Dr. Joel “Gator” Warsh shows signs of being a maverick.

The Los Angeles-based pediatrician isn’t in lock step with the mainstream medical community’s approach of giving a vaccine to everyone just because it’s recommended by the CDC. A strong proponent of informed consent, he believes in educating parents on the pros and cons of vaccines and letting them decide if they want to proceed, instead of pressuring parents to vaccinate their kids, an approach that aligns with the MAHA mission.

Warsh, who says he’s not “pro-vax” or “anti-vax,” considers himself to be in the mainstream. But he hasn’t hesitated to voice concerns about the potential dangers of vaccines, as he did in his 2025 book, Between a Shot and a Hard Place: Tackling Difficult Vaccine Questions with Balance, Data, and Clarity.

“I just want to see what’s best for my children and other people’s kids, and I’m just asking questions based on what I see,” he told The MAHA Report. “If that makes me a maverick, then so be it. We’re injecting kids with 20-plus vaccines in the first few years, and more and more people have questions. Many parents, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, have the same story of ‘my kid was fully healthy. I went to get a vaccine and that day or over the next few days everything changed.’ To me, that’s what we should be listening to. I don’t think every single one of those parents can be wrong. I know coincidences happen. But that seems like a lot of coincidences, and I feel like there are more vaccine injuries than we recognize.”

Doctors are supposed to follow informed consent for all procedures, but vaccine cases feel “slightly different,” Warsh says.

“A large majority of pediatricians are very dogmatic when it comes to vaccines,” he says. “And many practices require you to follow the CDC schedule, or they won’t accept you in the practice, or they’ll kick you out if you refuse. To me, that’s wrong. I feel like we shouldn’t be discriminating based on vaccine choices. We should be treating all kids. Most practices kick you out if you choose to politely decline, or even if you want to do an alternate schedule, which I think is unfortunate.”

Warsh, 42, has two decades of experience as a board-certified pediatrician. At the practice he founded in 2018—Integrative Pediatrics and Medicine—he specializes in vaccines, wellness, and integrative medicine. He’s published peer-reviewed research on childhood injuries, obesity, and physical activity and has been featured in many documentaries, films, podcasts, and media outlets.

Most patients in his practice vaccinate, with some doing a regular schedule and others a slow schedule. Some don’t vaccinate at all.

“Most of the information out there, anything you hear about vaccines, just tends to be so one-sided like, ‘vaccines are the best thing ever, and they can never cause a problem,’ or ‘vaccines are the worst thing ever, and you should never do it,’” he says. “I’m trying to bridge that and meet parents where they are. Most people are just scared and don’t know what to believe. I feel that doctors are a little bit more confident in vaccine research than maybe they should be. A lot more needs to be researched for doctors to be as confident as they tend to be about vaccines.”

Recently, Warsh was a guest speaker at a roundtable discussion focused on bringing to light the possible medical harms of vaccination and what can be done to tackle the massive epidemic of vaccine injuries. The MAHA Institute, a think tank aimed at fixing America’s health system, hosted the event in Washington, D.C.

At the roundtable, Warsh said one reason many mainstream pediatricians may not fully acknowledge vaccine injury is the lack of effort to adequately track and study it, making it hard to understand how common it may be or whether there are links to chronic disease. He also noted that many clinicians have not reviewed the primary literature on vaccine injury.

He referenced, for example, a 2020 study by the Henry Ford Health system in Detroit that followed more than 18,000 children born between 2000 and 2016. The researchers reported that vaccinated children were at least 2 ½ times more likely to develop chronic health conditions than unvaccinated kids. The study, which was not peer reviewed or published, is considered one of the most important of its kind.

Warsh believes the lack of a randomized controlled trial comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated children is the “gigantic elephant in the room.”

“Where are the studies using inert placebos as controls?” he wrote in his book. “Where are the studies that show giving multiple and a rising number of vaccines simultaneously is safe?”

Warsh would love to be on a team pursuing a long-term prospective trial on vaccine safety.

“That type of study would be the most important thing to be done in vaccine science,” he says. “I don’t know how easy it would be to get into a main journal. But if we could run a vaccinated versus unvaccinated study and people could come together to do it, especially around autism, it would be so important. I have pitched the idea before to do it, but people are very concerned it’s so expensive and that the idea will be dismissed.”

A native of Toronto, Warsh earned a master’s degree in epidemiology before completing medical school at Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He trained in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles and practiced in Beverly Hills, then opened Integrative Pediatrics and Medicine.

Because of his concentration on integrative medicine—which combines conventional approaches such as drugs and surgery with complementary therapies like exercise and proper nutrition—he’s learned that parents who come to his office have a lot more questions about vaccines, often because they’ve read more about them. At first, he didn’t have all the answers but began diving into research about the potential dangers of vaccines with a burgeoning curiosity.

