ICWA Weekly News 6-18-25
WA takes official stance against Kennedy's ACIP restructuring; Youth suicides in WA during COVID-19 Pandemic; More Pharmacy Shutdowns in Washington; Volunteer Opp - 🎺Covington Days Parade🥁 - July 19
In this issue:
Governor Ferguson takes official stance against Kennedy’s vaccine committee firings; Dr. Robert Malone hired
Youth Suicides During COVID-19 Pandemic in Washington
More Pharmacy Shutdowns in Washington
Plus: upcoming event July 19, Covington Parade (South Puget Sound)
June 13, 2025 Episode of Informed Life Radio—notes and links
The 4th Phase of Water
Guest: UW Professor Gerald Pollack.
Dr. Pollack shares insights from his groundbreaking research on exclusion zone (EZ) water—also known as the fourth phase of water—including how it forms and its vital role in human health. He also reflects on navigating a successful academic career while challenging prevailing scientific paradigms. Joining him for a warm reunion is co-host Xavier Figueroa, Dr. Pollack’s former postdoctoral student.
Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life: A New, Unifying Approach to Cell Function (2001)
The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor (2013)
Biological transmutation: a historical perspective: JCMNS-Vol7-1.pdf (2012)
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: What It Is & Benefits, Side Effects (Cleveland Clinic)
Upcoming show June 20th: What is Fluoride? with guest Dylan Moore
Drawing from his chemical engineering background, Dylan Moore of Irida TV differentiates between naturally-occurring fluoride and the industrial byproduct that’s added to municipal water. He discusses the element’s high electronegativity/volatility, potential to disrupt thyroid and calcium functions, and urges listeners to question the safety, purity, and origin of these additives while suggesting an unexpected approach for the public to advocate for water fluoridation policy change.
Tune in at 4 PM: KKNW 1150 AM, X, Rumble, Facebook
Gov. Ferguson Takes Official Stance against Kennedy’s Vaccine Committee Firings - Malone Hired
As much euphoria as there was that Children’s Health Defense founder Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was in a position to “Make America Healthy Again” after the 2024 election, the question remained on how much would his reforms trickle down to the deep state of Washington, a state and federal-tax-funded promoter of vaccines, and to which its Board of Health members are appointed by the governor.
Despite opposition from Washington Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, Kennedy was confirmed as the new head of Health and Human Services (HHS). On June 9, he made his most sweeping decision thus far by retiring all seventeen members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), who collectively decide what goes on the recommended vaccine schedule. (We wonder: was it because the current group thinks 94 doses before the age of 18 makes complete sense?)
This unprecedented news was also covered by the Epoch Times, who reported that all the fired committee members were appointed during the Biden administration, with eleven set to serve until 2027 or 2028. Kennedy alleged that the appointments were made in an effort to “lock in public health ideology and limit the incoming administration’s ability to take the proper actions to restore public trust in vaccines.”
Kennedy’s statements were also covered by the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall), but shared widely by many other news outlets, like The Focal Points. He began with the following image and four paragraphs of Kennedy’s statement:
Vaccines have become a divisive issue in American politics, but there is one thing all parties can agree on: The U.S. faces a crisis of public trust. Whether toward health agencies, pharmaceutical companies or vaccines themselves, public confidence is waning.
Some would try to explain this away by blaming misinformation or antiscience attitudes. To do so, however, ignores a history of conflicts of interest, persecution of dissidents, a lack of curiosity, and skewed science that has plagued the vaccine regulatory apparatus for decades.
That is why, under my direction, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is putting the restoration of public trust above any pro- or antivaccine agenda. The public must know that unbiased science guides the recommendations from our health agencies. This will ensure the American people receive the safest vaccines possible.
Today, we are taking a bold step in restoring public trust by totally reconstituting the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP). We are retiring the 17 current members of the committee, some of whom were last-minute appointees of the Biden administration. Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028.
After dragging its feet on Kennedy’s changes on the COVID-19 shot recommendations, the Washington Department of Health has apparently stepped to the side to let Governor Bob Ferguson attempt to stand up to Kennedy.
Ferguson did so by issuing a press release titled, “California, Oregon and Washington condemn dismissal of CDC vaccine panel, call on other states to join them.”
Here’s the shot the three Governors took at Kennedy:
Governors Gavin Newsom (California), Tina Kotek (Oregon), and Bob Ferguson (Washington) put out a joint statement today condemning U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for dismissing all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and reiterating their states' commitment to following the science to protect public health.
And here’s Ferguson’s reasoning:
Secretary Kennedy claimed that the members of ACIP – experts and physicians that develop recommendations on the use of vaccines – were fueling a "crisis of public trust."
