In a world where autism rates are continuing to climb out of control, an increasing number of aging parents of children with severe autism worry about who will care for their child and where their adult child will live once they are gone.

“It is a crisis for many individuals every day,” John Gilmore, the father of an adult autistic son, told The Defender. “In many places, even states with relatively good services, housing is only provided in emergency situations, such as when a single parent who provides care dies.”

Gilmore is a member of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), a committee launched in January by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The committee advises the federal government on issues related to autism.

Housing for individuals with severe autism is high on the committee’s priority list, Gilmore said. “It has taken longer than we expected to get the IACC moving, but it is now, and housing is probably the most important non-medical issue we are considering.”

At its first meeting in April, IACC recommended that federal agencies adopt the term “profound autism” to refer to people with autism age 8 and older who have little or no speech, require continuous or near-continuous supervision for safety, and need substantial help for daily living activities.

The IACC said it hopes that the adoption of one standardized term will pave the way for research and policies that benefit this subset of individuals with autism.

Roughly 27% of kids diagnosed with autism have profound autism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Jill Escher, president of the National Council on Severe Autism and a mother of two adults with nonverbal profound autism, told The Defender that federal policy has historically failed to provide good-quality housing for people like her sons.

“It’s a tremendous crisis that continues to grow more serious year after year as the population of young adults ages up and as the parents become more infirm and pass away,” Escher said.

Only 12% of parents and caregivers of individuals with profound autism have a concrete plan for when they can no longer provide care for their child, according to a nationwide survey the National Council on Severe Autism conducted last year.

The survey, taken by nearly 1,300 parents and caregivers, also revealed that 65% of caregivers were ages 45 to 64.

Nearly half said they are still figuring out a plan for when they can no longer care for their child, and nearly a third had no plan at all.

‘No one else cares about them in the way that I do’

Those numbers come as no surprise to Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Children’s Health Defense (CHD). Hooker and his wife’s only child is an adult with profound autism who requires 24/7 care.

“We don’t know what our actual plan will be for him,” Hooker said in a recent CHD.TV interview with Dr. Andrew Wakefield. “We are working that out with fear and trembling, trying to figure out what the best trajectory for my son will be, you know, besides my wife and I living until we’re 130, 140 years old.”

Roughly 1 in 31 U.S. kids have an autism diagnosis, continuing a decades-long increase, according to the most recent CDC data.

Securing quality care and housing for the increasing number of adult children with autism is something that has never been fully addressed, Wakefield said.

That’s why Wakefield wrote “The Bequest,” his latest book, which launched June 26. The book, which Wakefield plans to make into a film, centers on the dilemma parents of a child with autism face when it comes to ensuring that their child is well cared for and loved after the parents’ death.

Wakefield told Hooker:

“This is one of the issues that plagues millions of parents across the country and around the world every night. Keeps them awake. What happens to my child when I die?

“Because when I’m no longer here, no one else cares about them in the way that I do, no one understands them, and indeed, no one loves them. And so what will happen?”

Parents of children with profound autism face incredible stress.

The divorce rate among parents of a child with autism is about 80%, according to a 2023 Psychology Today report. That’s more than double the country’s overall divorce rate, according to the CDC’s most recent data.

Some states, including California, provide parents with assistance, including in-home support services or compensating parents for caregiving, said Hooker, a California resident.

But those services tend to be lacking in states with little to no state income tax, said Escher, who also lives in California. “Texas offers nothing,” she said.

15-year waitlist now typical for group homes

Part of what makes California unique is the Lanterman Act, a state law that provides people with developmental disabilities the right to services and support.

Under the law, the state runs regional centers that support over 222,000 people diagnosed with autism, including around 47,400 adults age 22 and up, according to Jennifer Ayari, a public information officer for California’s Department of Developmental Services.

“In some cases,” Ayari told The Defender, “regional centers may provide specialized housing and residential support services to people with qualifying disabilities.” But those services are made available only “after other sources of services and supports have been exhausted,” she said.

Group homes are the typical alternative when parents or extended family are not able to care for the adult child — but they may have long waitlists.

Gilmore, who lives in New York, said a friend of his was just notified after waiting 15 years that a group home spot was finally available for the friend’s adult son with autism. “Waiting 15 years is typical now,” Gilmore said.

California’s Department of Developmental Services runs nearly 641 group homes with another 48 in development, Ayari said.

Still, Hooker said that number is “nowhere near sufficient” to meet the growing needs of this population.

Plus, California’s regional centers, which make the recommendations for where a person with profound autism should reside, typically favor at-home placements and recommend group homes only in cases of emergency.

Group homes may not meet needs of adults with profound autism

Even when adults with profound autism manage to get into a group home, that is no guarantee that the place will be a safe and nurturing environment for them, Escher said.

“A lot of these group homes are not set up for emergency situations, and that becomes very, very difficult,” Hooker said.

Escher said that many group homes are influenced by federal policy that is “very drenched in ideology and wishful thinking about disability.”

The ideology assumes that people with disabilities, including those with profound autism, should live in the community. That typically means that group homes are placed in urban neighborhoods without a lot of yard or nature, she said.

Most group homes lack specialized amenities — including fences, gates, sensory equipment, swings, trampolines, hot tubs or pools — that people with profound autism need to keep them safe and happy.

Even though it’s likely that adults with autism would thrive in more rural, therapeutic environments, it’s nearly impossible for residents of some states to get that kind of housing and care for their child.

That’s the case in Pennsylvania, Escher said, which has a rule requiring group home placements for adults with profound autism. “They are not open to other alternatives.”

Gilmore said he thinks the housing situation for adults with profound autism is likely going to get worse before it gets better.

“The tsunami of young children diagnosed with autism in the 90s are now adults,” he said. “Their parents are getting old and starting to pass from the scene, and the taxpayers are going to start to learn how much of a subsidy those parents have been providing over the years.”

Related articles in The Defender

• RFK Jr.’s New Autism Advisers Set Sights on ‘Many Unanswered Questions’

• ‘Autism Tsunami’: Society’s Cost to Care for Expanding, Aging Autism Population Will Hit $5.54 Trillion by 2060

• ‘Honesty at Last’: CDC Says ‘No Evidence’ to Support Claim that Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism

• Who Will Care for Adults With Autism When Their Parents No Longer Can?

• As Private Equity Cashes in on Autism Epidemic, Kids End Up ‘Big Losers,’ Experts Say

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Efforts to Roll Back Childhood Vaccine Mandates in Florida Stall — What’s Next?

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Watch: ‘Thoroughly Corrupt’ CDC, FDA Lied to Public About COVID Vaccines

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Guest Editorial: The Case Against Scientific Retraction

EPA Greenlights PFAS Pesticides Never Before Used in U.S. for Use on Corn, Wheat, Soy and Other Food Crops

by Mary Holland, J.D.

Scientific retraction is a unique — and bizarre — form of censorship, neither entirely blatant nor completely surreptitious.

Science journals extirpate disfavored articles that publish findings that run counter to the “scientific consensus” — itself an oxymoron. And they do it with great fanfare — no doubt with the intent to send a strong signal to those who might seek to publish anything in the same vein.

Although all kinds of things fade from memory or are simply proven wrong — including theories, texts, formulas, doctrines — nothing quite resembles scientific retraction, which Google’s AI defines as “a formal mechanism used by journals to notify the public that a published study is fundamentally unreliable.”

At least officially, eugenics fell into disrepute. Flat-Earthers are mocked at every turn. The doctrine of the divine right of kings is no longer accepted.

But all these changes happened without “scientific” retraction. The proponents and their arguments remain in history’s annals — they have not been erased. Public opinion just moved on, through discourse, wars and otherwise.

But that’s not enough for corporatist science. When it seeks to stamp out scientifically seditious ideas — like the ideas that vaccines are a driving cause of autism, or that unvaccinated children are vastly healthier than vaccinated children — it does so with zealous fervor.

The “science” censors seek to bombastically announce that these vaccine-related claims and the meticulous publications propounding them are forbidden, outlawed, unreliable! They need a reprimand far louder and harsher than simply quietly relegating the studies to dusty cyber shelves.

No, the authors must be excommunicated! The articles must be banished!

The retraction ritual has much in common with the ancient rite of stoning — let every scientist throw a stone. Let all in the scientific community collectively kill the messenger of apostate ideas. The articles and the authors must be discredited! Long live the reigning orthodoxy!

This ritual has recently been unleashed on my colleagues Brian Hooker and Neil Miller, scientists who published critical work comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated child health outcomes over six (!) years ago.

In these last-ditch efforts to staunch the public stampede away from vaccines, pharmaceutical megacorporations likely instructed their (lackey) journal editors to withdraw the article, “Analysis of health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated children: Developmental delays, asthma, ear infections and gastrointestinal disorders” (SAGE Open Medicine 2020, doi: 10.1177/2050312120925344).

The editors do not make even a feeble attempt to justify this. No reasoning, no rationale — just that the public must be protected from wrongthink! The absurdity is self-evident. Such extraordinary paternalism has no place in any adult discourse, let alone in science.

The Anglo-Saxon legal system shares with science an intent to reach the truth through the adversarial process. Parties and theories are pitted against each other before qualified judges and juries. Then judgments are reviewed by qualified peer reviewers or appellate judges.

Sometimes the law changes, even radically. Yet past precedents or decisions are not “retracted.” Precedents may be overruled. Previous decisions may be vacated. But everything decided in the process remains in the record. Transcripts of hearings and court decisions may not be altered.

The same should be true in science — let new authors critique and discredit previous work, but let nothing be removed from the public record.

Without robust discourse and discord, science is dead. Could that indeed be the intent of the corporatist scientific retraction machine?

May real scientists excommunicate their censors!

by Henrick Karoliszyn, DSW

When Charay Gadd-Spencer thinks of her daughter, she remembers a girl who loved to draw, played soccer year-round in Michigan and dreamed of becoming an Air Force pilot. London Izabella-Ryén Gadd also had a passion for travel and loved taking trips to Mexico with her family.

But in July 2024, London told her mother she needed help with anxiety. Within days, she was prescribed fluoxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) commonly known as Prozac. Less than a month later, she took her own life. She was 12.

“We lost her 23 days after being prescribed psychiatric medication,” Gadd-Spencer told The Defender. “I was not told that some children can experience akathisia, emotional blunting, agitation, impulsivity, worsening behavior or sudden suicidal thoughts.”

Her daughter’s death led Gadd-Spencer to question how psychiatric medications are evaluated and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — especially those drugs that are prescribed for children.

“I cannot touch, see, smell, hear or remember anything without thinking of London,” Gadd-Spencer said. “This is a life sentence for our family. I lost my daughter, but I also lost the illusion that something is safe just because it is FDA-approved, prescribed by a doctor or called standard care.”

FDA rejected this SSRI four times — then approved it in 2023

Questions around how antidepressants are approved have resurfaced following a new analysis of the drug Exxua, an SSRI known generically as gepirone.

Researchers writing in JAMA Psychiatry examined the drug’s decades-long regulatory history. They concluded that the FDA-approved labeling emphasizes positive clinical trials — but omits multiple studies that showed the drug wasn’t any more effective than a placebo.

The researchers reviewed 13 efficacy trials submitted to the FDA. They found that only two acute-treatment studies showed positive results, while the majority failed to show the drug was superior to a placebo.

Three studies found the drug statistically inferior to an active comparator — an existing treatment or therapy used as a comparison in a clinical trial.

The FDA rejected Exxua four times, and a 2015 advisory committee voted that efficacy had not been established. Still, the FDA approved the drug in 2023 after agency officials concluded it met the statutory standard for approval.

The study authors said the case illustrates how the FDA may apply “regulatory flexibility,” weighing statistical significance and evidence across trials.

They argued that drug labeling should include all adequate and well-controlled trials, not only those “with positive outcomes, so that clinicians can make better-informed prescribing decisions.”

FDA approved Exxua based on two trials involving 442 adults

According to the FDA, Exxua was approved in September 2023 based on two eight-week, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials involving 442 adults with major depressive disorder.

Patients receiving the drug showed greater improvement on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale compared with placebo.

The FDA said study participants were predominantly women (65%), white (69%), and under age 65 (99%), with 13% identifying as Hispanic or Latino. Safety data were drawn from more than 1,600 patients across additional trials.

The agency concluded that patients treated with Exxua experienced greater improvement in depressive symptoms after eight weeks than those receiving placebo.

The FDA also noted the most common side effects, including dizziness, nausea, insomnia, abdominal pain and dyspepsia (chronic indigestion).

The agency also warned that the drug may increase the risk of QT prolongation, a condition that can lead to sudden cardiac arrest, serotonin syndrome and manic episodes in people with bipolar disorder.

Study: We need to understand regulatory evidence behind novel psych drugs

A separate study published in JAMA Network Open found that the FDA approved 16 novel psychiatric drugs between 2013 and 2024 based on evidence from pivotal clinical trials.

The researchers reviewed regulatory submissions, trial designs and efficacy data to assess the strength of evidence supporting approval decisions.

They noted that psychiatric drug development presents unique challenges because psychiatric diagnoses lack validated biomarkers, and the underlying biology of many conditions remains poorly understood.

The study concluded that understanding the regulatory evidence behind these approvals is increasingly important as novel therapies emerge for depression, psychosis, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other psychiatric conditions.

FDA approval standards ‘frequently’ allow mixed results

Medical experts interviewed by The Defender said it is not unusual for the FDA to approve medications, even when several clinical trials fail to demonstrate efficacy.

Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring, a psychiatrist and former FDA medical officer, said the agency’s longstanding approval framework “frequently” permits drugs to reach the market despite inconsistent trial results and arguments made by medical professionals.

“Many researchers — including some FDA scientists — have argued that the ‘two positive studies’ standard allows chance findings to play too large a role if numerous other studies are negative,” Witt-Doerring said.

“Under current standards, approval may still be possible if the FDA concludes the positive trials are persuasive and the negative trials are not definitive,” he added.

The FDA generally requires “substantial evidence of effectiveness,” a legal standard that has historically been satisfied through at least two adequate and well-controlled clinical trials demonstrating benefit.

Agency officials, however, evaluate the totality of the evidence rather than relying solely on the number of positive or negative studies.

Patient advocates call for greater transparency

Patient advocates say the approval process should provide physicians and patients with a more complete picture of the evidence.

