Florida to ‘End All Vaccine Mandates,’ State’s Surgeon General Announces
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 3, 2025
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced today plans to eliminate all vaccine mandates in the state, including for children to attend school.
“The Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida,” Ladapo said at a press conference in Tampa, hosted by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Florida would be the first state to completely drop all mandated vaccinations.
Ladapo said every immunization requirement “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”
“Who am I as a government? Or anyone else? Or who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body?” he asked.
Ladapo said some vaccines are mandated by the Florida Department of Health, but those requirements “are going to be gone.”
“We are going to work with the governor and law makers to get rid of the rest,” he added.
Ladapo did not lay out a timeline to end the mandates.
Currently in Florida, children without vaccine exemptions are required to take most vaccines on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s childhood immunization schedule to attend daycare or school. This includes shots for hepatitis B, measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, pneumococcal vaccine, the Hib vaccine and others.
Vaccine rates in Florida reportedly dropping
Vaccination rates in the state have reportedly declined under Ladapo, with 90.6% of kindergarteners vaccinated, the lowest number in over a decade, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
The rate of religious exemptions in the state has been increasing, according to the state’s public health department.
Ladapo, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, has been widely praised by critics of the COVID-19 vaccines and people in the health freedom movement generally for his critiques of questionable guidance issued by public health agencies.
In April 2020, he garnered national attention for his critique of the government’s pandemic management measures in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal called “Lockdowns Won’t Stop the Spread.”
In September 2021, Ladapo was appointed Florida’s surgeon general.
In 2023, he issued a health alert to the Florida healthcare sector and to the public, warning that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines caused a “substantial increase” in reports of adverse events in Florida.
Last year, Ladapo called for a halt in the use of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines over safety concerns that the mRNA technology is delivering DNA contaminants into people’s cells.
He also played a key role in the decision for Florida to become the second state to ban fluoride in public drinking water.
The mainstream media and its go-to commentators on public health — such as Dr. Paul Offit, who was removed from his vaccine advisory position at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday — denounced the move to end the mandates, saying it would put children at risk.
Those news organizations also argue that vaccines are key tools for public health.
Florida’s announcement follows a similar move last month in Idaho, where Gov. Brad Little signed into law the Idaho Medical Freedom Act, which prohibits most medical mandates in the state.
At today’s press conference, DeSantis announced the state will establish its own Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission at the state level.
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.
COVID Vaccines ‘Unleashed Profound Harm’ New Peer-Reviewed Paper Says
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 29, 2025
A new peer-reviewed study suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19 shows signs of “deliberate engineering” and that these features, including the spike protein also found in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, are responsible for widespread health harms globally.
The study, authored by 11 scientific and legal experts, was published in the fall edition of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
The authors argue that the man-made features of SARS-CoV-2 and the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are likely the outcome of controversial gain-of-function research, in violation of the United Nations’ Biological Weapons Convention.
Gain-of-function research, which increases the transmissibility or virulence of viruses, is frequently used in vaccine development.
According to the paper, the spread of COVID-19 — followed by the rollout of mRNA vaccines — resulted in unprecedented health harms, ranging from “autoimmune diseases and cardiovascular catastrophes to pregnancy complications and aggressive cancers.”
“Far from benign, these vaccines have unleashed profound harm, disrupting nearly every system of the human body and contributing to unprecedented levels of morbidity and mortality,” the paper states.
Dr. Andrew Zywiec, principal physician at Zywiec & Porter, is the paper’s lead author. He said the paper reveals a “pattern of harm too consistent, too pervasive to be dismissed as chance.” He added:
“The systemic toxicity unleashed by these interventions, manifesting as autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular devastation, aggressive cancers, and catastrophic reproductive harms, represents not merely a public health failure but a profound betrayal of trust.”
Joseph Sansone, Ph.D., a psychotherapist who filed a lawsuit to prohibit mRNA vaccines in Florida, said the paper is “extremely significant” as it is “the first peer-reviewed journal article stating that both COVID and the COVID injections violate the Biological Weapons Convention and that both COVID-19 and the COVID injections are biological weapons.”
SARS-CoV-2 virus ‘indicative of laboratory manipulation’
According to the paper, the SARS-CoV-2 virus “displays multiple genomic features indicative of laboratory manipulation,” including its furin cleavage site, which “enhances infectivity” and which is “absent in SARS-like viruses found in nature.”
Several other features of the SARS-CoV-2 virus “enhance immunological evasion and aerosol transmissibility,” making the virus “unusually durable … and five times more stable in air” than other respiratory viruses.
“These combined traits, along with the virus’s mutation patterns, are strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 could not have evolved naturally,” the paper states.
The paper cites two peer-reviewed journal articles by military scientists stating that SARS-CoV-2 contained “evidence of manipulation” that makes the virus an “attractive pathogen” due to its features, which resemble those of a biological weapon.
These manipulations “represent a violation of the Biological Weapons Convention,” the paper argues.
Enacted in 1975, the convention “effectively prohibits the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological and toxin weapons.” Nearly 200 countries have signed it.
Paper accuses Fauci of deliberately concealing SARS-CoV-2 origins
According to the paper, gain-of-function research involves “viral manipulation techniques” that can lead to the development of pathogens that are banned under the convention.
