I’ve been fighting government overreach in medicine for decades. I’ve seen bad policies, rigged processes and regulatory witch hunts.
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) still-in-effect 2022 recommendation that all children ages 6 months and up receive the COVID-19 shots and boosters is a perfect storm of bureaucratic coercion, scientific neglect and institutional groupthink that sacrifices the individual on the altar of “Public Health.”
So, I sued the CDC (on behalf of Dr. Samara Cardenas) to stop it.
But why now?
As you may know, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) held a meeting a few weeks ago. It was reported that some members were considering voting to remove the COVID-19 shot for children from the official recommendation list.
It was also reported that U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was weighing the same question, and that U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary would back Kennedy if he chose to pull the trigger.
So why sue now?
Let me give you a layered answer, starting with the simplest explanation, then moving deeper.
As of April 25, 2025 — the day we filed our lawsuit against the CDC — physicians who treat patients enrolled in Medicaid are still required to order and administer the COVID-19 shot to children 6 months and older.
That’s the policy. Even though the shot has never been shown to have any clinical benefit to healthy children. And even though the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS — which most likely undercounts adverse events — has logged (reported and temporarily associated with) more serious injuries and deaths following the COVID-19 shot than for all other childhood vaccines combined over the last three decades. That includes all age groups, even though COVID-19 vaccines have been in use in the U.S. only since Dec. 14, 2020.
I don’t know what you’d call this continued policy in light of these facts, but I call it outrageous. I don’t see the point in waiting for ACIP to continue its handwringing over something it never should have done in the first place.
The bigger thing
ACIP made the recommendation, and that decision revealed something much deeper: the systemic devaluation of individual health in favor of population-based policy.
These “public health” edicts disregard patient-specific circumstances. And the risk-benefit analysis they supposedly rely on? It’s hollow. The “risk” part has been deliberately under-analyzed, downplayed or outright ignored, as discussed in the legal complaint.
And here is the bigger thing.
That problem isn’t just about COVID-19. It infects all vaccine policy.
It’s about a structural failure in the way our public health authorities operate. That failure needs to be surfaced. The dominant view needs to be challenged. And solutions need to be considered by people who haven’t been captured by the system they’re supposed to oversee.
Medical science is an all-too-human endeavor
I’ve been doing this for a long time. Back in 2008, I wrote:
“Medical science … is necessarily infused with an inherent disorder, messiness, bias, animus, and a lack of objectivity. The philosophers of science have it wrong to the extent they believe that psychology, sociology, prejudice, and even sociopathology play no role in the growth of medical knowledge (or the lack thereof).” (“Galileo’s Lawyer: Courtroom Battles in Alternative Health, Complementary Medicine and Experimental Treatments,” page 261.)
We see this dysfunction on full display in the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule. Twenty-one or 22 different vaccines. Seventy-plus injections. Starting on day one of life with hepatitis B. All backed by the same flawed machinery: ACIP committees, industry-friendly advisory boards and agencies that treat dissent as disinformation.
To me, the entire vaccine program lays bare the core flaw in the way science, policy, politics, and profit intersect and distort one another.
If you’re looking for the broader frame, here it is: This lawsuit is just a small step in calling out the public health policy complex for what it is — an insulated machine that equates control with care and treats medical independence as a threat.
And yet another layer
On another level, this case has personal resonance. I’ve worked on many of the California medical board disciplinary cases where doctors were sanctioned for writing Senate Bill 277 medical exemptions from all childhood vaccines throughout childhood, which is a concept unrecognized by ACIP and which does not conform to ACIP’s narrow list of contraindications and precautions.
It was a difficult experience for me (but more so for some of my clients, sadly). The infectious disease establishment, particularly the university-based “Infectious Disease Mafia,” operated on a kind of religious orthodoxy.
According to them, it didn’t matter what kind of reaction a child had, or how many red flags were present. If a kid seized after one vaccine, give the rest. Multiple serious adverse events? Keep going. The ACIP rules were treated like scripture.
It was staggering and disturbing to hear about some of the injured kids whom these experts insisted should be fully vaccinated. The deification of “public health” over individual patient care has reached a level that is, to my way of thinking, morally reprehensible. (But don’t get me started.)
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So yes …
The impetus for this lawsuit goes beyond ACIP’s continued adherence to its 2022 decision to recommend the COVID-19 shot for 6-month-olds. That decision is just one more symptom of a much deeper disease, and hopefully, the treatment and cure will be forthcoming from the new crew.
And yes, there may be others (lawsuits).
Stay tuned.