Kim Witczak, whose husband committed suicide five weeks after being prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft, said, “the system only works when there is complete transparency and truly independent oversight.”

Witczak added:

“The issue is much bigger than any one drug. Clinical trials are designed, funded, managed, analyzed and presented by the sponsor. Pharmaceutical companies are doing what they are designed to do, which is develop products and bring them to market by making the strongest possible case for approval.

“From the company’s perspective, the FDA is the hurdle they must clear to get a product on the market. The FDA’s responsibility is to independently evaluate that evidence and determine whether the benefits outweigh the risks.”

Concerns about selective reporting of antidepressant trials predate Exxua

A landmark 2008 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine compared 74 antidepressant trials registered with the FDA involving more than 12,500 patients with the studies that ultimately appeared in medical journals.

Researchers found that nearly one-third of the trials were never published. Negative or questionable findings were frequently ignored or presented in ways that suggested favorable outcomes.

Among the published literature, 94% of antidepressant trials appeared to report positive results. The FDA’s complete review of the same studies, however, found that only 51% demonstrated positive findings.

The researchers concluded that selective publication inflated the apparent effectiveness of antidepressants by about 32%.

“Selective reporting of clinical trial results may have adverse consequences for researchers, study participants, health care professionals, and patients,” the authors wrote.

An incomplete evidence base can produce “unrealistic estimates of drug effectiveness” and distort the perceived balance between a drug’s benefits and risks, they added.

Critics: Favorable studies more likely to be published than negative findings

Critics of the drug approval process argue that favorable studies continue to receive disproportionate attention while negative findings remain unpublished, underreported or absent from physician-facing materials.

The issue has received particular scrutiny in psychiatry, where treatment outcomes often rely on subjective symptom-rating scales rather than objective biological markers.

Dr. Peter Gøtzsche, professor emeritus, internal medicine specialist and director of the Institute for Scientific Freedom in Copenhagen, has been an outspoken critic of pharmaceutical regulation.

In his 2013 book, “Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare,” he cites the antidepressant lamotrigine as an example of what he believes is selective reliance on positive evidence.

“Only two positive trials were published for this drug, while seven large, negative trials were not,” he writes. “But the FDA regarded the others as failed trials and approved the failed drug.”

Gøtzsche also argued that the FDA-approved antiepileptic drug pregabalin increases the risk of suicidal behavior, although that conclusion remains disputed within the scientific community.

Dr. Paul Marik, who said he was not familiar with the specific Exuua analysis, nonetheless criticized the broader FDA approval process, calling it “a scientific fraud.”

‘A drug can be FDA-approved and still devastate a child’

Researchers who analyzed Exxua argue that product labeling should summarize all adequate and well-controlled clinical trials — regardless of outcome — so physicians can evaluate the complete body of evidence instead of a subset of favorable findings.

For psychiatry, where questions about efficacy, placebo response and clinical relevance have shaped debate, the issue addresses how physicians assess risk and benefits, and how much information patients obtain before beginning treatment. It speaks to how regulatory systems deeply impact those seeking care.

For mothers like Gadd-Spencer, the FDA’s method for authorizing psychiatric medications can mean the difference between life and death.

“The FDA approval process has failed families like mine,” she said. “Approval does not mean enough when clinical studies can be shaped, limited, hidden, altered, ghostwriting, presented in ways that benefit drug companies and the system more than the children taking the drugs.”

“Approval does not mean enough when parents are not fully warned, children are not closely monitored, and real-world harms are minimized after the drug is already on the market … a drug can be FDA-approved and still devastate a child,” she added.

The FDA did not respond to The Defender’s requests for comment.

Related articles in The Defender

• 12-Year-Old Died by Suicide 3 Weeks After Starting Prozac, Mother Blames Social Media and Antidepressants

• After Husband’s Suicide, She Wanted Answers About FDA’s Drug Approval Process: ‘It Felt Like Unraveling a Spider’s Web’

• Antidepressants Only 15% Better Than Sugar Pills, FDA Data Show

• FDA Ignored Petition for Labels Warning Popular Antidepressants May Cause Long-term Sexual Dysfunction

• ‘Nobody Told Me’: Former Mental Health Patient Calls Out Dangerous Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs

by Jill Erzen

History is repeating itself in ways many people never imagined were possible, Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Vera Sharav said this week on CHD.TV.

Sharav said her new book, “Never Again Is Now Global: The Dangers of a One-World Final Solution,” is both a warning and a call to action.

“I have a mission … to call attention to what most people thought of [as] unthinkable,” she said.

Drawing on her experiences as a child during the Holocaust, Sharav said the forces that enabled some of history’s worst atrocities are once again gaining ground — this time on a global scale.

The book, co-edited by Robert Blanco, expands on themes Sharav explored in her five-part documentary series “Never Again Is Now Global.” In both works, she contends that the COVID-19 response exposed a coordinated effort to centralize power, suppress dissent and normalize policies that threaten individual freedom.

“This didn’t happen overnight,” she said. “One of the things that I try to persuade people with the book is nothing happens by chance.”

Sharav, founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, said her experience under the Nazi regime gives her a unique perspective on current events.

“As a survivor of the Holocaust, I have knowledge, experience — real-life knowledge, not fake science — where my antenna is very, very attuned, very sharp,” she said.

‘Strict censorship silences opposing views’

Throughout the interview, Sharav drew parallels between events leading up to the Holocaust and government responses to COVID-19, arguing that both were characterized by fear-based messaging, restrictions on individual rights and the elevation of authority figures beyond public scrutiny.

In a 2022 speech to commemorate the Nuremberg Code, Sharav wrote that the Holocaust was preceded by years of propaganda, discrimination and the gradual erosion of civil liberties. She argued that similar warning signs emerged during COVID-19, including “government-dictated protocols” and “a single, government-dictated narrative.”

“Strict censorship silences opposing views,” she said in her speech.

Sharav told CHD.TV she enlisted scientists, physicians, historians and journalists to contribute to her book because she “wanted multiple points of view,” not just her own.

“The book is trying to alert people,” she said. “This is much darker than a virus or an epidemic. They are attacking all of humanity with multiple weapons.”

According to Sharav, one of the weapons being used globally is medicine itself.

“The contracts are still there for billions of dollars for the mRNA,” she said.

She argued that the public should be skeptical of mRNA technology — including in flu vaccines — which is being positioned for broader use, despite growing public safety concerns.

“They want to use it for all vaccines,” Sharav said. “Essentially, these vaccines were meant to take away the immune system, make it dysfunctional, not recognize the enemy.”

‘There is a master plan. This doesn’t happen by chance’

Sharav repeatedly returned to what she described as a coordinated global agenda operating across governments, institutions and public health systems.

“Those who are the puppeteers are giving orders to all heads of government,” she said. “Because everyone is marching the same way.”

Sharav said the consistency of policies adopted around the world during the COVID-19 era convinced her that events were not unfolding by chance.

“There is a master plan,” she told CHD.TV. “This doesn’t happen by chance. And it became global.”

In an August 2022 speech, Sharav said that “a posse of ruthless, interconnected, global billionaires have gained control over national and international policy-setting institutions.”

She quoted Klaus Schwab at the 2022 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as follows:

“Let’s be clear, the future is not just happening; the future is built by us, a powerful community here in this room. We have the means to impose the state of the world.”

That belief in human hierarchy can lead people to accept policies that assign different values to different lives — a theme Sharav said has appeared repeatedly throughout history and resurfaced during the COVID-19 era.

‘The hospitals were following a protocol … which puts a value on human lives’

Sharav pointed to reports from the pandemic’s early years — including the widespread use of ventilators in critically ill COVID-19 patients and rules affecting nursing home residents — as policies that reinforced her concerns.

“The patients were dying under ventilators,” she said. “It just wasn’t a life-saving thing at all. It wasn’t used for that.”

She said she began seeing troubling parallels with Nazi-era classifications of human worth.

During the Holocaust, the Nazis had “very specific categories designating value, putting a value on human beings’ lives,” she said. She added:

“And that’s what I recognized was happening during COVID. The hospitals were following a protocol … which puts a value on human lives, not by ethnic category, but by age. The most valuable are teenagers and young adults, because they will have a long work lifespan. The least valuable are babies and the elderly. Sound familiar?”

Sharav also recounted an incident following her husband’s death in an assisted living facility in April 2020. She said he suffered from a long-term illness unrelated to COVID-19, but she feared COVID-19 would be listed on his death certificate.

“I called the doctor and told him, ‘Don’t put COVID on his death certificate because … he didn’t have COVID,’” Sharav said. “And the doctor told me, ‘I have to. I have to.’ And I threatened him. I told him, ‘Don’t do it because I’ll fight you all the way.’”

Doctors were pressured because “hospitals were getting money from the government to identify deaths as COVID-related,” Sharav said. “The whole facade is just riddled with lies upon lies upon lies.”

According to Sharav, the physician ultimately did as she requested.

‘You are responsible for your own actions, no matter what you’re being told’

For Sharav, the lesson of both the Holocaust and the COVID-19 era is personal responsibility.

“The first thing that we need to do is to learn to say no, right? Disobey,” she said. “That is what saved my life as a 6-year-old.”

She said too many people defer to authority figures rather than exercising independent judgment.

“Don’t think like the experts tell you, and just follow orders,” Sharav said. “Following orders was the defense used by those doctors who were tried at Nuremberg. … They used that argument and the legal panel said, ‘No way, that’s no excuse.’

“You are responsible for your own actions, no matter what you’re being told by someone else,” she added.

Sharav argued that the same principle applies today, whether the authority comes from government officials, public health agencies or medical professionals.

“We are responsible for our own actions. We have choice,” she said.

That responsibility includes questioning institutions and expert consensus rather than accepting them unquestioningly, she said.

“This idea of trust, the experts trust the science. What is ‘the science’? There’s no such thing,” she said. “Science is something that evolves and changes all the time as new information is gathered.”

‘You always have to question’

Sharav also questioned the culture of deference she sees within medicine and academia.

“The medical field is very much like the military,” she said. “Rank and all that means a great deal. And you do not question authority. That’s the worst kind of thing for humanity. You always have to question.”

According to Sharav, many people — including highly educated professionals — privately harbor doubts but fear speaking out.

“Those people who don’t want to hear anything contrary to their absolute belief, they cannot really be that certain if they’re afraid to argue,” she said. “When you are really sure of … your stand, you’re willing to discuss.”

By contrast, people who are merely following accepted narratives often avoid debate altogether, she said.

“It’s when you’re not so sure, you’re just following … then you don’t want to discuss,” Sharav said. “That’s when your thinking shuts down.”

She argued that fear of professional or social consequences keeps many experts from questioning prevailing views.

“The people with the degrees … they put blinders [on] because they’re afraid,” she said. “They’re really terrorized.”

In some cases, the problem amounts to “willful ignorance,” Sharav said.

As an example, she recalled a neurologist who lives in her building and continued wearing a mask long after pandemic restrictions had eased.

“A neurologist that doesn’t know that restricting oxygen is not too good for the brain?” Sharav asked. “But there it is.”

‘We all have a duty to say no’

Sharav said she has found greater skepticism among ordinary citizens than among credentialed experts.

“I’m finding that the most wide awake people … are people in the working class,” Sharav said. “Those who don’t have lots of initials after their name. In other words, they have not been indoctrinated for tens of years at universities that kept turning them into, essentially, a flock.”

Despite her concerns, Sharav said public attitudes are changing.

“A shift is happening within the population,” she said. “I do not believe that they could lock the world down again. People are not going to go for it.”

Ultimately, Sharav said the central message of her book is that powerful institutions depend on public compliance.

“Without our obedience, they are powerless,” she said. “Their weapons don’t work if you don’t obey. … We all have that duty to say no.”

Watch Sharav discuss her new book on CHD.TV here:

Related articles in The Defender

• ‘Our Choice Is Clear’: Holocaust Survivor Outlines History of Propaganda in the U.S. and How It Led to Today’s Globalists’ Power Grab

• Holocaust Survivor Vera Sharav Premiers ‘Never Again Is Now Global’ on CHD.TV

• Vera Sharav: ‘Nuremberg Code Is Our Defense Against Abusive Experimentation’

• Klaus Schwab to Vacate Top Post, as WEF Looks to Become Global Leader in Public-Private ‘Cooperation’

• Rush to Use Ventilators Killed Thousands of COVID Patients

by Jill Erzen

Mainstream media outlets continue to ignore evidence that federal health agencies acted in an “unbelievably corrupt” manner during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Monday.

Speaking on “The Jimmy Dore Show,” Johnson said years of congressional investigations, hearings and records requests have uncovered evidence that federal health officials concealed information about COVID-19 vaccine injuries — yet major news organizations refuse to cover the findings.

“The majority of the legacy media is completely ignoring what I consider the greatest government scandal in my lifetime,” Johnson told Dore.

Johnson pointed to reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

“Prior to 2021, on average VAERS reported about 280 deaths associated with various vaccines,” Johnson said. “With the advent of the COVID injections, they reported 21,000 worldwide deaths. So 280 on average to all of a sudden 21,000.”

Johnson said federal officials ignored warnings early in 2021 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were analyzing VAERS data using methods that obscure vaccine safety signals.

According to Johnson, an FDA analyst who independently applied an updated analytical method identified 25 safety signals, including sudden cardiac death, pulmonary infarction and Bell’s palsy.

Instead of investigating those findings, Johnson said agency officials shut down the effort.

“They told her to cease and desist,” he said, arguing that FDA officials knowingly continued using a flawed approach.

“On March 1 of 2021, FDA officials already knew the algorithm they were gonna use was gonna hide safety signals,” Johnson said. “They clung to that algorithm. They didn’t use the new one. So they go lie to the American public and say, ‘We’re not seeing safety signals.’”

Information about those safety signals became public only after years of oversight efforts, lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Johnson said.

“A bunch of us, including Children’s Health Defense,” filed FOIA requests seeking the data, he said. “Listeners have to understand how thoroughly corrupt the FDA and the CDC was in hiding what they knew.”

‘There was no informed consent on these injections’

Johnson said the early suppression of vaccine injury data extended beyond the FDA and CDC to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

He said NIH researchers were quietly diagnosing and treating COVID-19 vaccine-injured patients within months of the vaccine rollout — while withholding that information from the public.

NIH scientists told patients to “stay silent” about the research, Johnson said. “They said, ‘We want to complete our studies so that we can give complete information to the medical community so they know how to treat this stuff.’”

