ICWA Weekly News 6-11-25
Board of Health hears long-awaited fluoride science review; Upcoming Event - Covington Days parade July 19 to educate the public; ICWA drills Board of Health on vaccines
In this issue:
Board of Health Hears Long Awaited Fluoride Science Review
ICWA & CHD to march in Covington Parade on July 19
ICWA Drills Board of Health on Vaccines
June 6, 2025 Episode of Informed Life Radio – notes and links
Hidden Toxicity Part 4: Generational
With guest: Dr. Sarah Kotlerman.
In this fourth and final part of the Hidden Toxicity series, Dr. Sarah Kotlerman reviews how toxins impact not only those exposed, but also their children and grandchildren. Generational toxicity impacts us all, but there are steps we can take to minimize their impact and restore health for ourselves and future generations.
Neurotoxic mechanisms of mycotoxins: Focus on aflatoxin B1 and T-2 toxin - PubMed
Mycotoxins in milk for human nutrition: cow, sheep and human breast milk - PMC
Upcoming Radio Show June 13, 4 PM
We’re excited to hear from the expert in ‘exclusion zone’ water, UW professor Gerald Pollack, as he shares insights from his groundbreaking research. Joining him will be co-host Xavier Figueroa, one of Dr. Pollack’s former postdoc students.
Board of Health Hears Long Awaited Fluoride Science Review
At the January 8 Board of Health meeting, Lauren Jenks laid out a timeline for a Fluoride Science Review in which “March of 2025 is for the governmental health system to listen to one another and to be able to describe what the science says.” She then added, “We then plan to bring that back to the board. This way, we’ll have a better idea of what a science-based policy would look like.” That bringing the science back to the board finally appeared at the June 8 Board of Health meeting.
June 4, 2025 - State Board of Health Meeting - Zoom Recording
Meeting documents, presentations, and public comments turned in before Friday May 30 are included in this 454-page WSBOH June 2025 Meeting Packet.
Early on, at the 0:19:00 mark, the board heard three public comments opposing fluoridation of Washington’s public water systems, while one public comment supported the continuation of this policy.
This pro-fluoride commenter acknowledged the potential adverse health effects but countered that the level of fluoride used in community water systems has no evidence of harm. She then referred to a new study in JAMA that if the United States were to remove fluoride from public drinking water supplies, American children would suffer an additional twenty-five million cavities (dental caries) in five years. “These cases would disproportionately be borne by children most at risk for tooth decay who are those on Medicaid or who lack insurance entirely,” she said.
Retired dentist Bill Osmunson, DDS, MPH said for the first twenty-five years of his forty years as a dentist, he promoted water fluoridation. But for the last twenty-plus years, he’s been opposed to it.
“If we look at the history, research, we'll find that it looks like there's some benefit,” he said. “Of course, it's low quality, but it still looks like there may be of benefit. If we look more recently, we can see that it doesn't show that there's benefit with the World Health Organization data. We can look here at the tooth decay of fluoridation in New York state. If we rank each county based on the percentage of the whole population fluoridated, we can see that we should have the decay rate dropping down with more people fluoridated. But that's not the case. It actually goes up just a little bit, so it doesn't have benefit…But what rips me up is the problem to the developing fetus and infant mortality. There are children who are dying.”
In his public comment, Derek Kamppainen attacked the board’s inhumanity on the fluoride issue:
After World War II, Nazi doctors were prosecuted in the Nuremberg Trials for medical crimes against humanity. Some were hanged, and others received life sentences. Their defense: They were just following orders. This was rejected, and the conclusion was clear. Every person has a personal responsibility to refuse participation in unethical practices even when others say that those practices are okay. This principle applies today; each of you are accountable for your actions and decisions on water fluoridation.
Derek then used the Department of Health’s (DOH) often used Frequently Asked Questions method to drive home his point:
I'd like to ask you guys a series of questions regarding the fluoridation program that you promote, ones that you should be prepared to answer under oath in a court setting, as the doctors had to after World War II.
So first, is any form of fluoride currently approved by the FDA for ingestion through the public water supply? And the truthful answer is, no.
