen for a decade, “the change in rate or rise is what decries a new issue introduced into society.”
Beaudoin said that if the annual increase was 2% per year consistent with a 2% population increase, that is understandable. “But if the rate then goes to a 4% annual increase, then there is a major issue. The rate doubled and is not consistent with population increase.”
Dr. Pierre Kory, founder of the Leading Edge Clinic and president emeritus and co-founder of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), agreed. He said the USA Today report and the study in The Lancet mark “a sea change in the cancer message.”
Childhood vaccination ‘set the scene’ for rising young adult cancer rates
According to USA Today, there’s “no exact cause known for the rise in cancers among young people,” although “researchers are trying to figure it out.”
However, the article suggested that environmental factors, namely “changes to our microbiome over time — the environment, air, water, etc.” — may be partly responsible.
Christensen agreed, at least in part. “The same factors — environmental toxins in the food, water, air and many medications that cause insulin resistance and obesity — are causing cancers,” she said. “However, even in countries with lower rates of obesity, we are still seeing increased levels of cancers in younger folks.”
With environmental factors and obesity accounting only partially for the rising onset of cancer in younger adults, experts told The Defender vaccines likely contribute significantly to this increase.
“This has led me to look at childhood vaccines and I am afraid they have set the scene,” Dalgleish said. “There are now far too many. The adjuvants alone correlate with autism and ADHD,” attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
“The chronic inflammatory states recorded after some of the joint vaccines are highly likely to boost the induction of early cancer,” Dalgleish said.
Dr. Paul Marik, co-founder of the FLCCC, said he believes COVID-19 vaccines may have contributed to the more recent increases in cancer incidence recorded by the CDC.
“The rapid increase in cancers was noted in 2021, 2022 and 2023 after the rollout of the mRNA jabs,” said Marik, author of “Cancer Care: The Role of Repurposed Drugs and Metabolic Interventions in Treating Cancer.”
He added:
“There is strong mechanistic data to explain how the jabs may lead to cancer. This association is strong. There does not appear to be another plausible explanation. Obesity rates have increased slowly [and] cannot explain the massive increase in cancers noted recently.”
Christensen said USA Today and organizations like the ACS “are dancing around the elephant in the room” by “not wanting to make the connection to the vaccines while stating the obvious problems we can’t ignore.”
“Mainstream media have been completely negligent, in my view, for not holding our concerns regarding the vaccines and cancer to account,” Dalgleish said.
Instead of ignoring the problem, “The concept of turbo cancer needs to be accepted,” Marik said. “More research is required to more precisely determine who is at risk, what the incidence is and how to prevent and treat this disease.”
“The best way to stop the young person’s cancer epidemic is to stop the cause,” Jablonowski said.
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.
Congressional Investigation into Authors of ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Intensifies
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 15, 2024
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), authors of the “Disinformation Dozen,” faces a Nov. 21 deadline to provide Congress with documents related to its alleged collusion with the Biden administration and social media platforms to censor online users.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on Nov. 7 subpoenaed CCDH as part of an ongoing congressional investigation, launched in August 2023, into the nonprofit’s censorship-related activities.
The subpoena requests all communications and documents “between or among CCDH, the Executive Branch, or third parties, including social media companies, relating to the identification of groups, accounts, channels, or posts for moderation, deletion, suppression, restriction, or reduced circulation.”
The subpoena also requests all records, notes, and other “documents of interactions between or among CCDH and the Executive Branch referring or relating to ‘killing’ or taking adverse action against Elon Musk’s X social media platform.”
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1854563397859193136
CCDH previously included Kennedy on its “Disinformation Dozen” list, published in March 2021, of the 12 “leading online anti-vaxxers.”
Leaked CCDH documents released last month by investigative journalists Paul D. Thacker and Matt Taibbi revealed that CCDH sought to “kill” Twitter and launch “black ops” against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
CCDH included Kennedy, founder of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), on its list of “The Disinformation Dozen” when he was still chairman of CHD.
“Black ops” are defined as a “secret mission or campaign carried out by a military, governmental or other organization, typically one in which the organization conceals or denies its involvement.”
A subsequent report by Taibbi and Thacker showed that CCDH employed tactics it initially developed to help U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the U.S. Democratic Party, to target Musk, Kennedy and others.
CCDH used ‘explicit military terminology’ to target speech
Thacker told The Defender the leaked documents “definitely spurred” Jordan’s subpoena.
Sayer Ji, the founder of GreenMedInfo, was also listed among “The Disinformation Dozen.” He said the leaked documents were “chilling” and that CCDH’s efforts were part of “the largest coordinated foreign influence operation targeting American speech since 1776.”
