Children's Death Defense

Add +2 to Bobby's Body Count

An Idaho mother has been charged with murdering her two toddlers and blaming it on a vaccine injury. It’s a truly tragic situation, whatever the story behind it. There aren’t very many details, but what is known is terrible. I wish it weren’t so predictable.

Two toddlers are dead. A week after they died, their parents appeared on Children’s Health Defense (CHD) TV implicating half of the childhood recommended vaccine schedule in their deaths. Now, their mother is accused of killing them, by suffocation according to this report and implied by the mother herself. CHD is now reporting that the real crime here is law enforcement ignoring the mother’s concerns about vaccines and instead charging her with first-degree murder.

Some of the details that we do know aren’t very consistent with a vaccine injury. How did two fraternal twins, both of whom had tolerated scheduled vaccines previously, both develop an extremely complex clinical case of spontaneous suffocation over the course of eight days when they both died at the same time on the same day? That’s possible, but seems unlikely. Vaccine injuries can occur. They are usually rapid onset, within a few hours of vaccination. Even if both children sustained the same severe vaccine injury at the same time, it’s odd that they would both slowly deteriorate over the course of more than a week—with multiple doctors repeatedly dismissing two increasingly hypoxic 18-month-old babies gasping for breath—and then die simultaneously.

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This story seemed awfully familiar. Where have I seen parents of children who recently died talking about how much they hate and distrust vaccination before? Oh right. CHD.TV.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was confirmed by the Senate on February 13, 2025, barely two weeks after measles exploded in West Texas, causing an outbreak that has not ended since. It rapidly turned into a constellation of outbreaks lighting up as measles finds its way from one undervaccinated community to another.

When a child died in Texas, CHD interviewed her parents, who are members of a Mennonite community with a culture of vaccine skepticism. CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker and CHD.TV Director Polly Tommey stuck CHD microphones in their faces and asked about whether they would recommend the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, given all five of their children got measles and their six-year-old daughter died from it.

Measles not as bad as advertised—child funeral edition

Now, before you go blaming the parents for their “well, 4/5 of our kids survived” attitude toward vaccination, consider the parasites who staged and filmed the interview. Kennedy founded CHD, and although he stepped down in 2023 for his presidential campaign, he still has obvious influence there.

Kennedy founded CHD as an environmental nonprofit, but for the last twenty years, it’s been one of the most powerful anti-vax players in the game. For years, CHD has relentlessly churned out propaganda via one of their many media outlets: The Defender (newsletter), CHD.TV, Kennedy’s books and podcasts, and via their large network of partner organizations and MAHA celebrity influencers.

CHD is part of a tightly coordinated and very well-funded ecosystem of anti-vax organizations. They now effectively operate as an unofficial vehicle for spreading MAHA propaganda. As soon as measles was in West Texas, CHD was there with cameras rolling. They sent their measles A-team to lie about the risks of measles and discourage people from getting the MMR, which is 97% effective at preventing measles.

Polly Tommey is a producer of several films in the Vaxxed series. Brian Hooker was so committed to spreading pro-measles propaganda that he claimed he got measles in Texas and bragged he got on a plane while contagious.

These two and their crew ingratiated themselves in the Mennonite community, getting better access to patients and exposed cases than public health officials, who were being thwarted by funding cuts and havoc at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) caused by Kennedy himself. Amy Maxmen reported in KFF Health News that the negative impact of the DOGE cuts and Kennedy’s edicts and draconian policies were compounded by the fact that the CDC simply wouldn’t answer the phone when local health officials called. From the very start, as Kennedy has thwarted outbreak responses, CHD has provided him with all the emotionally manipulative propaganda he needs for cover.

In April 2025, Kennedy attended the funeral of a second Mennonite child who died from measles, whose father also disavowed vaccines. He also thinks the MMR doesn’t work. While there, Kennedy and CHD wasted no time redirecting locals from getting reliable information about measles vaccination to Ben Edwards, West Texas’ top anti-vax concierge physician podcaster and vitamin A dealer. Edwards is so pro-measles that he appeared in a CHD video treating patients while he had a visible measles rash on his face. Edwards charges out-of-pocket for office visits where he prescribes cod liver oil and steroids for measles, despite neither of these being shown to work. He, like Kennedy and CHD, downplay the severity of measles. They contend that the two measles deaths were from medical interventions, not from measles.

How many deaths are we willing to tolerate?