Does fluoride meet the Washington State legal definition of a poison? The answer is, yes, it does.
And does Washington state law prohibit the addition of poison to the public water supply? You would have to answer, yes, it does.
Is the fluoride used in water fluoridation classified as hazardous industrial waste up until the exact point it's added to the water supply. The answer is, yes.
Are you aware that the U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen ruled that a preponderance of evidence shows that fluoride at 0.7 ppm, the current levels, we add today pose an unreasonable risk to children's developing brains by reducing IQ. The answer is, yes.
Do you have scientific evidence that proves that 0.7 parts per 1 million fluoride in water does not pose an unreasonable risk to the developing brain? The answer is, no, you don't. It doesn't exist.
Does public water fluoridation allow for individual informed consent as is required by the Nuremberg Code that was developed out of the Nuremberg Trials following those doctors that were hanged for not following basic medical ethics. The answer is, no; people cannot consent to a medication added to their tap water. They cannot control the dosage.
Is mass water fluoridation without FDA approval, without informed consent, effectively an unapproved medical experiment on the public that is illegal. The answer is, yes, this is an illegal medical experiment.
Derek then concluded his remarks:
So if these answers are true, I challenge you to provide credible evidence. Otherwise, this program is a violation of Federal drug law, State law and poison laws, medical ethics, and international human rights. And I want to remind you guys that just following orders is not a defense. If you continue to support the mass medication of the public without consent, you may one day be held personally and legally accountable, just as those in Nuremberg were. You're not bound by past policy. You're bound by truth, law, and ethics. I urge you to end this program before any more harm is done.
Mary Long from Conservative Ladies of Washington commented that while fluoride has long been promoted as a public health success, new research and longstanding ethical concerns call this practice into question.
The CDC recommends a fluoride concentration of 0.7 milligrams per liter to prevent tooth decay, citing reduced cavities and cost savings, but emerging science is challenging the safety and fairness of this approach,” Mary said. “In 2024 the National Toxicology Program released a report linking fluoride exposure above 1.5 milligrams per liter to reduced IQ in children based on multiple international studies. While our levels are lower, a study in the Scientific World Journal pointed out that total fluoride exposure, including water, toothpaste and food, often exceeds safe limits. As a result, we're seeing a rise in dental fluorosis affecting up to 30% of children in fluoridated areas. A clear sign of overexposure. Furthermore, while the evidence around neurodevelopmental effects and skeletal concerns at recommended levels remains inconclusive, that uncertainty should not be a green light. It should be a red flag.
Mary then pushed further on what Derek called out about the inhumanity of fluoridating public water supplies:
More troubling are the ethical implications. Fluoridation is mass medication without informed consent; residents cannot opt out, even if they have medical issues, or they simply don't want to ingest this toxic chemical. This undermines the principle of informed consent that should guide all areas of health care. Given these risks and the lack of individual choice, I urge the board to discourage the use of fluoride in community water. Follow Utah’s and Florida’s lead and support legislation to ban this toxic chemical to Washington water.
After months of science reviews by the DOH team, the assistant secretary for Environmental Public Health, Lauren Jenks, was finally allowed to take the microphone at 1:04:25 after a three-minute introduction. She was the first of two presenters to update the Board on the Fluoride Science Review.
“We have had participants from local health,” Jenks said. “We've had local health officers from the eastern part of the state and the western part of the state. We've had local public health staff just in general staff roles, and then specifically in environmental health. We have had a tribal health officer and State Board of Health staff.”
She also listed the participants who played a role in the panel review:
Toxicologist
Office of Drinking Water
Regional Medical Officer
State Epidemiologist for Non-Communicable Conditions
Epidemiologist
After the board meeting, Dr. Bill Osmunson noted what was missing from the above list:
The Panel members are not Pharmacologists, Biochemists, Physiologists, or drug regulatory experts. One toxicologist on the panel has the most research training and should be listened to. Panel members are good people and most are way out of their area of expertise.
