Tag: cdc

Activists Hopeful as CDC Advisers Vote on Thimerosal Removal

Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are set to vote on June 26 on whether to recommend that the CDC act to remove thimerosal from influenza vaccines, raising hopes from people who have advocated eliminating the preservative.

“We are hopeful that the consideration of thimerosal will spark a thorough discussion that it deserves, hopefully leading to its removal from all vaccines,” Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, told The Epoch Times via email.

Thimerosal, approximately 50 percent mercury by weight, has been used in vaccines since the 1930s.

Concerns that the preservative could cause health problems resulted in a congressionally mandated 1999 review that concluded that some infants might be exposed to levels of mercury above recommended guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency.

A House of Representatives subcommittee in 2003, following the review, said that “mercury is hazardous to humans” and that it “should be minimized or eliminated entirely” from medicinal products.

The Food and Drug Administration, which has worked with companies to reduce or eliminate thimerosal from vaccines, says that the use of thimerosal has subsequently declined, but it maintains that studies “support the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines.”

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Did Head of CDC Vaccine Safety Office Delete COVID Vaccine Injury Records?

A key official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) responsible for monitoring vaccine safety and reports of vaccine injuries may have mishandled or deleted official records subpoenaed by Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) alleged earlier this week. The New York Post first reported the story on Thursday.

Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the CDC Immunization Safety Office, maintained the records in question. Shimabukuro previously authored a key paper and participated in public messaging claiming the COVID-19 vaccines were safe and effective for pregnant women.

Johnson, chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, requested the records in a subpoena sent in January to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The subpoena pertained to an investigation into internal COVID-19 vaccine safety communications.

According to the New York Post, the subpoena led HHS to discover “potential discrepancies” in the emails maintained by Shimabukuro.

“HHS officials recently informed me that Dr. Shimabukuro’s records remain lost and, potentially, removed from HHS’s email system altogether,” Johnson wrote in a letter he sent earlier this week to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and HHS Principal Deputy Inspector General Juliet Hodgkins.

Johnson called Shimabukuro’s possible mishandling of his official records “highly concerning.”

Journalist Paul D. Thacker, a former U.S. Senate investigator, said, “Every American should be concerned about government scientists deleting or hiding federal information to shape a political agenda. That information belongs to the taxpayers.”

Nebraska chiropractor Ben Tapper, whose questioning of the COVID-19 vaccines led the Center for Countering Digital Hate to add him in 2021 to its “Disinformation Dozen” list of the “leading online anti-vaxxers,” said he was “not surprised” by Johnson’s allegations.

“For years, I’ve seen patterns like this before regarding vaccine safety data. The public health establishment often prioritizes profits over people and continuously seems to protect the lies over the truth. The idea that critical records might vanish — whether through negligence or intent — fits a familiar playbook,” Tapper said.

California attorney Rick Jaffe said Johnson’s allegations are “troubling, but not surprising, given longstanding concerns about transparency at the CDC.”

In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last year, the CDC told Children’s Health Defense the agency has no records of certain internal email communications relating to the agency’s follow-up investigation of safety signals associated with COVID-19 vaccines.

HHS, CDC and Johnson’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

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Former Vaccine Committee Did Not Follow the Rules

In the spring of 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services underwent a sharp shift in leadership and oversight. With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. assuming the role of Secretary, one of the most scrutinized decisions was his removal of 17 members from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). The move followed years of concern about industry entanglement and sparked immediate backlash. Those dismissed issued a public letter defending their integrity and insisting that they had followed all disclosure requirements. But a detailed look at ACIP’s meeting history reveals that reporting a conflict of interest is not the same as acting on it—and that many of these members repeatedly failed to recuse themselves from discussions and votes where conflicts were plain.

ACIP is a federally chartered committee that sets the nation’s vaccine recommendations. Its decisions determine what vaccines are required for school entry, which are covered under federal programs like Vaccines for Children (VFC), and how billions in taxpayer dollars are spent. With that responsibility comes the requirement—both legal and ethical—to act free from industry influence. That doesn’t just mean disclosing conflicts. It means avoiding decisions in which personal or institutional interests could interfere with impartiality.

Over the last two decades, numerous ACIP members declared financial ties to vaccine manufacturers, but continued to participate in discussions and cast votes on matters directly tied to those companies. In many cases, those votes concerned vaccine products made by companies funding the members’ own clinical trials or compensating them as advisors. Under the CDC ethics policy, aligned with federal advisory standards, members are expected to recuse themselves from both discussion and voting when a conflict is present. Many did not.

For example, Dr. Cody Meissner, who served from 2008 to 2012, disclosed that his institution—Tufts Medical Center—received research funding from MedImmune, Pfizer, Wyeth, and AstraZeneca. Yet he voted on influenza and pneumococcal vaccine recommendations during that same period, with no recusal recorded in the meeting minutes.