But the NIH didn’t release the study, and the government continued to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Johnson. Researchers “finally released it in 2022, but they didn’t tell anybody about it. They just put it on a preprint server.”

Those actions deprived Americans of the information needed to make informed medical decisions, Johnson argued.

“There was no informed consent on these injections,” he said.

“The NIH was treating people vaccine-injured. FDA was lying that they weren’t seeing these safety signals,” he said. “And as a result, the American public was not informed.”

Dore echoed Johnson’s claims, arguing that public health officials repeatedly misled Americans.

“They lied about the creation of the virus. They lied about where it came from. They lied about masks. They lied about the vaccine stopping transmission,” Dore said. “There wasn’t a thing that they haven’t lied about.”

‘A lot of doctors … don’t have a clue’

Dore and Johnson also discussed Johnson’s U.S. Senate hearings, which featured testimony from people injured by COVID-19 vaccines and researchers who raised questions about vaccine safety, but received little mainstream coverage.

Johnson said some political opponents have actively discouraged the public from watching. He singled out Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), whom Johnson said: “has to be bought and paid for by Big Pharma.”

Before one hearing, Blumenthal “held a press conference … and said, ‘I hope nobody watches this. This isn’t worthy,’” Johnson recalled.

The hearings are highlighting “people whose lives have been destroyed by vaccine injuries, and he’s telling people, ‘Look away,’” Johnson said.

Johnson also argued that some experts brought forward to rebut COVID-19 vaccine safety concerns demonstrated limited knowledge of the vaccines themselves.

In a Sept. 9, 2025, clip aired by Dore, Johnson questioned Dr. Jake Scott about the makeup and behavior of the mRNA vaccines. After Scott struggled to answer several questions, Johnson explained how the mRNA is “designed not to degrade” in the body.

“Do you know that or not? Because I talked to a lot of doctors [who] don’t have a clue,” Johnson said.

Recalling the exchange, Johnson told Dore he was surprised by Scott’s responses.

“I was pretty well shocked that … he didn’t know these things,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he encountered a similar situation during a June hearing, when oncologist Dr. Julie Gralow was unable to answer comparable questions.

“The person that Blumenthal brought in, eminent oncologist … she didn’t know it either,” Johnson told Dore.

‘Absolutely no coverage in the mainstream media’

Johnson said experts who dismiss concerns about vaccine safety are often unfamiliar with evidence raised by critics.

Referring to Gralow’s testimony on possible links between mRNA vaccines and cancer, Johnson said, “She was definitively saying, ‘There’s no proof that the mRNA injections cause cancer. There’s no proof.’ Well, again, there’s not going to be proof if, first of all, you’re completely ignorant of what the shot is.”

He argued that researchers calling for additional safety studies are routinely dismissed.

“All they’re saying is, ‘Let’s do more research,’” Johnson said. “But these guys want to shut the research down.”

Dore said exchanges like those highlighted by Johnson illustrate why the public rarely hears competing viewpoints.

“You have the top doctors in their fields, the most cited doctors in their fields, come and testify,” Dore said of Johnson’s hearings. “It gets absolutely no coverage in the mainstream media.”

Dore suggested Big Pharma spends billions of dollars on prescription drug ads to influence news coverage. “What they’re trying to do is make the media reliant on their money so then they can control what they say and what they don’t say,” he said.

Johnson, who worked in sales before entering politics, agreed.

“Those ads are absolutely useless except for one reason and one reason only: to buy the media. To buy the narrative,” he said.

Johnson argued that the same officials and institutions that championed the COVID-19 response are reluctant to revisit those decisions and confront the harm those policies caused.

“Do you want to admit that something you approved, something you pushed on people, killed them or permanently disabled them?” Johnson asked.

“That’s why to this day, doctors by and large aren’t admitting this. The federal health officials still aren’t. The media certainly isn’t,” he said. “Which is why I cannot get on a major news network with what I consider is the greatest scandal in government history.”

Watch Johnson on ‘The Jimmy Dore Show’ here:

Related articles in The Defender

• Sen. Ron Johnson: Emails Show FDA Ignored ‘Overwhelming Evidence of Harm’ From COVID Vaccines

• The Story the Media — and the Government — Don’t Want You to Hear

• Children’s Health Defense Publishes Peer-Reviewed Paper Exposing Failure of FDA, CDC to Monitor and Report COVID Vaccine Safety Signals

• COVID mRNA Vaccines Should Be Pulled Off the Market, Oncologist Says

• Mary Holland: ‘Humanity Cannot Afford to Forget the Dire Toll That COVID Took Upon Us All’

by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

A former Rutgers University employee who challenged the institution’s flu vaccine mandate on religious grounds and was subsequently fired can challenge her termination under binding arbitration, according to a ruling last week by a New Jersey appeals court.

Rosemary Herrschaft worked as a secretary at Rutgers’ John H. Cronin Dental Center. In 2023, she requested a religious exemption from the university’s flu vaccine mandate, citing her beliefs as a “baptized Catholic.”

Later that year, Rutgers rejected the request and ordered Herrschaft to get vaccinated. In March 2024, the university fired her after she refused to comply.

Herrschaft’s union, Teamsters Local 97, filed a grievance on her behalf, seeking binding arbitration under the terms of its collective negotiation agreement (CNA) with Rutgers. The university alleged arbitration would impede its “managerial authority” to enforce its vaccination policy.

Last year, the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission ruled in Herrschaft’s favor. Rutgers challenged the decision, but last week’s ruling by the Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division rejected the university’s appeal.

Ruling doesn’t challenge Rutgers’ vaccine policy

According to the ruling, “Major discipline, like termination, is subject to the grievance procedures in the CNA.”

The court said that deciding what discipline to impose on an employee for violating vaccine policy doesn’t interfere with Rutgers’ right to have and enforce its policy.

The court also clarified that its ruling doesn’t challenge Rutgers’ vaccine policy but recognizes an employee’s right to challenge a disciplinary action.

Kim Mack Rosenberg, general counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), called the ruling “a win for unionized employees.” She added:

“While not a direct challenge to Rutgers’ influenza vaccine mandate, it does allow the employee to exercise her rights under the CNA to arbitrate the ultimate outcome of that policy — her termination when her religious exemption request was denied.

“It is clear that Rutgers — even in a non-emergency environment — wanted unfettered authority with respect to vaccine mandates, and the court denied Rutgers’ attempts.”

Michael Kane, CHD’s director of advocacy, applauded the support Teamsters Local 97 provided to Herrschaft.

“This is what happens when unions actually represent their members and don’t throw them under the bus because of political relationships,” Kane said.

Public Employment Relations Commission rejects Rutgers’ arguments

According to last week’s ruling, Rutgers first implemented its vaccination policy for employees in 2017. The policy covers certain communicable diseases, including flu, and applies to “covered individuals” — employees who work in areas where patients receive care.

Under the policy, covered individuals have until Nov. 1 of each year to submit a request for a medical or religious exemption for that year.

Rutgers alleged the policy applied to Herrschaft, who worked in a healthcare environment. The university first notified Herrschaft of her noncompliance with its flu vaccine mandate in January 2023.

Herrschaft requested a religious exemption. However, Rutgers didn’t process her request by the end of that year’s flu season and accordingly took no further action.

In October 2023, Herrschaft again submitted a religious exemption request in the lead-up to the upcoming cold and flu season. She argued that while the Catholic Church does not prohibit the use of any vaccine, it did recognize a moral right to refuse “a medical intervention, including a vaccination, if [her] informed conscience comes to this sure judgment.”

Rutgers denied Herrschaft’s request in December 2023 and gave her seven days to provide proof of vaccination. When she didn’t comply, Rutgers issued her a counseling notice in early January 2024 and later followed up with a pre-termination notice and order to attend a conference to discuss her noncompliance.

The conference took place later that month. Herrschaft attended and provided statements in support of her religious exemption request and her contention that she was not a “covered individual” under Rutgers’ policy.

On March 1, 2024, Rutgers rejected her arguments. Teamsters Local 97 filed its grievance that day.

According to the ruling, Rutgers filed a petition with the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission. The petition outlined three arguments in support of its vaccine policy and its contention that the policy was not subject to binding arbitration. However, the commission and the appeals court rejected the university’s arguments.

Ruling shows importance of union support for workers who challenge mandates

Herrschaft’s case now appears headed to arbitration, although no information is available on when this will be scheduled.

Kane said arbitration “can work well” for employees challenging administrative decisions and firings, and “remain binding, especially when the union actually represents its members, as opposed to selling them out.”

However, unions “behave so differently from state to state, even town to town,” he added.

Either way, Kane said last week’s ruling represents a positive first step for union protection of workers who may challenge their employers’ vaccine policies.

Unions are “representatives of their members,” so last week’s ruling is “a win,” Kane said.

Related articles in The Defender

• 10 Ex-Employees Sue Hospital Over COVID Vaccine Mandate, Alleging Civil Rights Discrimination

• Oklahoma Company to Pay $4.25M After Firing Workers Over COVID Vaccine Mandate

• Mayo Clinic Joins List of Employers Sued for Denying Religious Exemptions to COVID Vaccine Mandates

• Breaking: CHD Asks Supreme Court to Hear Rutgers COVID Vaccine Mandate Case

• RFK Jr. to Rutgers President: COVID Vaccine Mandate Violates Federal Law

• Rutgers University to Enroll Children in Pfizer Lyme Disease Vaccine Trial

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

A 23-year-old mother charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her twin toddlers was set to be arraigned later today, after an Idaho grand jury indicted her late Monday, the Payette Police Department said in a press release.

Police arrested Andrea Shaw on Tuesday afternoon, more than a year after her two children — fraternal twins Dallas and Tyson Shaw — were found dead at their home in Payette on May 1, 2025, eight days after receiving their 18-month vaccines.

The Payette Police Department said the arrest follows “a lengthy and thorough investigation” and said it would have no further comment regarding evidence in the case. “Future information will be presented through the judicial process,” officials said.

Shaw alleges that her twins’ deaths were caused by the vaccines they received at a routine doctor’s appointment.

Nurse Angela Wulbrecht, an advocate for people injured by vaccines and who has been supporting the Shaws, told The Defender she was “ shocked and heartbroken” to learn of Shaw’s arrest.

“Over the past year, I have had the privilege of walking alongside Andrea and her family after the unimaginable loss of her twin babies,” Wulbrecht said. “I have witnessed a mother’s profound grief, unwavering love for her children, and determination to seek answers.”

Andrea gave birth to a new baby, born three weeks prematurely, on June 25, Shaw’s attorney Joseph Filicetti told the local KTVB7 news station. Her husband is caring for the newborn while she is incarcerated.

Shaw told physician of family history of adverse vaccine reaction

The details of the Shaw twins’ story are laid out in court documents that are part of the lawsuit against the AAP. Andrea and her husband Nathaniel also shared their story in May 2025 with CHD.TV.

According to Andrea, she and her mother-in-law say they warned the twins’ pediatrician that there was a family history of adverse reactions to the flu shot.

However, the pediatrician dismissed these concerns. Nurses administered the flu vaccine along with hepatitis A and DTaP shots on April 23, 2025. The twins had previously received most routine childhood vaccinations, including their 1-year shots.

Within hours, Andrea said the toddlers became lethargic and ill. The next morning, their lips were blue, and they struggled to move. Andrea took the twins to the emergency room and told the doctor they had received three vaccines the day before.

The treating physician in the emergency room diagnosed them as suffering from “post-immunization reaction, initial encounter.”

The babies remained symptomatic over the days that followed. A week later, on the morning of May 1, Andrea found both children unresponsive. Police and paramedics were called, and investigators immediately focused on the parents. Andrea and Nathaniel told CHD.TV that the police immediately treated them as suspects.

“They said that it wasn’t medical and that they figured asphyxiation, and that I had supposedly had a postpartum overwhelming blackout and done it to my children,” Andrea said. The family filed a report with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.

Rather than investigating Andrea’s vaccine concerns, the Payette Police Department opened an investigation into her.

Medical industry ignores vaccines as possible cause of SIDS

When infants under age 1 die suddenly, and a cause can’t be determined, the deaths are typically classified as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). SIDS is the third leading cause of infant mortality in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Public health researchers developed a “triple-risk model” for explaining SIDS. That model says SIDS occurs when a baby has an unknown medical condition, is going through an important period of development where the body changes quickly, and encounters an outside stressor, such as sleeping on its stomach.

But even as the medical industry claims to remain puzzled about the cause of SIDS, numerous studies have reported a plausible association between vaccines and SIDS in peer-reviewed literature for decades.

Researchers theorize, for example, that some children with underdeveloped liver enzyme pathways may not be able to process excipients — inactive ingredients used as preservatives or to enhance a vaccine’s efficacy — which can lead to illness or death.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has also recognized links between vaccines and infant deaths. Last year the program compensated two families whose babies died. The program determined the deaths were vaccine-induced.

Due to concerns over the link between vaccines and SIDS, some states recently introduced legislation to require that medical examiners document recent immunizations on the death certificates of children who died from unknown causes.

How common is it to bring criminal charges against parents in infant deaths?

In recent years, some parents have been criminally charged when their infants die after sleeping on their stomachs.

Last year, two different sets of Pennsylvania parents were charged with felonies for placing their babies in unsafe sleeping positions. Attorney Daniel Nevins told Spotlight PA that such charges are rare and that the burden of proof on the prosecutors will be high.

But some parents have been convicted. In 2014, Virginia resident Candice Christa Semidey, age 25, was charged with murder after she swaddled her baby and put it to sleep on its stomach, The Washington Post reported. In that case, police did not think that she intended for the baby to die.

She pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect. She was ordered to serve three years of probation to avoid a five-year prison term.

Some charges have also been brought against parents in the deaths of infants sleeping with Boppy pillows. There have also been several cases of parents charged for sleeping in the same bed as their child.

Related articles in The Defender

• Twin Babies Die a Week After Receiving 3 Vaccines, Police Interrogate Parents

• Police: Investigation Still ‘Active’ 8 Months After Idaho Twins Died Following Vaccinations

• SIDS and the Vaccine Connection: Decades of Suppression

• Breaking: Children’s Health Defense Hits AAP With RICO Suit Over Fraudulent Vaccine Safety Claims

• 11-Week-Old ‘Anna’ Died Hours After Her ‘Routine’ Vaccines. Nearly 12 Years Later, a Court Ruled the Vaccines Killed Her

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

Amid a rapid rise in GLP-1 drug prescriptions for children and teens, a new analysis finds that behavioral and lifestyle treatments for childhood obesity outperformed the use of weight-loss drugs alone.

