Sweeping policy reversals in Washington continue in full swing, as new FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary announced the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will soon remove the Covid shots from the list of recommended vaccines for children and expectant women.
“The Trump administration plans to drop CDC recommendations that pregnant women, teenagers, and children get jabs unless they are in an “at-risk” group,” a Wall Street Journal article said.
Asked to explain the government’s drastic shift in position from its decision three years ago to include the Covid shot on the childhood vaccine schedule, Dr. Makary said that the CDC’s move always lacked scientific foundation.
“I’d love to see the evidence that shows that giving young, healthy children another Covid shot would help them,” the FDA commissioner said. “But that evidence does not exist.”
“I know they are trying to review all of the scientific data,” he noted. “But guess what? There’s no data. There are no good randomized control data that the current version of the Covid shot is necessary for young, healthy children. That evidence does not exist, and so we’re not going to rubberstamp things at the FDA.”
During the pandemic, “Follow the science!” became an authoritarian slogan, used by government and public health leaders to convey moral certainty and to silence dissent. Dr. Anthony Fauci’s attempt to equate any disagreement with his views as an attack on science stands as a prime example of this arrogance and manipulation.
“It’s easy to criticize but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science,” Fauci bombastically declared in a televised interview. “Attacks on me are, quite frankly, attacks on science.”
Now that the CDC under guidance from RFK is about to reverse course, the truth long known to many of us is clear to all: “Follow the science” was pure politics all along.
Yet, the government narrative succeeded to an extraordinary degree in compelling the medical establishment to fall in line with the Biden administration’s policies, with only a few courageous souls daring to risk their career by speaking truth to power.
Dr. Makary, who was then a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, was one of those individuals. Yated quoted his criticism of Covid-vaccination of children three years ago in an October 2022 article, at a time when many dismissed those views as “fringe,” although they were rooted in undisputed facts. These are the same truths he continues to voice today.
From the 2022 Yated article:
“There has never been a vaccine added to the child immunization schedule without solid clinical evidence that it reduces disease significantly in the community,” Makary said on a Fox News show. “The Covid-19 vaccine is the very first one to be approved without medical evidence supporting it.”
“This is basically a story about marketing a vaccine that has bypassed clinical data,” the medical expert said.
Makary pointed to the charade being acted out in the halls of power where the federal public health agencies rubberstamp whatever policies the drug companies and the White House want approved.
“Right now we have Pharma telling us, ‘Hey, we just did a study. Here’s the top line of the press release, okay? We’re gonna call the White House and the White House is going to call the FDA and the CDC and tell them all to get in line.”
“Which is why many of us are asking, why even have a FDA? Why do we even do clinical trials?” Makary asked, frustrated at a public health system that appeared hopelessly broken.
Sweeping Changes in Public Health Leadership
At the time, as Pfizer continued promoting the vaccines as safe for expectant women, children, and nursing mothers, Makary and like-minded colleagues faced intense media backlash. They were accused of fueling ‘vaccine hesitancy’ and ‘vaccine skepticism’—views the Biden administration treated as nearly criminal.
Today, amid a significant shift in public opinion about Covid vaccines, with the “safe and effective” mantra challenged by leading experts and medical journals, Makary’s comments are no longer controversial. Instead of sparking outrage, they are met with almost total media silence, which some interpret as tacit agreement.
Strikingly, just three years after Fauci marginalized his critics as “anti-science”, Makary himself stands at the head of the FDA, empowered to implement sweeping reforms so that this agency can actually serve the American people.
Another critic, Dr. Jay Battacharya, who publicly opposed lockdowns and school closures, leads the NIH formerly headed by Francis Collins. Ironically, it was Collins who, at the height of the pandemic, spearheaded the effort to destroy Battacharya, calling for his “devastating takedown” in the scientific community for the crime of offering a dissenting opinion.
[While Battacharya today enjoys national respect, Collins’s reputation has taken a major hit. In many circles, he and former NIAID director Fauci are seen as the enablers—through research grants—of the notorious gain-of-function experiments performed at the low security Wuhan lab, which most experts agree led to the lab-leak that caused the pandemic.]
Arguably the most maligned dissenter of all, Robert Kennedy Jr., now heads the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which oversees all other federal health bodies.
Kennedy is in the process of launching an overhaul of the HHS with a number of bold public health initiatives, some of which he presented in last week’s Senate and House Appropriations Committee hearings.
Comprehensive Audit of Infant Formula
A key initiative, announced in March and laid out in more detail by RFK before Congress last Tuesday, calls for the HHS and FDA to bring baby food formula manufacturing, which is largely imported from overseas plants, back to the United States.
“For too long high-quality options for infant formula have been limited. We should be asking ourselves why American moms are importing formula from other countries where costs are prohibitive and FDA oversight not possible,” Makary said in a recent statement.