Yet, the U.S. government — particularly the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci until 2022 — has long been involved in gain-of-function research, “including a long-standing collaboration between U.S.-funded institutions and the Wuhan Institute of Virology” in China.
Proponents of the “lab-leak theory” of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 argue that gain-of-function research at the Wuhan laboratory and a subsequent leak led to the global outbreak of COVID-19, which was covered up.
In April, the Trump administration launched a new version of the government’s official COVID-19 website, presenting evidence that COVID-19 emerged due to a leak at the Wuhan lab. The CIA, FBI, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Congress and several foreign intelligence agencies have endorsed this theory.
The paper refers to Project DEFUSE, a proposal the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan scientists submitted to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2018. Although the proposal was rejected, it described the creation of coronaviruses with features that enhanced their infectivity, including the furin cleavage site.
EcoHealth Alliance and its former president, Peter Daszak, Ph.D., collaborated with Wuhan researchers. Last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) suspended all funding for EcoHealth Alliance after finding the organization had failed to properly monitor risky coronavirus experiments.
The paper states that Fauci and the U.S. Intelligence Community never disclosed the existence of the research. Instead, “they obfuscated what is, in fact, proof of intent to produce a virus much like the one that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The paper cites a Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference with Fauci and key virologists, including several of the co-authors of the now-infamous “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper. The paper, which promoted the natural origin of COVID-19, was published in Nature Medicine in March 2020.
Although several of the co-authors of “Proximal Origin” expressed doubts that SARS-CoV-2 developed naturally, Fauci “aimed to suppress” such concerns during the Feb. 1, 2020, call.
“Proximal Origin” became one of the most-cited papers of 2020 and has been accessed over 6 million times. In 2023, The Nation reported that over 2,000 media outlets cited the paper.
The U.S. government, the scientific community and the media subsequently used “Proximal Origin” to promote the “zoonotic” — or natural origin — theory of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and to discredit proponents of the “lab-leak theory.”
“The deliberate concealment of critical genomic features delayed public awareness and pandemic mitigation efforts, potentially allowing wider spread and more deaths,” the paper states.
In May, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that paused gain-of-function research in the U.S. for 120 days while a new regulatory framework is developed. It also ended U.S. funding for such research in some countries.
Spike protein poses ‘potential for irreversible harm’
According to the paper’s authors, the development of SARS-CoV-2 — and the COVID-19 features that contain similar gain-of-function properties — resulted in significant harm to global public health.
The paper references statistics from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database which show a significantly increased incidence of myocarditis (151.4%), pulmonary embolism (43.6%), ovarian dysfunction (34.9%), hypertensive disease (22.9%), Guillain-Barré syndrome (14.9%), esophageal cancer (12.5%) and breast cancer (7%) in 2021, the year the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out globally.
Additional U.S. military data cited in the paper show “persistent elevations” in myocarditis, digestive organ cancer, brain cancer and other injuries between 2022 and 2025.
Reproductive harms also significantly increased following the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, the paper argues. It cites data from sources including the U.S. government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), Pfizer’s 2021 post-marketing surveillance report and its Phase 2/3 clinical trial data for its COVID-19 shot, showing increased miscarriages, stillbirths and neonatal deaths.
The paper cites the spike protein in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines as one of the likely factors for the increased incidence of cancers and other health conditions in recent years.
“Prolonged protein expression, exemplified by S1 spike protein detection more than 700 days post-COVID vaccination, underscores the potential for irreversible harm,” the paper states.
The paper argues that suppression of “proven or promising treatments” such as hydroxychloroquine in favor of universal COVID-19 vaccine mandates — and the policy decision to implement mass vaccination during the pandemic — further exacerbated global public health and had “damaging effects on public trust.”
Growing calls to suspend mRNA vaccines
The paper was published just as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ended its broad authorization of COVID-19 vaccines earlier this week, restricting the shots to people at higher risk for severe illness.
Earlier this month, HHS announced it canceled nearly $500 million in contracts and grants for the development of mRNA vaccines.
A growing number of scientists have called for the suspension or withdrawal of mRNA vaccines. The paper’s authors said their findings strengthen these calls. They stated:
“The surge in autoimmune diseases, aggressive cancers, pregnancy losses, cardiovascular fatalities, societal fragmentation, and the looming risks of advanced mRNA platforms demand an immediate halt to mRNA vaccine and biologic use, comprehensive investigations into the motives behind this unprecedented violation of public trust, and robust measures to restore safe therapeutics and ethical public health practices.”
Dr. Irene Mavrakakis, one of the paper’s co-authors and a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, said the paper supports calls for “complete recall of all COVID-19 vaccines and biologics and a moratorium on all mRNA biologics.”
Mavrakakis also called for the “criminal prosecution of decision-makers who were criminally negligent and failed in their duties.” She said vaccine manufacturers should be stripped of the immunity they enjoy under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 and the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) of 2005.
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, agreed. He said gain-of-function research “will always have its cheerleaders,” but humanity faces “extreme risk and inevitably pays a heavy price for that research.”