Dr. Tamera Coyne-Beasley, who served from 2010 to 2014, repeatedly disclosed Merck-funded clinical trials conducted at the University of North Carolina. She voted on Merck-related vaccine policies, including HPV and adolescent immunization schedules, without recusal.

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CDC Advisers Ousted by RFK Jr. Voted on Vaccines Despite Conflicts

Multiple people who until early June served on a federal vaccine advisory committee cast votes on vaccines despite receiving or recently receiving money from pharmaceutical companies that stood to be affected by the votes, according to an Epoch Times review.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on June 9 removed all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines, citing issues such as conflicts of interest.

Dr. Helen Y. Chu, a professor of medicine and allergy and infectious diseases at the University of Washington, reported throughout 2024 receiving funds from Merck, among other pharmaceutical companies. In October 2024, in her first meeting as a member of ACIP, Chu voted in favor of expanding recommendations for vaccination against pneumococcal disease.

Merck manufactures multiple pneumococcal conjugate vaccines.

Chu did not submit any conflict of interest disclosures for the meeting, according to a CDC database.

ACIP members “are required to declare any potential conflicts of interest that arise in the course of ACIP tenure,” according to the CDC’s website. Members who declare perceived or actual conflicts of interest, the site says, “will be asked to recuse themselves from participating in the discussion and decision-making of the issues relating to that interest.”

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RFK Jr. Purges CDC Vaccine Committee—And Suddenly, Every Pharma-Funded ‘Doctor’ on Twitter Has the Exact Same Script

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has taken decisive action against regulatory capture by dismissing all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee. This bold move represents a significant step toward restoring independence in vaccine policy decisions. His reasoning? Simple: You don’t “restore trust” by keeping the same Pharma-backed bureaucrats who’ve spent decades rubber-stamping every vaccine Big Pharma shoves at them. Who was on the ACIP committee? The geniuses who rubber-stamped injecting experimental mRNA cocktails into infants while dismissing parents’ concerns as “misinformation.”

As Mike Adams (the Health Ranger) put it: “If I were HHS Secretary, I would solve the entire vaccine problem in one day. ‘You’re all FIRED!’ I would auction off the furniture, sell the buildings, pink-slip everybody on day one and return health decisions to the American people (and the states) instead of a bunch of corrupt pharma whores who profit from maiming and killing children. Problem solved.”

RFK pretty much just did that.

NBC spun the news this way: “Manufactured chaos: Kennedy guts CDC’s vaccine panel of independent experts.” Let’s pause to appreciate NBC’s hilarious definition of “independent experts.” Apparently, “independent” now means “financially entangled with Big Pharma but still somehow magically unbiased.” But sure, NBC, tell us more about how Kennedy’s the one causing “manufactured chaos.” The only thing being gutted here is Pharma’s ability to treat the CDC like their own private focus group.

But here’s where it gets hilariously suspicious…

Within hours of RFK’s announcement, a swarm of blue-check “doctors” flooded social media with near-identical meltdowns:

  • “This is dangerous!”
  • “RFK is anti-science!”
  • “He’s gutting public health!”

Gee, I wonder if those keyboard warrior doctors are on Big Pharma’s payroll. How many zeroes did it take to turn them into corporate attack dogs? Hilarious how they ‘forgot’ to mention that many of their fired buddies on the ACIP committee were practically swimming in Merck, Pfizer, and Moderna cash. And what a coincidence—their outraged tweets all landed in the same four-hour window. Almost like… a coordinated Pharma meltdown. Weird, right?

Let’s be clear: This was never about science. This was about a captured system rubber-stamping vaccines with less scrutiny than a TikTok dance trend, all while committee members lined their pockets with Pharma speaking fees, sat on corporate boards, and voted on products from their own financial partners. Now that RFK Jr. has derailed their gravy train, we’re witnessing something glorious: the vaccine-industrial complex having its mask-off meltdown moment—complete with coordinated media hysterics and the kind of tantrum usually reserved for toddlers who lost their juice box.

The truth is simple: When “trusted institutions” suddenly start screaming in unison, it’s not consensus—it’s collusion.

No, the backlash isn’t organic—it’s a scripted meltdown.

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‘Clean Sweep’: RFK Jr. Boots Entire CDC ‘Rubber-Stamp’ Vax Panel

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired every member of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel in a sweeping move he says is meant to restore public trust, but critics are calling it reckless and radical.

In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy said the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) had been plagued by conflicts of interest, rubber-stamp behavior, and opaque decision-making for decades – and that only a “clean sweep” could fix it.