Bill also noted the strong biases from several of the panel members:
Their judgment is blinded by their education that fluoridation is ‘safe and effective.’ Promoting fluoridation as part of their job descriptions for all their professional lives, so a paradigm shift may not be possible. Their bias springs them back to the fluoridation lobby's constant mantra of ‘safe and effective.’ They appear to want absolute proof of fluoridation's harm.
We assume Jenks was referring to Bill when she said this:
In addition, we had one petitioner to the board express concern that the panel would be comprised of individuals with already formed opinions about community water fluoridation and perhaps an unwillingness to fully review the evidence. We then invited this community member to observe the panel's work and participate in the community input section. So the meetings have not been open. But we have invited some others to come and observe.
Jenks then provided the goals from this review:
Prevention and Community Health Charge to the Panel
The panel was charged with listening, learning, and considering all relevant science in their discussions of community water fluoridation.
The panel was then charged with summarizing their learnings and interpreting the science so that the State Board of Health can consider it in potential policy action.
In addition, the findings of the panel are expected to inform oral health work at the Department and communications about community water fluoridation from the public health system.
Jenks then said that the panel met nine times since January and has one more meeting scheduled for June. The meetings were held virtually and generally lasted about two hours. Questions were answered in the meeting, if possible. The meetings were recorded.
“We had presentations for approximately half of the meeting, and then we had time for questions and discussion afterward,” Jenks said. “Generally, we were able to answer questions during the meeting. Occasionally, we had to bring something back after doing additional research. We did record the meetings so that they are available to panel members who were not able to attend, so we could all keep up on the information that was being presented.”
We reviewed a lot of information. We started with a webinar video from Dr. Kyla Taylor from the NIH, who explained the National Toxicology Program Monograph. And this webinar came from the collaborative on Health and the Environment. We then spent another meeting with one of our DOH toxicologists really digging into that monograph.
As Bill Osmunson had previously referred to during his public comment, Jenks then jumped to U.S. District Judge Edward Chen’s ruling last September with a decision that is best summarized by The Defender:
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Dental Association (ADA) and other pro-fluoridation groups rushed to confirm their staunch support for community water fluoridation after a California federal judge last month ruled that fluoridation at current U.S. levels poses an “unreasonable risk” of reduced IQ in children.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen also ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) needs to enact a regulation that will eliminate the risk.
Jenks said of the ruling, “We had DOH legal and toxicology staff explain and analyze the 2024 EPA court judgment on fluoride. Then DOH oral health staff met with us to review oral health, the relative efficacy of different ways of getting fluoride to your teeth, and oral health disparities. We had healthcare authority staff come and discuss with us access to dental health care in Washington.”
To their credit, Jenk’s said that the DOH staff and an EIS officer studied the 2024 Cochrane Review on Fluoridation.
We had our regional medical officer review additional information on oral health and fluoride that included two case studies of community water fluoridation that had not been included in the Cochrane Review.
Bill has been asking the board for years whether economic benefits matter if fluoride is not safe? Obviously, Jenks did not think so when she said, “We had our DOH economist review literature on the economics of fluoridation, including the cost of harms of fluoridation, and then Dr. Christine Till presented an overview of emerging science on Fluoride Toxicology, and her work on several studies that were included in the NTP report.”
And as if the FDA and CDC’s claim that COVID-19 shot’s benefits outweigh the risks wasn’t enough, Jenks went the same route in her presentation, causing our radar to start pinging [at 1:11:37 on the zoom recording]:
As the work of the panel developed, the discussion began to center around how do we weigh evidence of benefit of community water fluoridation with evidence of risk. Community water fluoridation is associated with improved oral health in children, although, it is associated with that improved health to a lesser degree now than when community water fluoridation was first introduced in the 1940s. And that is because we have many more ways of being exposed to fluoride today compared to in the forties. So, in the 1940s, when fluoride was introduced to the drinking water, there was a huge drop in the number of cavities that we saw in children.
Today, the added benefit of community water fluoridation is much less when you consider that most of our children are exposed to fluoride and toothpaste and mouthwashes, and at the dentist's office and other things. So that evidence got a little blurrier the more we looked at it.