According to a JAMA Pediatrics analysis published last week, adolescents who received structured behavioral and lifestyle interventions without medication saw significant reductions in BMI and improvements in body composition compared with control groups.

The analysis also found that combining lifestyle treatment with medication produced the best results overall — but the authors cautioned that this particular conclusion rested on “a single trial with relatively few participants.”

They said the findings were particularly relevant for situations where “full intensive programs are not available and implies that health care practitioners should avoid prescribing obesity management drugs in isolation.”

The authors also found that obesity treatments using lifestyle interventions preserved muscle mass, while medication-only induced weight loss often leads to a reduction of muscle in children. Studies have found the same to be true for adults.

Much of the paper — and news coverage of it — focused on the authors’ finding that combining drugs with lifestyle treatments produced the greatest effect.

However, the standalone benefit of lifestyle treatment was substantial enough for the authors to conclude that “lifestyle treatment was essential and should form the backbone of any pediatric obesity treatment plan.”

They said it should remain a core component of care even when medications are prescribed.

The authors also noted that while lifestyle interventions were broadly effective, for some children with severe obesity, lifestyle interventions were limited. This may indicate underlying hormonal or metabolic issues that drugs can address. However, they cautioned against any “one-size-fits-all” intervention for childhood obesity.

The findings raise questions about why the drugs are being prescribed so widely to children, given the lack of data on safety and effectiveness.

Doctors admit they don’t know the long-term risks

Pediatrician Dr. Brian Thornburg said the paper’s emphasis on drug outcomes was “another exercise in short-sighted endpoint selection that overstates benefits while ignoring drastic long-term health consequences of GLP-1 drugs — effects on growth, puberty, bone health, lean mass and potential lifelong dependency — that could far outweigh transient wins.”

Thornburg said the authors failed to balance the risks of the drugs in their analysis, and sidestepped the root cause of pediatric obesity, which has tripled since the 1970s: “government-sanctioned ultra-processed foods enriching BigAg, BigFood, BigMed and BigPharma at children’s expense. True solutions lie in restoring nutrient-dense real foods and environments, not layering pharmaceuticals onto a toxic food supply.”

He added that parents and clinicians should demand long-term safety data on the drugs.

Dr. Michelle Perro, co-author of “What’s Making Our Children Sick?” who has long raised concerns about pediatric drug use, said:

“As a pediatrician, I believe childhood obesity is more of an ecologic disease rather than a metabolic one. We cannot medicate our way out of an environment that is making our children sick.”

Even doctors who prescribe the drugs to young kids admit they don’t know the long-term risks.

“We don’t know what the long-term effects could be and that can be scary and unsettling,” Dr. Claudia Fox, co-director of the Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine at the University of Minnesota, told the Wall Street Journal. Fox said the long-term risks of obesity are also serious and may outweigh the risks of the drugs.

Prescriptions soar after AAP recommends GLP-1 drugs for kids

About 20% of U.S. children and adolescents are chronically obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In December 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Saxenda to treat obesity in kids 12 and up. In 2022, the agency approved Wegovy for the same age group.

Weeks later, in January 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued new guidelines on childhood obesity — at the time, it was the first update to the guidelines in 15 years — recommending early diagnosis and aggressive treatment.

The AAP recommendations included weight-loss drugs for obese children as young as 8 and consultation for bariatric surgery for children with severe obesity as young as age 13.

Prescribing the drugs to children under age 12 is an off-label use of the drugs recommended by AAP.

It didn’t take long after the AAP issued its recommendations for GLP-1 drug prescriptions for those age groups to skyrocket — they jumped 38% in the first year following the change. MedPage Today reported that prescriptions for two of the drugs jumped 700%.

BMJ investigation uncovers AAP ties to GLP-1 drugmakers

In July 2025, a BMJ investigation uncovered undisclosed financial ties between the AAP and major drug companies behind blockbuster weight-loss medications.

The BMJ analysis found financial ties between industry and AAP members — including those who wrote the guidelines, those who reviewed them and the organization overall.

The researchers also identified serious irregularities in the guidelines development process. They concluded that the AAP based the guidelines on weak or nonexistent evidence.

The drugs were rolled out and widely distributed with no long-term studies in youth populations. There are concerns that the drugs pose risks to the development of their brains and bones.

Adults and children who take the drugs long-term risk exposing themselves to a host of side effects, ranging from vomiting, diarrhea and nausea, and fainting to serious issues like pancreatitis, stomach paralysis and kidney disease.

People who go off the drugs tend to regain the weight they lost.

A recent study published in the Journal of Toxicology found the drugs have also led to a surge in calls to U.S. poison control from people making dosing errors, according to HealthDay News.

Related articles in The Defender

• ‘Their Rubber Stamp Is Reckless’: After AAP Endorses Weight-Loss Drugs for Kids, Prescriptions Soar

• Weight-loss Drug Prescriptions for Kids and Teens Soar Despite No Safety Data

• AAP Members With Ties to GLP-1 Drugmakers Helped Write Weight-Loss Drug Guidelines for Kids

• Weight Loss Drugs for Kids: A ‘Minefield of Health and Emotional Problems,’ Researchers Warn

• How Much Do Big Pharma Donations Influence AAP Guidelines for Parents?

• Childhood Obesity: Drugs and Surgery Top List of American Academy of Pediatrics New Guidelines

by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is demanding to know why a 2021 peer-reviewed paper that presented data suggesting a possible link between vaccination and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) was recently removed from the Toxicology Reports website.

In a letter dated June 29 and made public today, Johnson called on the editor-in-chief of Toxicology Reports and the CEO of Elsevier, which owns the journal, to release all records related to the decision to remove vaccine researcher Neil Z. Miller’s analysis: “Vaccines and sudden infant death: An analysis of the VAERS database 1990-2019 and review of the medical literature.”

The analysis showed that from 1990 to 2019, many more SIDS reports were filed in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the first few days after vaccination compared to later on after vaccination.

The paper also included a comprehensive review of the scientific literature on vaccines and SIDS, including documentation of large increases in SIDS rates following the rollout of national immunization campaigns and numerous case reports of SIDS in babies who were recently vaccinated.

Toxicology Reports published Miller’s analysis in June 2021 after it passed the peer-review process.

Johnson, who recently held a hearing about attacks on published science, noted that Miller’s paper had been criticized on PubPeer, a platform critics have nicknamed “PubSmear.”

He also noted that on June 11, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also wrote to Toxicology Reports’ editor-in-chief demanding details about the process leading up to the journal’s removal of Miller’s analysis.

Kennedy also asked the journal to clarify why it opted to remove the article, rather than issue an expression of concern or a retraction.

‘No one has engaged with the data. They simply made the paper disappear.’

On April 9, Toxicology Reports posted a removal notice for Miller’s article, citing “serious methodological flaws.”

Miller told The Defender why he believes the removal was unjustified. He said:

“The core findings of my paper — the temporal clustering of infant deaths in the immediate post-vaccination window, the historical SIDS rate spike following the national immunization campaign, the full literature review — remain unrefuted.

“No one has engaged with the data. They simply made the paper disappear. That should concern every parent, every researcher, and anyone who believes science advances through open inquiry rather than institutional gatekeeping.”

According to the notice, the editor-in-chief decided to remove Miller’s analysis because it used VAERS data “to infer a correlation between vaccination and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).”

However, Miller said he never claimed a causal relationship between vaccination and SIDS. He said:

“My paper stated plainly: ‘While this paper does not prove an association between infant vaccines and sudden infant deaths, it reveals unusual patterns and safety signals highly suggestive of a causal relationship.’ I called for further investigation — nothing more.”

The journal launched an investigation into the article after PubPeer commenters criticized Miller’s paper starting in November 2021.

Some comments cited criticism posted on X by Magdalen R. Wind-Mozley, a former forensic scientist and vaccine advocate based in Newbury, England, who posts under the username “Rosewind,” Retraction Watch reported.

According to Retraction Watch, Wind-Mozley contacted the journal in 2022 to call for the article’s retraction.

The journal notified Miller about concerns raised by the commenters. According to the removal notice, “The Editor-in-Chief determined that the author’s response did not satisfactorily address the concerns raised about this article.”

However, Miller tells a different account of how things unfolded. He said:

“Neither Dr. Lash (Toxicology Reports) nor Dr. Papi (Elsevier) ever specified what the alleged methodological flaws were. From subsequent correspondence, I gathered their concern likely centered on reporting bias — an issue I had already explicitly addressed in the paper’s ‘Strengths and Limitations’ section.”

Since Miller had already acknowledged the critics’ concern — reporting bias — as a limitation of the study when it was first published, on what grounds did the journal remove it?

That’s a question that needs answering, Miller said. “I am deeply appreciative of Senator Ron Johnson and Secretary Kennedy for their efforts to get to the root of this problem.”

In his letter, Johnson cited a grieving mother who lost her child to SIDS. The mother said every parent at her SIDS support group brought up vaccines.

According to Johnson, the mother said, “We were all asking our SIDS support group leader, you know, is there a connection? Just seems like all of us feel like vaccines are involved.”

Johnson wrote:

“We owe it to this mother and all parents that have lost a child to SIDS to encourage and promote — instead of discourage and remove — medical research into the potential connection between vaccines and pediatric deaths.”

Miller’s paper cited possible biological explanations for why vaccination might cause SIDS in some babies, including inflammatory cytokines and some babies’ inability to process the toxicity of multiple vaccines given at once.

A 2025 study published in the International Journal of Medical Sciences found that underdeveloped liver enzyme pathways in some infants may make it harder for them to process toxic ingredients in vaccines, possibly leading to SIDS.

Study by Miller and CHD chief scientist also under attack

Miller noted that leading up to the paper’s removal, some influential figures had publicly endorsed his work on SIDS, including Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Pierre Kory.

“I suspect this amplified visibility, and the attendant fear of increased vaccine hesitancy, was instrumental in the decision to pull the article,” he said.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense (CHD) chief scientific officer, called Johnson’s letter “extremely encouraging and timely” given the lack of transparency surrounding the removal of Miller’s paper.

In April, Sage Journals notified Hooker that it is investigating a 2020 article he co-authored with Miller comparing health outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated children following criticisms on PubPeer.

Sage stamped Hooker and Miller’s article with an “expression of concern” as it conducts its review.

Given these recent attacks on studies that raise questions about the safety of vaccines, Hooker said he was “heartened that both Sen. Johnson and Secretary Kennedy are investigating the very real threats of censorship of robust vaccine safety science.”

“Unlike their predecessors, these officials are interested in promoting scientific inquiry for the best health of our nation, rather than Big Pharma dogma focused on profits and institutions,” Hooker said.

Miller said he hopes that “credible research is evaluated on its merits, and that articles are not removed or retracted solely because their findings are controversial or challenge prevailing views.”

Related articles in The Defender

• ‘Vigilante Science’: How Anonymous Critics Are Trying to Silence Peer-Reviewed Vaccine Research

• Sen. Ron Johnson: There Used to Be ‘Serious Journalism’ on Vaccine Injuries — But COVID Vaccine Cancer Risks Still Being Suppressed

• Oklahoma, Louisiana to Require Coroners Include Vaccine Records in SIDS Autopsies

• 8-Week-Old Dies of SIDS One Day After ‘Routine’ Vaccines — Were the Shots to Blame?

• New Research Reveals How Vaccines May Cause SIDS in Some Infants

Interview transcript:

Michael Nevradakis: Hey, everyone. I’m Michael Nevradakis, senior reporter for The Defender.

I am here in Paris, France. I am with a French researcher that has joined us for our Substack interview series.

I hope I don’t butcher the name too much — my French is not up to par.

Guillemette Crépeaux, OK, so thanks for joining us. I wanted to just get started by asking you to share a few words about your research that has focused on aluminum adjuvants in vaccines.

You’ve been doing it for over a decade, from what I understand. So just share a few words about your research and what sorts of findings you’ve had during the time that you’ve been looking at this issue.

Guillemette Crépeaux: Well, yes, big question.

I began to study aluminum adjuvant toxicity 13 years ago, and during that time, we focused on the biopersistence and the toxicity [of the adjuvants]. So this is called the mechanisms of action of aluminum particles while they are toxic.

So we are working on animal models, and we are working also with macrophytic myofasciitis … people who have been injured by aluminum adjuvants and they can’t clear out aluminum in their body.

They have muscular lesions full of aluminum adjuvants. They have cognitive impairment and memory troubles and … so, we work on their immune response in order to characterize the immune response to aluminum adjuvants.

Nevradakis: What is the pathway of action that these aluminum adjuvants take once they enter the body, and what makes them so toxic and so harmful for the body?

Crépeaux: Well, they are harmful because they are pro-inflammatory.

This is the role for an adjuvant: to produce an activation in the pro-inflammatory pathways. And aluminum adjuvants also alter, impair the autophagic pathway. [These are] the mechanisms involved in the clearance of the aluminum particles …

So, aluminum adjuvants trouble that mechanism. They are not cleared out and

they can persist, and when they persist, they are still, all the time, so inflammatory

and cytotoxic, so it kind of causes some inflammation throughout the body.

Nevradakis: Now, from what I understand, France used to have aluminum-free vaccines for children, until maybe a decade or so ago. What happened and how did health outcomes for children change, if they changed, when these aluminum-free vaccines were removed?

Crépeaux: Well, France used to use aluminum-free vaccines, and that was either

vaccine without aluminum adjuvants or without any adjuvants.

But when some [pharmaceutical companies] just buy others, finally they chose to do the same products with aluminum adjuvants, only one product did not contain aluminum adjuvants, and so, the vaccines without aluminum adjuvants, which were with calcium phosphate, were removed from the markets and they were accused to be deleterious for kids, but this is not a true story.

The French Association of Macrophagic Myofasciitis (E3M), which I used to work very

frequently, documented that story to prove that the number of adverse effects

induced by CaP [calcium phosphate nanoparticle] vaccines were not the right number.

Nevradakis: Have we seen an adverse impact on children’s health after these aluminum-free vaccines were removed?