Ji told The Defender :
“The leaked documents confirm what we experienced firsthand: CCDH wasn’t just targeting 12 individuals — we were test cases for deploying military-grade psychological operations against civilians at scale.
“Just as the British Crown once used seditious libel laws to silence colonial dissent, CCDH’s operation expanded to silence hundreds of millions globally, from doctors sharing clinical observations to parents discussing vaccine injuries.”
Ohio physician Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, also on “The Disinformation Dozen” list, told The Defender, “The exposure of the manipulation that went on behind the scenes to silence us is what we suspected, and now we know … We have the sad last laugh against their attacks. They are the ones with blood on their hands.”
Ji said CCDH’s internal communications reveal not just bias, “but explicit military terminology — ‘black ops,’ ‘target acquisition,’ ‘strategic deployment’ — coordinated between Five Eyes networks and dark money interests to target constitutionally protected speech.”
Writing on GreenMedInfo, Ji said, “CCDH’s ‘black ops’ approach includes coordinated media smears, economic isolation, and digital censorship.” Ji said CCDH’s activities represent “a new level of institutionalized power directed at civilian targets, often bypassing constitutional safeguards.”
Thacker said Jordan’s investigation should expand to include CCDH’s “black ops.”
“I don’t want to speculate on what CCDH was doing with ‘black ops’ against Kennedy,” Thacker said. “I think that should be explored by a congressional committee, with CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed put under oath,” Thacker said.
CCDH facing multiple lawsuits, possible Trump administration investigation
Jordan’s subpoena is the latest in a series of legal challenges for CCDH. According to GreenMedInfo, the organization faces several lawsuits and government investigations.
Following last month’s CCDH document leak, the Trump campaign said an investigation into CCDH “will be at the top of the list.”
The campaign also filed a complaint against the Harris campaign with the Federal Election Commission, “for making and accepting illegal foreign national contributions” — namely, from the U.K. Labour Party.
This followed the release of evidence indicating that the Biden administration coordinated with the U.K. Foreign Office as part of what GreenMedInfo described “as a systematic censorship regime involving CCDH and affiliated organizations.”
A lawsuit Musk filed against CCDH in July 2023 for allegedly illegally obtaining data and using it in a “scare campaign” to deter advertisers from X will likely proceed on appeal. A federal court initially dismissed the lawsuit in March.
Discovery in the Missouri v. Biden free speech lawsuit may also “shed further light and legal scrutiny on the critical role that CCDH played in allegedly suppressing and violating the civil liberties of U.S. citizens,” according to GreenMedInfo.
CCDH, others flee X in protest
Earlier this week, CCDH deleted its account on X, the platform it wanted to “kill.”
Writing on Substack, Ji said CCDH’s departure from X, during the same week Trump nominated Kennedy to lead HHS, represents a “seismic shift” and marks “a watershed moment, signaling the unraveling of entrenched systems of control and the rise of a new era for health freedom and open discourse.”
Several other left-leaning organizations and individuals, including The Guardian and journalist Don Lemon, also said they will stop using X, after Trump tapped Musk to lead a federal agency tasked with increasing government efficiency.
According to NBC News, many ordinary users are also fleeing X, citing “bots, partisan advertisements and harassment, which they all felt reached a tipping point when Donald Trump was elected president last week with Musk’s support.”
But according to Adweek, X’s former top advertisers, including Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Lionsgate Entertainment, resumed ad spending on the platform this year, but at “much lower rates” than before.
“Elon Musk’s ties with Donald Trump might spur some advertisers to think spending on X is good for business,” Adweek reported.
Thacker said CCDH’s deletion of its X account was “aligned” with the departure of “other organizations and ‘journalists’ aligned with the Democratic Party.” He said it appears to have been a “coordinated protest.”
Ji said organizations like CCDH view X “as an existential threat.” He added:
“Having experienced both Twitter 1.0’s AI-driven censorship system and X’s more open environment, I understand exactly why CCDH sees X as an existential threat. X represents what Twitter 1.0’s embedded censorship infrastructure was designed to prevent: a truly free digital public square.
“Under Musk’s commitment to free speech, their tactical advantage disappeared. They’re not leaving because X is toxic. They’re leaving because they can’t control it.”
Online censorship ‘may no longer be sustainable under intensified scrutiny’
According to GreenMedInfo, CCDH’s departure from X “appears to reflect an internal recognition that their operational model — characterized by critics as a US-U.K. intelligence ‘cut-out’ facilitating unconstitutional suppression of civil liberties — may no longer be sustainable under intensified scrutiny.”
In recent months, several mainstream media outlets have corrected stories that relied upon CCDH reports claiming “The Disinformation Dozen” was responsible for up to two-thirds of vaccine-related “misinformation” online.
According to Thacker, this reflects an increasing awareness by such outlets that readers are turning their backs on such reporting.