As we looked at evidence of risk, the studies that we saw looked at higher estimated fluoride exposures than what we see today in community water fluoridation. So, most of the studies that saw an association of fluoride and IQ, were looking at an exposure to fluoride that's equivalent to about twice the amount of fluoride that's in our drinking water.
But it isn't the concentration of fluoride in the water that makes the poison right? It's the dose that makes the poison. So were you to drink twice as much water as what we expect, you would have a dose that's at the level that we see in those studies, or if you were to drink a regular amount of water, and also have exposures from fluoride in toothpaste and mouthwash, and at the dentist, the question we come to is, is that a dose that is equivalent to the dose, to the concentrations in water that were associated with lower IQ?
And that is what we continue to grapple with. And we're having these difficult discussions in the context of controversy, much of which we heard today, and the controversy is not new; community water fluoridation has been controversial since it began.
In fact, in Grand Rapids, which was the first place that we had community water fluoridation, people began to complain of health impacts from the fluoride after the intervention was announced.
So, our beliefs impact our health, and that controversy has been there from just before the very beginning.”
This is where Bill raises the question again on the certainty of fluoride safety:
The Board and Department cannot assure the water is safe. Of course, the dose makes the poison. However, confusion over the difference between individual dose of fluoride from all sources, and concentration of fluoride in water, clouds or confuses their judgment. They can't seem to incorporate the concept that not everyone is "average" drinks the "average" amount of water, or ingests the "average" amount of fluoride from other sources. A safety factor is essential.
Jenks then spoke about the flood of public comments about water fluoridation during the BOH meetings:
Generally, people that we heard from who oppose community water fluoridation, as you heard today in public comment, do so out of concerns for public safety, for the value of bodily autonomy, and concerns about the proper role of government. Generally, people who we heard from who support community water fluoridation do so because of the long history of apparently safe water fluoridation in the U.S., the belief that community water fluoridation prevents dental cavities, and the value for an equitable public health approach to disease prevention that doesn't depend on access to care or other resources.
None of those things are actually science, right? So, we were charged to look at the science, such as it is, and it is not complete around fluoride. So, the science isn't going to come down on one side or the other here. What we see is that fluoride is likely having a modest benefit and likely having a small impact on IQ. So it's really kind of at the margins of impact, whether it's good or bad, right? Whether we're looking at benefits or harm.
But as Bill pointed out after the meeting, Jenks only touched on IQ. Just this January, Chauhan and Kumar (2025) published on other harms from fluoride via a molecular mechanism of toxicity:
Fluoride toxicity: oxidative stress, upregulates hormonal mechanisms, causing hormonal disruption… bone deformity…dental fluorosis, Skeletal fluorosis…bone and joint abnormalities… hampers ATP formation…alters metabolic and reproductive hormones,… impaired spermatogenesis, … reduced sperm quality, and infertility… liver damage… genetic damage to DNA, IQ deficits, and increased risk of developmental abnormalities. Neurological impacts involve structural changes in the brain, memory issues, and neuronal loss…affects cellular organelles, inducing oxidative stress, apoptosis, and disrupting hormonal balance…transcription factors, and protein synthesis. It alters different genes implicated in bone metabolism, hormone signaling, and immune function, which leads to harmful impacts of fluoride on human health.
Jenks then focused on water fluoridation in our state of Washington:
In the mix of all of that, the science is less clear than what we would like to see.
The Cochrane Review stated that they had insufficient evidence to determine whether community water fluoridation is currently having an impact on oral health disparities.
It makes sense to us that it would be, but that is not something that they were able to find evidence to support. We also saw, as I said, all of the studies that we looked at on IQ and fluoride were done in places where the water concentration of fluoride is twice as high as it is here. So, we have uncertainty around whether the exposure to fluoride in the water in Washington, plus other additional exposures, forms a risk for some people in our community. Eventually we will need to have policy recommendations that will lean one way or another, but that leaning will be into some uncertainty in the science. We're not going to get a crystal-clear message on that.