But the Covid era, when pharmaceutical companies declared their vaccines to be “safe and effective” without definitive studies, served in his mind as the “gasoline that lit the fire,” he says.

“That pushed me and a lot of others to start asking, ‘If they’re lying about this, what else might they be lying about when it comes to vaccines,’” he says. “For me, a lack of trust was certainly building before the pandemic. But that was the final straw that pushed me much deeper into the discussion and feeling like I want to be involved.”

Just like frustration built in him because of the Covid messaging, he takes issue with mainstream medicine where, in his view, everything is about supporting more vaccines instead of focusing on overall health.

“My job as a physician should not be pushing people to get more vaccines,” he says. “It should be to help people to get as healthy as possible. That should be 1,000 vaccines or zero vaccines, whatever the research shows. But it seems today everything is focused on more vaccines and vaccine efficacy, not about vaccine safety. Both things are important and both things can be true. The vaccine that can protect you can also cause harm. There’s no reason you can’t have honest conversations about that.”

Now one of the nation’s most widely known health freedom activists and the co-author of a book that encourages readers to exit conventional medicine and embrace natural living, Wilson remembers a particular night working on a case at her law firm.

“I was walking down the internal stairwell of the office with a deposition folder in my hand, and I looked at my partner and said, ‘Well, I’m leaving early tonight. I’m going to lead a shopping tour to teach people how to shop like the doc,’” Wilson said with a grin.

“Even then – when I spent so many hours working on corporate litigation – my greatest joy was felt when I was involved in helping people with their health.”

At the time, her husband, Dr. Nick Wilson, had opened a chiropractic and holistic wellness clinic.

Dr. Nick Wilson and Leah Wilson are now leaders in the natural health and health freedom movements.

Dr. Wilson is the founder of Alignment Training, Restructured Chiropractic and Vitality Metabolics. He also has a podcast and an Indianapolis-based radio show focused on natural health.

Leah Wilson is a health freedom attorney and co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom.

Through their respective advocacy, clinical work, foster care, writing, and speaking, the couple has crafted a movement that inspires families to improve their health by reclaiming vitality.

The principles of vitality, and the Wilsons’ story, are detailed in their new book, Reclaim Vitality: A Guide to Exit Conventional Medicine and Live Naturally, released by Skyhorse Publishing in January.

The book chronicles the corruption of what the Wilsons call the “sick care business” that is fueled by pharmaceuticals. The authors present a roadmap to natural healing featuring a “vitality score sheet” that allows readers to assess their assets and liabilities, optimize their environment, and rewire the thoughts that harm them.

In Reclaim Vitality, the Wilsons also offer a roadmap to activate the body’s God-given ability to heal. The five pillars of their plan are Rewire the Mind, Reset Sleep, Repattern Movement, Remove Toxic Inputs, and Restore Alignment.

The Wilsons encourage readers to live “vitalistically” with a lifestyle centered around conscious food choices, movement, breathwork, alignment, and rest.

Before you divorce yourself from the decades of lies you’ve been told about conventional medicine, you must take a first step toward reclaiming your health, Leah says.

Traditional medicine can lead to a dead end when you’re seeking healing.

“When people understand the truth, they won’t be able to be tricked into bad healthcare decisions anymore,” she says.

Leah Wilson told The MAHA Report that she and her husband framed the book in terms of virtues and principles “so that it will be more of a framework, and not a ‘how to avoid this food or how to find the best foods.’ It’s about shifting our reference point and exiting the model of whack-a-mole health care and fear-based decision making.”

Dr. Wilson describes modern conventional medicine as “whack-a-mole healthcare.”

You get a fever, and whack it with Tylenol. You get a cold, and whack it with an antihistamine. You take a vaccine for one condition, and it leads to a litany of other health issues.

“People just continue playing whack-a-mole, and the moles come faster and faster, and they never stop coming. And you end up increasingly frustrated,” Leah Wilson said.

“The game doesn’t stop by simply substituting your cholesterol-lowering medication with an herb that artificially lowers cholesterol, so to speak, if that exists,” she said. “It stops when we start looking at the underlying ability to heal and what’s interfering with your cholesterol naturally, as an example.”

Symptoms are the body’s whispers, and when they are ignored or suppressed, the body eventually screams.

Dr. Nick Wilson describes how a fever is a physiological process intended to eliminate invaders and give the body a “genetic upgrade.”

“Artificially suppressing the process could rob the body of immune-system reprogramming” it needs to thrive, Dr. Wilson said.

