By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

The medical industry is losing control of the vaccine narrative, according to participants in a webinar moderated by Chelsea Clinton and organized by Unity Consortium — a group of pharmaceutical companies and pro-vaccine organizations.

Vaccine makers GSK, Merck and Sanofi, along with Big Tech platforms Reddit and Snapchat, and Spanish-language media giant Televisa Univision sponsored Wednesday’s event: “Who Influences Young People’s Health Choices? The New Conversations About Vaccines.”

Unity Consortium lists Pfizer, Merck, GSK and Sanofi among its members. Vaccine inventor Dr. Paul Offit is a member of its board of directors.

During the hour-long conversation, Clinton and the panelists criticized the growing number of parents and teens who are starting to question the safety of vaccines. They blamed the trend on increased access to what they characterized as online “misinformation” — and on organizations like Children’s Health Defense (CHD).

“What’s different today … is that people have access to a lot more information,” said Dr. Margot Savoy, chief medical officer of the American Academy of Family Physicians. “The part that makes me nervous is that, more and more, we’re getting into this odd space where people are feeling a little more polarized.”

Jessica Steier, founder and CEO of Unbiased Science and author of “The Playbook Used to ‘Prove’ Vaccines Cause Autism,” said pro-vaccine voices are “losing the PR and communications battle.”

Elisabeth Marnik, Ph.D., executive director of The Evidence Collective and author of “I Grew Up Unvaccinated. Now I’m an Immunologist,” said the circulation of and public access to such information is “one of the hardest parts about social media.”

“The more somebody sees these false claims circulating, the more likely they are to start to question their own understanding. And that’s one of the dangers of social media,” Marnik said. She said that parents’ decisions not to vaccinate their children are “a product of [this] information ecosystem.”

Clinton suggested that the ecosystem acts as a barrier to sustaining trust in the medical profession and public health. “The algorithms are part of the challenge of both … the corrosion of trust and … the barriers to replenishing and sustaining that trust,” Clinton said.

According to Marnik, the public health establishment is losing public trust because “public health and science aren’t always good storytellers.” The “anti-vaccine side” is “really good at spreading these stories that are really compelling and very scary and [that] can motivate people in ways that are harmful.”

Attack on ‘information ecosystem’ is ‘an attack on informed consent’

Physicians and medical freedom advocates pushed back on the panelists’ claims. Dr. Michelle Perro, a pediatrician, told The Defender that an attack on the “information ecosystem” is “an attack on informed consent.” She said:

“More information doesn’t weaken medicine. It forces it to be accountable. Parents are not passive recipients of care — they are decision-makers. And decision-making requires access to more than a single, pre-approved viewpoint or government-sanctioned narrative.

“When leaders admit they’re ‘losing the PR battle,’ they’re acknowledging something deeper: this was never supposed to be about PR. … If trust is eroding, it’s not because critics are ‘good storytellers,’ but it’s because lived experiences are diverging from the official party line.”

Internal medicine physician Dr. Clayton J. Baker said that the panelists’ concerns about PR and communication come at the expense of “real public health.”

“They were almost completely dismissive of both individual freedom and any form of open debate,” Baker said. “Their focus is almost entirely on establishing, maintaining and protecting a dominant narrative on vaccinology, which is more or less the ‘safe and effective’ mantra.”

“The moment they called it a ‘PR battle,’ they admitted they left science behind, once again. Calling independent inquiry ‘misinformation’ is a way to avoid engaging with it. It’s one of the last vestiges of paternalism in society,” said research scientist and author James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D.

Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, welcomed the acknowledgement that more parents are interested in vaccine safety.

“After decades of deceit by federal health authorities, Americans are rightly reaching out to their trusted circle for accurate information about vaccines — because more mothers and fathers have read the actual studies touted as proving safety and efficacy of vaccines, when those studies fail to use inert placebos, proper control groups, or are limited to short time periods.”

According to Manookian, the “chronic disease epidemic afflicting America’s kids” and the COVID-19 pandemic helped contribute to “plummeting rates of vaccinations and plummeting levels of trust in federal health agencies and Big Pharma.”

In 2023, Clinton partnered with the World Health Organization and the Gates Foundation on “The Big Catch-up” initiative — described as a “targeted global effort to boost vaccination among children following declines driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.” The campaign was billed as the “largest childhood immunization effort ever.”

Physician Dr. Meryl Nass said that despite Clinton’s involvement in vaccine efforts, she has a limited scientific background. “Clinton has published exactly one academic article,” for which she was one of 19 co-authors — members of The Lancet Commission on Vaccine Refusal, Acceptance, and Demand in the USA.

“What is her single publication about? How to force people to take more COVID-19 vaccines. And what did they conclude? Give out money or gifts, or conduct lotteries.”