“The outlets that promoted CCDH propaganda are being investigated by their own readers, who are fleeing in droves. Readers are voting against this type of propaganda by refusing to subscribe to these media outlets,” Thacker said.
Yet, “many outlets continue to host these demonstrably false narratives without correction,” Ji said.
According to Ji, these false narratives resulted in medical professionals fearing the loss of their licenses for expressing non-establishment views, self-censorship among scientists “to avoid career destruction,” suppression of “critical public health discussions” and the labeling of millions of posts as “misinformation.”
“This isn’t just about suppressing speech. It’s about establishing a new form of digital control that echoes the colonial-era suppression our founders fought against,” Ji said.
“CCDH has polluted political discourse by pretending there is some absolute definition of the term ‘misinformation’ and that they hold the dictionary,” Thacker said. “That’s nonsense. They spread hate and misinformation to attack perceived political enemies of the Democratic Party.”
Ji called upon Congress to investigate “The full scope of those silenced beyond the ‘Disinformation Dozen,’” the “systematic suppression of scientific debate,” “media organizations’ role in amplifying foreign influence operations” and “dark money funding networks” supporting such organizations.
Thacker said Congress should examine possible CCDH violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. “We need to also look at how much foreign money they took in and whether we as a nation are comfortable with foreign influence trying to alter the law and political discussions.”
“The fight isn’t just about correcting past wrongs or personal vindication. It’s about preserving fundamental rights to free speech and scientific inquiry in the digital age,” Ji said. “If we don’t address this systematic abuse of power, we risk surrendering the very freedoms our founders fought to establish.”
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.
DNA Contamination in Vaccines: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 8, 2024
Legacy media fact-checkers and regulators across the world repeatedly claim that DNA contamination in vaccines — and particularly in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — poses no risk to vaccine recipients.
Some have gone so far as to claim that concerns raised about this issue by countless researchers are “baseless,” “misinformation” and “conspiracy theory.”
They concede that both older vaccines and the newer mRNA vaccines can contain residual DNA leftover from the manufacturing process — but say that remnant DNA is “expected and considered safe” and that there are regulatory steps in place to make sure it occurs only in limited quantities.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) dismissed concerns published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry about HPV (human papillomavirus) DNA fragments found in products like Merck’s Gardasil HPV vaccine. The agency claims the fragments are “not contaminants” and not a risk or a safety factor.
The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration last month issued a statement saying that recent studies claiming mRNA vaccines are contaminated with excessive levels of DNA lack scientific rigor and that residual DNA has been in biotech products for a long time anyway.
Australian regulators emphasized that “the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the potential risks.”
But some scientists — including Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, who spoke with The Defender — say residual DNA in vaccines should not be dismissed — the danger he said stems from both known and unknown risks.
Jablonowski said those risks have long been present in many existing vaccines, but they are even greater in the mRNA vaccines. Through the lipid nanoparticles contained in the mRNA shots, the DNA fragments “have an open pass to every membrane in your body.”
Why does DNA contamination happen?
Biology is complex, Jablonowski told The Defender. Nothing in it is very pure, so there are contaminations in everything.
He said there have been problems with contaminants in vaccines since what the journal Pediatrics described as the “First Modern Medical Disaster” — when 13 children administered a contaminated diphtheria antitoxin died.
Today, vaccines are produced in several different ways, but living cells play a part in the manufacturing of most vaccines, Jablonowski explained. Vaccines typically work by introducing a weakened bacteria or virus, or pieces of them — often with an adjuvant to amplify its effect — into the body to trigger an immune response.
Viruses need living cells to grow, so viral vaccines use some kind of living cell in the production process. The viruses can be grown in bacteria, yeast, animal or human fetal cells, for example.
That DNA in those cells is typically destroyed or fragmented in the process of making the vaccine. However, the process might not eliminate all of it — some remnant, fragmented DNA can remain present.
The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines used a different process. Rather than introducing a viral protein, they introduced messenger RNA, which trains cells to produce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and the immune system recognizes that protein and produces antibodies.
The COVD-19 vaccines used an RNA-making enzyme — an RNA polymerase — which uses a DNA template to synthesize the RNA in a lab process called “in vitro transcription.”
The DNA used in the process first has to be amplified. Vaccine makers like Pfizer amplified the DNA for the vaccine using a plasmid. Plasmids are small circular pieces of DNA that reside in bacteria and get reproduced when a bacteria reproduces. For the COVID-19 vaccines, they used E. coli, a commonly used bacteria in vaccine production, for rapid amplification.
This DNA template comes with additional risk because the DNA of the plasmid used to create the template has to be removed from the vaccine before it can be injected into people.