“Labs can and do leak,” he said. “One singular event at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in late 2019 caused innumerable suffering and death. Until we can construct a leak-proof lab, we shouldn’t be assembling world-ravaging viruses in them.”
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.
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.
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.
60% SAY NO TO FULL VACCINE SCHEDULE
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 21, 2025
A new JAMA study highlights declining confidence in America’s vaccine program, finding that only 40% of parents intend to follow the full childhood schedule. Meanwhile, the American Academy of Pediatrics has broken sharply from HHS guidance, now recommending the COVID vaccine for infants and children.
Why is America’s paediatric academy still pushing Covid vaccines for children?
The American Academy of Pediatrics has broken ranks with the CDC, issuing its own “evidence-based” immunisation schedule—but whose interests is the AAP really serving?
By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | August 19, 2025
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has just urged that all children aged 6 – 23 months receive a Covid-19 vaccine, regardless of prior infection, and extended that recommendation to older children deemed high risk.
Their guidance directly conflicts with the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which recently withdrew broad recommendations to vaccinate healthy children and pregnant women in favour of “shared clinical decision-making.”
Now, for the first time, the AAP has broken ranks — issuing its own “evidence-based immunization schedule” that places it squarely alongside its biggest corporate donors, the very companies whose products it promotes.
The boycott
The rupture began in June 2025, when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr dismissed the CDC’s old Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced it with a leaner panel.
The AAP, which had held a privileged liaison seat at ACIP for decades, responded by boycotting the meeting.
AAP president Dr Susan Kressly declared, “We won’t lend our name or our expertise to a system that is being politicised at the expense of children’s health,” branding the restructured ACIP “no longer a credible process.”
But credibility cuts both ways. At the June meeting, ACIP member Cody Meissner — himself an establishment veteran — rebuked the boycott.
“I think it’s somewhat childish for them not to appear,” he said. “It is dialogue that leads to the best recommendations for the use of vaccines.”
The AAP’s absence wasn’t about protecting children from politics. It was about rejecting a forum it could no longer control.
Following the money
The AAP insists its funding has no bearing on policy. But the Academy advertises its dependence on the very companies whose products it recommends for children.
On its own website, the Academy thanks its top corporate sponsors: Moderna, Merck, Sanofi and GSK. These companies produce nearly every vaccine on the childhood schedule — and now the AAP is demanding more of their products be given to babies.

Financial filings show corporate contributions make up a substantial slice of the Academy’s revenue. Even its flagship journal, Pediatrics, carries the fingerprints of industry support.
This isn’t independence, it’s entanglement. When an organisation funded by vaccine makers issues recommendations that boost those same companies’ sales, it is impossible to pretend this is solely about children’s health.
Parents have already rejected the shots
The problem for the AAP is that parents have already walked away. CDC data show that among toddlers, the rate is a mere 4.5%.
The public’s verdict could not be clearer: most families do not want these vaccines for their children.
The AAP knows this — yet it presses ahead regardless. Its recommendations are now performative, directed less at parents than at its corporate benefactors.
Kennedy strikes back
Kennedy seized on the contradiction.
Posting a screenshot of the AAP’s donor list, he wrote: “These four companies make virtually every vaccine on the CDC’s recommended childhood vaccine schedule,” after the Academy released its own list of “corporate-friendly vaccine recommendations.”

Kennedy accused the Academy of running a “pay-to-play scheme” on behalf of “Big Pharma benefactors” and demanded full disclosure of conflicts in its leadership and journal.
He warned that recommendations diverging from the CDC’s official list are not protected under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act. For now, Covid-19 products remain under a separate regime — the PREP Act and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), which HHS has extended through to 2029.
Kennedy cast this as a red line for the future: if the AAP keeps inventing its own vaccine schedule, it risks dragging doctors and hospitals into legal jeopardy.
This is no longer about one product but about who dictates the rules of childhood vaccination — government regulators or an industry-backed lobby group.
The deeper problem
This dispute isn’t really about Covid vaccines because parents, even healthcare workers, have already rejected them in overwhelming numbers. It is about who controls the institutions that speak in the name of children’s health.
The AAP claimed it boycotted ACIP in June to resist politicisation. In reality, it walked away from a process no longer stacked with the industry-aligned figures it had long relied on. That was the real affront.
The deeper problem is that the AAP is not a neutral guardian of child health. It is a lobbying arm entangled with corporate sponsors, issuing pronouncements that align with donor interests while ignoring the families it claims to represent.
AAP says it represents 67,000 paediatricians, and by extension America’s children. But its actions tell a different story. It represents the companies that fund it.
Children’s health is jeopardised when those entrusted with protecting it are compromised. The AAP’s latest recommendations are not science-based safeguards. They are corporate advocacy in disguise.
It is not just disappointing — it is harmful.
AAP’s full vaccine schedule [LINK]
AAP Received Tens of Millions in Federal Funding to Push Vaccines and Combat ‘Misinformation’
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender |August 15, 2025
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which is suing U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and has called for the end to religious exemptions, received tens of millions of dollars in federal funding in a single year, according to public records.
AAP, which represents 67,000 pediatricians in the U.S., 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, develop a Regional Pediatric Pandemic Network, and highlight telehealth for children.
However, not all of the money could be tracked through public records.
