When the FDA licensed Moderna’s new mRNA flu vaccine last week, legacy media coverage focused almost exclusively on efficacy.

The pivotal trial reported that the vaccine was “26.6% more effective” than a conventional flu vaccine at preventing protocol-defined influenza-like illness.

What received far less scrutiny was a much more serious problem in the trial data published in The New England Journal of Medicine—much of it relegated to an appendix behind a paywall.

An analysis of that appendix alongside the FDA’s own briefing document exposes clear regulatory malfeasance.

A statistically significant safety signal from the pivotal trial was systematically diluted until it disappeared from the official story.

The safety signal

Moderna’s pivotal Phase 3 trial (P304) enrolled roughly 40,000 adults aged 50 and older, randomised 1:1 to either the company’s mRNA-1010 vaccine or a traditional trivalent flu vaccine.

This study evaluated an “optimised” version of Moderna’s vaccine after earlier versions produced disappointing efficacy results.

Even with this updated formulation, the headline “26.6% relative efficacy” figure was misleading. In absolute terms, the vaccine reduced the risk of illness by just 0.8%.

Most concerning, however, were the serious adverse event (SAE) data.

The six-month data show that 449 participants in the mRNA group experienced at least one SAE, compared with 389 in the conventional group—an excess of 60 people.

So, while the pivotal trial showed there were 4 fewer influenza hospitalisations in the mRNA group, 60 additional people experienced an SAE.

SAEs are not mild events—they are usually severe enough to require hospitalisation, threaten life, cause significant disability, or result in death.

The imbalance of SAEs in Moderna’s pivotal trial was statistically significant—meaning it was unlikely to be a random fluke.

Yet in the briefing documents presented to the FDA’s advisory committee, VRBPAC, the agency characterised SAEs as “balanced.”

So how did the FDA make the SAE imbalance disappear?

Making serious adverse events disappear

The short answer is that the FDA used pooled data that obscured the safety signal.

Specifically, the agency relied on Moderna’s own “Integrated Safety Summary,” which combined data from four separate Phase III trials (P301, P302, P303 and P304), involving nearly 72,000 participants.

Once the pivotal trial P304 was combined with the other trials, the SAE rate became 3.1% in the mRNA group versus 2.9% in the comparator group—allowing the FDA to state that the rates were “balanced.”

Pooling data across clinical trials is common when regulators are looking for rare events. But the four trials Moderna pooled were very different in many aspects.

They tested different mRNA vaccine formulations against different flu vaccines—standard-dose and high-dose, quadrivalent and trivalent—across different age groups and countries, with follow-up ranging from six months to a year.

When these disparate trials were combined into a single analysis, the safety signal that stood out in the large pivotal trial was diluted.

The FDA accepted the approach—despite being aware of the problem.

In an appendix to its own briefing document, the FDA acknowledged that differences between the trials could produce safety variations “not fully captured by pooled analyses”—but proceeded anyway.

Table 6 of the FDA’s own review makes the switch even clearer (see below).

For the first 28 days after vaccination, when serious adverse events were still balanced between the groups, the agency reported safety results from the pivotal P304 trial alone (purple box).

But as more SAEs accumulated over the following months, a statistically significant imbalance emerged.

Instead of reporting those longer-term results from P304 in the same way, the FDA switched to Moderna’s pooled analysis (red box), where the signal was diluted enough for the agency to continue describing the rates as “balanced.”

The pooled analysis also obscured a concerning pattern in all-cause mortality.

In the pivotal trial P304, there were 40 deaths in the mRNA arm versus 34 in the comparator arm.

In the preceding trial P303, deaths were consistently higher across all three mRNA sub-studies:

• Sub-study 1 (mRNA vs Standard Trivalent): 5 deaths in the mRNA-1010 arm vs. 1 death in the comparator arm (5 vs 1).