Crépeaux: Well, I do not have the number for each chronic inflammatory condition, but at the same time, calcium phosphate was removed, and more and more vaccines were mandatory for kids, so those situations changed at the same time.

It’s not so easy to conclude; I don’t know how the situation changed.

Nevradakis: So all that being said, we still see that in Europe, the childhood vaccination schedule is a bit smaller than it is in the U.S. Fewer vaccines are recommended to children by most countries in Europe when you compare them to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] CDC schedule in the U.S.

If we compare the U.S. and Europe, if we compare the data, do we see a difference in Europe as a result of this lighter schedule?

Crépeaux: Well, the schedule is not the same. It’s stronger in the U.S. as compared to France, but the quantity of aluminum adjuvants injected into the kids are quite similar.

Indeed, the timing is not the same. The beginning is not the same. We begin at two months in France, and it’s the day of birth in the U.S.A.

But finally, at 1 year old, this is quite the same kind of exposure for aluminum adjuvants.

Nevradakis: OK, interesting.

Now, there was a study by some Danish researchers recently that, to just boil it down and put it simply, it said that the aluminum adjuvants are safe in vaccines.

Now, you participated along with our own Brian Hooker at CHD [Children’s Health Defense] and some other scientists, if I understand correctly, on a study that refuted those findings.

So tell us a little bit about your research, what you found and how your findings contradict those of the Danish study.

Crépeaux: Well, yes, that study — the Danish one — is very interesting because it’s full of methodological errors that just give [a] conclusion [that’s] not relevant. You cannot pull something from this study.

And when I first read that paper, I was about to go on holiday, and I said, “OK, we need to do something, because everything is wrong in that study.”

In one or two days, it was presented to some of the media and newspapers, to say “aluminum are safe, it’s OK, don’t worry,” but it was so badly done that, finally, I contacted Brian Hooker [CHD chief scientific officer] and Karl Jablonowski [CHD senior research scientist] and other people … and we decided to work on something just to explain what is wrong.

And so there was a lot of things that are wrong, and we published that a few months later in a peer-reviewed journal with four reviewers. And I think that, to be easy to understand, the main problem is that they do not have a control group and they compare a little bit of aluminum adjuvant with a little bit more aluminum adjuvant.

So, let me explain. If you compare two smoker groups. One is smoking maybe 10 cigarettes a day, and the other one is smoking 11 cigarettes a day. And you can’t find any specific concerns in terms of lung cancer. You can’t say, “So, smoking is OK.”

And this is the same, very weird way of thinking, in that study. This is one point. … But everything was badly done.

Nevradakis: It’s amazing that these studies not only get published, but get the attention that they do. But obviously, they’re serving a narrative.

Have you experienced challenges publishing your research, which goes against that narrative?

Crépeaux: Well, not so frequently, but I did sometimes, with a previous paper. It was a letter for the editor. It was retracted, but because it was quite the same a few weeks later, so it was OK.

And, very recently, you know, something has changed, I think, in the last few months. I see more and more frequently, bad papers published on aluminum adjuvant safety, and my papers are questioned by the editor.

They say, someone said that “There [are] some troubles in your paper, so you need to answer these questions.” And that was never the case in [my] 13 years of research.

Now, it [has been] the case three times in a month or something to that extent. And I think it’s a good sign, because that means that the topic is important and is observed,

because the question must be answered.

Nevradakis: So we saw recently in the U.S. an executive order that is asking the health agencies in the U.S. to work on aligning the U.S. schedule with the childhood schedules in Europe, and it specifically mentioned Denmark, interestingly enough, and Germany as well. And it also mentioned Japan — a non-European country.

And this was the outcome of a report that was commissioned by the federal government in the U.S. that looked at the childhood schedules and what they called peer countries, other countries that have a similar sort of development level to that of the U.S.

So, do you think that this executive order could be a game changer in the U.S. as far as tackling the autism epidemic, the chronic illness epidemic that is faced by American children, and all of these health challenges that, in some ways, are [more] pronounced in the U.S. than they are in Europe?

Crépeaux: Well, I think it is the first step that the U.S. needs to do, but my final goal is that aluminum adjuvant exposure will be reduced to zero for babies and for kids and teenagers and adults.

This is a first step, but maybe not the whole solution.

Nevradakis: Well, I appreciate your insights on this, and I know that our viewers do the same.

So thank you so much for joining us. And for our viewers, thanks for tuning in. And remember, you can find more great Defender content at childrenshealthdefense.org/defender and on Substack, tdefender.substack.com.

Read more about Guillemette Crépeaux here.

by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

A military officer failed to convince Europe’s highest court that Italy’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for military members discriminated against military members because the mandate didn’t also apply to civilian employees.

The officer, identified by the initials B.G., served in Italy’s Army Engineer Corps. He was suspended without pay in January 2022 for refusing to comply with the mandate.

Earlier this month, the European Court of Justice ruled that opposition to vaccine mandates based on policy disagreement, rather than sincerely held belief, is not protected under European Union (EU) anti-discrimination law.

B.G. challenged his suspension, arguing that regular COVID-19 tests were an acceptable alternative to compulsory vaccination and that workers in other sectors were given this choice.

Italy’s Constitutional Court ruled against him, finding that the military vaccine mandate was an appropriate measure for military personnel.

On appeal, Italy’s Council of State, the country’s highest administrative appeals court, asked the European Court of Justice to clarify several legal questions.

The European Court of Justice found that B.G. did not demonstrate a sincerely held religious, spiritual or philosophical belief protected under EU law.

“Judges found BG was not expressing a protected religious, philosophical or spiritual belief but challenging Italy’s public health policy,” Courthouse News reported. His objections “focused on vaccine effectiveness, possible side effects, testing as an alternative and the way the mandate was implemented.”

In its ruling, the European Court of Justice wrote that B.G. “does not seek to oppose the compulsory vaccination at issue in the main proceedings on the basis of his own beliefs, but to challenge, as such, the choices made by the Italian authorities in the field of public health.”

Those objections “constitute opinions” on public health, and as such, are not protected. Aside from sincerely held beliefs, EU law also protects against discrimination based on age, disability or sexual orientation.

Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst called the ruling “unfortunate and disappointing,” as the legal protection of personal beliefs in the EU “appears to be an empty shell.”

Ruling not ‘a blank cheque to impose medical requirements’

Legal experts disagree on the potential ramifications of the European Court of Justice’s ruling.

According to Defence Matters, while the case originated from COVID-19-era legislation, its relevance extends beyond the pandemic to “the wider question of how far armed forces may impose health and readiness obligations on personnel, and how EU law distinguishes military employment from civilian work.”

More broadly though, the ruling falls short of a general endorsement of vaccine mandates, as the European Court of Justice “did not decide whether all compulsory vaccination rules are valid in every setting,” Defence Matters reported.

According to Defence Matters, the ruling still “limits the use of ‘belief’ as a legal basis for challenging workplace vaccination rules.” This may reduce the scope for future “anti-discrimination claims based on personal opposition to vaccination.”

“That distinction may matter in future disputes where employees seek to frame objections to health or safety rules as protected convictions,” Defence Matters reported.

Defence Matters said the European Court of Justice’s decision does not give EU member states “unlimited discretion.” Military personnel may still challenge national mandates based on “domestic constitutional law, human rights law, administrative law or other areas of EU law where applicable.”

According to Defence Matters, the ruling is likely to affect military service members throughout the EU the most, as “it confirms that military status may justify different employment obligations.”

“Armed forces regularly apply medical, fitness, vaccination and deployment rules that are stricter than those imposed on civilian personnel. These rules may affect the ability of personnel to serve, deploy or remain in particular roles,” Defence Matters reported.

Paolo Vargiu, Ph.D., associate professor of law at the U.K.’s University of Leicester, told Courthouse News the ruling does not give governments “a blank cheque to impose medical requirements” and does not limit protected beliefs just to religion but leaves open the boundary between protected beliefs and challenges to policy.

Vargiu said this means that future legal challenges may emerge over topics ranging from medical autonomy to climate commitments and other workplace requirements.

But Terhorst said the European Court of Justice’s ruling “undermines any exemption from compulsory vaccination based on belief” and that it ignored Article 3 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which states that any medical intervention must be based on informed consent.

“To say no to a medical intervention is the most fundamental human right — the right to decide on your own body,” Terhorst said.

Pending case argues vaccine mandates violate informed consent

Terhorst predicted that “the legal discussion on compulsory vaccination” in the EU “will continue,” as the European Court of Justice has not yet reviewed a challenge to such mandates in relation to European human rights law.

Italian attorney Alessandro Fusillo told The Defender that another case pending before the European Court of Justice may provide answers to some of the unresolved legal questions.

Case C-386/25 also focuses on alleged discrimination against military service members who were subject to Italy’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. However, the case challenges the mandate, in part, on a claim that service members were denied informed consent.

The European Court of Justice was asked to determine whether Italy’s vaccine mandate is “uninformed because of the lack of indications or information necessary to ensure awareness of the citizen.”

This lack of informed consent could violate several articles of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union — including Article 3 — and several other EU and Council of Europe laws and resolutions.

“This request is way more ample and may force the Court to abandon the limited consideration of religious and philosophical questions, since it is strictly connected with the right to informed consent,” Fusillo said.

Related articles in The Defender

• Worker Wins Religious Exemption From AI — Could It Boost the Case for Vaccine Exemptions?

• EU Broke Law By Refusing to Turn Over Text Messages Related to Pfizer COVID Vaccine Contracts

• Government Officials Pressured EU Regulators to Rush Authorization of Pfizer Vaccine, Leaked Documents Reveal

• Breaking: Congress Members Urge DOJ to Investigate 4 States That Prohibit Religious Exemptions

• ‘Death Sentence for Millions’: WHO, EU Launch New Global Vaccine Passport Initiative

by Henrick Karoliszyn, DSW

Efforts to roll back childhood school vaccine requirements in Florida have stalled after lawmakers declined to advance a proposal that would have expanded exemptions and moved the state closer to eliminating several longstanding immunization mandates.

The proposal, backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, was part of a broader campaign promoting medical freedom.

Since 2025, state officials have explored both legislative and regulatory changes to vaccine requirements for schoolchildren, making Florida a closely watched testing ground for efforts to loosen vaccine mandates.

The effort lost momentum in April when Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez declined to bring the issue before lawmakers during a special legislative session.

“There is some concern here, on my behalf, about children being in school without measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox vaccines that have been working for decades,” Perez told reporters after the session.

Now supporters and critics alike wonder what’s next for Florida’s childhood school vaccine mandates.

‘The default setting should be freedom’

At the center of the debate was Senate Bill 1756, which would have created a “conscience-based” exemption for childhood immunizations in addition to existing medical and religious exemptions.

The proposed Medical Freedom Act would have prohibited vaccine manufacturers from offering financial incentives to healthcare providers for administering vaccines and barred providers from accepting them.

The proposal also sought to bar state mandates for mRNA-based vaccines and allow over-the-counter access to ivermectin. The legislation failed to advance in the House.

Public health experts argue that school vaccination requirements remain one of the most effective tools for preventing outbreaks of infectious disease in group settings such as classrooms.

Supporters of loosening mandates counter that vaccination decisions should rest primarily with parents rather than the state.

During a public hearing, health freedom advocate Larry Downs Jr. said, “The default setting should be freedom, not these corporate chemical vaccine injections.”

Opponents of the proposal, including educators, warned of the consequences of declining vaccination coverage.

Teacher Marion Fesmire reportedly told state officials she had witnessed severe cases of vaccine-preventable diseases while working overseas.

“I’ve seen kids with polio. I’ve seen blind kids. I’ve seen kids die before they’re even 10 years old,” she said.

The proposed bill is one of hundreds in “anti-science” legislation introduced throughout the U.S. in recent years, according to The Associated Press.

‘Nearly half a century’ of ‘struggle’

The debate has unfolded against a backdrop of continued concern over infectious disease trends. Florida reported one of the higher measles case counts in the nation this year, according to state and federal health tracking data, intensifying scrutiny of proposals that could weaken vaccination requirements.

A 2025 survey conducted by KFF and The Washington Post found that 81% of parents nationally support requirements for some school vaccines, even as political divisions over public health policy remain pronounced following the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, according to the Daily Caller, a secret poll conducted in October 2025 by President Donald Trump’s longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio found that 73% of voters said they had concerns about childhood vaccine mandates, and 90% of voters expressed concern about the pharmaceutical industry’s corrupting influence. The poll was never released.

Some advocates for eliminating mandates argue the latest setback reflects a failure in government.

Joseph Sansone, Ph.D., a psychotherapist who legally tried to prohibit mRNA vaccines in Florida, blamed faulty leadership for allowing what he called “biological and technological weapons of mass destruction” to continue.

“If Governor DeSantis had the courage to stop mRNA by enforcing the law and stopping this mass murder, it would be a lot easier to force the legislature to stop mandating any so-called vaccine,” he said. “The game is to distract people from the simple fact that most people they know will have shortened lifespans due to mRNA injections. If the Governor told the truth and acted nobody would want to be anywhere near forcing injections of any kind.”

Other long-time anti-mandate advocates say the effort remains part of a decades-long movement.

Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Defender the fight is not over.

“The struggle to protect liberty has been going on for 250 years in America,” she said. “The effort to end vaccine mandates in Florida and every other state in the U.S. has been going on for nearly half a century and is part of that larger struggle. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Never give in and never give up.”

Related articles in The Defender

• ‘Science Is on Our Side’: Critics Fire Back at AP Report on ‘Wave of Anti-Science Bills’

• Florida to ‘End All Vaccine Mandates,’ State’s Surgeon General Announces

• Under Pressure, Michigan Makes It Easier to Opt Out of Vaccine Tracking

• Bhattacharya Opposes Vaccine Mandates, Promises to Tackle Chronic Disease Epidemic

by Jill Erzen

“Parents are watching … and we are seeing our children suffer,” Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Senior Advocacy Manager Stephanie Locricchio said last week. Locricchio urged lawmakers to take a closer look at the health effects of radiofrequency (RF) radiation.

Speaking on the “Culture Apothecary” podcast, Locricchio said families are increasingly concerned about 5G technology and the rapid expansion of wireless infrastructure.

“We’re seeing the sickest generation of children coming up right now. And we’re seeing a government that, frankly, is doing nothing about it,” she said.