The federal grants are in addition to financial contributions the AAP receives from several major pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly, GSK, Merck, Moderna and Sanofi.
Sayer Ji, founder of GreenMedInfo and co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom, said the joint funding that the AAP receives from taxpayers and Big Pharma “reflects a troubling alignment between its policy positions and the interests of its largest funders — both federal agencies and pharmaceutical corporations.”
He added:
“Federal grants tied to vaccination programs, pandemic preparedness and public health messaging create an inherent conflict of interest when the same organization actively lobbies against religious and personal exemptions, promotes universal uptake of COVID-19 shots in children and pregnant women, and funds or publishes research that omits clear stratification of outcomes by vaccination status.”
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.
Last month, the AAP was one of six medical organizations that sued Kennedy and other public health officials and agencies over recent changes to COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women.
Also last month, the AAP called for an end to religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions for children attending daycare and school in the U.S.
‘AAP has been on the wrong side of a number of child health issues’
Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, said, “Historically, the AAP has hidden its funding sources” and “it has been impossible to learn exactly what the quid pro quo is — in other words, what that money earns.”
“All we know is that the AAP has been on the wrong side of a number of child health issues, with vaccine mandates in particular being a point of contention,” Nass said.
Journalist Paul D. Thacker, a former U.S. Senate investigator, said organizations like the AAP have “pervasive” ties to Big Pharma despite receiving taxpayer funds. He said:
“When I was working to pass the Physician Payments Sunshine Act that requires corporations to disclose payments to doctors, we were aware that many physician organizations and patient advocacy groups are wallowing in Pharma cash. We sent dozens of letters to physician groups to uncover their Pharma ties, and the money is pervasive.”
Taxpayer money helped AAP promote child vaccination in Madagascar
The AAP’s single audit report also showed that the organization received $257,607 in a pass-through grant for the Accessible Continuum of Care and Essential Services Sustained (ACCESS) Program in Madagascar — a program of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The ACCESS Program sought to integrate “nutrition, vaccination, and treatment of common illnesses into primary health care services” in Madagascar.
This included the promotion of childhood vaccination in the country. According to ACCESS, the program helped train vaccination teams and “improve accessibility through the establishment of vaccine sites and mobile clinics.”
As a result, “the coverage rate among infants for the pentavalent vaccine, which protects against five life-threatening diseases, increased from 75% to 83%,” according to ACCESS. The vaccine — intended to protect against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type B or Hib infections — has been associated with infant deaths.
AAP used federal funds to create online guide warning of ‘misinformation’
The AAP received over $1.9 million in funding for the development of the AAP Center of Excellence, an online guide to promote “a healthy digital ecosystem for children and youth.”
A portion of this guide is devoted to identifying “sources of mis- and disinformation on social media”:
“While teens note coming across ‘fake news’ and health-focused mis/disinformation online, they described that they still trust some social media platforms because the convenience and accessibility of platforms make them appealing.”
The guide presents strategies to “become a critical consumer of health information online,” including identifying “fishy features that can help distinguish mis/disinformation from trustworthy health information online.”
Another section of the guide provides advice to patients on how to locate “trusted health information” online:
“We know that adolescents look online for health information for several reasons including ease of access, for privacy, or to find others with similar lived experience. … The health information that they find online and on social media may vary in quality and may contain misinformation or even disinformation which can be harmful to patients.”
The guide encouraged clinicians to “preemptively share health information resources from reputable sources” on specific health topics that teens may have questions about and direct patients toward “digital literacy resources to learn strategies to identify misinformation and disinformation.”
AAP received funds to promote telehealth for kids
The AAP also received grants of $537,578, $126,670 and $71,625 for the promotion of telehealth and telemedicine services for pediatric patients.
A pass-through grant from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, totaling $71,625, was for the promotion of the SPROUT-CTSA Collaborative Telehealth Research Network.
The SPROUT (Supporting Pediatric Research on Outcomes and Utilization of Telehealth) Collaborative is a group of institutions and pediatric providers operating within the AAP to focus on pediatric telehealth.
“The ultimate goal is to establish an infrastructure that removes barriers to efficient telehealth research across large geographic areas,” according to a National Institutes of Health news release.
The program was announced on March 17, 2020, just as COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns were being introduced in the U.S. and globally.
Despite its rising prevalence in pediatric care, some pediatricians are critical of offering health services to children via telehealth platforms.
In an interview with The Defender last month, pediatrician Dr. Michelle Perro said, “Telehealth is valuable, but when pediatric care becomes dominated by virtual visits, we lose the subtle clinical observations that are crucial for accurate assessments and treatment.”
She added:
“The physical examination is a key component to the medical visit. These visits will morph into AI [artificial intelligence]-dominated healthcare.
“Children deserve thoughtful, hands-on care, not a profit-driven model where Big Pharma influences how and what we prescribe through a screen. We are modeling healthcare behaviors for children through the internet and normalizing online health visits.”
Taxpayer funds helped create ‘Pediatric Pandemic Network’
The AAP also received a grant of $134,653 in a pass-through from the University of Texas at Austin to develop the Regional Pediatric Pandemic Network, administered through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
According to HRSA, this program aimed to “help children’s hospitals and their communities be ready to care for children during disasters and public health emergencies.”