Considering that Washington is set up so that the BOH and Department of Health can only recommend but not direct jurisdictions to fluoridate water, Jenks said the following:
And I think one of the things that we take from that is that our messaging to community needs to be nuanced. It isn't a black and white issue, and our explanation of fluoride can't be it’s 100% great or it's 100% bad, right? Because we do have evidence on both sides. And we have uncertainty on both sides. And we'll need to explain that nuance to communities that are deciding whether to fluoridate their water.
In summary, a science review team conclusion and possible BOH vote on a water fluoridation recommendation are not expected until the August 20 meeting, at the soonest.
It seems to us that Jenks and the review team are signaling a significant change in policy, as she explained the need to brief other major stakeholders on their findings before going public.
“We're not going to publicize them before we come to the board,” Jenks said. “But I don't want our new secretary to see them for the first time, say at the board meeting in August, and we don't have a secretary yet, so I need them to come on board, and for us to explain this whole process to them before we're ready to present the recommendations here, and we'd also like to bring the governor's office along and some of our state agency partners.”
Is she signaling that a major policy change is afoot? Wanting to brief the Governor and other state agencies seems like a new process step that wouldn’t be required if they were going to maintain the status quo. Plus, it could easily allow for politics to get in the way of a scientific policy decision.
Jenks’s mentioned not having a new secretary of health. But now, this past Monday, Governor Bob Ferguson appointed Dennis Worsham to fill this position. We’ll be certain to share our background check on him in an upcoming issue of ICWA Weekly News.
The fluoride topic then had a second presenter. Molly Dinardo gave the following overview of Washington’s responsibility to the federal agencies as related to water safety and cleanliness:
So, starting at the Federal level as a reminder, the role of the Federal Government is to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of fluoridation, and they provide guidance to state and local governments on optimal fluoride levels.
They also regulate consumer products that contain fluoride.
The Federal Government does not have authority to regulate fluoride in public water systems outside of the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act.
The FDA is responsible for regulating products containing fluoride, which includes toothpaste, rinses, supplements, and mouthwashes to ensure certain compounds, whether they are naturally occurring or added, do not exceed certain thresholds as part of their regulations.
The EPA has established a maximum allowable level, which is also known as a maximum contaminant level or MCL For fluoride at 4.0 milligrams per liter with a secondary non-enforceable standard of 2.0 milligrams per liter.
Finally, the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. Through the centers for disease control issues recommendations on best practices for fluoridation to promote public health.
We’ll take this moment to remind you that all fluoride-containing toothpastes come with a warning in the directions for use: “Do Not Swallow.”
The U.S. Public health service, as Lauren mentioned, first issued fluoridation guidelines in 1945, with updates in 1962 and most recently in 2015, to reflect evidence on optimal fluoride levels for preventing dental cavities.
So now, locally in Washington state in terms of Washington state authority, decisions about fluoridating public water systems are made at the local level by public water systems or local governments.
State law requires the BOH to regulate public water systems and set standards to ensure safe drinking water, and these standards are established in chapters 246.290 WAC.
The board does not require or prohibit fluoridation in public water systems for public water systems that choose to fluoridate. Washington's recommended level of fluoridation is well below the MCL.
Dinardo provided information upon request from the BOH for the DOH 2015 oral health strategies before adding, “And as a reminder, these recommendations are not within the board's rules, and they cover topics outside of the board's regulatory authority.”
She then suggested the following to the BOH:
I want to bring this up because the staff recommended at our January meeting that the board may want to consider revisiting the oral health strategies or updating them based on findings from the Science Review Committee. The board has not reviewed or made updates to these oral health strategies since 2015.
Dinardo then gave her concluding remarks:
I just want to reflect that the question is not is fluoride toxic. As Lauren said, the principle in toxicology is that the dose makes the poison, and even just plain drinking water has a toxic dose that infants are more sensitive to. It's possible to drink so much water without any kind of additives that can lead to seizures and death. So, the question is, what is that safe level of fluoride? And what is the level of fluoride at which the benefits of community water fluoridation outweigh the potential risks.
And I think one of the most important things that we, as a public health system, can do is take all of this data with its messiness and uncertainty, and express it in a way that is in plain language that communities can take and make the best informed decision that's right for them using the best available science.