In reality, ACIP has served the nation for 60 years as the trusted, rigorous reference for the nation's immunization recommendations. ACIP members — who have included current and past employees of the Public Health Departments of California, Oregon, and Washington – have extensive immunization expertise, are carefully screened for major conflicts of interest and selected through a lengthy process.
At face value, his statements might seem true since they align with mainstream narratives; but are they substantiated? Gov. Ferguson has obviously not read Kennedy’s book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health for a reality check!
Kennedy persuasively explains Dr. Tony Fauci’s disregard for conflicts of interests - and possible outright corruption - concerning the COVID-19 shots:
Dr. Fauci populated the key FDA and CDC committees with NIAID, NIH, and Gates Foundation grantees and loyalists to insure rubber-stamp approvals for his mRNA vaccines, without any long-term injury studies. More than half of FDA’s VRBPAC committee, which approved EUAs for Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer, and granted final licensure to the Pfizer vaccine, were grant recipients from NIH, NIAID, BMGF, and pharmaceutical companies. More than half the CDC’s ACIP committee participants were similarly compromised.
From the footnote citations, these were some of the tools used to validate the above claims if you want to play around with the data too:
Kennedy also dug up two historical instances of the ACIP’s corruption for Ferguson and his staff to look at. Here’s the first one:
The 2006 meeting of CDC’s ACIP provides an illustrative blueprint for how Tony Fauci and his Pharma partners use their “principal investigators” to control the key FDA and CDC panels that license and “recommend” new vaccines for addition to the childhood schedule.
That 2006 ACIP panel recommended two new blockbuster Merck shots: the Gardasil HPV vaccine for all girls ages nine through twenty-six,[footnote 76] and three doses of a Merck rotavirus vaccine, Rotateq, for infants at ages two, four, and six months.[footnote 77] Both Bill Gates[footnote 78] and Tony Fauci (via NIAID)[footnote 79] had provided seed and clinical trial funding for the development of both Gardasil and the rotavirus vaccine.[80,81]
Merck maintained it had not tested either vaccine against an inert placebo in pre-approval trials, so no one could scientifically predict if the vaccines would avert more injuries or cancers than they would cause.
Nevertheless, the sister FDA panel, VRBPAC, approved Gardasil—to prevent cervical cancer—without requiring proof that the vaccine prevented any sort of cancer, and despite strong evidence from Merck’s clinical trial that Gardasil could dramatically raise risks of cancer and autoimmunity in some girls.[82] ACIP, nevertheless, effectively mandated both jabs. Gardasil would be the most expensive vaccine in history, costing patients $420 for the three-jab series and generating revenues of over $1 billion annually for Merck.[83] That year, nine of the thirteen ACIP panel members and their institutions collectively received over $1.6 billion of grant money from NIH and NIAID.
Pharma and Dr. Fauci similarly rig virtually all the critical drug approval panels using this strategy of populating them with PIs who, bound by financial fealty to Pharma and NIAID funders, reliably approve virtually every new drug upon which they deliberate—with or without safety studies. From 1999 to 2000, Government Oversight Committee (GOC) Chairman Republican Congressman Dan Burton investigated the systemic corruption of these panels during two years of intense investigations and hearings.
According to Burton, “CDC routinely allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on influential advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines . . . while these same scientists have financial ties, academic affiliations and other . . . interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight.”
And here’s the second example of ACIP conflicts cited by Robert Kennedy Jr.:
During the 1998 ACIP session, Dr. Paul Offit sat as one of five full voting members. (There were five additional nonvoting members.) His Rotateq codeveloper, Stanley Plotkin, also sat on the committee. The ACIP Committee unanimously recommended Wyeth’s RotaShield vaccine. The August 2000 Congressional investigation found that the majority of ACIP members were conflicted in that vote. That report found that seven out of ten ACIP working group committee members who voted to approve the rotavirus vaccine in June 1998 had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine. According to the Congressional Report:
The Chairman served on Merck’s Immunization Advisory Board.
One member was under contract with the Merck vaccine division, received funds from various vaccine manufacturers, including Pasteur (now Sanofi), and was under contract as a principal investigator from SmithKline (now GSK).
Another member (of that same ACIP panel) received a salary from Merck as well as other payments from Merck.
Another member was participating in vaccine studies with Merck, Wyeth (now Pfizer), and SmithKline (now GSK).
Another member received grants from Merck and SmithKline (now GSK).
Another member shared a patent on his own rotavirus vaccine funded by a $350,000 grant for Merck to develop this vaccine and was a paid consultant to Merck.