Kennedy and CHD aren’t directly murdering people, but in my opinion they bear responsibility for these deaths. Whether from measles or murder, more and more people—including children—are dead as a direct result of the propaganda that they have spread. I’ve been trying to keep track of the body count and it’s not a trivial task. Here are some of the most obvious and quantifiable:

Kennedy, as leader of CHD, wanted to conduct a “natural experiment” in Samoa where he would see what happened when measles was allowed to spread in an unvaccinated population. He may have lied about his work in Samoa to the Senate during his confirmation hearing. I can see why he’d want to downplay his role in orchestrating and actively encouraging the epidemic, because his experiment had the same result as all other observed results of massive measles outbreaks: confirmed lethal. Eighty-three people died, mostly babies and toddlers. BODY COUNT: 83

A man who reportedly believed he had been injured by a COVID-19 vaccine fired 500 rounds at the CDC and killed a police officer. Despite his rhetoric directly causing a domestic terror attack on federal employees, it took Kennedy a full day to even reach out to CDC Director Susan Monarez. He fired Monarez two and a half weeks later when she refused to rubber stamp his intent to erase most of the recommended childhood vaccine schedule. BODY COUNT: 83 84 RIP Officer David Rose, who died in the line of duty protecting my colleagues

CHD and Kennedy downplayed the severity of measles in Texas. They convinced grieving parents to say that vaccines are harmful on camera and to the press. That their children were killed by doctors and medicine, not measles virus. CHD wrote articles arguing that the children died because of medical treatment they received at the hospital (ventilation), not because of the measles that put them there in the first place. They discouraged vaccination and redirected people to quack doctors who prescribed ineffective treatments and exposed them to greater risk. In addition to the two girls in Texas who died, one unvaccinated adult in New Mexico also died. BODY COUNT: 84 87

Andrea Shaw was charged with first-degree murder after allegedly suffocating her twins. Less than a week after their deaths, Andrea appeared on CHD.TV with her husband Nathaniel to explain that they died from vaccine injuries. Currently CHD.TV is presenting Andrea’s case as one of the police framing her to cover up for Big Pharma. BODY COUNT: 87 89

As Kennedy (and CHD) approaches the 100 casualty count mark, things only have the potential to get worse. Now Kennedy can effect policy, which is scaled to have consequences for millions. Kennedy is very, very good at working behind the scenes administratively to achieve his goals. CHD is always there to provide him as much propaganda as he needs along the way.

Kennedy and CHD are highly effective in getting people to believe that institutions are untrustworthy and vaccines are their instruments of control. Andrea Shaw was obviously influenced heavily by CHD. The murder charges against her suggest that her appearance on CHD.TV shortly after their deaths was an attempt to evade responsibility for killing them rather than concerns about vaccines. This case is a tragic example of how the anti-vax movement does not defend children’s health at all. They deliberately distribute propaganda that puts children at far greater risk. I think we need to start asking ourselves how much of this risk we are willing to tolerate.

Measles is surpassing last year’s total case count, with no end in sight. Ongoing measles invariably means more deaths. One need look no further than Lena Sun’s Washington Post piece from today for a stark reminder of where we are at: more measles, faster.

This is a direct result of both policies that Kennedy has implemented more recently (restructuring CDC, firing people, and destroying outbreak response capacity) and propaganda he and CHD have spread (they’ve successfully put vaccination rates into decline nearly everywhere they have sunk effort into it).

At what point are we going to acknowledge that the HHS Secretary, who is charged with protecting the nation’s health and who claims to be Making America Healthy Again, is causing more people to die? He and the organization he founded are actively working toward an America ridden with epidemics of preventable disease. A less secure and more malnourished America. A more broke and less prosperous America. A less healthy and more dead America. An America in which we all just accept that other Americans must die because the deranged weirdo leathern eugenicist at MAHA HQ wants to do (poorly designed and uncontrolled, in my professional opinion) “natural experiments.”

This goes beyond impeaching Kennedy. He does need to be removed from office as soon as possible, but beyond that, he and organizations like CHD need to stop being accepted. They are actively convincing Americans to make medical decisions that will harm themselves and their families. They are, in some cases, convincing Americans to commit acts of terrorism and murder.

We need to stop accepting that this is some kind of respectable dissent, or a new way of doing things, or that the solution is to talk to MAHA people more so we can build trust. The leader of the MAHA movement is a cabinet secretary who works for all Americans, and his actions and rhetoric are killing Americans. He should not be censored. He should be stopped. He and CHD should be held accountable for their actions.