Vaccine Danger

The prosecutor asked if Ayoub believed that Gavi—along with the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation, and UNICEF—was using vaccinations to force sterilization on people in Third World countries. “Yes, that’s my belief,” Ayoub said.

As evidence, he cited a report from 1972 by a commission headed by the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III and a 1974 study overseen by Henry Kissinger, who was the Secretary of State at the time, warning about the dangers of population growth. It’s “no leap of faith” to believe that vaccination is being used to carry out this agenda, Ayoub said.

The prosecutor also questioned Ayoub about a speech he delivered in 2005, in which he said that his views on vaccination—including his belief that it has contributed to a rise in autism—put him in a “fringe group,” and even in the “fringe of that fringe.” Ayoub acknowledged making the statement. “Thinking that vaccines were associated with autism, you’re clearly a minority view if you’re a physician,” Ayoub testified. “If you think it’s done intentionally for nefarious purposes, you’re clearly another level of—you know—different.”

In an e-mail, Ayoub said that he did not mean to accuse the Alliance or the Gates Foundation of intentional genocide, though he realized that his 2005 lecture might give that impression. “I was concerned by confirmed sporadic reports that some vaccines distributed in third-world countries contained fertility-reducing substances,” he said. “Regardless of whether this was deliberate, careless, unintentional or a cost-cutting measure, I felt that there was a potential for abuse and that this should be investigated.”

Prior to his child-abuse work, Ayoub was a prominent supporter of a movement that blames the rise in autism—a neurological and developmental disorder that starts in early childhood—on vaccinations that contain mercury, aluminum, or other substances. These claims are mostly dismissed by scientists, but they have nonetheless spurred a burgeoning worldwide “anti-vaxxer” movement, which has fuelled a decline in vaccination rates. Both positions reflect a deep suspicion of government and mainstream medicine and a rising backlash against scientific consensus in an era when misinformation quickly spreads online.

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Ayoub told me that he became interested in vaccines about fifteen years ago, after researching treatment for a bothersome knee. He was reading about alternative therapies and ended up subscribing to a newsletter from Joseph Mercola, a proponent of alternative treatments with a large online following and a Web site that frequently features pieces criticizing vaccination. Mercola has also promoted other controversial views, including the idea that fluoridated water can give children A.D.H.D. (In 2016,

Opposition to vaccination is almost as old as vaccination itself. But Web sites like Mercola’s have helped drive the modern anti-vaccination movement. M

ost scientists consider vaccination one of the greatest public-health advances of the twentieth century, helping to control or even eradicate diseases such as smallpox, polio, and measles in the U.S. Studies have found that vaccines can have side effects, but they are almost always minor, like redness and swelling.

Anti-vaxxers blame vaccines for an increase in the rate of autism diagnoses among American children. From 2000 to 2014, the number of children diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorder increased to one in fifty-nine from one in a hundred and fifty. Ayoub and others have argued that vaccines are one reason for this increase, …

Prominent anti-vaxxers include celebrities such as the actress Jenny McCarthy and the lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Before becoming President, Donald Trump weighed in, tweeting in 2014 that a “healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes – AUTISM. Many such cases!”

After discovering Mercola’s site, Ayoub said he went down a “rabbit hole” and read thousands of studies and documents about vaccination,

Ayoub found particularly persuasive a 2003 report by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Reform, which said that thimerosal, a mercury-based vaccine additive, was “likely related to the autism epidemic” and posed a risk to infants and children. The subcommittee was headed by Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican and later a Tea Party member, who said that his own grandson became autistic shortly after being vaccinated.

Thimerosal was also eliminated from all childhood vaccines in the U.S., except for some flu shots, in the early two-thousands.

In a 2005 speech for the Radio Liberty Conference, titled “Mercury, Autism and the Global Vaccine Agenda,” which the prosecutor in the Divband case cited, Ayoub discussed the idea that vaccination could be a cost-effective way to wage “a war on population.” He showed one slide that read, “Syringes cheaper than guns,” and another indicating that the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan totalled three hundred billion dollars, while worldwide immunization efforts were initially funded at between one billion and two billion dollars. “So it’s a cheap deal and people don’t run from these bullets,” he said. “They run toward these bullets, so it’s ideal.”

Ayoub flung himself into the anti-vaccination cause. He served as the medical director for two groups alleging safety problems with vaccines, wrote letters to newspapers, lectured at conferences, testified at legislative hearings, and was the registered agent for a political-action committee funded by prominent anti-vaxxers. Its mission was to advocate for people with autism “caused by exposure to neurological toxins,” according to a filing.

Mercola interviewed him at least twice for his Web site. In 2014, Ayoub suggested on Mercola’s site that a desire for high profits drove pharmaceutical companies to promote vaccines and state child-welfare agencies to accuse parents of child abuse. “Now, as you know, there’s science that links vaccines with autism,” Ayoub said. “Why isn’t that science believed? Well, it’s attacked. It’s marginalized because there are competing papers, generally very flawed papers, which refute their claims. [They] design studies in order to give the answer that they want. That’s going to happen when you have an industry this strong. The government is a big industry. Child Protection Services is a behemoth, believe me. There’s a lot of money generated from the job of protecting children from abuse.”