What Big Pharma, the Government, and the Media Didn't Want You to Know About Hepatitis B Vaccines

*With an excerpt from Gavin de Becker's New Book, Forgotten Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression About Brain Damage From Childhood Vaccines

By John Klar, Contributor, The MAHA Report

The recent decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to recommend that parents make individual decisions about administering the hepatitis B vaccine series to infants provides Americans with a front-row seat to the lies of various media outlets. The entrenched pharmaceutical industry and its media lackeys are increasingly cornered by “real science” that exposes the decades of dishonesty and harm their collusion with captured regulatory agencies has inflicted on Americans — especially on young children.

This decision offers an opportunity to share the truths about these vaccines and industry corruption documented by Gavin de Becker in his new book, Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression About Brain Damage From Childhood Vaccines (Skyhorse Publishing, 2025). Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been informing Americans for many years about the regulatory capture that has sacrificed their children’s long-term health for short-term corporate profits. The response to the revised ACIP recommendations proves both men right.

A common refrain has been that the hepatitis B vaccines for infants whose mothers do not have the disease are somehow legitimate due to the passage of time. NPR intoned:

“The result, if approved by the CDC’s acting director, will be a rollback of a universal recommendation to start hepatitis B immunization at birth, a standard practice in the U.S. for more than 30 years that has been credited with dramatically lowering liver diseases caused by the virus.”

It is not clear that vaccines have reduced liver diseases. A 2010 analysis by the Institute of Medicine stated, “As noted above, about 1,000 newborns are infected by their HBV-positive mothers at birth each year in the U.S. That number has not declined in the last decade.” Yet the MSM parroted this claim.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (criticized by HHS Secretary Kennedy for its conflicts of interest and industry funding) responded stridently:

“This irresponsible and purposely misleading guidance will lead to more hepatitis B infections in infants and children,” AAP President Susan J. Kressly, M.D., FAAP, said in a statement. “I want to reassure parents and clinicians that there is no new or concerning information about the hepatitis B vaccine that is prompting this change, nor has children’s risk of contracting hepatitis B changed. Instead, this is the result of a deliberate strategy to sow fear and distrust among families.”

Also outspoken in its condemnation of the recent decision to allow parents free of hepatitis B to decide whether to administer these vaccines was the Associated Press, which wrote:

“A loud chorus of medical and public health leaders decried the decision, saying the hepatitis B vaccine prevents thousands of illnesses.

“The committee has just condemned hundreds of children to a shorter life,’said Dr. Paul Offit, a Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia vaccine researcher and former government adviser.

“Offit said babies can also get it from relatively casual contact with someone who has chronic disease, such as touching a towel or toothbrush because the virus can live on surfaces for more than seven days at room temperature….

“Why a dose right at birth? Health officials used to rely on screening expectant mothers to find babies that might have been exposed to the virus. But many cases were missed, experts say, partly because some women weren’t tested or test results were incorrect.”

Offit is an industry shill acting here as the fearmonger for concerned parents. The CDC does not list surface transmission as a source of hepatitis B infection, stating it is “primarily spread when blood, semen, or certain other body fluids… enter the body of someone who is not infected.” The Associated Press omitted the original rationale for dosing infants. The New York Times printed the truth back in 1991: “If adults won’t go for the shots, then give them to babies.”

What all of these propaganda outlets have avoided is discussing the potential harms to babies from vaccinating them at birth against a disease they don’t have and are statistically unlikely to have. As Gavin de Becker chronicles in Forbidden Facts:

“Gallagher and Goodman (2008) found that boys who received all three doses of hepatitis B vaccine were 8.63 times more likely to have a developmental disability, including autism, than boys who did not receive all three doses….

“Gallagher and Goodman (2010) found that boys ‘who received the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine during the first month of life had 3-fold greater odds for autism diagnosis’ as compared with ‘boys either vaccinated later or not at all.’”

The ACIP committee has erred on the side of caution by allowing parents to confer with their personal physicians about whether to administer these shots. That hardly seems extreme. Media claims that children will die are simply false – why the histrionics and deception?

Parents considering this and dozens of other vaccines for their newborns and children under 18 must inform themselves of the “real science” collected by de Becker in his outstanding study of vaccine risks.