• Sub-study 2 (mRNA vs High-Dose Trivalent): 3 deaths in the mRNA-1010 arm vs. 2 deaths in the comparator arm (3 vs 2).

• Sub-study 3 (mRNA vs Standard Quadrivalent): 3 deaths in the mRNA-1010 arm vs. 1 death in the comparator arm (3 vs 1).

Notably, in Sub-study 1, Moderna’s own trial investigators assessed one of the five deaths in the mRNA group as caused by the vaccine—the same product that has now been licensed.

Together, these numbers raise serious concerns about a possible excess in mortality in the mRNA groups—a pattern the FDA failed to highlight.

One rule for efficacy, another for safety

The FDA’s handling of efficacy reveals an even more striking double standard.

For efficacy, the agency relied strictly on study P304—the large pivotal trial testing the exact formulation submitted for licensure.

Earlier trials of Moderna’s vaccine had produced weaker efficacy results—and in at least one case, negative efficacy. Had the FDA pooled those trials for efficacy, the “26.6% efficacy” figure would almost certainly have been substantially lower.

But, as noted above, when the pivotal trial produced an unfavourable safety result, the FDA did the opposite—it pooled the data.

One approach maximised the efficacy. The other diluted the safety concerns.

Who is protecting the public?

On the surface, the FDA says Moderna’s flu mRNA vaccine is “safe and effective.”

Dig deeper, and the pivotal trial shows a statistically significant excess of participants experiencing SAEs.

Dig deeper still, and you discover the statistical trickery Moderna used—and the FDA accepted—to make the SAE signal disappear.

This brings us back to a fundamental question I have raised over years of reporting on regulatory failure.

When the FDA accepts the manufacturer’s trial design, adopts its data analyses, and rubber-stamps statistical methods that dilute a safety signal, who is actually protecting the public from harm?

Further reading:

June 2026: FDA poised to approve Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine despite earlier rejection

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For several years, concerns over excessive DNA contamination in Covid-19 mRNA vaccines have been investigated almost entirely by independent scientists.

Researchers such as Kevin McKernan and David Speicher have continued to publish findings suggesting that levels of residual plasmid DNA in the vaccines exceed the regulatory limit of 10 nanograms per dose.

Regulators, meanwhile, have consistently maintained that their own testing shows residual DNA levels remain comfortably within acceptable limits.

Then, briefly last year, it appeared that these questions might finally receive official scrutiny.

The newly reconstituted Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP) signalled plans to examine previously overlooked manufacturing and quality issues, including DNA contamination.

Around the same time, FDA scientist Dr Tracy Høeg, then at the Centre for Biologics Evaluation and Research, publicly acknowledged that key scientific questions remained unanswered.

But that window of official inquiry closed quickly.

Following a federal court ruling, ACIP’s progress stalled, Hoeg is no longer at the FDA, and fundamental questions about residual DNA remain unresolved.

Once again, much of the work has fallen to independent scientists.

Now, genomics expert Kevin McKernan’s latest work brings us a step closer to a possible explanation for why measurements of residual DNA have differed so dramatically.

At first glance, his recent article is daunting. It runs for pages and is filled with technical language about PCR chemistry, molecular biology and laboratory engineering.

But for all its technical complexity, the central premise is fairly straightforward.

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Anthony Fauci has been held in contempt after refusing to answer 111 questions at last week’s Senate hearing.

Today, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines to advance a resolution that could ultimately result in criminal prosecution.

All eight Republicans voted in favour, while five Democrats opposed it and two more voted against it by proxy.

Before the final vote, Democrats made five attempts to halt or delay proceedings—seeking more documents, testimony from Fauci’s lawyer, a guarantee that any referral would first go before the full Senate, and a court order granting him immunity.

Every attempt failed.

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At the end of 2020, the public was sold a story of scientific triumph.

The FDA had authorised the first Covid vaccines, television networks broadcast healthcare workers rolling up their sleeves, and public health officials urged millions to get vaccinated with assurances that the shots offered the path back to normal life.