“We can lower the prohibitive cost of formula by bringing in competition and encouraging domestic manufacture of infant formula,” RFK told Congress.
In an equally ambitious program, the new HHS director aims to launch a groundbreaking review of the nutrients required in infant formula, dubbed Operation Stork Speed. Under the program, the agency will audit all available baby formula brands to ensure they meet the most rigorous scientific standards.
The last comprehensive government review of this nature was conducted in 1998.
“Operation Stork Speed brings radical transparency to ingredients in infant formula and puts science front and center,” Kennedy told the House Appropriations Committee.
He cited a consumer report investigation published in March that revealed harmful levels of arsenic, lead and heavy metals in individual formulas. In addition, many infant formulas contain added sugars and various amounts of seed oil. Many of these components are not listed on the product’s label.
New regulations will require labeling to be more accurate and consumer-friendly, RFK said.
About 75% of babies in the U.S. receive infant formula at some point, according to the CDC, which makes the subject a serious public health concern.
The FDA requires 30 specific nutrients to be included in infant formulas. The goal is for formulas to replicate the composition of breast milk with a balance of calories from fat, carbohydrates and protein.
Regulations are in place to prevent contamination and other safety issues at formula manufacturing plants, but government oversight has been poor. In one recent scandal, improper sanitary conditions caused a least one major domestic supplier to be shut down in 2019. This closure, compounded by supply chain issues, caused a severe shortage of baby formula in 2022. [See Sidebar]
“Every child has a fundamental right to a healthy start,” the HHS commissioner said in a statement. “We’re giving parents the truth and the tools to make that happen. You can’t ‘Make America Healthy Again’ if we don’t fix what nourishes our youngest and most vulnerable Americans.”
RFK: ‘Ending Chronic Disease Epidemic’
In his opening statement to the Senate Appropriations Committee, Kennedy noted the United States is the “sickest developed nation” despite “$4.5 trillion spent annually on healthcare, which is two to three times per capita than that of other nations.”
“We should be the healthiest country,” he said. “But the opposite is true. Something is structurally and fundamentally wrong with our healthcare system.
“If we don’t stanch this unsustainable hemorrhaging, our children will suffer from bankruptcy and disastrous health consequences,” Kennedy cautioned. “We can’t just throw more money at the problems, we have shift away from bureaucracy to policies delivering immediate impact.”
“Going forward, we’re switching the trajectory at the HHS,” he announced. “We are going to focus narrowly on ending the chronic disease epidemic in this country.”
Kennedy expressed deep frustration over endless NIH studies that only develop marginal improvements of chronic diseases— but never get down to root causes.
“The budget for my agency increased by over 38% under the Biden Administration,” he noted. “And Americans got sicker. And more Americans overdosed. And more Americans died from cancer. And now we have an epidemic of colorectal cancer in our children. The chronic disease rate is now up to 60%.”
“The autism rate is up to 1 in 31 children,” he asserted. “And all that money that was supposed to cure those diseases or revert them, but none of that worked. We need leadership and a new vision.”
Kennedy then turned to the subject of vaccines, announcing the implementation of HHS’s new policy requiring all new vaccines, and variations of older vaccines, to be tested against a placebo before being licensed.
This “radical” policy change received immediate blowback from media critics who claimed it “alarmed health experts.”
Liberals who accuse Kennedy of being an anti-vaxxer—a label he rejects, calling it a tactic to silence dissent—seized on his proposal for placebo testing as proof that vaccines are squarely in his crosshairs.
‘CDC Failed to Monitor Vaccine Injuries’
Others have been quick to point out the advantages of placebo testing and the pitfalls of failing to use this scientifically proven route.
“What many people don’t realize is that by the time children turn 6, they’ve received over 50 doses of vaccines—often before their immune systems are developed. By age 18, they’ve received 70 doses, explained Fox News medical consultant Dr. Sogol Ash.”
“These shots are not “bio-individualized,” Dr. Ash noted. There is presently no mechanism to determine “the possible side effects on children who may be auto immune or those whose systems are more sensitive, and might have adverse reactions to a vaccine.”
“RFK wants to change that, to see what the long-term effects are, and to learn which vaccines are right for which children.”
“Post-Covid, parents are raising concerns about vaccines in general,” Fox News consultant elaborated. “We do need to increase transparency, we need to rebuild trust in vaccines. It’s not wrong to ask if authorities are evaluating every factor that might be contributing to our nation’s health crisis, our chronic health burden in America.”
Currently, few of the updated vaccines given to children have undergone rigorous safety testing. The majority are deemed “safe” because they’re supposedly very similar to older vaccines. Costly and time-consuming placebo testing should therefore not be required, critics say.
RFK argues that it isn’t wise to assess a vaccine’s safety purely based on whether it’s ‘similar’ or ‘not that much different’ from a previous one—especially when the earlier vaccine’s side effect profile may be unknown.