Panel attacks CHD for spreading alleged vaccine misinformation

Wednesday’s webinar also included an attack against CHD, cited as one of the organizations that is spreading “misinformation” about vaccines to the public.

Steier cited a November 2025 STAT article about CHD’s annual conference, held earlier that month. Peter Hildebrand, the father of Daisy Hildebrand, an unvaccinated West Texas child who died last year after she developed pneumonia following a case of measles, attended the conference. The father praised CHD for its support.

Steier told the panel:

“There was the father of one of the children who tragically died from measles last year, and [STAT] expected that the father would be so angry with the people at this organization who were part of the reason why he chose not to vaccinate his child, but instead, he could not say enough about them.

“We need to remember that when we don’t create space for these people, they’re going to go elsewhere, and those other sources do not necessarily give them good information.”

According to CHD Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski, Steier “mischaracterized” both the West Texas death and the STAT story.

“The first measles vaccine is recommended to be administered at age 1. For Daisy Hildebrand, that would have been in 2017. CHD officially launched Sept. 12, 2018. It is fair to state CHD could play no part in decisions made before it existed,” Jablonowski said.

Jablonowski said that Hildebrand’s death, and the death of another Texas child last year that was attributed to a measles outbreak in the state, were due to other causes — in Hildebrand’s case, hospital-acquired pneumonia.

‘Science is not static’ — but vaccine science is settled?

According to Jablonowski, the two children “died from medical malpractice.” He said the last pediatric death from measles in the U.S. was in January 2003. He accused Steier of “perpetuating a falsehood to influence immunization behavior.”

The panelists also accused the Trump administration — and U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — of spreading “misinformation” about vaccines. “The administration continues to itself promulgate and amplify misinformation around vaccines and also with federal vaccine policy,” Clinton said.

Steier said, “Science is not static, it’s an evolution,” but then suggested that the science regarding vaccination is settled.

“I think when it comes to vaccines, the public should understand that, in 2026, this is the most studied medical intervention in the history of the world. … It’s not like we’re going to do a complete 180 when it comes to vaccine safety or efficacy at this time,” Steier said.

“Science does evolve,” Perro said. “That’s precisely why safety claims should be made with humility, not certainty. Vaccines may be widely studied, but that doesn’t make them beyond question, especially as schedules expand and long-term, cumulative or toxic effects remain undocumented and underreported.”

According to Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the risks of injury from vaccines “are low,” but everyone who gets a vaccine “is at risk.”

Orient said most patients she sees visit her practice due to conditions that are not vaccine-preventable, but which “may be vaccine-caused.” These include musculoskeletal pain, cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

Orient added that most doctors are “not a reliable source” for vaccine-related information because “they may have a huge financial incentive to get their patients ‘fully vaccinated’” and are “threatened by employers and medical boards if they deviate.”

“Dr. Steier is not a pediatrician, so she is not in on the racket of incentivization bonuses,” Jablonowski said.

Clinton said, “We are still combating old myths regarding autism and how the vaccine causes the disease.” Steier accused Kennedy of making “completely false” statements about how the HPV vaccine increases the risk of cancer.

But according to Orient, “there isn’t good evidence” that the HPV vaccine prevents cancer.”

During the webinar, Steier also revealed that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) — the largest pediatric trade group in the U.S. with 67,000 members — will soon distribute a “two-pager” to physicians with information about “pre-bunking” questions about vaccine safety, and advice on “how to approach these questions.”

Perro said “pre-bunking” is “nothing less than training physicians to steer conversations before questions even fully form, which should concern anyone who values ethical medicine.”

“Pre-bunking isn’t science. It’s narrative control before evidence is even considered,” Lyons-Weiler said.

Related articles in The Defender

• ‘The Big Catch-up’: Chelsea Clinton Partners With WHO, Gates Foundation on ‘Largest Childhood Immunization Effort Ever’
• More Parents Seek Out ‘Vaccine-Friendly’ Pediatricians Who Will ‘Simply Answer Their Questions’
• CHD Files Landmark RICO Lawsuit Against the American Academy of Pediatrics
• Breaking: Federal Court Blocks ACIP Meeting, Changes to Childhood Vaccine Schedule
• Vaccine Injury Lawyer Delivers Scathing Rebuke of Childhood Vaccine Schedule — Offit, Hotez Decline Invitation to Debate
• ‘An Encouraging Sign’: 60% of Pregnant Women and Young Mothers May Delay or Refuse Routine Vaccines for Kids
• ‘We Get Paid to Vaccinate Your Children’: Pediatrician Reveals Details of Big Pharma Payola Scheme

The post Pro-Vaccine Panelists: ‘We’re Losing the PR and Communications Battle’ appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

IPAK-EDU is grateful to The Defender as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More