She accused regulators of “turning a blind eye” to evidence of harm while prioritizing industry interests.

Meanwhile, CHD is pursuing a federal lawsuit to force the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to comply with a 2021 court order requiring the agency to explain how its RF radiation exposure limits protect people and the environment.

The lawsuit demands that the FCC comply with the court order by reexamining RF radiation limits, established in 1996, that the court agreed are outdated. “Five years ago, this request was made. We still have received zero from them,” Locricchio said.

Her comments come amid a growing debate over control of wireless infrastructure. Earlier this year, grassroots opposition from local governments and health-freedom advocates helped delay a vote on the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2025, a federal bill that would have weakened municipal oversight of cell tower placement near homes, schools and parks.

‘It is not 1996 anymore’

Locricchio said federal RF exposure limits have not kept pace with the explosion of wireless technologies over the past three decades.

The FCC’s current exposure guidelines date to the 1990s, before smartphones, Wi-Fi, smart appliances and other always-connected technologies became commonplace.

“We had flip phones,” Locricchio said, noting that people could not stream videos, connect to Bluetooth devices or use Wi-Fi the way they do today.

She argued that regulators continue to rely on decades-old research that focused mainly on whether RF radiation heats the body, rather than what long-term exposure might do to human health.

“The studies were done in the ’80s on monkeys and rats to just test for heat,” she said. “There’s no long-term studies done on what happens when you have a generation of children growing up from cradle to grave, essentially, and in the womb exposed to RF radiation at all times.”

Researchers have linked RF exposure to a range of health concerns, including headaches, dizziness, nausea, memory problems, brain fog, infertility, neurological problems, learning disabilities and cancer.

Yet, the FCC has never adequately explained why its current exposure limits remain sufficient, Locricchio said. “This technology is here, and it comes at a cost,” she added.

Exposure now comes from both personal devices — including cellphones, smart watches and wireless earbuds — and infrastructure that people cannot easily avoid, such as cell towers, small-cell antennas and smart utility meters.

“The combined radiation that we’re exposed to between the voluntary and the involuntary exposure is off the charts,” she said — and children “absorb 10 times more than adults.”

“And there is no science that supports that this is healthy for humans or for the environment,” she said.

“It is not 1996 anymore,” Locricchio added. “We’re in 2026, and we are surrounded by this invisible toxin that is known to cause harm.”

Law shields telecom companies so ‘if you are harmed … there’s no way to sue’

A major focus of the podcast was Section 704 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Locricchio said Section 704 prevents local governments from rejecting cell towers based on health or environmental concerns. Communities can still consider zoning, aesthetics, historic preservation, fire safety and property values, she said, but not potential health impacts.

She pointed to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where residents reported becoming ill after a cell tower was installed nearby.

“The Telecom Act of 1996 eliminated the ability for local communities to cite any impacts from health or environmental concerns as a reason not to put a tower,” she said. “Years later, you’re seeing cancer rates increase on that block.”

She also cited a report by the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Environmental and Health Effects of Evolving 5G Technology, which recommended keeping cell towers at least 1,640 feet from homes, schools and other places where people gather.

Yet cell towers are increasingly being placed close to homes and apartments.

“You’re seeing cell towers popping up right outside of windows,” Locricchio said. “And what you need to know is that exposure is real. You can’t feel it, you can’t see it, you can’t smell it, but it is impacting you.”

She said the law shields telecom companies from health-related liability.

“If you are harmed by wireless radiation, a 5G tower near your home, there is essentially nothing you can do,” she said. “There’s no recourse. There’s no way to sue for damages.”

Locricchio said the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2025 would have further weakened local oversight by streamlining approvals for towers and antennas and limiting opportunities for public input. The proposal stated that local governments “may not deny, and shall approve” applications for most cell towers and antennas on practically any structure, overriding local zoning laws.

The bill was “basically clearing the path for telecom companies to just build cell towers wherever, whenever they want,” she said.

The U.S. House of Representatives postponed a vote on the measure in April following pressure from grassroots opposition.

‘Fox guarding the hen house’

Locricchio said close ties between regulators and the telecommunications industry have led to a “fox guarding the hen house” scenario.

She pointed to a sharp divide between independent and industry-funded research on RF radiation safety.

“Two-thirds of independent scientific studies show harm. Two-thirds of the industry-funded studies show no harm,” Locricchio said. “They’re buying and paying for science just like all of these other corporate industries.”

She called it “the same exact playbook” used by Big Tobacco, Big Food and Big Pharma to create “this wheel of illness and disease and suffering that’s happening in this country.”

Locricchio also criticized policymakers who she believes have ignored evidence of potential risks.

She recalled a meeting between wireless-radiation advocates and a staff member for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who chairs the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which oversees the FCC.

According to Locricchio, the staffer told the group, “I’ve never seen anything to show any concern when it comes to health impacts related to wireless radiation.”

She argued that many elected officials have chosen not to confront evidence that could challenge industry-backed policies.

“The lobbying industries have really taken over our government,” Locricchio said.

“A lot of these politicians have to just cover their ears, close their eyes” because they know that acknowledging the issue and allowing it to happen would require confronting “long-term impacts” that affect “generations to come,” she said.

As agencies continue to dismiss concerns about wireless radiation, more Americans are questioning whether public health institutions are acting in the people’s best interest, Locricchio said.

“It’s really hard for people to wrap their brains around the fact that these agencies that were supposed to be put in place to protect public health are failing so miserably,” she said. “I think the silver lining of COVID was it eroded that trust.”

AirPods are ‘like sticking your head in the microwave’

While calling for regulatory changes, Locricchio also urged listeners to reduce wireless exposure in their own homes.

She recommended hardwiring internet connections when possible, turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when not in use, using airplane mode, limiting children’s screen time and creating device-free sleeping spaces.

“Distance is your friend,” she said, describing physical separation from wireless devices as one of the easiest ways to reduce exposure.

She encouraged families to examine the wireless technologies they use every day, including routers, smart meters, baby monitors, smart appliances and wearable devices.

AirPods are “sort of like sticking your head in the microwave,” Locricchio warned.

Newer wireless technologies also raise questions about privacy and surveillance.

“The 6G that they’re developing right now has sensing capability,” she said. “It’s been said that once 6G is deployed, it will actually have the capability to see through the walls of people’s homes. … How is it legal? How is it allowed?”

Locricchio urged listeners to be more informed and involved.

People should not become complacent by “just blindly believing” industry representatives and self-described experts, she said. Instead, she called on the public to do its own research, question prevailing narratives and closely observe “what is happening in our world.”

Locricchio encouraged listeners to participate in CHD’s action alert campaign, which calls on federal officials to update the FCC’s exposure guidelines and pause further wireless expansion until that review is completed.

“It’s so important that people listening take these actions,” she said. “These one-click actions really do make a difference.”

Watch CHD’s Stephanie Locricchio on ‘Culture Apothecary’ here:

Related articles in The Defender

• Children’s Health Defense Seeks to Force FCC to Comply With 2021 Ruling

• Breaking: Grassroots Opposition Sinks Bill to Limit Local Control Over Cell Towers — for Now

• People Living Near Cell Towers at Greater Risk of Chronic Immune Stress

• Wireless Radiation Limits at Least 200 Times Too High to Protect Against Cancer Risks

• ‘New Phase of Attack’: Children’s Health Defense Tells FCC to Protect People, or ‘Get Out of the Way’

by Jill Erzen

A recent virus-smuggling case involving a National Institutes of Health (NIH) researcher has renewed questions about oversight in biomedical research, with investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker arguing that some scientists believe they are above scrutiny.

Speaking on “The Kim Iversen Show,” Thacker said the allegations against Vincent Munster, Ph.D., reflect a pattern of scientific arrogance that has surfaced in controversies involving gain-of-function research, COVID-19 origins and government transparency.

“The main thing that we see is that there was this obvious … coalition of lies that happened,” Thacker said. “More and more evidence of these lies keeps coming … to the fore.”

Munster, a Dutch citizen who leads the Virus Ecology Section at the NIH Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, and research fellow Claude Kwe Yinda, Ph.D., were charged June 2 with conspiracy to smuggle biological materials into the U.S. and making false statements to investigators.

According to a U.S. Department of Justice press release, the men were stopped at a Detroit airport in January carrying coolers containing deactivated monkeypox virus, chickenpox virus and human DNA.

The complaint alleges that Munster “adamantly denied” carrying biological samples and claimed any required documentation was on his laptop. Authorities said he failed to produce the documents.

According to an FBI affidavit, Munster also told investigators, “I do this all the time.”

For Thacker, that statement speaks volumes. “I think what happened … is this is how he was always doing things,” Thacker said.

‘It’s about a culture that treats dangerous pathogens as a playground’

Munster is one of many researchers who travel the world collecting viruses, Thacker said. Over time, some begin to view regulations and oversight as obstacles rather than safeguards.

Thacker described a mindset in which scientists believe they can simply “grab something and bring it back” without worrying about paperwork because they are the experts.

“This is the kind of attitude these people have,” Thacker said. “They see themselves as above it all because they have a Ph.D. and they are the scientists … they have the answers for American society, and we’ve got to shut up and listen.”

That attitude extends well beyond one researcher, he said.

“There’s a bit of a master of the universe … ego thing going on here,” Thacker said. “There’s an arrogance there. It’s, ‘we are the smart people. … You’re stupid. Shut up.’”

The problem is compounded by a lack of meaningful oversight, according to Thacker. “We don’t really spend enough time, I think, looking into what these researchers do,” he said.

Iversen agreed, arguing that the issue is about more than budgets or grant funding.

“It’s about a culture that treats dangerous pathogens as a playground while the public is expected to simply trust that everything is under control,” she said.

‘Anyone who knows science knows that that’s a misdirection’

According to Thacker, controversies such as the Munster case reveal how difficult it can be for the public to scrutinize scientific research. That lack of transparency also played a role in debates over COVID-19’s origins, he said.

Thacker pointed to Project DEFUSE, a controversial 2018 grant proposal involving bat coronavirus research linked to EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The proposal has drawn scrutiny because some of its planned experiments — including inserting genetic features to see how they would function in human cells — closely resemble the biological makeup later seen in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

“When you look at the details of this grant, what they look like they were doing from parts of it was creating a virus just like SARS-CoV-2, just like the COVID virus,” Thacker said.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) ultimately declined to fund the proposal, citing concerns that it could create potentially dangerous pathogens.

However, “about a year after these people submit a grant saying we want to create this particular type of virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, surprise, this type of virus ends up in Wuhan,” Thacker said.

Researchers linked to the proposal have argued that the work could not have contributed to SARS-CoV-2 because DARPA never funded the project. Thacker disputed that reasoning, saying scientists frequently complete substantial research before formally submitting grant applications.

“Anyone who knows science knows that that’s a misdirection because before you actually submit a grant, you’ve already done a lot of the research,” he said.

Officials relied on ‘serious misdirection’ to deceive public about COVID origins

Thacker also criticized how public officials shaped the debate over COVID-19’s origins, arguing that key figures targeted China while downplaying questions about U.S.-backed coronavirus research.

“There was a serious misdirection” by people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, former NIH Director Francis Collins and various U.S. senators who kept steering the public toward China, Thacker said. “Remember the whole, ‘let’s look at China’s books’? No, let’s look at Americans’ books.”

Iversen cited comments by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has led congressional investigations into COVID-19’s origins.

“Six out of seven of the scientists that were experts in this field all said it came from the lab,” Paul said in a clip, referring to early discussions about whether the virus may have emerged from a laboratory. “Anthony Fauci comes in and says no.”

Paul argued that the controversy over the virus’s origins did not begin as a coordinated scheme so much as a “convergence of interests” among officials and researchers who were “covering their tracks.”

“It was a serious mistake in judgment — maybe one of the worst mistakes in judgment of the last century — to fund dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan,” Paul said.

“They fund it. Now this virus takes off. So what do they do for the next several years? Even people who didn’t know each other, they’re all doing the same thing: ‘We don’t want anything to link us to funding this.’”

Paul echoed Thacker’s argument that officials engaged in a “serious misdirection” by steering scrutiny toward China while minimizing questions about U.S.-backed coronavirus research.

“We created this technology,” Thacker said. “We did it. So, we can sit there and look at China all we want,” but doing so misses the larger question of how such research was funded and conducted in the first place.

‘This type of research, we pioneered it in America’

For Thacker, the concern extends beyond what happened in Wuhan.

Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently released declassified documents showing the U.S. government has funded more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries. According to the documents, many of those facilities conduct research involving hazardous pathogens and, in some cases, gain-of-function experiments.

At the same time, the technology needed to manipulate viruses has become increasingly accessible, Thacker said.

“This research is now pretty cheap and it’s pretty well understood,” he said. “The scary thing” is that “it could be popping up in … pretty much any country.”

Iversen argued that some countries feel compelled to keep pace with one another in this space. “If we don’t do it, somebody else will because somebody else is,” she said. “You know, China’s doing it. All these other countries are doing it. So, we have to get on that bandwagon and do it, too.”

Thacker disputed that point. He noted that many of the techniques used today were developed in the U.S., particularly by University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric, Ph.D., a leading expert in coronavirus engineering and gain-of-function research.

“The thing you have to understand, and I think this is a point that’s really important, this type of research, we pioneered it in America,” Thacker said.

‘This is actually not virus research … this is an integrated system’

In his view, the debate is not really about a single scientist, a single laboratory or even a single virus.

“This is actually not virus research … this is an integrated system,” he said. “This is biodefense.”

Thacker noted that NIH is “the largest funder of biomedical research on the planet.” He pointed to the Wellcome Trust as another major source of funding for research connected to Wuhan.

Thacker also criticized the former director of Wellcome Trust, Jeremy Farrar, Ph.D., whom he accused of helping “to cover up” evidence supporting a lab origin early in the pandemic.

Farrar served as chief scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO) from 2023-2025. He’s now the WHO’s assistant director-general in the Division of Health Promotion, Disease Prevention and Control.

It is a self-reinforcing cycle in which researchers collect viruses, manipulate them in laboratories and then help develop products intended to counter the same threats they created, according to Thacker.

“That’s how the system’s working,” he said. “We give grants and contracts to these researchers to go out and collect these viruses in different places, right? They bring them back to these labs, right? They start messing with them like, ‘Oh … what happens if I make this thing more dangerous?’ … Then they make it more dangerous.”