But inside Dr Anthony Fauci’s private diary, a starkly different reality was already taking shape.

Within weeks of the first vaccine authorisations, the scientists closest to Fauci were no longer discussing how the vaccines would end the pandemic, but whether emerging variants might quickly undermine them.

The public never heard that conversation.

On 9 January 2021, less than a month after the first Covid-19 vaccine received emergency authorisation in the U.S., Fauci documented a conversation with Columbia University virologist Dr David Ho.

Ho had begun testing vaccine-induced antibodies against the newly emerging variants from the United Kingdom and South Africa, and the early results revealed some “disturbing data.”

Fauci summarised the discussion. “It looks like the vaccine might be compromised. We need to prepare to modify the vaccine if this observation holds up.”

So, while the public was celebrating the arrival of the vaccines, Fauci’s inner circle had already begun questioning how long they would remain effective.

Three days later, on 12 January, the concern deepened when Fauci recorded that the South African variant caused a “2 to 3-fold” reduction in the potency of vaccine-induced antibodies.

Fauci soon began discussions about using Bill Gates funding to jump-start the development of variant-matched, next-generation mRNA vaccines. Yet when speaking to reporters, Fauci offered only a brief, tentative remark that the variant “could be having some impact... perhaps even for the vaccine. We don’t know that.”

The private warnings escalated again on 14 January when Ho sent Fauci a note warning that “Mutants are becoming very troublesome.”

Ho had observed a “profound” loss of neutralising activity across every serum sample tested, stating that the emerging variants “threaten the effectiveness of the current vaccines” and that additional mutations “could render current monoclonal antibodies and vaccines useless.”

In the weeks that followed, rather than levelling with the public about these scientific uncertainties, official messaging did the exact opposite by becoming increasingly confident.

Media commentators eagerly promoted the narrative, with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow assuring viewers that “the virus stops with every vaccinated person.”

Fauci reinforced that same illusion on 16 May 2021 when he appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation, he declared that when someone gets vaccinated, “you become a dead end to the virus… the virus is not going to go anywhere.”

Those assurances carried devastating real-world consequences. They built false expectations, drove individual medical choices, and later became the moral rationale for aggressive mandates that forced millions to choose between an injection and their livelihood.

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This weekend CNN anchor Dana Bash invited Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. onto State of the Union to discuss vaccines, public health and America’s preparedness for the next pandemic.

The conversation quickly settled into familiar territory.

Bash accused Kennedy of spreading vaccine misinformation, defended established public health positions and appealed repeatedly to scientific consensus.

Kennedy pushed back. If Bash wanted to invoke “the science,” he expected her to debate it. Whenever she offered a broad assertion, he returned to the same demand. “Cite me the study.”

The exchange exposed a fundamental weakness in modern health reporting.

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Anthony Fauci walked into Capitol Hill with something highly unusual for a congressional witness. A sweeping pre-emptive presidential pardon from former President Joe Biden covering more than a decade of his federal conduct.

He arrived legally shielded from federal prosecution for offences covered by that pardon.

But over the next three or so hours, the former face of America’s pandemic response refused to answer every substantive question senators put to him.

Instead, he repeated the same prepared response 111 times.

“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”

He refused to explain his private diaries, defend his pandemic decisions or address US-funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

By the end of the hearing, that single sentence had become the story everyone was talking about.

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It was only last year that Nobel laureate Drew Weissman spoke with complete confidence about the mRNA technology he helped create.

When asked whether the genetic material or lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) used in Covid-19 vaccines could persist in the body or spread far beyond the injection site, his answer was unequivocal.

“It is absolutely impossible….. The RNA is gone in days,” said Weissman, who shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine for co-inventing the technology

But four years earlier, behind closed doors, his message was very different.

Newly released documents made public by Senator Rand Paul reveal that Weissman privately alerted Anthony Fauci to some concerning findings from his own laboratory.

