My drug store will text me if I have a prescription to collect. It will also text a reminder to get a flu shot as flu season approaches. In recent years, text messages began increasing: get your shingles shot! time for a covid booster! Apparently, there is even a pneumonia shot the Centers for Disease Control insists anyone aged 50 or older should receive. (Does pneumonia discriminate by age?)
I have gotten an annual flu shot for decades. The one year I didn’t get one was the same year a case of the flu knocked me for a loop. I’m a believer the flu shot works for me. Some of the other recommended shots I have gotten (e.g. shingles), and others I have not (covid booster #5, middle-aged pneumonia).
I am ready for an open and honest conversation on vaccinations without the media labeling anyone who merely asks questions an “anti-vaxxer!” I believe the past several decades have established the immense value of vaccinations such as for polio. When I was young, I knew people who were crippled from polio in their youth before a vaccination was in place. The polio vaccine apparently works.
This doesn’t mean I still don’t have questions. I recently found my vaccination card. I had 13 vaccinations and boosters by the time I turned 18. Today, the CDC recommends a minimum of 72 vaccinations and boosters by age 18. Really? Are there demonstrably better health outcomes directly tied to vaccinations today than a couple of generations ago?
One vaccination that has recently come under considerable public scrutiny is the series of shots for Hepatitis B. This is a virus that is contracted either through intravenous drug use or unprotected sex. Yet, nearly every newborn in America is given a Hepatitis B vaccination only hours after birth with two more doses by age 18 months. What are the chances a newborn will begin shooting-up smack or having unprotected sex in the hospital bassinet? Of note, these shots make billions of dollars for drug makers GlaxoSmithKline, Dynavax, and Merck, the manufacturers of the three HepB vaccines: Engerix-B, Heplisav-B, and Recombivax HB.
Let us have a public conversation with all the facts and data on public display.
I would welcome a discussion about possible links between certain vaccinations and the steep increase in childhood illnesses and afflictions that exist today. Maybe ties exist, maybe they don’t. Yet, the furious opposition to merely having a conversation is a red flag that maybe something’s amiss.
Are all vaccinations bad? No, I don’t believe so. On the other hand, are all vaccinations really necessary? Maybe not.
This can be said with certainty: all vaccines are not 100% safe. If they were then the pharmaceutical industry would not have lobbied furiously in the 1980s for Congress to enact a 1986 law (42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-22) that permanently shields the industry from liability in the case of injury or death from a vaccination. How many other industries have similar liability protections? The answer is none. The pharmaceutical industry stands alone. This is another red flag.
The federal government also operates a fund called the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The program makes payments to people who have suffered injuries or death from vaccinations. This four-decade old program has paid $5.2 billion to people injured by vaccines since 1988, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. More than 27,500 death and vaccine injury claims have been filed since the fund was created. Obviously, there are issues with vaccine safety and side effects.
Vaccinations is one the few things we are not supposed to talk about in polite company. Your question “Is this vaccination really necessary?” is met with “Shut-up and get your shot you anti-vaxxer!”
I previously addressed a big reason why the media narrative is 100% pro-vaccine. The pharmaceutical industry is now the second largest advertiser in America. It spent $22 billion in 2024 on all platforms (print, TV, online and social media.)
You may have seen a TV commercial for an obscure medication and wondered how the advertising is cost effective? It probably isn’t. The reason why the pharmaceutical industry advertises in media platforms is probably less about attracting new customers and is more about bribing news outlets from producing stories critical of the industry.
This is how I addressed the impact of the $6 billion of pharmaceutical industry advertising spent on television in 2024 (Big Pharma Advertising, November 18, 2024):
All television advertising from all sectors (e.g. entertainment, drugs, automotive) in 2024 will total about $60.5 billion. This means about 1 in 10 television advertising dollars will have come from the pharmaceutical industry. In other words, Big Pharma advertising revenues are very, very important to the television industry.
Among some of the biggest recipients of the Big Pharma ad dollars are cable news and broadcast (traditional) television news programs. Just how big is this spending? Just in the month of March 2023, the pharmaceutical industry spent nearly $15 million on ABC World News Tonight With David Muir, according to Ad Week. For an entire year this would be $180 million. For just one 30-minute newscast. That is quite the financial windfall.
Other top 10 television drug advertising destinations were also news programs: NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt, Good Morning America, CBS Evening News With Norah O’Donnell, Today and CBS Mornings. Will David Muir, Lester Holt, Norah O’Donnell and the other news anchors report to viewers a negative story about pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson or Novo Nordisk? Of course not. Big Pharma advertising is less about attracting new customers and more about buying silence from the news industry. In fact, it’s not just silence, but compliance. This explains why news outlets go on the attack against anyone who questions pharmaceutical policies, such as vaccines.