He recommends listening to the body and supporting its natural healing processes, which requires a mindset shift.

“Your body isn’t broken and in need of fixing, it is brilliant and just needs support to heal and thrive,” Leah explained. “When you understand this, you learn to trust your body’s natural healing process. You reach less for artificial treatments to suppress symptoms and more towards natural ways to aid these processes.”

The Wilsons’ foray into advocacy started after she and her husband became foster parents.

Years had passed since the birth of their first son when they were confronted with secondary infertility. The couple had long planned to become foster parents. The delay in having a second biological child moved the fostering timeline forward.

As an attorney, Leah Wilson hoped the day would arrive when she could address two patterns she saw in foster programs – aging out of the system, and overmedication.

When they entered the foster parent program, the Wilsons were paired with a sick 2-year-old boy who had been found in the cold on a 30-degree night.

The infant was unhealthy – inflamed, and completely swollen – Leah recalled. The boy also struggled to sleep and was afraid of men.

Most foster children with health issues are treated with pharmaceuticals, tended to by a local doctor who manages the trauma with medication.

The Wilsons’ home is a calming sanctuary, and the boy lived in an environment free of synthetic fragrances and harsh detergents, drank filtered water, and consumed only whole foods.

The couple gave the boy a non-toxic home that treated the whole child, and not only the symptoms.

The child gradually recovered. Over a year, his inflammation subsided, and he became calmer and happier.

Before this third birthday, the Wilsons returned a healthier boy to his mother, who was living in a Salvation Army shelter.

The foster agency was impressed. They recommended the Wilsons for more placements.

The couple prepared to welcome a new placement when Indiana issued a new mandate that all children in the home be up-to-date on vaccines.

Leah Wilson attempted to use a religious exemption, but she learned that this did not apply.

No family member can be a threat to the welfare of the foster child, Wilson was told, recognizing that, in the state’s view, being unvaccinated was considered a threat.

The agency delivered an ultimatum to the Wilsons: Walk away, or have their foster license permanently closed.

“It was unbelievable that they would rather have kids sleeping on the floor at the Department of Child Services than in our safe and loving home. It was unbelievable that they considered vaccination status a threat to a child’s welfare,” Wilson said.

The Wilsons were prevented from taking a new foster child.

The issue was “too big not to fight, but also too big to fight,” she said. They set out to overturn the vaccine mandate in Indiana. Ultimately, that happened. Foster homes in Indiana are no longer required to provide vaccination records, with the caveats of children being six months or older, and as long as children are not medically fragile.

“They don’t really actually understand that even medically fragile children and infants are safe in unvaccinated homes,” Wilson said. “But we did get that switch so that there are more available homes to children who need them, regardless of vaccine status.”

Propelled by their own experience, the Wilsons felt compelled to grow their activism.

“The health freedom movement lacked a voting bloc,” Leah Wilson said.

“Even though there were many national organizations and several state organizations that care about these issues and would host rallies or educate on the issues, we needed to have a meaningful voice to show that there are thousands of voters in every constituency that care deeply about health freedom, informed consent, parental rights and privacy, and everything that is related to health freedom,” she added.

That is what led to the creation of Stand for Health Freedom.

The Wilsons joined Sayer Ji and Dr. Joel Bohemier to establish Stand for Health Freedom amid the 2019 measles outbreak. The group expanded nationally, gained hundreds of wins across the country, and empowered hundreds of thousands of new families to reclaim autonomy over their health, Leah Wilson said.

“Many Americans don’t know if this school mandate issue or this employer mandate issue is a concern of their congressman or their state senator or their city council,” Wilson said.

“We wanted to provide that bridge and build a really meaningful voting bloc and voice for the health freedom movement to stop public health overreach,” she added.

Leah Wilson no longer works at the clinic, though she does teach occasional classes on natural health. Her focus is on Stand for Health Freedom and helping secure more wins across the country. She also embraces the opportunity to work with her husband to help more people find their vitality by escaping conventional medicine and living naturally.

“There’s definitely a one-way exodus from conventional medicine. That exodus will leave you in the wilderness if we don’t have the framework to reach the promised land,” Wilson said.

Reclaim Vitality is intended to help people ask better questions and to know that the majority of chronic illnesses today – like heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and autoimmunity, most cancers, even neurodegenerative disorders like dementia – aren’t random acts of bad genes, bad bugs or bad luck.

“They are predictable outcomes of how we think, eat, move, sleep and live,” Wilson said. “When we start to think, eat, move, sleep and live differently, we can get unstuck.”

Related stories

Leah Wilson’s Roadmap for Reclaiming Vitality

Stand For Health Freedom Sues CDC Over ‘Reckless’ Childhood Vaccine Schedule