Those findings triggered discussions among some of the NIH’s most senior vaccine scientists before eventually finding their way into Fauci’s personal diary.

Still emerging technology

When the pandemic hit, mRNA vaccines were still an emerging technology. Just two years prior, Weissman and his colleagues published a review in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

While praising the technology’s potential, they highlighted unresolved hurdles—including RNA instability, unwanted immune reactions, and the challenge of getting genetic material into the right cells.

Though initial animal studies showed promise, early human trials yielded modest results, leading the authors to urge “cautious expectations.”

Significant questions also remained around safety of mRNA vaccines during pregnancy, as pregnant women were excluded from the pivotal Pfizer and Moderna trials.

Regulators had to rely on animal reproductive data while human data accumulated post-rollout.

It was against this backdrop that Weissman reached out directly to Fauci.

Fauci alerted to new data

On 8 February 2021, Weissman emailed Fauci.

“I wanted to alert you to some new data we generated.”

Weissman reported that when injected into pregnant mice, mRNA-LNPs crossed the placenta and entered the foetus, generating viral proteins and triggering an immune response in the amniotic fluid.

In non-pregnant mice, the LNPs accumulated in the uterus and ovaries.

While these initial experiments used intravenous (IV) delivery at doses roughly 100 times higher than a standard vaccine, they aligned with broader research.

As early as 2013, French scientists had shown that lipid nanoparticles could accumulate in organs such as the ovaries, highlighting the need to understand how different delivery methods behave inside the body.

This was also reflected in regulatory documents for Covid-19 vaccine pre-clinical studies, which showed that mRNA lipid nanoparticles accumulated in organs, including the ovaries.

Weissman wanted to test a more clinically relevant scenario, so he planned to repeat the study using intramuscular (IM) injections, matching standard vaccination practices.

“We are waiting to release the findings until these studies are completed,” Weissman told Fauci, noting he had already alerted the FDA, Moderna, BioNTech/Pfizer, and DARPA.

Fauci replied that evening.

“It would be interesting to see what human dose levels given IM do.”

Three weeks later, on 1 March 2021, Weissman emailed back with a confidential report attached.

“Here is the human dose IM studies in pregnant mice. We still have some concern over the data,” he wrote.

Within the hour, Fauci forwarded the report to Dr John Mascola, director of the NIH Vaccine Research Centre, writing, “Let us discuss.”

Mascola quickly circulated the report to his senior leadership team for review.

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With Senator Rand Paul releasing over 1,000 pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s private diary, readers are getting an unprecedented look behind the curtain.

Many might expect the private reflections of the nation’s most influential public health official to be dominated by the scientific and public health challenges confronting the country. Instead, something else becomes evident.

Amid meetings, phone calls and official duties, Fauci repeatedly paused to catalogue glowing newspaper profiles, television appearances, and celebrity praise.

The pattern began on 20 January 2020, when television host Lou Dobbs called to say that President Trump would soon be in touch. Dobbs told Fauci he had described him to the president as the “smartest person” he knew and urged Trump to speak with him.

Days later, Fauci recorded that the White House had chosen him—rather than CDC Director Robert Redfield—to serve as the administration’s primary spokesperson.

“Bob Redfield just does not come across very well,” he wrote, explaining that Redfield rambled too much, so instead “they are putting me out on all the requests.”

The decision marked a turning point.

Fauci recorded the moment President Trump told him, “Anthony, you are really a famous guy,” before spending the next 20 minutes asking him questions.

Fauci wrote that he was “surprised and very pleased,” adding that those present “were clearly stunned and impressed.”

“All my friends kept saying I was a national hero,” wrote Fauci. Members of Congress told him they felt “safe in [his] arms.”

By late March—as the nation entered historic lockdowns and the economy ground to a halt—Fauci boasted that the “press is going wild with me.”

His diary increasingly resembled a scrapbook of his own celebrity.