In his opening chapter, de Becker reveals how the vaunted Institute of Medicine relied upon to dismiss any claims that vaccines cause neurological injuries such as autism has been used repeatedly over the decades to refute numerous claims of injury or sickness by various sources, beginning with birth defects caused by Agent Orange.

That’s right – the biased entity that repeatedly determined that Agent Orange does not cause defects is the same organization invoked by pharmaceutical companies, media outlets, and government agencies to dismiss any concerns about vaccine injuries to children. This, despite skyrocketing rates of autism for which these outlets offer no causative explanation. This pattern of shoulder-shrugging ignorance is also present with regard to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and other ailments.

Photo of Gavin de Becker

Gavin de Becker has done a rare and riveting deep dive to uncover these and other disturbing truths in his book, Forbidden Facts. With the author’s kind permission, the first chapter of his essential book, required reading for parents, is reprinted here for MAHA Report readers.

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CHAPTER ONE (8-MINUTE READ)

What’s Agent Orange Got To Do With It?

The Earth is round, not flat, as everyone knows. And it rotates around the sun. Can we all agree on those two? Can we also agree that cigarette smoking causes cancer in some people? And gravity is the force that pulls objects toward the center of the planet?

There was a time when all these beliefs were hotly debated; today, they are all considered facts. Another thing everybody knows is that there is no link between childhood vaccines and autism. Everybody knows that notion has been debunked. Despite everybody being quite certain vaccines don’t contribute to autism, since that possibility has been debunked, just about nobody can answer these two simple questions.

Who debunked it?

How was it debunked?

Most people can’t answer even one of those questions, and that includes most pediatricians. Perhaps it was debunked so completely and obviously (known as being ‘thoroughly debunked’) that there’s no need to ever wonder how or why we are all so sure. It would be like questioning gravity, except that the theory of gravity can be tested by any of us all day long. The idea that the vaccine-autism link has been debunked is more like an article of faith, akin to Adam and Eve being the first two people on Earth.

But this is not religion; this is science, right? And that raises a third question:

Where did the idea that vaccines might be among the contributors to the increase in autism come from in the first place, such that it needed to be debunked?

For context, here are a few facts most people would agree aren’t at all controversial, since they come directly from Federal public health agencies:

In the 1950s, the rate of autism in American children was about one in 10,000. In the late 1980s the rate took off, so that by the year 2000, one in 150 children were diagnosed with autism. By 2023, the rate of autism in American children was one in 36. (In California, it’s currently one in every 22 children.)

Because these spiking numbers are so alarming, because this epidemic is so destructive to so many children and families, Federal public health authorities must have learned exactly what causes autism.

But they haven’t. (“Scientists don’t know exactly what causes autism spectrum disorder.” — National Institutes of Health)

Surely there must be effective drugs for treatment.

But there aren’t. (“There are no medications that treat the core symptoms of ASD.” — CDC)

Surely there must be wide agreement on what exactly autism is.

But there isn’t. There are no consistent biomarkers, no consistent physical characteristics, no blood or urine tests to confirm diagnoses — because autism is not a distinct disease. It’s called a disorder, and was previously called a syndrome — a collection of observed symptoms subject to interpretation. One doctor might diagnose autism, and another doctor seeing the same patient might say it isn’t autism, or say it’s mild autism, or say it’s nothing. Some children labeled and categorized with the diagnosis of autism appear to be fine, while others have dramatic and profound neurological disorders that require attentive care round-the-clock.

Though government scientists can’t hold firm to a definition of autism and don’t know what causes it, they claim with fist-clenching certainty to know what does not cause autism. How are they so sure? Because, as we’re all aware, any link between vaccines and autism has been debunked. Since you probably don’t know a single person who can say how it was debunked, or by whom, let’s get that foundational question out of the way now.

The possibility that any child’s autism could be linked to any vaccine or combination of vaccines was debunked by the Institute of Medicine (IOM).

What’s the Institute of Medicine? Many people assume it’s a prestigious government entity, but it’s actually a totally private organization that hires members of various professions to examine issues pertaining to public health. Though IOM is often paid by government, it’s also sometimes paid by private industry, including Pharma. As a private organization, IOM is not required to disclose how much it was paid for a given review, or who paid, or how much the hired experts were paid.

News media companies have tended to describe the Institute of Medicine as authoritative, independent, prestigious, respected, and the gold standard. IOM describes itself as unbiased, objective and evidence-based, and describes the experts it hires with words like esteemed and renowned, right up to distinguished and eminent. As you read on, it’ll be your call to decide how much trust to invest in IOM.

