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Children’s Health Defense (CHD) is asking to join in a high-stakes court battle between the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In an emergency motion filed Wednesday, CHD asked a Massachusetts federal court to join as a defendant, along with Kennedy and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in a suit filed by the AAP and other medical groups against Kennedy and HHS.
The AAP lawsuit seeks to block recent changes HHS made to the childhood vaccine schedule and other vaccine-related policies.
Attorney Rick Jaffe and Massachusetts attorney Robert N. Meltzer filed the motion to intervene in the case.
Jaffe represents CHD and five other plaintiffs in a separate lawsuit against the AAP. That suit accuses the AAP of running a decades-long racketeering scheme to defraud American families about the safety of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine schedule.
Jaffe said the AAP and HHS are litigating whether the government has the authority to revise the schedule — but neither side is addressing the more fundamental issue at stake: the safety of the former childhood schedule.
“I filed this intervention because the court is about to rule on restoring a vaccination schedule without hearing from a single family affected by it,” Jaffe said.
Jaffe told The Defender:
“You have seven trade organizations on one side and government lawyers on the other, and nobody in the room speaking for the children who were injured or killed under the schedule the plaintiffs want back.
“Andrea Shaw lost twin sons. Shanticia Nelson lost her daughter. The court should know their names before it rules.”
Shaw and Nelson are parents whose children died after receiving vaccines routinely recommended by the CDC. They, along with two pediatricians, are co-plaintiffs with CHD in the lawsuit against the AAP.
CHD General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg said the motion to intervene in the AAP’s lawsuit against HHS also raises new claims. CHD alleges that because many states have taken up AAP’s vaccine recommendations, the AAP has effectively become a state actor.
“As a state actor, AAP violates the First Amendment by tamping down doctors’ speech and by depriving listeners — like the parent intervenors here — of a variety of opinions to assist in making an informed choice,” Mack Rosenberg said.
Missing evidence: childhood schedule never proven safe
Judge Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts is currently deciding whether to grant the AAP’s request for a preliminary injunction.
The injunction would restore the April 15, 2025, version of the vaccine schedule pending the outcome of AAP’s lawsuit against HHS.
In January, the CDC reduced the number of vaccines recommended as routine for all children from 17 to 11. The vaccines no longer routinely recommended are still available and still covered by insurance. However, the CDC moved them to a category that emphasizes shared decision-making between families and clinicians.
Murphy is also considering the AAP’s request to cancel a federal vaccine advisory panel meeting scheduled for Feb. 25-26.
Last year, Kennedy removed former members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), citing financial conflicts of interest and replaced them. The AAP is asking that ACIP be rebuilt under court supervision and that the court overturn the committee’s recent recommendations.
In the motion filed Wednesday, CHD and its co-plaintiffs asked the court to consider the evidence they submitted with their motion before ruling on AAP’s request for an injunction.
According to the motion, a central fact is missing from AAP’s lawsuit against Kennedy and HHS: the cumulative childhood immunization schedule has never been tested for long-term safety — even though the Institute of Medicine (IOM), in 2002 and again in 2013, recommended that testing be done.
Neither the AAP nor the federal government has cited those IOM reports in their briefs before the court.
Jaffe told The Defender:
“The IOM looked at this twice, and both times found that nobody had ever tested whether the schedule as actually given to children is safe. Not individual vaccines. The schedule. The whole thing. Twenty-four years later, the study still hasn’t been done. Neither side in this case even cited the reports. We are submitting the IOM’s requests to the court.”
In its lawsuit against HHS, the AAP continues to characterize the schedule as “rigorously tested” — a claim CHD and its co-plaintiffs directly challenge in their lawsuit against the AAP.
“The AAP claims that the reduced schedule of 11 universally recommended vaccines is a ‘very dark day for children,’” Jaffe said. “Yet it filed its lawsuit in a state that requires only nine vaccines to attend school. The AAP has never called Massachusetts’ schedule ‘dangerous.’”
The parents and doctors asking to intervene in AAP’s lawsuit allege that the harms AAP and its co-plaintiffs claim in their lawsuit against HHS and Kennedy don’t compare to the suffering they’ve endured.
According to the motion:
“Plaintiffs’ Jane Does lost sleep, ground their teeth, and spent gasoline driving to pharmacies. Proposed Intervenors’ families buried their children. The balance of irreparable harms weighs against restoration [of the schedule], not for it.”
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Parents, doctors have stake in AAP lawsuit against HHS
Andrea Shaw’s 18-month-old twins died eight days after receiving routine vaccinations. Shaw warned her pediatrician about a family history of vaccine reactions. Healthcare workers dismissed her warning, citing AAP’s official guidelines.
Shanticia Nelson’s daughter, Sa’Niya Carter, died less than 12 hours after receiving six injections, even though she was sick, during a catch-up visit, according to the filing.
Shaw and Nelson said that if the court restores the former version of the schedule, it will lead to more pediatricians and parents making the same decisions that led to the deaths of their children.
The two physicians seeking to join the AAP lawsuit against Kennedy and HHS said they were punished for challenging the CDC schedule.
According to the motion to intervene, Dr. Paul Thomas published a vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated study — the type of cumulative research the IOM recommended. Soon after, he lost his medical license.
Dr. Kenneth Stoller used genetic testing to identify children he believed might be at risk for adverse reactions to vaccines. His license was revoked for deviating from federal advisory guidelines.
“These physicians tried to do what the IOM said needed doing, and the system punished them for it,” Jaffe said.
If the court reinstates the prior schedule, the clinical approaches for which both physicians were disciplined could once again be deemed professional misconduct, according to the filing.
Murphy heard oral arguments on the AAP’s request for an injunction last week. He gave the government until 5 p.m. Wednesday to respond to last-minute declarations filed by the AAP, which he said planned to consider before ruling.
Related articles in The Defender
- Breaking: Children’s Health Defense Hits AAP With RICO Suit Over Fraudulent Vaccine Safety Claims
- Federal Judge Weighs AAP Emergency Motion to Block Vaccine Policy Overhaul
- Federal Judge Clears Path for AAP to Sue RFK Jr. Over Vaccine Policy Changes
- CHD Funds Lawsuit Against CDC Over Program That Forces Pediatricians to Give COVID Vaccines to Kids on Medicaid
- CDC Hit With Lawsuit Over Failure to Test Cumulative Effect of 72-Dose Childhood Vaccine Schedule