The 10 children’s hospitals in the nationwide network were to “serve as hubs in their communities and regions to improve the overall management and care for children during emergencies.”
One of the program’s stated goals: “Advancing improvements in all phases of planning, response, and recovery; making sure hospitals and communities respond effectively during a global health threat to children and their families.”
Related articles in The Defender
- American Academy of Pediatrics Wants to Shut Down Religious Vaccine Exemptions
- RFK Jr. Hit With Lawsuit Over Changes to COVID Vaccine Policies for Kids, Pregnant Women
- AAP, AMA Booted From CDC Vaccine Advisory Working Groups
- Telehealth Firms That Partner With Big Pharma Prescribe More Drugs, U.S. Senate Report Shows
- Long COVID in Kids and Teens: New Study Challenges Mainstream Narrative
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.
The Creation of New ICD-10 Codes for Post-Covid Vaccine Syndrome
By Christopher Dreisbach | Brownstone Institute | August 15, 2025
“If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution.” ― Steve Jobs
Definitions matter. In almost any context, problems left undefined inevitably remain problems left unsolved.
For this reason, healthcare professionals worldwide rely upon the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10), a standardized system used to categorize and code diseases, symptoms, and health conditions. In the United States, ICD-10 codes serve as the foundation for medical records, insurance billing, epidemiological research, and public health policy. Without specific ICD-10 codes, severe conditions may remain invisible in the healthcare data ecosystem—making it harder to track, study, or provide adequate care.
This is precisely the challenge facing thousands of Americans suffering from persistent severe adverse events after receiving a Covid vaccine—a condition recently defined as Post-Covid Vaccine Syndrome (PCVS). As one of those individuals, I know all too well how debilitating and life-altering this condition can be. Our symptoms include exercise intolerance, excessive fatigue, brain fog, insomnia, and dizziness. They develop shortly after vaccination, within a day or two, can become more severe in the days that follow, and persist over time.
At present, there are no dedicated ICD-10 codes for PCVS. This absence has significant consequences for patients, clinicians, researchers, and policymakers alike.
Visibility in the Healthcare System
One of the primary functions of ICD-10 codes is to make a condition visible within the healthcare system. Without specific codes, PCVS is at best recorded under vague categories like “unspecified adverse effect of vaccine” or “other specified postvaccination complication.” Leery of contradicting the safe and effective narrative, many providers simply utilize codes for general symptoms such as “fatigue” or “paresthesia.” As a result, PCVS is effectively lost in a sea of unrelated data.
Dedicated codes would allow providers to document PCVS in a standardized way, ensuring it is recognized in patient records, insurance claims, and national health databases. This visibility is crucial for legitimizing PCVS in the eyes of both a conflicted medical community and a polarized public.
Facilitating Research and Data Collection
Medical research thrives on accurate, reliable data. Without discrete ICD-10 codes, it is extremely difficult to track how many of us are affected by PCVS, what our symptoms are, how long they last, and what treatments are effective.
Currently, researchers who want to study PCVS must sift through miscellaneous adverse event codes, searching for possible cases—a process that is slow, imprecise, and prone to undercounting. Specific codes would enable more precise epidemiological studies, making it easier to identify risk factors, compare outcomes, and develop evidence-based treatment guidelines.
Improving Public Health Response and Policy
Public health agencies use ICD-10 coding data to monitor trends, allocate resources, and shape policy decisions. The lack of codes for PCVS means that policymakers are operating without a complete picture of vaccine safety profiles and long-term outcomes.
By establishing dedicated codes, health officials could more accurately assess the frequency and severity of PCVS, helping them balance the benefits and risks of vaccination programs and design better safety monitoring systems in the future. This transparency would strengthen public confidence in vaccination campaigns by demonstrating that potential adverse events are being taken seriously and tracked systematically.
Reducing Stigma and Improving Clinical Recognition
Those of us suffering from PCVS often face intense skepticism, with our symptoms crudely dismissed as unrelated or psychosomatic. The absence of recognized diagnostic codes can inadvertently reinforce this stigma, making it harder for those suffering with PCVS to be taken seriously.
Specific ICD-10 codes would send a clear signal to clinicians that PCVS is a legitimate medical condition worthy of investigation, empathy, and appropriate care.
Ethical and Societal Responsibility
Healthcare systems have an ethical duty to acknowledge and address all medical conditions – especially those that may be rare or controversial. Creating specific ICD-10 codes for PCVS would demonstrate a commitment to transparency, patient welfare, and scientific inquiry.
This step would not undermine legitimate vaccination efforts; rather, it would enhance them by showing the public that adverse events are being tracked rigorously and addressed proactively. Public health trust depends not only on promoting the benefits of a medical intervention but also on an honest acknowledgment of its risks, however small.
Aligning with the Approach to Long Covid
The World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have already recognized the need for specific ICD-10 codes for post-acute sequelae of Covid, commonly known as Long Covid. These codes have helped researchers and clinicians better identify, study, and manage that condition.
The same logic applies to PCVS. Both prolonged conditions involve complex overlapping symptoms following an acute event (infection or vaccination) and require long-term monitoring.
