This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.
There you go again, New York Times.
Ronald Reagan’s quip nails The New York Times’ latest in-depth hit piece on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Children’s Health Defense, and anyone who takes a skeptical approach to vaccines.
“An Oral History of a Year of Turmoil at Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s CDC,” by Jeneen Interlandi, is a classic example of pro-vaccine propaganda.
While the era of medical coercion and blind faith in vaccines is ending — thanks in part to government overreach during the COVID-19 pandemic — The New York Times has yet to catch on.
Interlandi’s background shines through in her reporting. According to her bio, she “formulated vaccines in a pharmaceutical lab.” A perfect background for propaganda.
Then there are the people she chose to interview — only staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who resigned or were laid off. The piece retells in its own way the essential orthodoxy: “vaccines are safe and effective” and “vaccines save lives.”
A few examples:
1. “Spreading falsehoods”: Interlandi writes that “Kennedy [has been] spreading falsehoods about vaccines — first through his nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, and then through his Make America Healthy Again movement, or MAHA.” What “falsehoods”? Well, you know! Cognescenti just know which falsehoods she’s referencing.
2. The 2025 West Texas measles outbreak: In early 2025, hundreds of cases of measles erupted in a West Texas Mennonite community. Many families in the close-knit community choose not to vaccinate, having suffered severe and fatal past vaccine injuries.
CHD interviewed families and doctors in the community. We broadcast those interviews on CHD.TV. Several doctors and scientists concluded that the two tragic deaths of young girls were not from measles — they were from hospital medical errors. But The New York Times insists that the deaths were from measles, as best fits the measles fear trope.
3. Fetal cell lines used in vaccines: Interlandi quotes former CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry that Kennedy said there were “fetal parts in vaccines.” That’s not what he said. Kennedy said some vaccines contain “aborted fetus debris and DNA particles,” and because of this reality, some people object to them on religious grounds.
As Interlandi must know, the rubella component of the measles-mumps-rubella or MMR vaccine is grown in human aborted fetus fibroblast cells — one version in WI-38 cells and another in MRC-5 cells. The true scientific implications, let alone the ethical and religious ones, of using human immortalized cell lines are not fully known. Curiosity and humility are in order, but not so when distortion is the point.
4. Vaccines and autism: The New York Times article perpetuates the canard that autism rates today, according to “most experts,” are the result of “expanded diagnostic criteria and better overall reporting.” All 32,158% increase? Putting thimerosal — half neurotoxic ethyl mercury by weight — as a preservative in vaccines was always a bad idea. So it was a straightforward safety improvement to remove it from all shots, as Kennedy did. But that might run the risk of making Kennedy look good, so Interlandi outlandishly pretends that mercury in vaccines is a good idea.
5. “Spurious harms of vaccines”: Interlandi interviews a former epidemiologist who criticizes Kennedy for “talking about the often spurious harms of vaccines.” Wow. Spurious? The $5.4 billion awarded to vaccine injury victims was for “spurious harms”? The science showing the epidemic of neurological and autoimmune harms from vaccines is “spurious”? To those touched by vaccine harms, this comment is simply offensive.
6. Demetre C. Daskalakis, former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases: Daskalakis correctly notes that “the Children’s Health Defense backed a lawsuit against vaccine mandates” in New York City in 2020 in Brooklyn’s Hasidic communities. We stood up for the families who had lawful religious exemptions. New York City, based on Daskalakis’ misguided advice, attempted to lock down several areas of Brooklyn for the “unvaccinated,” in violation of the law. Courts in Rockland County appropriately knocked down similar measures, and the ruling was upheld on appeal. (During COVID-19, he offered the following “public health” advice: “If you attend sex parties or get-togethers with large groups,” then be sure to be vaccinated with the COVID shot. I don’t know about you, but this is not the guy I would want leading immunization policy at the CDC.)
7. “Fluoridated drinking water”: The author notes parenthetically that “the medical consensus supports” it. Well, first, what is “the medical consensus”? But more importantly, how can there be a “medical consensus” for fluoridated water when the leading poison control organization in the country, the National Toxicology Program, has opined with certainty that fluoride is causing neurological damage to young children?
