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Highlights:
- Jack Leslie — chair of the NIH Clinical Center Research Hospital Board and senior adviser to PR firm Weber Shandwick — leaked a statement to The New York Times criticizing the agency’s new Vaccinology and Immunology Center (VIC) without the newspaper disclosing his pharmaceutical industry ties.
- The VIC at the NIH Clinical Center is designed to research and treat vaccine injuries.
- Critics allege the recent leak is part of a broader effort by industry figures to discredit vaccine injury claims.
- Critics also argue Leslie’s dual role on the NIH hospital board while affiliated with Weber Shandwick — a firm representing major vaccine producers like Pfizer, Moderna, and GSK — presents an unaddressed conflict of interest that merits public scrutiny.
- HHS spokespeople and attending pediatricians defended the VIC as a long-overdue initiative meant to study vaccine injuries with gold-standard scientific rigor.
A pharmaceutical industry public relations (PR) executive who serves on an influential National Institutes of Health (NIH) board leaked criticism of the agency’s new vaccine injury clinic to The New York Times — which reported the criticism without disclosing the PR executive’s industry ties, according to The Disinformation Chronicle.
Jack Leslie, a senior adviser and former chairman of Weber Shandwick, the world’s second-largest public relations firm, chairs the NIH Clinical Center Research Hospital Board. Weber Shandwick represents several major pharmaceutical companies.
The hospital board oversees the NIH Clinical Center in Maryland, which will house the agency’s new Vaccinology and Immunology Center (VIC). The center will focus on researching and treating vaccine injuries. U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced its launch earlier this month.
Last week, the Times reported that the NIH hospital board unanimously approved a statement criticizing the new center and Kennedy, accusing him of undermining public trust in the hospital’s work.
According to The Disinformation Chronicle, Leslie leaked the statement to Times health policy correspondent, Sheryl Gay Stolberg. The newspaper published her story within hours but did not disclose Leslie’s ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Paul D. Thacker, investigative reporter and author of The Disinformation Chronicle, told The Defender that he believes the Times published the story to discredit Kennedy and people who say vaccines have injured them.
“Everyone knows the pharma industry hates RFK Jr. So, it’s beyond perplexing that a New York Times reporter saw ‘news’ when PR man Jack Leslie said something denigrating about him, and spit on people harmed by their products. That’s what Big Pharma pays Weber Shandwick to do,” Thacker said.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the NIH, defended the new center in a statement to The Defender.
The VIC “reflects the Trump Administration’s commitment to restoring gold-standard science, transparency, and accountability to our public health institutions,” the spokesperson said.
“This work will help ensure that people who experience health problems following vaccination are taken seriously and studied with the same scientific rigor applied to other medical conditions,” the spokesperson added.
Pediatrician Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, who attended the center’s launch event earlier this month, called the VIC “long overdue.” She accused Leslie of using his “PR skills” and “background doing public relations for multiple vaccine manufacturers” to undermine an initiative intended to study and help people who have been injured by vaccines.
Possible conflict of interest deserves ‘a public answer’
According to The Disinformation Chronicle, which has extensively investigated Weber in the past, the PR firm “represents most major vaccine manufacturers.”
In recent years, Weber’s pharma clients have included Pfizer, Moderna, GSK, Sanofi, Novartis and Eli Lilly.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Weber positioned the firm’s team as “misinformation and disinformation” experts, who provided clients with services to help manage perceived threats posed by spreaders of such information.
Leslie’s biography on Weber’s website lists his past consulting work for Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Sanofi — alongside his consulting work for the World Health Organization, Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation.
However, the Times story disclosed only Leslie’s work with global health organizations and nonprofits, stating:
“Mr. Leslie, a former chairman of the global public relations firm Weber Shandwick, has advised the World Health Organization and numerous health-oriented philanthropies, and government bodies under presidents of both parties. He also chairs the board of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and advises global health institutes at two universities, Duke and Georgetown.”
Researcher and author James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., said Leslie should have addressed his concerns about the VIC publicly instead of leaking them to the Times — and added that the Times’ report gave readers “an incomplete account of a source whose interests are directly relevant to the controversy.”