Similarly, you’ll decide how much trust to invest in me. On the one hand, I’m not a doctor, and on the other hand I’m not opining on medical science. I am a criminologist sharing information about corruption, crime and deceit, and I am a behavioral scientist sharing a few insights about human behavior and human nature. And I am a parent. I have followed my curiosity and skepticism, exactly as you can. In any event, the reader is not asked to trust me on anything, since citations with links to source material are provided throughout these pages.

Before we look at how and why IOM debunked the vaccine-autism link, let’s take a quick look at another claim they debunked, the claim that the biological weapon Agent Orange caused sickness in some Vietnam Veterans, and birth defects in some of their children.

Agent Orange might seem irrelevant to the vaccine-autism issue, however IOM used some of the very same people and applied the very same process to reach the same conclusion for both Agent Orange and vaccines. And in both instances, their debunking conclusions were extensively marketed to the American public in the same way.

A quick bit of history:

For almost ten years, the US military sprayed Agent Orange onto jungles and people in Vietnam. An ingredient known as TCDD is the most toxic form of dioxin, and causes severe injury, including malformations in test animals, and (no surprise) in people too.

When the US was accused of violating the Geneva Protocol that regulated the use of chemical weapons, our government argued that Agent Orange was not a chemical weapon. They called it an herbicide useful for destroying food crops and jungles that afforded concealment for the enemy. It wasn’t meant to hurt anyone, they insisted.

After studies showed that Agent Orange caused birth defects in test animals, the Department of Defense promised to reduce its use, though it would be years before it was officially suspended. Even the official suspension didn’t end it, alas, because some military units falsified reports to conceal their continued use of Agent Orange. Eventually the military really did stop using it in Vietnam because, well, the war in Vietnam ended. By that point, many returning veterans had reported debilitating health problems in themselves and their children, affirmed by ever-expanding and terrible toxicologic reports about TCDD.

To resist and reject these claims, the US Government wrote a check to IOM. Whether debunking the crazy idea that injecting mercury into children could possibly cause any neurological injury, or debunking the crazy idea that a military weapon containing dioxin could possibly be linked to health issues, IOM sang the same dreadful dirge. For example, they used the same approach in both scientific inquiries. (‘Scientific inquiry’ is a phrase that stretches those two words to the breaking point). They began both projects by setting forth what would not be included in their ostensibly deep explorations.

In their study of Agent Orange, IOM stated that they would not consider “toxicologic studies,” because, you know, what possible bearing could toxicology have on the topic of toxicity? Similarly, in their study of vaccine safety, their report stated at the outset that they wouldn’t “recommend a change in the licensure, scheduling, or administration of a vaccine.” Meaning, their deep and comprehensive study of childhood vaccines wouldn’t propose anything about the administration of… childhood vaccines.

After one of its many Agent Orange reviews, the Institute of Medicine announced their bold conclusion: Studies into the reproductive history of individuals who’d been exposed to dioxin were [wait for it…] needed. Studies were needed. Their subsequent Agent Orange reports of 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014 all reached that same dramatic conclusion: Studies needed.

Finally in 2018, the gloves came off when the IOM reaffirmed that studies were needed, but this time recommended something new: “further specific study of the health of offspring of male Vietnam veterans.”

The bold font is theirs, by the way, because these folks wanted it clearly understood that when they conclude (five times) that further study is needed before they can conclude anything else, they really mean it. The closing words in their report didn’t pull any punches, perhaps because they never landed any punches in the first place.

“There are many questions regarding veterans’ health that cannot be adequately answered by examining superficially analogous exposures and outcomes in other populations. It is only through research on veterans themselves that the totality of the military service experience can be properly accounted for.”

I find nothing to ridicule in that intelligent sentence above — other than that it took the vaunted Institute 22 years to get there.

Though no parent would want the Government assessing childhood vaccines the same way it assessed Agent Orange, that’s exactly what happened. And both projects involved two of the same central figures from the CDC: Dr. Frank DeStefano and Ms. Coleen Boyle, PhD.

They did the job of ensuring that no link would be found between dioxin and most of the maladies reported by veterans and their children, thus denying veterans and their families any compensation. They were helped by a third person, Dr. Marie McCormick, also hired by IOM to debunk harms from both Agent Orange and later, childhood vaccines. A subsequent Congressional report about the Government’s deceitful debunking says it all right in the title:

“The Agent Orange Cover-up: A Case of Flawed Science and Political Manipulation.”