Kevin McKernan, the researcher who first identified the DNA in the COVID-19 vaccines, found that the vaccine makers tried to get rid of that DNA by “chewing it up with an enzyme” called deoxyribonuclease or DNase, which breaks down DNA. However, they failed to completely eliminate it.
What are the potential dangers?
The potential risks of residual DNA in vaccines have been debated for decades without resolution, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Some researchers claim the remnant DNA is inert. Others argue it is an important risk factor that may be oncogenic — cancer-causing — or infectious.
The immune system, a delicate system of sensors, has a threshold for how much foreign material it can tolerate in the body, Jablownoski said. When DNA is present outside of cells and in the bloodstream, it can initiate a powerful immune response — called an interferon response — which will aggressively seek out the harmful pathogen.
This can create an overblown immune system response that could be a vector for autoimmune issues related to vaccine contamination.
For example, pathologist and molecular gene detection expert Sin Hang Lee identified the residual RNA in the HPV vaccine Gardasil, which he tested for fragment DNA after a 13-year-old girl developed acute juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D., reported.
In the Gardasil vaccine, Lee found the HPV DNA present bound tightly to the aluminum adjuvant. As a result it doesn’t easily break down as it should. Lee theorized that immune cells such as macrophages, which are laden with aluminum adjuvant, travel from the injection site through the blood to various organs.
According to Demasi, the HPV DNA that is bound to the adjuvant “can cause chronic immune-inflammatory reactions that lead to autoimmune conditions in some people.”
Jablonowski said the mRNA vaccines pose a new and more serious problem. That’s because before the introduction of the mRNA vaccine, foreign DNA had no mechanism to get inside of a cell. However, the lipid nanoparticles make that possible.
“The appropriate amount of foreign DNA inside the cell is zero,” Jablonowski said. “It can run amuck with all of the delicate biology necessary to operate a cell.”
Foreign DNA could cause cells to become diseased, it can disrupt regulation, and if the DNA is present at cell division, it could get inside the nucleus and create a host of problems, he said.
Some researchers have argued there is evidence this contaminant DNA could be linked to rising cancer rates.
What do the regulators say?
In 1985, the FDA set an upper limit of 10 picograms per dose. In 1987, the WHO ncreased its recommended limit to 100 picograms and then increased it again to 10 nanograms (i.e., 100 times higher) — a limit now adopted by the FDA, Demasi reported.
Researchers like Lee and McKernan say in the case of Gardasil, this limit doesn’t offer adequate protection, because the HPV DNA can be hard to detect when it binds to the adjuvant.
Jablonowski said when this threshold was set, regulators were only considering how much residual DNA might be in the bloodstream from vaccines — because at that time there wasn’t a mechanism for the DNA to get into the cell. But with mRNA vaccines, that threshold can likely pose a serious danger.
Why did DNA contamination become so controversial?
Researchers and scientists have had concerns about DNA contaminants in vaccines for decades. However, last year, genomics researcher McKernan reported finding that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is contaminated with plasmid DNA — which should not be present in an mRNA vaccine.
He said this raises concerns that the plasmid DNA could lead to cancers or autoimmune issues in some vaccine recipients.
After McKernan’s lab made its findings public, and other researchers confirmed them, Health Canada also confirmed that the Pfizer vaccine contains this DNA.
McKernan also reported that Pfizer concealed this information from regulators. In the manufacturing process for the drug’s clinical trials, Pfizer used PCR testing rather than the plasmid DNA it later used for mass production. So the first version of the drug — granted emergency use authorization by the FDA — didn’t contain the DNA.
It was later revealed that the Moderna vaccines used the same production method — so Moderna’s mRNA vaccines also were contaminated with the remnant DNA.
The issue quickly became politicized, with those claiming the vaccines are “safe and effective” calling the claims “misinformation” and a conspiracy theory, dubbed “plasmid-gate.”
Critics of the COVID-19 vaccines, like Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo, called on regulators to address the issue.
The FDA said in a response letter that “based on a thorough assessment of the entire manufacturing process, FDA is confident in the quality, safety, and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines.” However, the agency provided none of the evidence on which it based that conclusion.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who serves on an FDA advisory committee for the COVID vaccines — and who is himself a vaccine inventor and patent holder on RotaTeq, the rotavirus vaccine recommended for universal use in infants by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — in a YouTube video dismissed the concerns raised by MeKernan, Ladapo and others.
He said it is possible that there is fragment DNA in the vaccines, but that it is impossible for the DNA fragments to enter people’s cells or to cause disease.
Jablonowski said that for Offit’s explanation to make sense, biology would have to be very simple and straightforward. But it’s not, he said. “Biology is really messy and there are almost always exceptions.”
The immune system is the second-most complicated system, and there is a lot we don’t know about it, he added.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