“The reason it’s unknown is due to the failure of the CDC to monitor vaccine complications adequately,” an HHS spokesman said.
“The CDC’s former practice of suppressing information about vaccine injuries has badly eroded trust in our public health agencies,” the agency said in a scathing critique.
“The CDC’s own research has shown that its surveillance system, VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) captures less than 1% of vaccine injuries,” the HHS spokesperson said. “It’s a system that was designed to fail.
“The Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) — intended as a backup to VAERS — is virtually unusable for serious research. Both systems have become templates of regulatory malpractice,” the spokesperson said.
By contrast, placebo-controlled testing, which compares the effects of a vaccine against an inert saline solution, offers a far more reliable and sensitive measure of safety, the agency said.
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Biden’s Baby Formula Shortage Crisis
In 2022, as countless infants across the country faced the risk of malnourishment as a result of a baby formula shortage crisis, millions of outraged parents were demanding answers from the Biden Administration.
Explanations about “supply-chain glitches,” “inflation” and the sweeping recall of baby formula by manufacturing giant Abbot Nutrition, failed to pacify Americans who were being forced to put their babies to sleep hungry.
Parents of these infants were driving desperately from town to town, city to city and even out of state in search of formula.
The recalls that compounded the formula shortage resulted from FDA plant inspections in 2019 and 2021, as well as information concerning several babies hospitalized in Minnesota, Ohio and Texas with bacterial infections.
These illnesses were linked by the CDC and FDA to the consumption of powdered infant formula produced by Abbott, one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of baby formula, including Similac and specialty metabolic formulas EleCare and Alementum. Two of the sick infants died.
As it turned out, “the FDA and CDC were well aware of dangerous contamination in the Abbott plant many months earlier,” reported the New York Post at the time. “From Sept. 2021 to February 2022, the CDC received reports of “cronobacter bacteria” cases in several infants” in the aforementioned states.
Cronobacter infections, although rare, can cause life-threatening infections or meningitis. They can be deadly in newborns in the first days or weeks of life, the Post article stated.
There were warning signs about Abbott’s products prior to these outbreaks. After an inspection in 2019, the FDA cited Abbott for failing to test an adequate amount of formula to assure that it met “the required microbiological quality standards.”
Then, in September 2021, the FDA returned to Abbott and found that the company failed to “maintain a building used in the manufacture of infant formula in a clean and sanitary condition.”
Around this time, “the FDA was warned by a whistleblower at the plant that Abbott was falsifying records, releasing untested formula into the market, and failing to adequately clean and disinfect the plant,” the NY Post article detailed.
Despite these ominous red flags, the FDA did not act with alacrity. An investigation was eventually opened, took several months to complete and ultimately substantiated the allegations.
In its March 2022 recall notice, Abbott acknowledged having found “evidence of cronobacter sakazakii in the plant,” the Post article reported.
The impact of the recall and subsequent shortage of baby formula was felt immediately across the nation. Outrage at the government’s failure to provide a backup plan was heightened by reports that trailers full of formula siphoned off the nation’s supply were parked near the border, reserved for the babies of illegal migrants.
The abrupt shuttering of the country’s largest baby formula manufacturer left families struggling to find safe alternatives for their infants, feeling like residents of a third world country.
The FDA and the Biden Administration were left scrambling for excuses for their months of inaction, a disgrace they have never lived down.
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‘Toxic Baby Food’ Lawsuits Filed Against Manufacturers
The baby formula shortage is far from the only issue surrounding the baby food industry in recent times.
In April, U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Corley of San Francisco said parents can proceed with a lawsuit against a group of ten baby food manufacturers, claiming that toxic heavy metals contaminated their baby food, causing brain and neurodevelopmental damage to children who consumed it.
According to a report in Reuters, some of the most well-known companies being sued are Beech-Nut (owned by Nestle), Gerber (owned by Switzerland’s Hero Group) and Walmart. Other brands in the case include Hain Celestial’s; Earth’s Best Organics, Danone’s; Happy Baby and Happy Tot, Sun-Maid and Neptune Wellness Solutions.
Parents sued after a 2021 report by a U.S. House subcommittee on economic and consumer policy said “dangerous” levels of heavy metals in some baby food could cause neurological damage. The disorders singled out by plaintiffs as affecting their children include autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity.
The lawsuit alleged that some of the baby food companies failed to adhere to internal limits about how much arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury in baby food was safe, while others never addressed the issue.
The companies all claim their baby food is safe. Some argued that heavy metals are naturally present in the environment, and parents “cannot simply allege that detectable levels of heavy metals make baby food defective.”
Attorney Brent Wisner, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, rejected that defense. In an emailed response to Reuters, he said, “Selling baby food with lead and arsenic is simply not OK, and with the court’s ruling, we are one step closer to holding these companies accountable for their decades of malfeasance.”
