Dr. Brian Hooker is the scientific director of Children’s Health Defense.
Children’s Health Defense is a nonprofit organization based in the United States.
Its mission is to protect the health of children worldwide, identify the causes of health problems
among children, and hold those responsible to account.
On April 29, 2026, Brian Hooker gave a lecture in Switzerland, moderated by AUF1 host Thomas Eglinski.
A personal experience led Brian Hooker to begin exploring the topic of vaccinations in
relation to chronic childhood illnesses 28 years ago.
Even back then, he had noted that the number of chronically ill children worldwide had risen significantly.
Today, one in five children in the United States has a developmental disorder.
His scientific studies—in which he compares vaccinated and unvaccinated children with regard to chronic
diseases—as well as similar studies by his colleagues, are routinely rejected for publication by medical journals.
This raises the question:
Why are these very elaborate vaccine studies being categorically suppressed by highly professional experts in their
field, and why are the dramatic connections being kept secret?
Who has an interest in ensuring that the medical community at large and the world's population never find out about this?
Learn more about Brian Hooker's scientific work and the shocking findings of his scientific studies in this presentation.
So, let's get started. I'm the scientific director of Children's Health Defense.
I started working for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. around 2015.
And in 2021, he was finally hired directly by Children's Health Defense.
I have a child who was harmed by a vaccination.
When my son was 15 months old, he received three vaccinations while he had an active ear infection.
As a result, he very, very quickly developed neurological developmental disorders. He was diagnosed with autism.
So back then, 28 years ago, I noticed that the number of sick children in the United
States—and, in fact, worldwide—had risen significantly.
Today, one in six children—now one in five—in the United States has a developmental disorder.
At least one in 31 children has autism or has been diagnosed with autism.
In my home state of California, it's one in 19 children.
In Los Angeles, in Los Angeles County, it is now one in ten boys.
And if you've seen the movie "Vaxxed," you know that—as was to be expected—it affects three out of ten African American boys.
As a result, 30% of African American boys in Los Angeles County are diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.
All of these case numbers have risen since the late 1980s and early 1990s.
We also know that mainstream doctors, pharmaceutical representatives, and government officials very
often tell us that vaccine injuries are rare—that they occur in only one out of a million cases.
Only one in a million people have a reaction to the vaccine. But that's not true.
We know that the CDC commissioned a study in 2010.
In this study, they analyzed 1.4 million vaccinations administered over a three-year period.
Of these, 35,000 were potentially serious side effects.
So for me, that's not one in a million, but 35,000 out of a million, which is a
completely different number. Or it's about 2.6%.
And when you also take into account that people receive more than one dose of the vaccine—since that original
figure referred to a single dose—the probability of vaccine-related injury rises to 10%.
So this is potentially serious.
The CDC more or less refused to continue funding the study, and it was not renewed.
That would have automatically triggered our adverse event reporting system.
But instead of looking to the future and truly understanding vaccine-related injuries, they chose not to do so.
What happens when we compare vaccinated and unvaccinated children?
We already know that the CDC simply didn't want to know this information.
They cut off all contact with these researchers. They did not respond to their emails or their phone calls.
But in 2017, I began examining the outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
If a child receives even one vaccination, they are considered vaccinated. If a child does not receive
any vaccinations, they are considered unvaccinated.
In the following slides, we will distinguish between vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
So these are not necessarily children who have been fully vaccinated; rather, having received even
one or more doses makes them vaccinated children.
If we take a look at this: This is a study conducted in 2017 by a good colleague of mine, Anthony Mawson.
The red bars represent the vaccinated children. The blue bars represent the unvaccinated children.
And you can see that allergic rhinitis—that is, nasal allergies—is consistently 30 times more common in the vaccinated group.
And, by and large, these were children who had received at least one dose of the vaccine.
In this sample, these happened to be children who were homeschooled.
If we then look at the other conditions we examined, they were, by and large, autoimmune diseases or developmental
disorders, which occurred between 3.9 and about 5 times more frequently among vaccinated children.
It gives me hope to see that more and more people are coming.
The more people there are in this small room, the hotter it gets, but families who sweat together stick together.