The last of these bullet points referred to Paul “I Have No Conflicts” Offit. Dr. Tony Fauci’s and Pharma’s corrupt control of those two panels allowed Wyeth to obtain both an FDA license and a CDC “recommendation” without having to genuinely safety test this product, a process that would have revealed terrible risks. Even the truncated trials of Wyeth’s RotaShield, conducted with no placebo, revealed serious side effects in babies, including “failure to thrive,” fevers high enough to cause brain injury, and a condition called intussusception, wherein a child’s intestines telescope into themselves, causing an agonizing blockage that, in some instances, results in death.
Just last week on June 10, Nicolas Hulscher shared additional perspectives on the corruption of the ACIP.
He brings up the 2000 U.S. House Committee on Government Reform’s landmark report confirming that even back then, the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel was deeply compromised by industry influence.
The House committee uncovered systemic, ongoing conflicts of interest within both the ACIP and the FDA's vaccine advisory counterpart, VRBPAC:
7 out of 10 members of ACIP’s rotavirus working group—which drafted the recommendation for the Rotashield® vaccine—had direct financial conflicts of interest.
Every ACIP member was granted a conflict-of-interest waiver, regardless of industry ties.
Members were allowed to vote on vaccine recommendations while holding stock in manufacturers, receiving grants, or serving as paid consultants.
RotaShield® was taken off U.S. market in 1999. ACIP voted on October 22, 1999 to no longer recommend use of the RotaShield® vaccine for infants because of an association between the vaccine and intussusception.
In sworn testimony, a CDC ethics official admitted, “We generally give [waivers] to everyone… we give them out freely.”
The above evidence shows Ferguson’s ignorance with the next statement he made in his press release:
The unprecedented, abrupt removal of all current ACIP members less than three weeks from their next meeting is deeply troubling for the health of the nation. ~ Gov. Bob Ferguson
Sorry Mr. Ferguson, but the above evidence shows that a new set of ACIP members is desperately needed. Furthermore, Ferguson went so far as to say that Fauci’s ACIP soldiers referenced above provided the best available science (emphasis added):
California, Oregon, and Washington stood up the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup that assisted during the pandemic and are committed to continuing to work with medical experts, professional organizations, and public health partners to ensure our recommendations reflect the best available science and safeguard the health of all of our residents.
In actuality, Ferguson’s press release looked more like a vaccine promo for Big Pharma with the following statement:
The Departments of Public Health in California, Oregon, and Washington all continue to recommend all individuals age 6 months and older should have access and the choice to receive currently authorized COVID-19 vaccines, with an emphasis on protecting higher risk individuals, such as infants and toddlers, pregnant individuals, older adults and others with risks for serious disease.
Ferguson is promoting a shot that has very low uptake and that is coming under increased pressure to be removed from the market.
The Epoch Times then quoted a June 9 termination notice they were allowed to view:
This email serves as formal notice of your immediate termination as a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. We appreciate your prior service and commitment.
The Epoch Times also noted that Kennedy said the new members, who had not been identified at that time, “will prioritize public health and evidence-based medicine” and that the panel “will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas.”
Without even speaking on the specifics of the new ACIP members, Ferguson took an opposition to them at the get-go as he said the following:
Together, our states depend on the best science and knowledge available to protect public health, including scientific information about immunizations. We have grave concerns about the integrity and transparency of upcoming federal vaccine recommendations and will continue to collaborate to ensure that science and sound medicine prevail to prevent any loss of life.
Instead of hastily condemning the following eight ACIP members that Kennedy picked two days after retiring the seventeen others, Ferguson should honestly assess their credentials and credibility. Here are the new ACIP members, Gov. Ferguson:
Dr. Joseph R. Hibbeln, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist with a career in clinical research, public health policy, and federal service.
Martin Kulldorff, M.D., Ph.D., a biostatistician and epidemiologist formerly at Harvard Medical School and a leading expert in vaccine safety and infectious disease surveillance.
Retsef Levi, Ph.D., professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a leading expert in healthcare analytics, risk management, and vaccine safety.
Dr. Robert W. Malone, a physician-scientist and biochemist known for his early contributions to mRNA vaccine technology.
Dr. Cody Meissner, professor of Pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and a nationally recognized expert in pediatric infectious diseases and vaccine policy.
Dr. James Pagano, a board-certified emergency medicine physician with over 40 years of clinical experience following his residency at UCLA.
Vicky Pebsworth, OP, Ph.D., RN, who holds a doctorate in public health and nursing from the University of Michigan.
Dr. Michael A. Ross, clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at George Washington University and Virginia Commonwealth University, with a career spanning clinical medicine, research, and public health policy.