8. “Most medical groups in the U.S. recommend starting hepatitis B vaccination at birth …” Are you referring to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), against which we’ve filed a RICO racketeering lawsuit? The AAP is a trade organization in bed with the pharmaceutical industry; it’s never met a vaccine it didn’t endorse. The Merck hepatitis B vaccine Recombivax was tested on 147 healthy infants and children ages 0 to 10 — and monitored for 5 days — before being administered to the vast majority of 4 million infants born each year. What medical group of physicians would endorse such a reckless practice? Sadly, a medical group corrupted by Big Pharma.
9. Informed Consent: “Kirk Milhoan, new ACIP [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] chair … argued that free choice supersedes the duty to protect others, like the immunocompromised and infants too young to be vaccinated.” The author implicitly endorses medical coercion — that all people must accept vaccination to protect the vulnerable. But the reality is that when the vulnerable assert medical exemptions — like Sarah Doe, who presented seven doctors’ exemptions — they are typically denied them unless they litigate. Thankfully, the state may not lawfully force vaccination on civilians.
10. “We’re setting ourselves up for a generation of problems that we do not have to have.” This interviewee, Abby Tighe, is worried that people may have less access to vaccines in the future. On the contrary, the issue today is for people to have the freedom to refuse vaccines. Secretary Kennedy did not deprive anyone of any vaccines previously available, nor has he removed the liability protection for the childhood vaccines or the COVID-19 shots that have wreaked such damage.
This latest New York Times propaganda is unsurprising — the newspaper has been parroting medical-pharmaceutical vaccine orthodoxy for decades while censoring truthful information that people need for informed health decisions.
At some point, however, reality demands recognition, even at The New York Times.
Half of American children are sick. They suffer from autism, ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder), learning disabilities, allergies, asthma, eczema, Type 1 diabetes, anaphylaxis and more. Almost 77% of young people cannot serve in the military due to ill health.
This was not true before the late 1980s, when Congress ill-advisedly granted liability protection for vaccine manufacturers and doctors, creating lucrative, perverse incentives.
Americans’ ill health means suffering — pain, emergencies, anxiety, anguish, suicide, disability, shortened lives. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the developed world. Babies following the AAP’s vaccine schedule are dying, like the plaintiffs in CHD’s case against the AAP for racketeering. Americans live 3.7 years less than people in peer countries and spend three times as much for healthsick care.
The chronic disease epidemic implicates pervasive dysregulation of the human immune system. It’s not working properly when people have perpetual health problems. Many studies compare vaccinated and unvaccinated health outcomes, and their essential findings are consistent: vaccinated children are approximately four times more likely to have chronic disease conditions than their unvaccinated peers.
There are extremely few cases of autism among unvaccinated children. Unvaccinated children are robustly healthy, and when they get sick, they bounce back. And illnesses, like measles, flu and COVID-19 are treatable, making preemptive care both unwarranted and unwise.
No parent knowingly leads his child to have a life of chronic disease. No parent wants her baby to run the risk of death from vaccination. No person wants to risk more harm from a vaccine than she would from disease.
But vaccine propaganda and censorship would have it be otherwise — that if you don’t vaccinate, you and your children will die! The orthodox narrative persists — because without it, the businesses that support $50 billion in childhood vaccination and the $500 billion in chronic disease care would collapse. And the trillions in evaded liability might finally come due.
Vaccination is on its way out — the truth is spilling out. Fewer people are getting COVID-19 and flu shots. Childhood vaccination rates are declining. Religious exemptions are rising. States are passing health freedom laws. And Congress members are drafting bills for a national religious exemption, for an end to the childhood vaccine liability shield, and to the PREP Act (Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act) that enabled the extraordinary COVID-19 injustice.
Will The New York Times ever report on the massive epidemic of vaccine injury and the efforts to stop it? Can it obtain a smidgen of credibility on this topic? Probably not, but it’s never too late to stop the propaganda and tell the truth, New York Times.
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