Among its many findings:

• The Government “had secretly taken a legal position to resist demands to compensate victims of Agent Orange exposure…”

• CDC’s work was “based on erroneous assumptions and a flawed analysis” 1

Famed Navy Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. led a review that was independent of the Institute of Medicine, and then testified before Congress:

“The sad truth which emerges from my work is not only that there is credi ble evidence linking certain cancers and other illnesses with Agent Orange, but that government and industry officials credited with examining such linkage intentionally manipulated or withheld compelling information of the adverse health effects associated with exposure to the toxic contami nants contained in Agent Orange.”

The Admiral’s testimony was all the more powerful because it was deeply personal: He himself had ordered the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam — and his own son was among the soldiers who died from it.

For our purposes here, the Government’s intentional manipulation and withholding of the truth starkly demonstrates that the Government has done such things. Readers who can embrace that idea will be open to the possibility that it might happen again when the same players at IOM use the same methods for the same money paid by the same client for the same reasons. All that differs is the toxin.

After being roundly discredited for their shammy work on Agent Orange, were Dr. DeStefano and Ms. Boyle demoted by CDC? Nope. Were they fired? Not exactly. He was promoted — from Agent Orange to… childhood vaccines.

After Dr. DeStefano was caught concealing study results that showed increased risk of autism from a vaccine product, he was promoted again — and not to just any position, but to Director of the optimistically-named Immunization Safety Office. (Recently, he was the perfect choice to find the obviously preferred answer to another pressing question: Might cardiac injury from mRNA vaccines be a serious problem?)

And Ms. Boyle? Despite or perhaps because of her deceitful work on Agent Orange, she too was promoted at CDC, eventually to Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. Agent Orange prepared her well for her work on birth defects, causing as it does… birth defects. And childhood vaccines likely prepared her well for understanding developmental disabilities, causing as they too-often do… developmental disabilities.

Before blindly honoring the Institute of Medicine’s debunking of any link to any ingredients in any vaccine products and any neurological injuries to any children, it would seem fair to consider if any more recent studies have debunked IOM’s position. Wouldn’t you know it, there’s a whole bunch of published peer-reviewed science in that category, the most recent from 2025:

A study of 47,155 nine-year-old children found the vaccinated children had far higher rates of autism than the unvaccinated (2.8 percent vs 1.1 percent), and that “vaccination was associated with significantly increased odds for all measured neurodevelopmental disorders,” and that “vaccination is strongly associated with increased odds of neurodevelopmental disorders.”

Another study looked at medical records from four HMOs, showing that infants exposed to greater than 25 μg of mercury in vaccines at the age of one month were 7.6 times more likely to have an autism diagnosis than those not exposed to any vaccine-derived organic mercury.

Review of 165 studies that focused on thimerosal, an ethylmercury com pound in many childhood vaccines, “found it to be harmful.” Sixteen of the studies specifically examined the effects of thimerosal on infants and children with reported outcomes of “developmental delay and neurodevelopmental disorders, including tics, speech delay, language delay, attention deficit disorder, and autism.”

“Autism: A novel form of mercury poisoning”

Study found higher brain mercury levels after ethylmercury exposure

“Mercury is among the most harmful heavy metals to which humans can be exposed… the human body lacks effective mechanisms to excrete it.”

“Exposures to neurotoxicants such as lead, mercury, and pesticides can have a particularly detrimental impact on brain function and in turn lead to… learning and developmental disabilities.”

(See Appendix #5 for studies that compare the occurrence of neurodevelopmental disabilities in vaccinated children versus unvaccinated children.)

When there is a lot of research to undo, when there are so many forbidden facts to dissolve, you need something more than mere science. Luckily for the Government, IOM had a time-tested process — and not just from Agent Orange.

Key Takeaways:

– The mainstream media have launched a slanderous campaign against HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the current ACIP Committee to conceal troubling truths about hepatitis B vaccines for healthy infants.

– Gavin de Becker’s book, Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression About Brain Damage From Childhood Vaccines, meticulously documents the use of a compromised Institute of Medicine to cover up vaccine injuries. De Becker also provides studies showing potential harms to babies from hepatitis B vaccines.