The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine. It has never recommended against a vaccine—even those later withdrawn for safety reasons. It has failed to scrutinize vaccine products given to babies and pregnant women. To make matters worse, the groups that inform ACIP meet behind closed doors, violating the legal and ethical principle of transparency crucial to maintaining public trust. -RFK Jr.

The 17-member ACIP panel – made up of independent scientists, doctors, and public health professionals – was scheduled to meet later this month to review recommendations, including those involving COVID-19 vaccinations for children. That meeting will still go ahead, but without the current panelists, some of whom Kennedy said were ‘last-minute Biden appointees’ whose terms would have otherwise extended until 2028.

“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy wrote. 

Kennedy’s defenders say this is exactly the kind of bold move needed to break the credibility crisis surrounding vaccine science and government health agencies. The new appointees, he pledged, “won’t directly work for the vaccine industry” and will “refuse to serve as a rubber stamp,” instead fostering “a culture of critical inquiry”.

But critics say the move reeks of ideology and raises fears that Kennedy will stack the committee with vaccine skeptics or unqualified appointees, further eroding trust.

“Firing experts that have spent their entire lives protecting kids from deadly disease is not reform — it’s reckless, radical, and rooted in conspiracy, not science,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in a scathing statement.

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ORWELLIAN CONTROL MACHINE: Again, CDC screaming for everyone to mask up on flights to flatten new Covid curve and push clot-shot VACCINATIONS

The CDC, Centers for Disease Continuance, will push propaganda to the limits in order to coerce the populace into getting jabbed up with any toxic concoction they dream up. It’s lab to jab, with no science to back up the “safe and effective” claims they’ve been spewing for 75 years. Now they want everybody wearing face diapers on all flights so that we’ll all believe that deadly Covid variants are floating on those aerosol particles and infecting the world, again, so we’ll all dash to the doc-in-tha-box and get stuck in the arm with the deadliest jabs ever created. Rinse and repeat.

  • No Return to Mask Mandates Expected: Despite purported rising COVID-19 hospitalizations, public health experts and airlines confirm that mask requirements for air travel are unlikely to return, even as colder weather increases respiratory virus risks and the CDC pushes their propaganda again
  • CDC’s Authority and Industry Pushback: The CDC’s 2021 mask mandate for transportation was struck down by a federal judge for overreach, and airlines have since maintained optional policies. Industry leaders oppose reinstating mandates, calling them ineffective and burdensome.
  • Current CDC Guidance Focuses on Localized Risks: The CDC now ties mask recommendations to regional hospitalization levels — currently low in 92% of the U.S. — and denies rumors of impending federal mandates, emphasizing voluntary precautions instead.
  • Public Sentiment and Pandemic Shifts Make Mandates Unlikely: Experts cite reduced pandemic severity and widespread resistance to masking as barriers to renewed mandates, though some high-risk settings (e.g., hospitals, schools) may still enforce them locally.

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4 Vaccines for Pregnant Women? Doctors and Scientists Explain Why CDC Recommendation Is Dangerous

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends pregnant women get at least four vaccines: COVID-19, flu, whooping cough and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. Critics say the shots provide questionable benefit while posing known risks — including increased miscarriage rates and exposure to neurotoxins.

According to the CDC, maternal vaccines are important “because pregnant women and their babies can get sick from diseases like COVID-19, flu, RSV and more.”

What the CDC doesn’t say is that if a pregnant woman gets a vaccine, there is a 100% chance that she will be exposed to vaccine ingredients that may harm her and her baby, according to Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense senior research scientist.

“There is a probability of disease exposure during pregnancy — but toxic exposure is assured with vaccination,” Jablonowski said. “Vaccines work by antagonizing the body with toxins, toxoids and other antigens to elicit an immune response. Pregnant women in modern medicine are trapped between fear and hazards.”

Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist and author of more than 1,000 publications, said that vaccines “are not medically necessary nor clinically indicated” during a healthy woman’s pregnancy.

“The downsides of vaccination during pregnancy can be serious,” McCullough said. “Vaccine-induced inflammation and fever can provoke a miscarriage, stillbirth or premature delivery, leaving the baby to face all the problems of being a ‘preemie.’”

That’s why many women tell their obstetricians they want to go “natural” and not take risks that come with vaccination, McCullough added.

Still, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists endorses the CDC’s recommendation that pregnant women get the COVID-19, RSV, Tdap and flu vaccines.

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Profanity-ridden Emails, Misuse of CDC Funds: How Big Fluoride Tries to Prevent Towns From Cleaning Up Their Water

When Washburn, North Dakota’s town commissioners decided in January to take up the issue of whether or not to continue fluoridating the water supply for the town’s 1,300 residents, they anticipated researching the risks versus benefits and putting the matter to a vote.

What they didn’t anticipate — but soon encountered — was evidence of a coordinated effort by state actors and a national fluoride lobby group, using federal money, to crush local efforts by small towns like Washburn to stop fluoridating their water supplies.