In the same study, the researchers examined actual infections among vaccinated children compared to unvaccinated children.
And they found that cases of pneumonia were about five times as common.
These were cases of pneumonia that generally required hospitalization.
In addition, about 20% of all vaccinated children suffered from chronic ear infections,
compared with less than 6% of unvaccinated children.
We know that not all babies are born the same. Okay, some babies are born less healthy than others.
In this case, the researchers studied premature births. In other words, the subjects were premature infants.
And they compared vaccinated children with unvaccinated children.
So if they were vaccinated and born prematurely, their risk of developing a neurodevelopmental disorder—such as autism, tics,
ADHD, an autism spectrum disorder, or Asperger’s syndrome—was 14.5 times higher than that of full-term, unvaccinated children.
Within the same group of individuals, the likelihood of receiving this diagnosis was 2.7 times higher among
full-term, vaccinated children than among unvaccinated children.
Okay, in order to publish this kind of research in established scientific or medical journals, we need contacts.
That's a very, very difficult process. We call it a contact sport.
This research article was initially accepted for publication in a journal titled “Frontiers in Public Health.”
As soon as it was accepted and only the abstract of the article was published, it caused quite a stir.
There were 80,000 downloads of the abstract alone during the first weekend that this paper was featured on the journal's website.
Ultimately, the paper was removed from *Frontiers in Pediatrics* that afternoon—on Monday afternoon after the weekend.
They said, “We haven’t retracted the article. We hadn’t finished the review yet.”
Yes, that's right. We hadn't finished the review yet. And we checked it again.
"And this time, we decided to reject the article."
Fortunately, this article has been republished.
It was published in a more independent academic journal.
But the whole process ended with the first author, Anthony Mawson, being suspended from his university at that time.
At least the study was published.
Then, in 2020, I teamed up with medical journalist Neil Miller, and we had already begun this study in early 2018.
We studied children who were vaccinated during their first year of life and compared them to children who
were not vaccinated during their first year of life.
So at that point, we were only looking at infant vaccinations, which amounted to about 24
vaccinations—the difference between the two groups.
But as with the Mawson study, most of our vaccinated children were not fully vaccinated.
On average, they received 8 to 9 vaccinations during their first year of life.
When looking only at the first year of life—a period during which the vaccination schedule is particularly intensive, with up to 6
or 7 vaccinations at once—developmental delays were twice as common, and asthma occurred 4.5 times more frequently
in the vaccinated group than in the unvaccinated group.
Please note that these red bars represent only partially vaccinated children.
Ear infections also occurred twice as often in the vaccinated group as in the unvaccinated group.
And when we began studying gastrointestinal disorders, we observed something that was very similar to developmental delays.
I found that very interesting:
Vaccinated children had 2.5 times as many cases of gastrointestinal illness as unvaccinated children.
It was really hard to get this scientific article published.
Okay, so we submitted this article to five different prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals.
So you'd think that at least one of the journals would review them rather than simply rejecting them across the board.
But tellingly, they rejected the work within 24 hours of its submission.
In fact, one reviewer wrote: “Brian Hooker is an anti-vaxxer, period; I reject this research article.”
So it was an attack on me, not an attack on the work.
Finally, we found the journal “SAGE Open Medicine.”
And usually, scientific journals review an article once and then either accept or reject it.
Okay, in this case, there were four different reviewers who reviewed the article three separate times
over an 11-month period and provided comments each time.
So it took longer to write this article than it does to carry a child to term.
The article was eventually accepted by SAGE and published in May 2020, just in time for the pandemic.
And it has been viewed or downloaded about 300,000 times. It's a very, very popular article.
About every five to six months, I receive an email from the magazine in which someone complains
about the article and demands that it be removed.
Even now, six years later, they still hold on to us.
That was an important milestone, because not only is it a significant article in an important journal, but the journal was
also indexed in the National Library of Medicine of the U.S. National Institutes of Health —vaccine
advocates, scientists, executives, doctors, whoever they may be, keep trying to have it removed.
We didn't let that deter us; we began a new study, which was published in 2021.
We doubled the size of our cohort—that is, the group of children studied—compared to the original study.