The result is “an entire money-making system that goes round and round and round and round and round,” he said.

Watch Thacker on ‘The Kim Iversen Show’ here:

Related articles in The Defender

• U.S. Funded Biolabs in 30+ Countries — Many Experimented With Highly Contagious Pathogens

• ‘Let That Sink In’: Feds Charge Two NIH Researchers With Smuggling Mpox Into U.S.

• Virologist Linked to Fauci Under FBI Investigation for Smuggling Dangerous Pathogens Into U.S.

• Virologist at Center of Coronavirus Research Loses NIH Grants, University Places Him on Leave

• Smoking Gun? Documents Suggest Fauci Knew COVID Was Created in Wuhan Lab, and mRNA Vaccines Wouldn’t Work

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by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

A new study linking COVID-19 vaccines to a significantly lower risk of heart attack and stroke joins “the latest in a growing body of research about the vaccine’s benefits for heart health,” according to The Washington Post, which reported on the study.

But Dr. Vinay Prasad, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, called the study “hopelessly flawed.”

Prasad, the former director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research before stepping down in April, and other scientists said the study’s methodological flaws skewed its findings.

“Not only should it not be in the news, the paper should not be in print,” Prasad wrote on Substack.

Canadian researcher Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., called the paper “outright bad science” that “should not be used whatsoever to ‘help inform clinical and public health discussions’ as they propose.”

The study, published last week in JAMA Internal Medicine, tied COVID-19 vaccination to a 37.7% lower risk of serious cardiovascular conditions, particularly among people 75 and older or people with comorbidities.

The authors also found that the vaccinated had a 6.2% lower risk of serious heart conditions overall and a 6.6% reduction in all-cause hospitalizations.

“Extrapolating these estimates to a population of 1 million people, vaccination could plausibly be associated with averting approximately 2370 [major cardiovascular] events and 1580 deaths over an 8-month period,” the study claims.

However, the researchers acknowledged that “the absolute benefit” of COVID-19 vaccination “was modest for the general cohort.”

Heart conditions such as myocarditis are widely associated with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, with reports of deaths connected to the vaccines, particularly among teenage and young adult males.

Study lacked true unvaccinated control group

The study observed nearly 1.04 million veterans who used the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system during the 2024-25 cold and flu season.

The researchers compared the health outcomes of those who took the seasonal flu vaccine — a group the researchers classified as “unvaccinated” — and those who received that season’s flu and COVID-19 shots on the same day.

The researchers followed up with the participants after eight months to assess their risk of a major cardiovascular event.

Rancourt said the study’s design was likely to produce outcomes tainted by the healthy vaccinee effect — where the vaccinated group is drawn from people more likely to be in better overall health compared to people who are seriously ill, suffering from comorbidities or near the end of their lives.

“The study is not a controlled trial,” Rancourt said. “No randomization was applied. The unfiltered voluntary vaccination of the subjects is the opposite of randomization. The study uses circumstances that must be expected to produce a large healthy vaccinee bias that is virtually impossible to mitigate.”

The study’s authors “do not mention healthy vaccinee bias in their ‘Strengths and Limitations’ section, nor do they provide any evidence or analysis supporting their unjustified belief that healthy vaccination bias does not invalidate their results,” Rancourt said.

Epidemiologist M. Nathaniel Mead, Ph.D., a McCullough Foundation scholar, said the study had an “invalid control group, which appears to have been unhealthier, more frail or vulnerable to heart problems at baseline.”

In an analysis posted on Substack, French scientist Hélène Banoun, Ph.D., noted that the study lacked a true unvaccinated group.

“It is a comparison between those who received only the flu vaccine and those who received both the flu vaccine and the COVID-19 vaccine on the same day. Therefore, it is not a comparison between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals,” Banoun wrote.

Banoun noted that some study participants received the COVID-19 vaccine after the flu vaccine but were nevertheless included in the “unvaccinated” group.

“Those who experienced cardiovascular adverse events following a COVID-19 vaccine received shortly afterward (most often 1 to 2 months later) are classified as UNVACCINATED,” Banoun wrote. She noted that the study’s supplemental data show that adverse events are, in fact, “higher among the ‘vaccinated’ group.”

Mead noted that the prior vaccination status of the study’s subjects is unknown. He said:

“We don’t know how many vaccines the ‘unvaccinated’ group had received prior to the study period.

“The ‘no-vaccine arm’ could easily have received multiple synthetic mRNA inoculations prior to the study period, the researchers do not consider the likelihood that the COVID infections are interacting with the persistent spike protein production from those previous COVID mRNA shots to cause heart damage.”

Studies have shown that the mRNA COVID-19 shots contain lipid nanoparticles, which distribute the spike protein to vital organs, including the heart. A study published in the journal Vaccines earlier this year found that the FDA underestimated the risk of heart damage from Moderna’s mRNA shot.

Mead said it’s possible some of the subjects in the “unvaccinated” group could have plausibly sustained an adverse event following receipt of a previous COVID-19 shot, leading them to avoid further COVID-19 shots.

“If the ‘no vaccine’ group had in fact received multiple shots prior to the study period, this would have resulted in persistent spike protein in the blood that could have predisposed them to more cardiac issues following the infection … as my colleagues and I convincingly argued in our compound adverse events papers,” Mead said.

Study contained several statistical anomalies

Experts also noted statistical anomalies in the study’s results. “The first question you have to ask is: are the groups well matched — did the authors create two comparable groups whose only difference was COVID-19 vaccine receipt,” Prasad wrote.

Prasad wrote that the study’s authors did not accomplish this.

“In the supplement it is clear they do not achieve adequate matching. All cause mortality curves separate by day 10. That is simply impossibly fast. The MACE [major adverse cardiovascular event] separates by week 5, and the all cause death separates by week 2.”

Mead said this outcome “tells us that the two study arms weren’t comparable from the start. It suggests that those who got the extra COVID booster along with the flu shot were ostensibly healthier, so they had lower MACE and death rates for reasons completely unrelated to the mRNA shots.”

According to immunologist and biochemist Jessica Rose, Ph.D., a potentially “realistic” explanation for this result “is that the ‘no vaccine’ group might have been sicker or frailer from the start” — an indication of a confounding factor, such as healthy vaccinee bias.

“A vaccine shouldn’t rapidly cut deaths from all causes if the groups are balanced. Quick separation screams confounding,” Rose said.

Journal rejects CHD’s rebuttal of the paper

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said the study’s researchers also improperly weighted different subgroups within the “unvaccinated” cohort, skewing the study’s results. He said:

“For most of the comorbidity conditions assessed, the unvaccinated appear healthier than the vaccinated. The unvaccinated have lower incidence (table 1) of COPD, cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, chronic lung disease, dementia, depression, diabetes, gastrointestinal disease, heart failure, immunocompromised status, myocardial infarction, peripheral artery disease, and stroke.

“For each of those diseases, the unvaccinated cohort is weighted to over-represent the illness and closer match the incidence in the vaccinated. The reweighting spans the unvaccinated demographics as the younger are made to appear older, Blacks are upweighted, whites are underweighted, area deprivation index is underweighted, homelessness is upweighted, etc.”

Jablonowski outlined some of his concerns with the study’s methodology and results in a letter to the editor of JAMA Internal Medicine last week — a copy of which he shared with The Defender.

“This is not a COVID-19 vaccinated vs. unvaccinated comparison in the 2024-2025 season. It is a COVID-19 vaccinated vs. those who chose to suddenly stop COVID-19 vaccination in that season. In upweighting people who suddenly stopped, the authors are underweighting everyone else,” Jablonowski wrote.

According to Jablonowski, when looking at the study’s crude — or unadjusted — results, the data tell a different story. For all-cause MACE, he wrote that the crude vaccine efficacy data show a negative vaccine efficacy (VE) rate of -18.15% among the vaccinated, whereas the weighted VE was 6.2%.

The results were similar for all-cause hospitalization, for which the unweighted vaccine efficacy was -14.3% but the weighted VE was 6.6%. For all-cause death, the crude VE was -11.43% but the weighted VE was 7.1%.

“When such a disparity exists between crude and weighted VE, extra scrutiny is warranted on how the weighting was performed and reported. That extra scrutiny would take the form of sensitivity analyses,” Jablonowski wrote.

The researchers performed 12 different types of sensitivity analyses, but Jablonowski said some of these analyses were improperly done, because the researchers looked at whether members of the “unvaccinated” group had been vaccinated in prior years, then “upweighted” those subgroups to represent a significant part of the “unvaccinated” cohort.

Mead noted that “both study arms were in fact heavily pre-vaccinated,” as “eligibility to be in the study required a 2023-2024 COVID-19 dose.”

“This means that the control, or ‘flu-only,’ arm carried the same history of mRNA vaccine exposure as the booster group, differing mainly in receipt of the 2024-2025 booster formulation,” Mead said.

‘The headlines are often incorrect’

In his letter, Jablonowski said the study’s authors should repeat their analysis “without including prior immunizations in the inverse probability weighting, coupled with a thorough explanation as to how negative efficacy turned positive.”

However, on Monday, JAMA Internal Medicine’s editor declined to publish Jablonowski’s letter. According to Mead, this is unsurprising.

“JAMA’s decades-long reputation as a mouthpiece for Pharma is once again confirmed — not surprising, given that drug advertising covers as much as 25% of JAMA’s financial overhead,” Mead said.

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center at Washington University in St. Louis and one of the study’s co-authors, told the Post that the study “tells us that these vaccines have actually brought beneficial effects even in people who don’t really know that they actually have contracted covid-19.”

But Prasad wrote that mainstream media outlets like the Post lack “in house critical appraisal of science.” As a result, “the headlines are often incorrect.”

The paper “was allowed to pass peer-review to pump out a false narrative, in my opinion,” Rose said.

Related articles in The Defender

• FDA Understated Risk of Heart Damage From Moderna COVID Vaccine, New Study Suggests

• ‘Gravely Concerning’: Spike Protein Found in Female Stroke Victims Up to 17 Months After Receiving mRNA COVID Vaccine

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• Lipid Nanoparticles in COVID Vaccines Travel to Vital Organs, Including Heart

• Watch: Spike Protein Leads to ‘Five Mechanisms of Damage’ in Human Body

by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

A North Carolina employer recently granted an employee’s request for a religious exemption from artificial intelligence (AI) — some experts suggest that workplace requests for AI exemptions may help draw more attention to religious exemptions for vaccination.

In April, Erin Maus, a software engineer and practicing Unitarian Universalist, asked her employer for a religious exemption from using AI.

According to Inc. Magazine, Maus cited ethical questions and environmental concerns linked to the operation of AI data centers in her objection. Maus consulted with an employment lawyer and a minister at her local chapter to support her request.

Business Insider reported that last month, her employer, a “large tech-entertainment company” that Maus described as “progressive,” granted the exemption.

“I’m writing my code and reviewing my code by hand, which seems crazy to say,” Maus told Business Insider. “Just two years ago, how else would you do it?”

Shortly after Maus’ employer granted her exemption, Pope Leo XIV published a 42,000-word encyclical letter in which he raised questions about how AI can undermine human dignity and negatively affect workers, and called for AI to be “disarmed.”

According to Business Insider, the pope’s letter could fuel more AI exemption requests, as the document “carries real legal weight, given that federal law requires employers to consider faith-based requests.”

Michael Kane, director of advocacy for Children’s Health Defense, said some religious exemption requests for AI may relate to fears that the technology represents the “mark of the beast” — and that it “will be required to engage in all transactions.”

“If people have strongly held, sincere beliefs against AI, then I support their right to seek religious exemption from using it,” Kane said.

Religious exemption requests on the rise

The issue of religious exemptions to avoid using AI comes at a time when the debate over religious exemptions for vaccination is intensifying — and when clinical trials for the first vaccine developed with the use of AI are underway.

Earlier this month, the University of Cambridge and its Bill Gates-linked biotech spinoff DIOSynVax published the results of Phase I clinical trials of the first-ever vaccine designed by AI, a universal coronavirus vaccine. The vaccine is being promoted as a solution to future pandemics.

Currently, four U.S. states — California, Connecticut, Maine and New York — do not recognize religious exemptions for vaccination. In West Virginia, the issue is the subject of ongoing litigation and political debate.

Other states, including Massachusetts, are considering legislation to end religious exemptions for vaccination. Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the largest pediatric trade group in the U.S., called for an end to religious exemptions.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a record number of religious exemptions from school vaccination requirements in recent years. And according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 3,710 workers filed religion-based discrimination claims in 2025 — up from 2,111 in 2021.

Business Insider reported that 2021 was “the last full fiscal year before vaccine-mandate disputes drove a sharp increase in filings.”

‘Doubtful’ there will be many ‘public health’ arguments for requiring employees to use AI

Rev. Wendy Silvers, founder of the Million Mamas Movement, told The Defender that “growth in successful AI religious exemptions can expand the possibility for religious exemptions for vaccinations,” including for future AI-powered vaccines.

Kane said a potential growth in religious exemption requests for AI use may “draw attention to the issue of religious exemption to vaccination,” particularly if AI-driven vaccines become available.

“One would have two avenues for religious objection to this technology — one being to vaccination itself and the other being to AI,” he said.

More broadly, Kane said “the fundamental arguments are likely to be much different” among employees seeking religious exemptions to AI use versus those seeking such exemptions from vaccination requirements.

“I am doubtful there will be many ‘public health’ arguments to force the use of AI on employees, except for hospital and healthcare settings,” Kane said.

Silvers said many employers may be less willing to grant religious exemptions for vaccination as opposed to other requests, including AI.

“There still seems to be an existing blind spot and parsing out of what areas a person’s sincerely held religious belief may be applied to when it comes to vaccines, as opposed to other issues,” Silvers said. “This would present human resources departments with the weight of accepting religious exemptions without question.”

Kane said states that currently prohibit religious exemptions to vaccination are likely to remain resistant to this right, even if religious exemption requests for other reasons, such as AI, become more prominent.

“Many states use these idiosyncratic differences against the individual seeking exemption. Instead of honoring that we are all unique individuals with various faiths, states often use these small differences to create arguments negating our beliefs to force medical interventions upon us. States like New York and California,” Kane said.

Silvers said that whether employees seek religious exemptions to vaccination or for other reasons, the underlying reason for such requests remains the same.