For that reason, React19, a science-based 501(c) non-profit organization dedicated solely to supporting those suffering from long-term Covid vaccine adverse events, has submitted a formal proposal to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics to create ICD-10 codes for PCVS mirroring those for Long Covid.
PCVS Patients Deserve Action, not Argument
“We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” ― Ayn Rand
While opinions differ greatly to what extent – by all credible accounts the Covid vaccines simply did not perform as public health officials assured the American public they would. As to efficacy, they failed to stop transmission and infection. As to safety, in addition to the emergence of PCVS, the CDC has conceded that myocarditis and pericarditis are “linked to certain types of COVID-19 vaccinations.” And of course, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was pulled entirely from the market after multiple cases of fatal blood clotting after vaccinations.
Yale Medical School professor of cardiology Dr. Harlan Krumholtz well summarized, “It’s clear that some individuals are experiencing significant challenges after vaccination. Our responsibility as scientists and clinicians is to listen to their experiences, rigorously investigate the underlying causes, and seek ways to help.” Creating distinct ICD-10 codes for PCVS mirroring those currently utilized to identify Long Covid would be the logical first step to provide this much needed support.
Failure to create specific ICD-10 codes for PCVS would be to ignore the agonizing reality of the syndrome, leaving the sick and suffering to face the grim consequences of inaction – left adrift in a medical system unwilling to acknowledge our existence and desperate need for treatment. We must expect more of our public health agencies – those debilitated by PCVS deserve no less.
Christopher Dreisbach
Prior to his own life altering vaccine injury, Chris primarily practiced criminal defense throughout central Pennsylvania. His client base ranged from individuals facing minor offenses such as driving under the influence to those charged with serious offenses including homicide. In addition to his private clients, Chris served as court-appointed counsel representing incarcerated individuals under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act. In 2009, he was recognized as Advocate of the Year for his work on behalf of victims of violent crime. He is now Legal Affairs Director of React19, a science-based non-profit offering financial, physical, and emotional support for those suffering from longterm Covid-19 vaccine adverse events globally.
mRNA: GROUND ZERO FOR CANCER CRISIS?
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 7, 2025
As HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pulls the plug on $500 million in mRNA vaccine contracts and U.S. COVID shot uptake plummets to historic lows, a more alarming crisis is taking shape—a potential pandemic of cancer. Could the very technology once hailed as revolutionary now be triggering a silent epidemic? Explore the emerging science uncovering how mRNA vaccines may be reactivating dormant cancer cells and disrupting immune surveillance. This is a wake-up call the world can’t afford to ignore.
RFK Jr. Ends Financial Incentives for Hospitals That Report Staff Vaccination Rates
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 4, 2025
The federal government will no longer financially reward hospitals for reporting the vaccination rates of their staff, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Aug. 1. According to the press release, the incentive system was “coercive and denied informed consent.”
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said:
“Medical decisions should be made based on one thing: the wellbeing of the person — never on a financial bonus or a government mandate. … Doctors deserve the freedom to use their training, follow the science, and speak the truth — without fear of punishment.”
The move repeals a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) inpatient payment policy created during the Biden administration that tied hospital reimbursement to COVID-19 vaccination reporting.
Under the old policy, hospitals didn’t just collect the data and hold it internally. They published the data on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Healthcare Safety Network — the “nation’s most widely used healthcare-associated infection tracking system,” where it was used “as a tool for public shaming, not public health,” the press release said.
CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz applauded the repeal.
“Doctors and other providers should have the same autonomy to choose what’s right for their own individual health care needs as the patients for whom they care,” Oz said. “Today’s announcement helps put that power back in their hands.”
HHS said the repeal is part of the agency’s broader efforts to “restore medical autonomy in federally funded programs and root out financial and regulatory pressures that incentivize physicians towards pre-scripted medical decisions rather than individualized, evidence-based care.”
CMS estimated that the annual burden of collecting the data across 3,050 hospitals was between $1,378,600 and $1,608,570.
Trial Site News noted that HHS’ press release didn’t cite evidence supporting the allegation that requiring hospitals to report vaccination data had been used to shame them, but said such evidence may exist.
According to Trial Site News :
“This policy rollback is more than bureaucratic housekeeping — it’s a reflection of a national reckoning. The American people grew weary of the top-down, one-size-fits-all vaccination regime advanced by HHS agencies like the FDA and CDC during the COVID-19 era.
“What was framed as public health became, in the eyes of many, a vehicle for coercion, censorship, and loss of personal agency. … The rise of RFK Jr. to lead HHS isn’t a fluke; it’s a clear mandate from the public demanding medical freedom, transparency, and an end to government overreach disguised as science.”
Jon Fleetwood wrote in a Substack post today that the change suggests HHS may be restructuring how it relates to the medical community. The agency “now favors decentralization and professional freedom over command-and-control enforcement,” he said.
Many hospital workers resisted COVID vaccine
The issue of COVID-19 vaccination mandates for hospital staff has been contentious.
Earlier this year, the Court of Appeals of the State of Kansas ruled that Saint Luke’s Health Systems improperly fired an employee when it rejected her request for a religious exemption from the hospital system’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
In 2021, over 100 hospital workers in Texas sued their employer for requiring them to get a COVID-19 shot, alleging the mandate forced them to “subject themselves to medical experimentation as a prerequisite to feeding their families.”