Now let's compare fully vaccinated patients who followed the vaccination schedule with patients who are completely
unvaccinated, and when we do that, our red bars get bigger.
So we're looking at allergies, gastrointestinal disorders, asthma, autism, ADHD, and chronic ear infections.
Some of these differences: Chronic ear infections are nearly 28 times more common in the vaccinated group—the
fully vaccinated group—than in the unvaccinated group.
ADHD: One in ten children in the United States has been diagnosed with ADHD, a condition that is 20 times more
common in the vaccinated group than in the unvaccinated group.
We have also gained some interesting insights into autism.
When we looked at the children—whether they were breastfed or not, and whether they had been vaccinated
or not—we noticed something very, very interesting.
The lowest risk was among unvaccinated children.
This applied to all vaccinations, regardless of whether they were administered before or after the child's first birthday.
So they didn't receive any vaccinations at all.
If they had been breastfed, their risk was lowest.
Among unvaccinated children who were bottle-fed or fed infant formula, the likelihood of
receiving an autism diagnosis was 2.5 times higher.
If they had been vaccinated and breastfed—that is, the opposite—the likelihood of
receiving an autism diagnosis was 6.7 times higher.
And finally, those who fared the worst—with a 12.5-fold increased risk—were the ones who had been vaccinated.
These are fully vaccinated children who were not breastfed.
And we have defined “breastfed” as follows: For a child to be considered breastfed, it must have received breast milk regularly
for a period of at least six months. Before its second birthday.
Of course, I know that children are sometimes born into difficult situations.
I understand the challenges involved in breastfeeding consistently.
In addition, we want to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated children and take into account the type of
delivery—whether it was a vaginal birth or a cesarean section.
Here, too, I realize that there are certain emergency situations in which it is very, very difficult.
It is a very difficult decision for a family to opt for a cesarean section.
The most important thing for one's health is to have a healthy, living child.
I completely understand that.
But once again, the lowest risk is among unvaccinated children born through normal delivery.
The likelihood of an autism diagnosis is 4.6 times higher following a cesarean section.
And that is the hygiene hypothesis.
During a vaginal birth, extensive colonization by essential microbes takes place.
In the case of a C-section, these are not replenished.
So it has become clear that this is very, very important.
There are alternatives to a cesarean section for implanting an unborn child.
In the reverse scenario—when the child is vaccinated following a normal birth—we observed a 9.2-fold higher risk.
And then the worst—one of the worst outcomes we saw in the study, as in my son’s case: vaccinated and
born by C-section, with an 18.7-fold higher risk.
This specific research article was published in the *Journal of Translational Science* in 2021.
I would like to discuss a few other publications before returning to my own research.
These are the findings of a study by James Lyons-Weiler and Dr. Paul Thomas.
It was published in 2020.
And you see something very, very similar.
They examined the actual doctor visits.
How many visits did these children make to Dr. Thomas’s office when they were vaccinated (red)
compared to those who were unvaccinated (blue)?
And were these specific conditions diagnosed during those doctor's visits?
And once again, we saw something very, very similar.
But you'll notice that autism is missing.
And in fact, since the children represented by those red bars in Dr. Thomas’s practice were typically partially vaccinated,
there weren’t enough autistic children to compile statistics.
The rate of autism in his practice was about 1 in 250.
Publishing this research is dangerous. It is very, very difficult.
In this particular case, the research article was published in 2020 in a highly prestigious journal, the *International
Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health*.
Almost immediately after the scientific article was printed and published, Dr. Paul Thomas had his medical license revoked.
It was an immediate suspension; he was no longer allowed to practice medicine in the state of Oregon.
This was followed by a single anonymous complaint sent to the magazine.
The academic article was removed in 2021.
I was one of the original reviewers of the thesis.
The newspaper called me and said, “Oh, we were thinking about taking down the article.”
We are concerned that it comes from a single doctor's practice.
"And we believe that unvaccinated children differ too much from vaccinated children to conduct a valid study."
And they lump these children, these adults—the people who question the safety and effectiveness of vaccines—into one category.
They say: You're different, you're strange, you don't go to the doctor as often, and you
stay home even if you have a brain hemorrhage.
They make such absurd claims in order to discredit this type of study.
That's exactly what they did.