The most notable pick to our readers - or infamous of you’re a trolling DOH employee - is Dr. Robert Malone. That’s right, the Dr. Malone who smoothly articulated the hazards of the COVID-19 shots on the June 2021 Darkhorse podcast (episode: How to Save the World in 3 Steps) with Bret Weinstein and Steve Kirsch. And as J.P. Sears said at the January 2022 Washington D.C. rally, it was Robert Malone who “blew open the dam” on a Joe Rogan Experience interview. The same Robert Malone, who at that January rally, quoted St. Augustine: “The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.”
Now, he’ll have the ability to set truth free from an official podium.
Sofia Karstens, co-founder of Free Now Foundation, wrote in her guest essay on Malone’s Substack:
When I encouraged him [Dr. Malone] back in November, just after the election, to pursue an official capacity, his reply was, ‘Absolutely not. I have zero interest in being stabbed and shot in the back by everyone on all sides for 4 years thank you very much.’ He had already suffered through that crucible during COVID and knew the political terrain. He preferred working with states or private partners, where bureaucratic constraints wouldn’t muzzle urgent action.
He didn’t seek a federal appointment, but when Kennedy asked him – with the moral urgency of a country in collapse – Malone chose service over safety. He strapped back into his armor not for ambition, but out of obligation. And that’s precisely what makes him so dangerous to the institutional elite. He doesn’t need them. He can’t be bought. And he knows how to beat them.
It’d be interesting to see what Ferguson and his staff would think of Dr. Malone’s credentials, which Ms. Karstens lists in some detail:
Dr. Malone was the original inventor of mRNA and DNA vaccination technologies (1989, with nine issued patents) as well as in-vitro and in-vivo RNA transfection and multiple non-viral DNA and RNA/mRNA delivery technologies (mRNA as a drug).
He is a scientist and physician, specializing in public policy, clinical research, medical affairs, regulatory affairs, project management, proposal management (large grants and contracts), vaccines, and biodefense. This includes writing, developing, reviewing, and managing vaccine, bio-threat, and biologics clinical trials and clinical development strategies.
He was involved in developing, designing, and providing oversight of approximately forty phase 1 clinical trials and twenty phase 2 clinical trials, as well as five phase 3 clinical trials.
He has served as medical director/medical monitor on phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trials, and served as principal investigator on some of those. Examples of his infectious disease pathogen advanced (clinical phase) development oversight experience include HIV, Influenza (seasonal and pandemic), Plague, Anthrax, VEE/EEE/WEE, Tularemia, Tuberculosis, Ebola, Zika, Ricin toxin, Botulinum toxin, and Engineered pathogens.
Malone has a history of assembling and managing expert teams that focus on solving complicated biodefense challenges to meet US Government requirements. He was instrumental in enabling the PHAC/rVSV ZEBOV (“Merck Ebola”) vaccine to move forward quickly towards BLA and (now recently granted) licensure.
During Zika, Malone pioneered and publicized the use of repurposed drugs to fight infectious disease outbreaks when he realized that chasing a rapidly mutating infectious disease outbreak with a yet-to-be-developed vaccine was a fruitless endeavor. This was codified in a peer-reviewed paper published in PLOS: NTD. This article has been viewed almost 50,000 times and has many citations.
He led a large team from January 10, 2020 and well into the pandemic, focused on clinical research design, drug development, computer modeling, and mechanisms of action of repurposed drugs for COVID-19 treatment.
He has approximately 100 peer-reviewed publications and published abstracts and has about 15,000 citations of his peer-reviewed publications and patents, as verified by Google Scholar. He has sat on or served as chairperson on numerous NIAID and DoD study sections as well as been a consultant for the World Health Organization during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks.
Dr. Malone has testified at the US Senate, US House, the Texas State Senate, the Tennessee State Senate, the Louisiana State Senate, and spoken or testified at the UK Parliament (Dec, 2023), European Parliament.
Karsten further noted Pharmedia’s reaction to the Malone appointment:
Dr. Malone’s appointment triggered a predictable media offensive, laced with insinuation and omission. Major outlets, operating in lockstep, flooded the digital landscape with headlines crafted to imply fraud without making refutable claims. Phrases like “played an early role in mRNA development…” and “claims to have invented…” flooded search results. They planted seeds of doubt without offering substance – classic psyop strategy.
Let’s make this plain: the establishment isn’t reacting this way because Dr. Malone lacks credibility. They’re reacting this way because he threatens everything upon which they rely to maintain control.
Unfortunately, this media reaction is hovering over Ferguson, giving him a kind of top cover.