The same year, a New Jersey hospital system fired over 100 employees who refused to get a COVID-19 shot.
In 2023, CMS eliminated COVID-19 mandates for healthcare workers. Since then, healthcare worker COVID-19 vaccination rates have dropped.
Last fall, roughly 85% of healthcare workers declined a COVID-19 booster, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary.
Will HHS eliminate vaccine incentives for pediatricians?
The HHS policy change didn’t reference an incentive program that rewards pediatricians who follow the CDC childhood immunization schedule. Kennedy raised the issue last month during an interview with Tucker Carlson.
But Polly Tommey, program director for Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) CHD.TV, brought it up during her testimony last month at a U.S. Senate hearing on vaccine injury.
“We need our pediatricians to stop getting bonuses for vaccinating our children,” said Tommey, whose son was injured by a childhood vaccine.
CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker, who also has a vaccine-injured son and testified during the Senate hearing, said pediatricians can receive hundreds of dollars for each fully vaccinated child, depending on certain factors.
CHD CEO Mary Holland said in a recent interview with OAN News that vaccine incentives for pediatricians have “completely distorted” pediatric care.
“A pediatrician with a large practice of thousands of children in it can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, really serious money, by having a 90% or a 95% uptake rate,” Holland said.
AAP tells doctors it’s ok to drop patients if parents refuse to follow vaccine schedule
A recent investigation by The Defender found that high vaccination rates are key to a profitable pediatric practice, according to data from insurance incentive structures and an analysis of a pediatric practice’s income.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), in a 2016 report on “Countering Vaccine Hesitancy,” told pediatricians that it was an “acceptable option” to dismiss families who refused to vaccinate their children.
The AAP receives funding from numerous vaccine makers, including AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, GSK, Merck, Moderna and Pfizer, according to data compiled by White Rose Intelligence.
Last month, the AAP sued Kennedy and other HHS officials over the decision to no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy kids and pregnant women.
On July 28, the AAP issued a policy statement urging states to eliminate all non-medical exemptions to vaccination requirements for school kids, including religious and conscience-based exemptions.
When The Defender asked HHS if it planned to eliminate financial pressure tied to pediatric vaccination reporting, an HHS spokesperson said the agency “continues to evaluate solutions that align with current public health priorities and the best available scientific evidence.”
Related articles in The Defender
- Court Rules Against Hospital That Fired Woman for Refusing COVID Vaccine
- Are Vaccines Big Money-Makers for Pediatricians? RFK Jr. Comment During Interview With Tucker Carlson Sparks New Debate
- ‘We Get Paid to Vaccinate Your Children’: Pediatrician Reveals Details of Big Pharma Payola Scheme
- Pediatricians Get Paid to Push Vaccines — and It’s No Small Amount of Cash
- CHD Funds Lawsuit Against CDC Over Program That Forces Pediatricians to Give COVID Vaccines to Kids on Medicaid
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.
California Hospital Concealed Evidence Linking ‘Catastrophic Surge’ in Stillbirths to COVID Vaccine, Lawsuit Alleges
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 4, 2025
A California hospital concealed data linking a “catastrophic surge” in stillbirths among women who received COVID-19 vaccines, according to a lawsuit filed last week in the Superior Court of California, Fresno County.
Michelle Spencer, a nurse at Community Medical Centers’ (CMC) Community Regional Medical Center, said the hospital “deliberately and selectively” concealed from staff, patients and regulators a spike in unborn baby deaths that began in spring 2021, and retaliated against her when she publicized the information.
The lawsuit also says the hospital concealed medical data related to the fetal deaths that showed a link to COVID-19 vaccination of pregnant mothers.
The data include hospital-wide medical records documenting the number of stillbirths and the vaccination histories of those babies’ mothers. One managing nurse at the hospital told a staff member that nearly all of the stillbirths occurred among vaccinated mothers.
According to the complaint, Spencer “witnessed firsthand the exponential increase in unborn baby deaths directly correlating with pregnant women who received a Covid vaccine and then would deliver a dead baby a close number of days or weeks following their injection.”
Spencer’s attorney, Greg Glaser, said:
“The essence of this case is that the truth shall set you free. The hospital possessed vaccinated versus unvaccinated comparison data. The numbers proved the vaccines were causing miscarriages and more in the vaccinated group.
“We know hospital management analyzed the data because they said so, and we see they concealed it from regulators because that file [requested by regulators] is empty.”
Children’s Health Defense is funding the lawsuit, which accuses the hospital of fraud, retaliation and unethical business practices.
Graphic email describes spike in ‘demise patients,’ or stillbirths
Spencer, who has been employed with the hospital since 2017, works in the antepartum, postpartum and labor and delivery units, all located on the hospital’s third floor. Before the COVID-19 vaccination rollouts, the hospital averaged one fetal death per month, she said in the lawsuit.
However, beginning in spring 2021, the number of stillbirths skyrocketed to about 20 per month, and remains at that level today, Spencer said. The number is an estimate because Spencer can’t access the hospital’s full medical records.
