MAHA Institute Roundtable Assesses Dangers of Over-Vaccinating Children

By Mike Richman, Special to The MAHA Report

The pharmaceutical industry has been covering up the probability that vaccines cause autism, using a “scaled-up version of the playbook” that the tobacco industry once relied on to disguise the link between cigarettes and lung cancer.

So says Mark Gorton, president of the MAHA Institute, a policy-focused think tank that partners with government leaders and grassroots advocates to fix America’s health system. He, along with Del Bigtree and Mary Holland, delivered opening remarks at a roundtable hosted by the institute on Monday, March 9.

Photo by Brian Olson

The nearly 6-hour event, recorded here, brought to light the medical harms of over-vaccination and what can be done to tackle the massive epidemic of vaccine injuries.

Photo by John Klar

Some of the world’s leading experts, researchers, practitioners, and advocates gathered for the roundtable at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., to push through taboos, counter the pro-vaccine propaganda that has saturated America, and raise the public consciousness about a burgeoning health crisis.

The stimulating program, which drew a packed audience of more than 200 people in the hotel’s Crystal Room, featured three panel discussions: the scale of vaccine-related injuries to children; the impact of Covid vaccines on the public; and the refusal of mainstream pediatricians to recognize that vaccines can cause adverse effects on youth.

Gorton opened the proceedings by acknowledging that many Americans have worked hard to bring attention to the vaccine injury problem, and yet it’s still a “taboo topic.”

Photo by Brian Olson

“Doctors shy away from [vaccine injury],” Gorton said. “Reporters don’t dare touch it. Researchers risk their careers if they publish work on the subject. Political analysts even caution against mentioning vaccine injury. Despite being one of the largest health issues in America, vaccine injury is still marginalized. The sheer scope of the problem makes it hard to confront. Vaccine injuries are all around us. Most families in America have suffered from vaccine injuries, but most people don’t know this because we’ve never clearly named this epidemic.”

Gorton shared quotes that question the integrity of medical research, including comments by Marcia Angell, an American physician and a former editor-in-chief of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines,” Angell said in 2009. “I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”

Gorton also presented slides that illustrate a clear link between vaccines and chronic health conditions. One slide showed a remarkable correlation between the skyrocketing autism rates in recent decades and vaccine doses given to infants. In another slide, researchers looking at nearly 50,000 children enrolled in Medicaid in Florida found that vaccinated kids have much higher rates of chronic disease, with neurological conditions such as learning disorders, the brain disease encephalopathy, and tic disorder, or rapid muscle movement, topping the list.

For its part, The MAHA Institute has explained that vaccine injury can come in the form of neurological diseases, such as autism, ADHD, epilepsy, and learning disabilities; and autoimmune conditions such as allergies, asthma, Type 1 diabetes, and multiple sclerosis; and that 1.4 million children are injured each year by vaccines. Today, the CDC recommends childhood vaccines for 10 diseases, down from 17 at the end of 2024.

Photo by Brian Olson

Next up at the MAHA Institute event was Del Bigtree, CEO of the Informed Consent Action Network, which aims to provide everyone with the right to informed consent, whereby a healthcare provider discloses the risks, benefits, alternatives, and purpose of treatment so patients can make educated decisions.

In Bigtree’s view, it’s not realistic to think vaccines should be “erased from existence,” noting that patients have the right to want some vaccines or all of them. At the same time, he argued, “I can’t imagine that we can call ourselves free if we live in a country where anyone, any bureaucrat, any neighbor, anyone outside of my family is making my medical choices for me.”

Photo by Brian Olson

Bigtree, who served as communications director for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign (which ended in late August 2024), said current HHS Secretary Kennedy has no intention of erasing today’s vaccine program from existence.

Bigtree also spoke of his award-winning 2025 documentary, “An Inconvenient Study,” which looks at the alarming rise in chronic health illness among America’s children. The film investigates a vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated study conducted by the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, believed to be the most definitive research of its kind.

The 2020 study, which tracked more than 18,000 children born between 2000 and 2016, found that exposure to one or more vaccines was linked with a 2.5-fold increase in the likelihood of developing a chronic health condition. Although the study was never published in a peer-reviewed journal, it became part of the public record after being introduced at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing in 2025.

Photo by Brian Olson

In Monday’s final panel discussion on pediatrics and vaccines, the experts were asked why mainstream pediatricians do not accept the reality of vaccine injury. One panelist, Dr. Joel Warsh, explained that “institutional pressure,” an inclination to trust CDC data that recommended vaccines are good for kids, and a lack of time to read the literature such as the Henry Ford study influence doctors to believe there’s no validity in vaccine injury.

“You never really look it up yourself,” Warsh said. “When you do hear about those individuals that are talking about those issues, they’re called anti-vaxers and quacks, and you just dismiss it. We’re dealing with an ideology that the only way to protect kids is through vaccination.”