“One of the greatest gifts of being human is that of having choice. It is our God-given right to determine what happens to our bodies and minds,” she said.

“As humans, we get to acknowledge our God-given rights to keep our bodies pure from forced medical protocols and procedures,” Silvers added. “If HR is tasked with granting religious exemptions with regard to AI, then we must also do this with medical protocols that affect our brains, immune systems and bodies.”

Related articles in The Defender

• AI-Designed Universal Coronavirus Vaccine Raises DNA Contamination Fears

• Breaking: Congress Members Urge DOJ to Investigate 4 States That Prohibit Religious Exemptions

• Vaccination Rates Hit Record-Breaking Low for Third Year in a Row as Religious Exemptions Reach Record High

• American Academy of Pediatrics Wants to Shut Down Religious Vaccine Exemptions

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by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Canada’s federal government has dropped the word “injury” from the country’s vaccine injury compensation program. It’s one of several changes authorities made to the program in recent weeks, including some that may open the door for more people to receive compensation.

The Western Standard reported Tuesday that an internal Public Health Agency of Canada memo dated Feb. 27 outlined plans to rename the Vaccine Injury Support Program to the Vaccine Impact Assistance Program. Blacklock’s Reporter first broke the story.

The change, which took effect June 12, is linked to the federal government’s takeover of the program in April from a private contractor accused of mismanaging the program and delaying the claims process.

“Given the extent of program changes and the transition to administration by the Government of Canada, rebranding this renewed program with a new name is an important part of the program’s communications approach,” the memo stated.

The Public Health Agency followed through with the name change even though research suggests that similar programs in other advanced economies typically include the words “injury,” “damage” or “accidents” in their names, and that “vaccine injury” was the most frequently searched phrase related to this topic.

Despite this, the memo states that the agency opted to drop the word “injury” from the program’s name because use of that term “may presuppose a conclusion or decision.”

Mark Johnson, a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency, told The Defender that the name “was updated to reflect the new program launch.”

“While the term ‘vaccine injury’ denotes the causal link between a vaccine and a medical diagnosis, the term ‘impact’ more clearly reflects the objective of the program in providing financial support to eligible claimants, to address some of the financial impacts of the specific vaccine injury,” Johnson said.

Wayne Rohde, an expert in global vaccine injury compensation programs and author of “The Vaccine Court: The Dark Truth of America’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program” and “The Vaccine Court 2.0,” said the name change “is not trivial.”

“In the U.K., their program is called the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme. … In the U.S., we have the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program [CICP]. The U.K. and Canada schemes do not include injury compensation in their names. This is a slight legal difference,” Rohde said.

Notably, Canada’s federal vaccine compensation program excludes Quebec, which administers its own Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

The change took effect just days after a Canadian member of Parliament (MP) launched an inquiry into COVID-19 vaccine injuries. Dean Allison, a conservative MP, earlier this month. Patients, clinicians, researchers and policy experts are slated to testify in September.

‘Most of the money was not used for the injured’

Canada launched its vaccine injury compensation program in 2021 with an initial 75 million Canadian dollar (approximately $53 million) budget earmarked for the first five years of operations.

As of Nov. 30, 2025, the program received 3,557 claims — of which 252 were approved. The program awarded a total of CA$21,474,722 in compensation, or about CA$78,374 (approximately $55,000) per claim.

Global News reported in April that the “beleaguered” program came under criticism after it was revealed that Oxaro, the private firm hired to operate the program using government funds, spent CA$36 million on administration — CA$15 million more than it awarded in compensation to vaccine injury victims.

A July 2025 Global News investigation featured interviews with vaccine-injured people who said they were left waiting for their claims to be processed or approved.

“Many of the injured are still waiting for help,” Global News reported at the time. The outlet cited some of the program’s employees, who described its inner workings as “chaos.”

One of the claimants who spoke with Global News is Kayla Pollock. In 2022, Pollock developed vaccine-induced transverse myelitis after receiving Moderna’s COVID-19 shot. She subsequently woke up paralyzed, and later sued Moderna.

Pollock, who suffers from incomplete quadriplegia and requires a wheelchair to move around, said she has “spent more than four years navigating Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program,” making her “one of the program’s longest-waiting applicants.”

Pollock, whose claim remains unresolved as there are “currently no physicians available to assess claims,” added:

“I have documented my experience publicly, spoken with journalists, lawyers, physicians, elected officials and other vaccine-injured Canadians, and advocated for greater transparency and accountability within the program.

“My experience, along with the stories of other injured Canadians, contributed to broader public awareness and reporting about the challenges facing the program and the concerns surrounding its administration.”

Such allegations contributed to the Canadian government taking over administration of the program on April 1.

Rohde said he’s been following the workings of Canada’s vaccine injury program “since the very beginning.”

“One of the biggest complaints against the Canadian system was that most of the money was not used for the injured,” Rohde said. He cited a series of reports by another Canadian outlet, Rebel News, that led the Canadian government to “audit the money allocated.”

In one report, published in February, Rebel News revealed internal documents showing that the program “prioritized media messaging over victims.”

In October 2024, Rebel News reported that the program struggled to respond to the volume of claims it received and to calculate compensation for injured children in particular, “since they have no income history to determine potential earnings.”

“The Canadian government had to make a change and brought the system ‘in-house,’ to be administered by a government agency,” Rohde said.

But Pollock said removing the term “injury” from the program’s name “risks minimizing” the experience of vaccine-injured people.

“I do not believe changing the language changes the reality. Canadians who have experienced serious adverse events are looking for answers, support and accountability. Using clear language helps people find the program and understand who it is meant to serve,” Pollock said.

Canada broadens eligibility for submitting vaccine injury claims

While dropping the word “injury” from the name of Canada’s vaccine injury program has raised some eyebrows, other recent changes appear to make the program easier to navigate — and may allow for some previously rejected claims to be reconsidered.

The Western Journal reported that claimants will now have the right to file a claim up to three years after a vaccine injury becomes apparent, or when a probable link to vaccination is determined. Under the previous rules, claimants had three years from the date of vaccination or death to file a claim.

The program will also launch a new call center for claimants and will consider applications from 225 people whose claims were previously rejected for missing the three-year deadline.

Johnson said the Public Health Agency “acknowledges the frustration and hardship that many applicants faced while applying” for compensation.

He said that the agency is “focused on making the process clearer, more responsive and easier to navigate, while ensuring that every claim receives the careful consideration it deserves” by loosening the eligibility requirements for potential claimants.

Johnson added that the program plans to “address the existing backlog of applications.”

Rohde said these changes will bring “better transparency and petition tracking” to the Canadian program — elements he said are still missing from the U.S. government’s vaccine injury compensation programs.

“In the U.S., we are still dealing with a ‘black hole’ for COVID vaccine injuries,” Rohde said.

The CICP, which handles COVID-19 vaccine injury claims in the U.S., has been criticized for its low rate of payouts and the substantial hurdles that hinder the process for claimants.

Despite reforms, Canada’s compensation program ‘lacking in a few areas’

Changes to Canada’s vaccine injury compensation program come amid a gradual decline in public trust in vaccines.

A December 2025 survey by polling firm Leger found Canadians’ trust in vaccines has “declined over the last five years,” with 26% of respondents saying their confidence in vaccines has declined since 2019, compared to 14% who said it has increased during that period.

Vaccination has been a political flashpoint in Canada in recent years, particularly in relation to the country’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and restrictions on the unvaccinated during the pandemic.

In 2024, Canada’s Federal Court ruled the Canadian government’s use of the Emergencies Act in 2022 to disperse the “Convoy for Freedom,” which protested the government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates, was “unreasonable” and violated several articles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Some Canadian physicians who questioned the safety or efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines or who proposed alternative treatments faced investigation and disciplinary actions and were accused of spreading “misleading, incorrect or inflammatory” messages to the public.

In February, Health Canada, the agency responsible for the country’s national health policy, said it would need up to 15 years to release records on vaccine injuries.

Ongoing deficiencies related to the operations of the Vaccine Impact Assistance Program may be contributing to this growing mistrust.

“While the new Canadian program has some major improvements, it is still lacking in a few areas,” Rohde said.

“One is causation. In Canada, the petitioner’s submission is still treated as causation-in-fact. No injury table, unlike in the U.S. This means that, for injuries such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, myocarditis and anaphylaxis, there is a presumption of causation in the U.S. Not so in the Canadian system.”

Mathematician and physician Sam Dubé, M.D., Ph.D., said claimants are still “required to have a ‘credible source’ establish a link between the injury and ‘vaccine.’”

“With physicians being persecuted for openly questioning the ‘vaccines,’ how easy will it be to get one’s physician to come forward?” Dubé asked.

Pollock welcomed the program’s relaxed eligibility requirements, which she said “recognize a real problem that many injured Canadians have faced.”

However, “the priority should be reducing wait times, improving transparency, ensuring qualified medical experts review claims and providing timely support to Canadians whose lives have been permanently changed. For me, those issues have a much greater impact than what the program is called.”

Related articles in The Defender

• ‘People Will Be Heard’: Canada Launches Inquiry Into COVID Vaccine Injuries

• Health Canada Slow-Walks Release of Vaccine Injury Reports

• ‘They Stole His Practice’: Medical Board Drops Case Against Canadian Doctor Who Questioned COVID Vaccines

• Health Authorities Hoped to Silence Doctors Who Questioned COVID Vaccines by Threatening Their Careers

• Canadian Truckers Score Big Victory Over Trudeau in Federal Court

• Federal COVID Vaccine Injury Program Pays for Another Death — But Denials Still Hover Above 98%

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

A new analysis of adverse events reported to the federal vaccine safety surveillance database after the HPV vaccine detected a strong safety signal for POTS, an autonomic nervous system disorder, in some people who received the shots.

The authors of the study, published last week in PLOS One, analyzed 77,909 reports associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) between 2006 and 2024.

They concluded that the signal for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) warranted further investigation. However, they downplayed the significance of their findings, according to experts who spoke with The Defender.

Their discussion section dedicated only two sentences to POTS, even though the condition was the strongest signal identified by the analysis.

The authors underscored that a signal for POTS does not prove that it was caused by the shot, and said that a strong signal “does not necessarily translate into a large clinical or public health impact.”

Warning that when people hear about serious adverse events, it affects their “perception” of safety, the authors framed their paper as part of a process of identifying and addressing potential risks that “is crucial to maintaining high vaccination coverage.”

Cynthia Nevison, Ph.D., said this approach led the authors to be dismissive of their own results. “I always object in principle to papers that start out with the motivation of reducing vaccine hesitancy,” Nevison told The Defender.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker said the attempts to downplay POTS as a side effect of the HPV shot are “criminal and the paper is expertly crafted to hide this very obvious signal in order to repeat the default ‘safe and effective’ lie.”

He added that given VAERS underreporting, “we know that the pesky result they’re downplaying could represent 68,000 POTS cases nationwide and over 1 million serious adverse events total.”

Did data really show ‘favorable’ overall safety of HPV vaccines?

Researchers from Xiamen University in China examined the reports using four statistical signal-detection methods commonly employed in pharmacovigilance to identify adverse events that are reported more often than expected.

They identified adverse event signals in the data, typically called “safety signals,” because they indicate a condition may be caused by the shot and warrant further investigation.

Syncope, or fainting, was the most frequently reported adverse event signal, with 8,351 reports. POTS showed the strongest statistical reporting signal, appearing in 680 reports.

Among all reports, 68.4% involved females and nearly half involved people younger than 18, the primary age group targeted for HPV vaccination. About 90% of reported adverse events occurred within 30 days of vaccination.

CHD Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski said that according to the data in the paper, the proportion of POTS reports for non-HPV vaccines in the VAERS database is 1 in 9,950. For Gardasil, it is 1 in 475.

“For a passive surveillance system that captures the smallest fragment of actual adverse events, 1 in 475 is a huge number and is hugely out of proportion for all other vaccines,” he said.

Nevison, who has conducted her own analysis of adverse event reports for Gardasil in VAERS, questioned some of the authors’ numbers.

She counted over 12,000 reports of syncope from 2006-2025 in the U.S.-only VAERS dataset — well above the 8,351 cases identified by the authors, who deemed only 1,229 of those reports “serious.”

“The decision to label a report as ‘serious’ can be subjective and it’s not clear who is making this determination,” Nevison said. “When we recall that health officials during COVID routinely dismissed myocarditis reports as ‘mild,’ there is reason to be skeptical of these subjective judgments.”

She said this is particularly important, given that the authors concluded:

“Encouragingly, serious AEs [adverse events] account for only a small proportion of the reported HPV vaccine-related AEs. While the overall safety of the HPV vaccine is favorable, identifying and addressing potential risks is crucial to maintaining high vaccination coverage.”

“Again, the emphasis is on decreasing vaccine hesitancy and reassuring the public that safety is not an issue,” Nevison said. “On what basis are they claiming that ‘the overall safety … is favorable’? Such a statement requires a quantitative comparison of the number needed to harm vs. the number needed to treat for vaccine AEs and HPV-related conditions, respectively, of comparable severity. Zhang et al. haven’t done this.”

The evidence for link between Gardasil and POTS

Merck has been aware of a link between Gardasil and POTS since at least 2011, according to expert reports submitted as part of a recent lawsuit against Merck by Jennifer Robi, a California woman who alleged the Gardasil vaccine permanently disabled her.

Yet, the company has never warned the public about the risk.

Robi and hundreds of other plaintiffs who alleged they suffered POTS and other serious adverse events after taking Gardasil recently settled with Merck on confidential terms. The expert reports submitted during the case are now public.

Several expert reports present evidence, including clinical cohorts, adverse event reports and autoimmune testing, that experts said support a probable connection between Gardasil and the development of POTS and certain autoimmune conditions.

Other reports showed how Merck cherry-picked vaccine injury data to try to prove its Gardasil HPV vaccine didn’t cause serious neurological side effects.

Numerous published studies have also linked Gardasil to autoimmune conditions and POTS.

Related articles in The Defender

• Merck Deliberately Hid Gardasil Link to Autoimmune Disorders, Says Former FDA Consultant

• CDC Relied on Cherry-picked Data to Claim No Link Between Merck’s Gardasil Vaccine and POTS

• Woman Confined to Wheelchair Settles With Merck Over HPV Vaccine Lawsuit

• Gardasil’s Long Shadow of Autoimmunity Confirmed — Again — by New Study