Perhaps we’ve become too complacent about putting foreign stuff into our bodies just because the pharmaceutical industry said we should. (Wouldn’t Dr. Scholls love to mandate everyone buy their inserts in order to eliminate plantar fasciitis?)
The CDC’s vaccination schedule is eerily reminiscent of the opioid epidemic. The US leads the world in prescribing opioids and other Schedule II narcotics. As a nation, we’ve become so extreme that some doctors are prescribing addictive drugs with dangerous side-effects to children as young as two-years old.
This is what I had to say about this last year (Meds, Dads and School Shooters, September 11, 2024):
A Schedule I drug has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” such as heroin and LSD. A Schedule II drug is a heavy-duty category of narcotics that have “high potential for abuse, with use potentially leading to severe psychological or physical dependence.” These include fetanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine. These Schedule II drugs prescribed to the would-be shooters are most often prescribed to treat ADHD, anxiety, or depression, and often have very serious side-effects.
Why are children (ages 1-11) and adolescents (12-17) being prescribed powerful drugs that have dangerous side effects?
It's become commonplace to prescribe Schedule II narcotics for children and adolescents. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2016 more than 6 million children aged 17 or younger were diagnosed as having ADHD; 388,000 were just 2-5 years old. Of this group, 62% were prescribed a Schedule II narcotic, including 18% of the 2-5 year olds.
The pharmaceutical industry, government officials and the media are poised to attack anyone who merely has questions. Yet, the public does have questions. And doubts. The public learned the hard way that despite earlier claims, the covid vaccination does not protect anyone from getting covid nor from transmitting the virus to others. So what was the point of the shots is an obvious question that’s gone unanswered.
The continuing fall-out from the covid fiasco is troubling. At the beginning of the 21st century, nearly 100% of polling respondents said childhood vaccines are “extremely/very important.” That number has fallen by nearly 30 points (69%) in 2024. Less than half of respondents (40%) view childhood vaccines as “extremely” important. The most precipitous fall in support for childhood vaccines occurred during the pandemic. We will likely experience troubling outcomes resulting from covid vaccine mandates for years to come.
In December 2024, a federal judge ordered the Food & Drug Administration to release its “emergency use authorization” file to a group of scientists named the “Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency” to scrutinize the agency’s deliberations in approving the covid vaccine. This is a continuation of a 2021 FOIA request where the FDA insisted it would take 55 years to fully release its covid documents. No one keeps good news secret. The FDA is attempting to stonewall independent scrutiny of its covid vaccine decision-making. This is another red flag suggesting something’s seriously wrong.
It was investigative journalist Alex Berenson who recently broke the story that Moderna hid the death of a 5-year old child during the clinical trial for its mRNA covid vaccine despite a moral, ethical and legal responsibility to do so. Whether through intention, incompetence or neglect, the FDA permitted Moderna to cover-up a significant and tragic outcome.
This is how Alex first reported the news (Unreported Truths, January 3, 2025):
The death occurred about two years ago. Moderna has not apparently reported it in any preprint or scientific journal. Nor has the company disclosed the death on clinicaltrials.gov, a federal site where companies legally must report trial results.
Stricter reporting standards demanded by European regulators is what made the clinical death public. It is not surprising that virtually the entire US media landscape has ignored reporting this devastating and very consequential news.
The conflict-of-interest between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry has become open and brazen. Robert Califf was President Barack Obama’s FDA commissioner. He went to work in the pharmaceutical industry during the Donald Trump presidency and then returned to office as the FDA commissioner under President Joe Biden. There is no more blatant revolving door than this one. And the nation’s public health must suffer the consequences of it.
We need more transparency and less secrecy especially when there are mandates to vaccinate or lose your doctor, your job, your freedom to travel, or the freedom to make decisions about what to put in your own body.
Like any manufacturer, the goal of the pharmaceutical industry is to sell more of its products, not less. Positive health outcomes maybe in the conversation, but it’s unlikely to be the number one goal. The pharmaceutical industry is not an independent arbiter of what is medically necessary and what is not. Conflicts at the FDA cast doubt if that agency can be impartial on the topic of vaccines. Where does this leave society and who can be trusted?
It’s time to have that conversation about vaccines and make all the data public so the public can make informed decisions.
Mark Hyman is a 35-year military veteran and an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, Parler, and Mastodon.world at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.
Mark welcomes all news tips and story ideas in the strictest of confidence. You can reach him at markhyman.tv (at) gmail.com.