So the magazine called me, and I said, “Hello.”
You know, I've reviewed the study.
"I stand by my review, and I happen to know that Dr. Thomas's patients are very, very satisfied with him."
That study focused on differences in health-conscious behavior, which implies that unvaccinated children do
not go to the doctor—which was definitely not the case.
Dr. Thomas’s license was thus reinstated under very strict conditions.
He wasn't allowed to talk about vaccines.
His First Amendment rights were taken away from him.
He was only allowed to treat certain patients and was not allowed to participate in important decisions.
He has filed a federal lawsuit against the Oregon Medical Board.
I wish him every success in that endeavor.
At the time, I was very, very proud that Dr. Lyons-Weiler, the researcher and lead author of this publication, fought back.
In fact, he and another doctor analyzed the same data and showed that parents who received a consent form and
clear answers from their pediatrician, Dr. Thomas, actually enjoyed going to the doctor.
Just imagine: You get clear answers, so you go back.
So they divided the practice into three groups: high, medium, and low use of health care services.
When they use health care services frequently, they often go to the doctor. When they use health care
services infrequently, they don't go to the doctor as often.
And then there's the group in between.
So the vaccinated group is represented by the blue line or the blue curve.
And the unvaccinated group is the yellow line.
I apologize for the poor readability of the slide.
And they found that unvaccinated children consistently visited their doctor more often, regardless of whether
they had high or moderate use of health care services.
And the same was true for the lowest levels of health care utilization.
In other words: Unvaccinated children do not visit the doctor any less often when they
see their doctor and receive clear answers.
They want to have their baby examined. They trust their doctor. They have a good relationship.
And that's why they go at least as often as usual.
Now I would like to discuss a study published in 2022 by the Centers for Disease Control.
A link has indeed been found between the aluminum salt adjuvant contained in vaccines and persistent asthma.
The study examined vaccinations administered before 24 months of age and then asthma
diagnosed between 24 months and five years of age.
It was found that if the child had eczema—eczema is a sign of an autoimmune disease.
So if a child had eczema and received the highest possible dose of aluminum in
vaccines, the risk of asthma was 63 percent higher.
This is referred to as early-infancy or childhood asthma.
It is diagnosed very, very early, not within a specific time frame.
This is another sign of an autoimmune disease.
If they had eczema, their risk was higher, especially if they received the highest vaccine dose.
But the CDC will never include a control group with zero exposure, so it turns out that the blue bar
here represents a high aluminum content, and the orange bar contains only slightly less aluminum.
That's fraud—that's what you call fraud; they should have included a zero-exposure group; we would see a much clearer difference
there if they had actually conducted a controlled study.
If they had looked at children without eczema, those children would still have had a higher risk of asthma.
If you have a child who shows signs of something like eczema—a condition that is clearly autoimmune—it
makes sense to skip or postpone the vaccination schedule.
These children were vaccinated before they were 24 months old, and the results led to an increase in asthma.
If we break down this study further: the first two years of life—it was a monumental concession—the CDC
never sides with those who say that vaccines cause anything other than happiness and sunshine.
However, they acknowledged that the persistent asthma consisted of three diagnoses of
severe asthma between the ages of two and five.
So you've admitted it.
Strangely enough, it was Dr. Frank DiStefano—he’s an interesting researcher—who helped cover up the link
between vaccines and autism, which led to the film “Vaxxed.”
He was also involved in the cover-up regarding Vietnam veterans and Agent Orange.
So he had a history of perhaps not being entirely truthful, but he published his work and then retired.
So that was his last word.
Okay, are you ready for even more bar charts?
Now let's get right to the point: here are the hard facts—the real, hard-hitting details from the
studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
I want to highlight a very, very stark contrast, and I'm doing so for good reason.
I want people to truly understand that this type of analysis—the kind conducted solely by independent researchers—does not
come from government-funded universities, nor does it come directly from the CDC or the National Institutes of Health.
These are independent scientists, and this is the result of their work.
And if we publish this, we have nothing to gain; on the contrary, we could lose our livelihoods, face criminal
charges, lose our medical licenses, and so on and so forth.