So, I think that's one of the goals of this review panel is to not dumb things down at all but, if anything, to highlight those areas where there is uncertainty, where there is controversy, and to state where we have good science and where we need more data so that communities can make the decision that's best for them.
So after all this dust has settled, the bottom line is that for the next BOH meeting on August 20, the Fluoride Science Review panel will make a recommendation. The BOH might vote on those recommendations to revise the statewide policy, or they might decide to delay the vote until a future meeting. Or miracles of miracles, they might actually direct DOH Legislative Director Kelly “We passed all three of our bills” Cooper as well as DOH Chief Medical Officer Tao Kwan-Gett to lobby the legislature next year (as he did this year to pass HB 1531) to pass legislation to ban fluoride in public water drinking supplies as done in Utah and Florida.
What we do know for sure is that it would be best for everyone to give public testimony on this issue at the August 20 BOH meeting. “If they need help on what to say, they can contact me,” says Bill Osmunson. Bill says the best way to contact him is through his email address: bill@teachingsmiles.com.
ICWA and CHD members to March in Covington Days Parade
For the third year in a row, you can join Informed Choice Washington and the Washington chapter of Children's Health Defense in the Covington Days Parade on Saturday, July 19! The effort is led by the South Puget Sound group, and will meet at 9:00 AM for a 10:00 AM start. They anticipate to be done marching by 11:00 or 11:30 AM. This isn’t just a parade—it’s an energizing, high-visibility opportunity to engage hundreds of new people with our message of informed medical choice.
Just send an email to contact@informedchoicewa.org if you are interested have questions.
ICWA Drills Board of Health on Vaccines
During the public comment period at last Wednesday’s Board of Health (BOH) meeting, ICWA volunteers gave the Board members plenty that they needed to hear.
At the Vaccine Advisory Committee (VAC) meeting last April 10, Natalie Chavez drilled Department of Health (DOH) Chief Medical Officer Tao Kwan-Gett for his ignorant lie at the previous day’s BOH meeting in which he said the following:
Measles activity continues to increase nationally and globally. Of course, we are closely following the Gaines County, Texas, outbreak, which has spread to eighteen additional counties in Texas as well as two surrounding states. Texas has reported nearly 500 cases, mostly centered around the Mennonite community. There are fifty-six hospitalizations and two deaths, both in children.
Still, the BOH needed to hear this, and Natalie gave it to them:
“It was disturbing for me to hear the measles update at the Board of Health Meeting on April 9,” she said. “I found the information shared at the BOH meeting regarding the two child deaths as very offensive and disrespectful. First off, nobody, including doctors, should be mentioning or discussing the deaths of the two children unless they have thoroughly reviewed the children's medical records.”
The Covenant Children's Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, released eight-year-old Daisy Hildebrand's medical records to her family soon after her death, and approximately four doctors had reviewed her records before the last BOH and VAC meeting.
“Daisy died of acute respiratory distress syndrome, secondary to hospital, acquired pneumonia,” Natalie informed the board. “One medical doctor who analyzed her records has extensive experience in pulmonary and critical care medicine. He stated, ‘The causative organism was a highly antibiotic-resistant E. coli (‘superbug’), which she contracted during the first hospital ICU [intensive care unit] stay.’ So yes, her death was preventable, and not because she did not get a MMR vaccine, but because she was not given a correct antibiotic, one that would have saved her life.”
Natalie then told the board that the hospital staff deviated from the standard of care and waited days before they took a sputum culture. The test results showed that Daisy had E. Coli bacteria in her lungs, and the results did not come back until just a few hours before her death when she was already on a ventilator.
“Daisy had numerous risk factors for hospital acquired pneumonia, including previous antibiotics,” Natalie said. “For her previous ICU stay showed she was being immunosuppressed, and her medical records indicate that she had prior diagnoses of a mononucleosis throat infections, and her parents had been trying to schedule for her to get surgery to have her tonsils removed. She was a very sick child, although honestly, it wouldn't have mattered if Daisy had had terminal cancer. Because of the measles vaccine, obsessed mainstream media and doctors would still have pushed their inaccurate measles death narrative, which is very disturbing, disrespectful, and offensive, especially to Daisy's parents, and the six-year-old girl who died before Daisy. Her death was caused by a medical error. So yes, both deaths were preventable, and it sounds like lawsuits are forthcoming as they should be.”