In September 2022, Julie Christopherson, a nurse manager specializing in perinatal care and bereavement, sent an email to the nursing and technical staff at the hospital describing the ongoing spike in stillborn babies, which she called “demise patients.”
“Well, it seems as though the increase of demise patients that we are seeing is going to continue,” Christopherson wrote. “There were 22 demises in August, which ties the record number of demises in July 2021, and so far in September there have been 7 and it’s only the 8th day of the month.”
She said the nurses hadn’t seen all of the deaths because the statistics included other units within the hospital, “but there have still been so many in our department.”
Christopherson said:
“It’s a lot of work for you as the bedside RN’s and it’s also a lot of work for me. Demises have taken a lot of my time away from the other groups of patients that I serve, so I hope this trend doesn’t continue indefinitely.
“I know of a few more that are scheduled to deliver in the week ahead, so unfortunately the process is going to be very familiar with all of you.”
According to the email, many parents requested autopsies of their babies. It also provided graphic details of the mishandling of a dead fetus, and reminded the staff of proper procedures for handling the babies’ remains and other associated biological material.
Hospital ‘aggressively’ promoted vaccines despite signs of risk, lawsuit alleges
The lawsuit alleges the spike in baby deaths began in spring 2021, as the hospital “was aggressively promoting Covid-19 vaccines to pregnant women, including requiring OBGYNs with hospital privileges (and their staff) to administer vaccines without knowing or disclosing risks or benefits.”
According to the lawsuit, Christopherson “expressed bias against unvaccinated children and their parents” and helped the hospital conceal data linking vaccines to the record-high number of stillbirths.
Nearly all of the deceased babies were born to mothers who received the COVID-19 vaccine, while the number of fetal deaths in mothers who didn’t get the vaccine remained at the pre-vaccine rollout level, averaging one per month, according to the lawsuit.
The hospital management ignored “multiple safety signals” for COVID-19 vaccine injuries among mothers and babies, according to the complaint, which states:
“Not only did the increase in unborn baby deaths occur, but mothers suddenly … began having more frequent and more significant health problems (i.e., vascular, clotting, hemorrhaging) that did not occur prior to Spring 2021 based on Plaintiff’s direct observations and conversations with colleagues. ….
“ … At the same time … the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) on the fourth floor also experienced such dramatic spikes in injuries that the patient population nearly doubled. … From direct observation and conversations with colleagues after March 2021, Plaintiff learned of increasing numbers of babies being born at CMC with conditions such as missing fingers and toes, heart murmurs, and jaundice.”
The hospital benefited financially from promoting the vaccines, the lawsuit says, while pushing the cost of that policy on patients and healthcare professionals by refusing to investigate the COVID-19 shot as the possible cause of its increasing injury and death rates.
Hospital retaliated by withholding her bonus, Spencer said
Spencer kept a copy of Christopherson’s email, which she shared with multiple independent news sources. She also appealed to clinical supervisors to investigate whether the vaccines were linked to fetal deaths.
In response, Spencer “was gaslit by management who continued to make unsubstantiated excuses such as ‘pesticides’ as a more likely cause of the record high dead babies at CMC,” according to the lawsuit.
Spencer said she followed the standards of ethical whistleblowing and did not violate hospital rules. However, when the hospital learned she had shared the email with the media, it opened what Spencer called a “biased investigation” into her, in an attempt to silence her and other concerned colleagues.
Spencer said the hospital wasted its resources investigating her, instead of investigating the cause of the stillbirths.
She appealed to the California Department of Public Health to investigate the deaths. However, the hospital used its influence to prevent any investigation, provided false medical information to the agency regarding the number of fetal deaths, and stated COVID-19 vaccines played no role in the stillbirths, according to the lawsuit.
In December 2022, the hospital declined to pay Spencer a $5,000 retention bonus, claiming she was no longer in good standing because she was under investigation.
This sent a message to staff that “whistleblowers will be punished,” she said.
By intentionally concealing the vaccine-correlated data regarding baby deaths, the hospital prevented her from fulfilling her responsibility as a nurse to properly inform her patients of their health risks, Spencer said.
She continues working at the hospital and informs patients of the risks associated with vaccines, including the Hep B vaccine. However, she has been reprimanded for those actions.
Spencer is asking the court to compel the hospital to have a qualified third party investigate the deaths. She also seeks lost wages and punitive damages.
Spencer said she hopes her lawsuit will “expose the evil that’s going on in the hospital system,” and will “wake up parents and educate nurses.”
Glaser said:
“The hospital chose financial gain over people’s lives, and the hospital retaliated against Ms. Spencer as the nurse who blew the whistle on all of this. Our goal with the case is to give the evidence to a jury to set the truth free. Only then can we really begin to heal. And God knows we need it.”
Related articles in The Defender
- Study of 1.3 Million Women Links COVID Vaccines to Pregnancy Risk
- Study Finds 37 Safety Signals for COVID Vaccines During Pregnancy, CDC Still Urges Women to Get the Shots
- COVID Shots During Pregnancy Linked With Rise in Fetal Deaths, Leaked Emails Suggest
- Hep B Vaccines Come With High Risk, Little Benefit — Why Does CDC Recommend Them for Every Newborn?
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.