So, in many ways, I take no pleasure in pointing out the extent of the damage—especially when doing so
puts my livelihood and my family’s well-being at risk.
But if you look at the study by Dr. Mawson, who once again drew on the Florida Medicaid database:
This refers to autism spectrum disorders, hyperkinetic syndrome, ADHD, epilepsy, seizures, learning disabilities,
encephalopathy, twitching, and at least one of the four neurological developmental disorders listed.
The risks for learning disabilities therefore range from over 2% to over 2.5% to nearly 7%.
He also studied premature births at the same time, and all of these risks increase—so
we see a higher rate among premature births.
In response, we at “Children’s Health Defense” have stepped up our efforts.
We work directly with wonderful medical professionals—who wish to remain anonymous—who treat both
vaccinated and unvaccinated children in their practices.
According to the latest count, we have ten different doctors whose anonymized data we have used—these are all very, very
secure medical practices; we store the data very, very securely and never disclose anything that could identify the patients.
And we've seen how that number has grown to—well, that figure is outdated—we now have over 100,000 patients.
Actually, we wouldn't have to do that at all, because the CDC has its own database that
includes not 100,000, but three million children.
But they don't release this data; they don't even—and I hate to say this—they don't even pass this data on to
Minister Kennedy; they're constantly trying to hide it.
Although they are located in different places and face various legal obstacles, in this cohort we have 4,000
patients who have never been vaccinated, and we have followed them from birth for a minimum of four years.
The older children in this group are between 13 and 15 years old.
The youngest age is four years old, because we want diagnoses of developmental delays, autism, tics—whatever.
The rest of the group consists mainly of children who have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
That was the basis for my earlier publications, but we have expanded the group and will continue to do so.
So, just to show you: This is brand-new; this work is being published right now.
We've looked at neurodevelopmental disorders, we've looked at autoimmune diseases, and now we're looking at infections.
After all, vaccines are meant to keep you healthy; they're meant to prevent infections.
However, in this cohort, we observed that these recurrent infections were defined as at least three
different diagnoses—over a 12-month period—during which the child was registered at this pediatric practice:
Ear infections, respiratory illnesses, strep infections—all of these were much, much more common.
And when we looked at the number of vaccinations administered—including those who were unvaccinated—we found that
in the first year of life, there were one to three vaccinations; in the first year,
four to six; six to nine; and then ten or more.
And what you see is that, overall and in almost every case, the unvaccinated are doing much better.
So, they're simply healthier children.
There is a lower rate for ten or more vaccinations against respiratory diseases, and I would really
attribute that to the fact that this happens when you vaccinate a healthy child—you just keep vaccinating.
We call this the “Healthy Vaccinee Effect.”
And this is the kind of information we typically see.
We do not take this information lightly.
And I would also like to express my willingness to:
If vaccines prove effective, if vaccines yield better results, we want to give them the benefit of the doubt.
It is simply our duty to ensure that we are completely fair and that we present nothing but the truth in our publications.
Overall, then, the difference is very, very clear when we compare vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
The vaccinated children suffer in some way.
We don't know what specific disorder it might be.
But we also know that the technology and tools are available to predict these specific vaccine-related injuries.
I'm going to skip a few slides here to get straight to the conclusion.
They therefore have fewer developmental delays and neurological diagnoses.
They are less likely to suffer from asthma, ear infections, autoimmune diseases, allergies, respiratory infections,
and streptococcal infections, and are generally healthier.
So that's clear.
We're not pulling the wool over anyone's eyes here, and we're basing our claims on 11
independent studies that show very, very similar results.
I have shown you the findings of Anthony Mawson of “Children’s Health Defense,” as well as
those of James Lyons-Weiler and Paul Thomas.
So these are just three of the research groups conducting this type of study, and we consistently observe this kind of effect,
and as you know, this is obviously a very personal matter for me, and it is a very personal matter for many people who work
for “Children’s Health Defense” and support the organization.
But let me repeat: We're not trying to tell people what to do.
We want to educate people and ensure that they have the right tools at their disposal to make an informed decision about any
intervention, especially interventions during early childhood and during these very, very sensitive stages of development.
Thank you very much.
Dr. Brian Hooker, “Children’s Health Defense”