On Monday night, town commissioners voted 4-1 to stop adding fluoride to Washburn’s water supply — making Washburn the latest in a growing list of communities across the country to end the practice in light of mounting scientific evidence that the chemical harms children’s health and provides little or no dental benefit.

At the meeting, Commissioner Keith Hapip shared what he said was evidence of astroturfing by Dr. Johnny Johnson, president of the American Fluoridation Society; Jim Kershaw, Bismarck, North Dakota’s water plant superintendent and others.

“Astroturfing is when a group with money and power pretends to be regular folks supporting something, but it’s really a planned push from the top,” Hapip said. “Real grassroots come from the community naturally. And here, the oral health program used CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] cash to manufacture support for fluoridation in Washburn.”

Johnson phoned into the meeting to advocate for water fluoridation. In response, the commission also hosted a presentation by Michael Connett — the attorney who represented the plaintiffs who won alandmark ruling in a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the agency’s failure to appropriately regulate fluoride use in water supplies.

Dr. Griffin Cole, conference chairman of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, who has expertise on fluoride’s toxic effects, also made a presentation.

Interviews by The Defender with grassroots actors across the country revealed that for years, Johnson, one of the country’s foremost advocates of water fluoridation, has been intervening in grassroots efforts to end fluoridation in their communities.

He and colleagues — in this case, Kershaw — travel physically or virtually to meetings in towns across the country.

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Senator Johnson: Did a Top CDC Official Destroy Covid Vaccine Files?

Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is asking federal police agencies to investigate whether a top CDC official destroyed records containing data about the safety of Covid-19 “vaccines.”

Johnson, who is chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent a letter on April 9 to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI, and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG), about Dr. Tom Shimabukuro. Johnson wrote:

I recently learned that a top official at the [CDC] who led the effort to identify COVID-19 vaccine adverse events, may have deleted or destroyed agency records and communications. If true, these actions would be a clear obstruction of my oversight efforts and a violation of federal record-keeping requirements.… HHS officials recently informed me that Dr. Shimabukuro’s records remain lost and, potentially, removed from HHS’s email system altogether.

Investigation Needed

The Wisconsin senator calls Shimabukuro’s potential misdeeds “highly concerning,” especially since his job includes monitoring harmful side effects of the Covid-19 injection. He is now asking the DOJ and FBI to investigate “the extent to which officials with HHS and its sub-agencies, including Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deleted or destroyed official agency records,” and if they did this to avoid compliance with the investigation.  

On November 19, Johnson told officials at the CDC, HHS, and Food and Drug Administration to preserve all records “referring or relating to the development, safety, and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.” He has long been on the hunt for accurate information regarding the controversial injections. He believes the world has yet to learn the true destruction they have, and continue, to bring about.

Part of a Pattern

This isn’t the first piece of evidence suggesting that CDC employees destroyed vital public records regarding the Covid injection. In November 2023, Congress learned that National Institutes of Health (NIH) senior adviser Dr. David Morens kept very few emails or documents that detailed the government’s response to the COVID-19. Morens told his colleagues to send communications about sensitive issues directly to his Gmail address. Johnson mentioned this in his letter to FBI and DOJ officials:

I had always suspected that Dr. Morens was not the sole evader of federal record-keeping requirements at HHS. The extent to which HHS officials systemically mishandled, deleted, or destroyed their communications, data, and other information relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccines must be thoroughly investigated.

Covid Vax History

The U.S. government began its coercive Covid-19 injection campaign in early 2021. The stated goal was to inject as many people as possible. Some experts warned right away that the shots weren’t all they were cracked up to be. In April 2021, internationally renowned doctor Peter McCullough told The New American that early data were already indicating the shot was causing thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of hospitalizations. That same month, microbiologist Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi warned that the injection would lead to clotting as well as immune system problems.

In November 2021, Dr. Robert Malone, an inventor of mRNA technology, called the shot “the largest experiment performed on human beings in the history of the world.” By then, Malone had become one of the most respected figures to protest the irrational approaches of the vaccination campaign. He especially had a problem with the “experts” not taking natural immunity into account and that they were pushing the injection on low-risk populations comprising young, healthy people.

It just so happens that Shimabukuro has downplayed the consequences of the jab. As noted by The Defender, in an April 2023 presentation to the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Shimabukuro said international regulatory and public-health partners did not detect concerns “for ischemic stroke following bivalent COVID-19 mRNA booster vaccination.” But a peer-reviewed study published in November 2024 found that mRNA Covid-19 vaccines pose a 112,000-percent greater risk of brain clots and strokes than flu vaccines, and a 20,700-percent greater risk of those symptoms than all other vaccines combined. The study called for a worldwide moratorium on mRNA vaccines.

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