We will be watching as he and the DOH try to escape all the lions being set free by Kennedy’s HHS.
For further reading, these are other sources consulted for this article:
Youth Suicides During COVID-19 Pandemic in Washington
According to Karl Kanthak in a June 11 article by The Defender, a growing number of school administrators in the U.S. are excluding students with vaccine exemptions during outbreaks, even though these exclusion policies lead to increased risks, and have resulted in suicide fatalities. Karl points out a possible solution, that blanket exclusion policies should be informed by a proper risk analysis, weighing potential harms of barring students from attendance.
Kanthak has researched school vaccine exemption regulations in numerous states and has provided written and oral briefings regarding vaccine exclusion risks and safety to health and education governing boards.
He said a growing number of schools are “recklessly ordering” students with vaccine exemptions to stay home, even though “They have no idea what the student’s mental status is.”
“There was no research as to the unintended consequences of this policy,” Kanthak said. When he asked officials at the Washington State Department of Health whether they consulted with state mental health authorities before enacting their exclusion policies for vaccine-exempt schoolchildren, they didn’t respond.
“Everyone’s afraid of questioning any aspect of vaccines or the vaccination program because you’ll be labeled anti-vax,” Kanthak said.
School districts and state health boards haven’t conducted studies on the potential harms of their exclusion policies. However, statistics suggest such policies may be connected to an increased rate of youth suicides in the U.S. in recent years.
Data from the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families shows a sharp increase in adolescent suicides during the COVID-19 pandemic. Suicides had increased to 227.5 per 100,000 youth in 2019 — the year before the pandemic was declared — to a peak of 409.9 per 100,000 in 2021, and 405.1 in 2022.
Remote learning was in place in many Washington schools, at least through the spring of 2021. However, many Washington schools shifted back to remote learning in 2022 following reported COVID-19 outbreaks among students and teachers.
By contrast, official statistics from Sweden, which did not impose lockdowns or school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, show that suicides among young people decreased in 2020 and subsequent years.
A Swedish government commission that investigated the country’s COVID-19 response found the no-lockdown strategy was “fundamentally correct,” and defended the decision to keep schools open, noting the low levels of excess mortality in 2020 and 2021.
Part of the reason Karl became so active researching vaccine law and data was because a Washington youth took his own life in the 2016/17 timeframe when they were excluded from school involuntarily and for an indefinite period of time during a mumps outbreak.
More Pharmacy Shutdowns in Washington
Last January 8, ICWA Weekly News reported on the closing of over thirty Rite Aid stores in Washington.
This month, Newsweek reported the closing of two more Rite Aid stores in Washington:
250 Basin Street SW, Ephrata, WA 98823
248 Bendigo Boulevard S., North Bend, WA 9804
In early May, Rite Aid, which currently operates over 1,200 stores across the U.S., announced that it had filed for bankruptcy for the second time since October 2023. CEO Matt Schroeder cited long-term financial challenges, as well as "rapidly evolving retail and healthcare landscapes," in the announcement.
Rite Aid tried moving into Port Townsend at the end of the last century, where there was a Don’s Pharmacy, which has now been in business for sixty years.
But the city council enforced its no chain store rule "to maintain the city's unique Victoria seaport and surrounding rural character" while maintaining the "vitality of the community's commercial districts and the quality of life of Port Townsend residents."
The Daily Express has reported on the closing of twenty-five Walgreen’s stores across the U.S. in June, including the one on State Highway 303 in Bremerton.
Previously, ICWA Weekly News noted thirty-seven Washington deaths following a COVID-19 shot after administration in a pharmacy.
Missing from the Washington reports of vaccine-related fatalities in VAERS is the death of Victor Simoes, a 34-year-old senior manager at Amazon, who died after taking the COVID-19 shot at a Seattle Safeway Pharmacy.
Because the Seattle healthcare workers did not report the death to VAERS, as they are supposed to do by law, Victor’s mother had to write the VAERS report herself from her home in New York.
ICWA and CHD members to March in Covington Days Parade
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. With a MAHA tailwind, you can help carry a banner, hand out flyers and ‘healthy’ candy, or just walk with other members of the health freedom movement. If you need any enticement, participants will receive a small gift like a tote or water bottle as supplies last.
Just send an email to lisa@informedchoicewa.org if you are interested or have questions.
Wrapping up, here are some recent fave memes from the Robert Malone funnies on Substack. With his new job, will Dr. Malone’s Substack articles and weekly fun posts continue?
This one was obviously posted in relation to his Rally quote above and his new posting to the ACIP committee.
(This one took us a while)
Last one…
Have a fantastic day.
Bret Weinstein.
Just…no. Not even once.