Bob Runnells drilled the DOH for its lack of clarity and slow rollout of the HHS changes around COVID-19 shot guidelines for children six months through seventeen years, and for pregnant women.
“As I understand it, the websites on CDC are in various states of flux, and I think the DOH sites are also in flux. So, for the DOH representative on the Board here, I'm hoping that clarity can still be provided. I think there's a lot of work to be done. It's probably in work.” Bob said. “but I'm looking at the COVID-19 Vaccine Information page where it was updated on May 29. The CDC’s changed child and adolescent immunization schedule now reflects shared clinical decision-making of COVID-19 vaccines for all children aged six months to seventeen years. These are really the recommendations from the CDC. I thought that [recommendation] was a proper noun, where some states even turn that into a mandate in their schedules.”
‘Shared decision making’ is very different than a CDC ‘recommendation.’
Bob then pointed out that the information the DOH is still citing an out-of-date CDC website:
“And so I think you're confusing all the people who might be reading the DOH website on these changes, and I just urge for more completeness and clarity. Are you formally recommending it still, even though the CDC has stopped recommending? I’m just looking for clarity as these positions are unwound.” Bob concluded.
At 0:35:10, Lisa Templeton warned the BOH and the public about the FDA's recent approval of Moderna's latest Covid shot, mNEXSPIKE, newly approved for ages twelve and up.
“The product underwent limited trials with major gaps in safety and efficacy,” Lisa told the board. “About 11,500 people were split into two groups. One got another vaccine: Spikevax, which is not a true placebo. Safety testing included only 689 people, which is an underpowered sample, too small to detect most harms. The package insert nonetheless discloses that 2.7% of the clinical trial participants experienced serious adverse reactions.”
Lisa told the board that the public deserves full disclosure of this risk.
The trials didn't test prevention of illness or hospitalization or death. They only tested for antibody response, which is a weak surrogate marker for real protection. Unlike Spikevax, mNEXSPIKE uses self-amplifying mRNA, which is an entirely different platform that replicates inside cells and extends RNA expression. This platform lacks basic safety data and again was compared only to an earlier non-equivalent vaccine, not to an inert placebo.
In case the BOH and the DOH never take the time to look at the package insert for mNEXSPIKE, Lisa let them know all about it:
The package insert confirms myocarditis and pericarditis risk highest in males, ages twelve to twenty-four. Myocardial damage is permanent. Those cells don't regenerate, and the damage appears on MRI scans. The insert also notes that data on mNEXSPIKE in pregnant women are insufficient to assess vaccine-related risks. It also hasn't even been evaluated for carcinogenicity genotoxicity or effects on male fertility in animals or humans.
Lisa concluded her comment with this recommendation:
At the very least, I ask that the board insist on rigorous, long-term transparent trials, measuring real-world outcomes, not just antibody levels and comparing against inert placebo.
Washingtonians expect science, not marketing, and we deserve transparency. Not another rushed product rollout that seems to be fueled more by profit motive than scientific integrity.
Lastly, we note this anonymous pro-COVID vax public comment (see page 36) sent in through a generic submission form:
Public Health and Vaccine availability
I hope that WA state will continue to promote the COVID vaccine to protect children and pregnant women. Leaving these vulnerable groups without the option to protect themselves because of the ill-informed beliefs of an anti-vax activist at the federal level is unconscionable. One of the things that I love about WA is that we allow people to have the choice to access needed health care. I hope that we can set an example as a place that promotes public health and prevention regardless of popularity and follow the science.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
We guess the commenter didn’t actually read the new CDC changes, but rather a sky-is-falling headling from the New York Times. They obviously did not know that COVID shots are still available - for those willing to ignore the warnings. We hope this person just doesn’t believe very much is their strange stance since they did not leave a reply email and did not want to be contacted again.
Thanks for reading the Weekly News - an all-volunteer newsletter on matters affecting public health policies in Washington State.