“Readers should not have to visit a PR firm’s website to discover that context,” Lyons-Weiler said.
According to The Disinformation Chronicle, Leslie’s parallel role on the NIH hospital board and his affiliation with other government and nonprofit entities affords him “further leverage to market his lucrative pharma clients.”
Dr. Francis Collins, who served as NIH director under the Biden administration — and as Dr. Anthony Fauci’s boss during that period — named Leslie to the NIH hospital board in 2022. Leslie became chair in 2024.
Lyons-Weiler said Leslie’s role on the NIH hospital board raises possible conflict of interest questions that “deserve a public answer.”
“NIH should explain how his relevant relationships were evaluated, what safeguards apply, and whether he should participate in deliberations concerning vaccine injury research. If those conflicts cannot be adequately managed, he should not take part in those decisions,” Lyons-Weiler said.
‘This is about attacking people who have been harmed by vaccines’
According to Thacker, Leslie’s leak and the Times’ story are part of a broader attack targeting the vaccine-injured.
Thacker cited a recent statement by outspoken vaccine advocate Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., who congratulated the Times and Stolberg in a post on X for shedding light on what he called a “well organized antiscience campaign to undermine public confidence in vaccines.” Hotez’s remarks came in response to a Stolberg post on X.
“Hotez congratulating Stolberg for her coverage makes it pretty clear this is about attacking people who have been harmed by vaccines,” Thacker said.
In a post earlier this month for Science-Based Medicine, vaccine advocate David Gorski, M.D., Ph.D., wrote that the VIC is “likely a sham” — and described vaccine injury victims as people who have merely “claimed” that vaccines injured them.
“Big Pharma has a vested interest in minimizing vaccine injuries,” Mumper said.
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Weber received $50 million from the CDC to promote vaccines
Weber’s health-related ties extend beyond Big Pharma to the federal government.
Documents that Children’s Health Defense obtained in 2022 through a Freedom of Information Act request showed that in 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hired the firm to write advertisements cloaked as news articles aimed at persuading the elderly and parents of young children to get flu shots.
In 2023, The Disinformation Chronicle reported that under the $50 million contract, awarded through the CDC National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), Weber employees were embedded in the NCIRD — at the same time that Weber represented COVID-19 vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna.
The Disinformation Chronicle reported last week that days after its 2023 report, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) demanded the CDC reveal its contract with Weber and the names of all of the firm’s employees who were working at the CDC.
A source inside HHS told The Disinformation Chronicle that shortly after Kennedy took over as health secretary last year, the CDC terminated its contract with Weber.
In 2023, Thacker revealed that Dr. Richard Baron, then-president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine, was also a Weber client.
During the pandemic, Baron pushed for physicians who spread “misinformation” about COVID-19 and the vaccines to lose their license and certification. “Putting out flagrant misinformation is unethical and dangerous during a pandemic,” Baron said.
In turn, Weber organized panel discussions on “medical misinformation” in which Baron participated.
Stolberg is also linked to pharma. In 2024-25, she was a public policy fellow for the Wilson Center.
Established by the U.S. Congress in 1968, the Wilson Center receives substantial federal funding. However, some of its funding has come from drugmakers, including Gilead, Merck and Pfizer, and pharmaceutical industry lobbying group PhRMA.
Big Tech firms including Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, who helped censor content critical of the vaccines and pandemic-related policies, have also funded the Wilson Center — as have several nonprofit groups, including the Open Society Foundations, founded by billionaire financier George Soros.
Related articles in The Defender
- NIH Will Run Vaccine Injury Research and Treatment Center, Pay Doctors to Report Vaccine Injuries
- Medical Board Chief Who Wanted Doctors Delicensed for ‘Misinformation’ in Bed With PR Firm Tied to CDC, Pfizer, Moderna
- CDC Used Same PR Firm as Pfizer, Moderna — Prompting Demand for Transparency
- Pharma Spent Record $456.9 Million Last Year on Lobbying — With No Signs of Slowing Down
- Vaccine Advocate Peter Hotez Calls for Use of Police, Military Against ‘Anti-vaccine Aggression’
