Login
“I really feel like we’re riding a wave right now. We have Bobby Kennedy as HHS secretary. No one could have predicted that.”
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland appeared on “The Highwire,” where she and Del Bigtree discussed the recent history of the medical freedom movement and controversies surrounding Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since his confirmation as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Bigtree, CEO of the Informed Action Consent Network or ICAN, worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign. He said when Kennedy was sworn in as HHS secretary, “I just remember thinking, this is even sweeter than if he was being sworn in as president.”
Holland agreed. “This is really what he has been focused on for 20 years,” she said. “We’ve got to stop making kids sick.”
Bigtree and Holland addressed criticism from people in the movement of Kennedy’s actions while in office so far.
“People need to understand that he can’t do everything overnight that he wants to do,” Holland said, adding:
“I think anybody who reads what he’s written when he was at Children’s Health Defense — he wrote ‘A Letter to Liberals,’ ‘The Real Anthony Fauci,’ ‘The Wuhan Coverup,’ and we promoted ‘Thimerosal [Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury — a Known Neurotoxin — from Vaccines].’ Anybody who reads these books really has a deep understanding of where this man is coming from.”
Bigtree asked Holland if it was hard to see people criticizing Kennedy’s language, which “appeared to be promoting the use of MMR vaccine, but also vitamins, in the statements about the measles outbreak.
Holland said that she very closely followed California in 2015 and New York in 2019, “the last two times they ran the measles playbook that results in the repeal of religious exemptions,” and Kennedy’s response was different from past secretaries.
The fact that he didn’t say, “Everybody stay home and get your MMR [measles-mumps-rubella] shot,” was “radically different than what happened in the last two go-rounds.” Instead, he said, you have a choice, the shot can prevent measles, “it’s absolutely up to you.”
Holland said people were disappointed that Kennedy suggested the vaccine at all, because it is a very injurious vaccine — her own child was injured by the MMR shot. However, she said, it’s true that it is “somewhat effective against measles.”
“So to me, Bobby Kennedy did what he had to do and he stood in the truth,” Holland said. “What’s most important is he acknowledged you have a choice. It is a personal decision. No head of health services or president has ever really drilled in that message in the context of an outbreak.”
Bigtree said there was a lot of diversity in the medical freedom movement but that everyone agreed people should have “the right to choose — no mandates.”
Holland agreed, “I say if there’s no choice, it’s not medicine. Coercion is not medicine. Medicine is ‘first do no harm.’”
Holland and Bigtree were both disappointed that Dr. David Weldon’s nomination to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was withdrawn.
Weldon is a doctor who still gives vaccines, Bigtree said, but simply because he said he would examine the link between vaccines and autism, he was at loggerheads with senators.
Holland said the question of vaccines and autism is clearly a political flashpoint. “For 20 years they’ve been telling us vaccines don’t cause autism,” but “it’s a nonsense statement,” given the complexity of the issue and the total lack of research into it.
This article was funded by critical thinkers like you.
The Defender is 100% reader-supported. No corporate sponsors. No paywalls. Our writers and editors rely on you to fund stories like this that mainstream media won’t write.
She added:
“And we know, Del, that it’s not just autism. We know that vaccines set children up for all kinds of real chronic health conditions, allergies, asthma, ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder], all kinds of problems, apraxia, dyspraxia. So they’re guarding it. This is a racket, right? Pharma knows this is just the trigger point. And then clients for life.”
Bigtree said that most people have stopped believing government narratives about vaccines.
“They’ve lost this battle. It’s over. People are not vaccinating now. They are really starting to question it. They don’t trust the CDC. And they somehow believe if they just stick to the talking point, vaccines are safe and effective, they do not cause autism, that somehow you’re going to get out of this.”
Holland and Bigtree agreed that instead, good scientific research on the topic is needed, including an analysis of the Vaccine Safety Datalink — which is what Kennedy has been pushing for, they said.
Holland said it’s also significant that Kennedy has also said he is going to investigate SSRIs, geoengineering and electromagnetic radiation. “Who the hell has ever done that before?” she asked.
“He hasn’t backed down on vaccines. For people who are disappointed that he hasn’t ended the childhood schedule or that he said, you can take an MMR. He has not backed down. He is saying, we’re going to look at this. We’re going to look at everything. So he’s up against a lot.
“I think we’re blessed that Bobby’s in office, and I think those of us in this movement have every good reason to support what he’s doing. If it turns out in one year he’s got nothing done, which I can’t imagine, well then, OK, then let’s get somebody else. But we’ve got to give this guy a chance.”
Watch Mary Holland on ‘The Highwire’:
Related articles in The Defender- Kids, Vaccines and Autism: Will a New Legal Strategy End the Decades-long Battle for Truth and Justice?
- ‘Long-overdue Crack in the Dam’: RFK Jr. to Create CDC Sub-agency Focused on Vaccine Injuries
- ‘We Will Do That Right Away’: RFK Jr. Promises Better Vaccine Injury Tracking, as White House Launches MAHA Commission