He saved clippings about his childhood, his high-school basketball career and his personal life. He documented a petition to make him “Sexiest Man Alive” and even kept stories about “grandmothers who have crushes on me.”

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Anthony Fauci returns to Capitol Hill on July 29 to face fresh questions about the origins of Covid-19 and his role in the pandemic.

For years, Fauci has denied that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan and repeatedly claimed not to recall critical early decisions.

During his January 2024 interview with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, lawmakers counted over 100 instances where he answered, “I don’t recall.”

Now, Senator Rand Paul has released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's private diary, spanning from December 2019 until his retirement at the end of 2022.

Written contemporaneously and never intended for public release, the pages detail key meetings, phone calls, scientific debates, and personal observations as the crisis unfolded.

For the first time, Fauci’s public narrative can be measured directly against his private record.

The initial warning

By late January 2020, the official explanation for the outbreak was already collapsing behind closed doors.

On January 26, Fauci recorded that epidemiological and genomic data indicated the earliest infections occurred weeks before the cluster at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market.

His takeaway was unambiguous: “The market was not the source, it was the amplifier.”

That was a remarkable observation. The seafood market was central to the official outbreak narrative. If it was merely an amplifier, the virus had to have originated elsewhere.

Five days later, on January 31, Jeremy Farrar telephoned Fauci after consulting scientists Kristian Andersen, Eddie Holmes, and Bob Garry about the newly sequenced SARS-CoV-2 genome.

Fauci noted that the scientists found the genome “inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,” focusing specifically on the virus’s furin cleavage site, which “could not have occurred naturally.”

He then noted:

“They bring up the possibility that this could have been deliberately inserted and either accidentally released or deliberately released by a crazy person in the lab—the former being the most likely.”

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For decades, the vitamin K injection has been one of the most routine procedures in newborn care. It is given shortly after birth to protect against a rare but potentially serious bleeding disorder.

Few parents questioned the practice, but that is changing. Hospitals across the United States report that more parents are declining the injection.

A national study of more than 5 million births found that the proportion of newborns not receiving the vitamin K injection rose from 2.9% in 2017 to 5.2% in 2024.

Last month, Senator Angela Alsobrooks and Representative Kim Schrier urged Acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya to begin tracking vitamin K refusal rates nationally, along with cases of vitamin K deficiency bleeding and associated deaths.

The rise in refusals has largely been attributed to “misinformation.” But that explanation is too simplistic.

Many parents simply want to know exactly what product is being offered to their newborn, what alternatives exist, why recommendations differ between countries, and what evidence supports the specific product they are being asked to accept.

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Twenty years ago, a paper published in JAMA changed the way doctors thought about antidepressant use during pregnancy.

The study concluded that women who discontinued the medication during pregnancy were five times more likely to relapse into major depression than those who remained on the medication. It quickly became one of the most influential papers in perinatal psychiatry.

Its findings were incorporated into clinical guidelines, cited by regulators, and eventually referenced in FDA prescribing information.

For many clinicians, it became the definitive evidence that discontinuing SSRIs during pregnancy carried a substantial risk of depressive relapse.

At the time, maternal-foetal medicine specialist Dr Adam Urato noticed something was missing from the study’s disclosures.

He recognised that many of the authors’ financial relationships with manufacturers of antidepressants had not been disclosed.

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This week, Dr Erica Schwartz appeared before the Senate HELP Committee to make her case for leading the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But before the nominee had answered a single question, the terms of her confirmation had already been laid down.

HELP Committee chairman Bill Cassidy wasted no time.

“A lot of this conversation for me is going to revolve around vaccines,” he announced. “Vaccines should be settled.”

He blamed “a flurry of misinformation” around immunisation, saying some people cast doubt on mRNA vaccines “for no other reason than people don’t understand them.”

Mothers and fathers, he said, had become “confused as to whether vaccines are safe to give their children.” The result was thousands of measles infections, with children hospitalised or dying from vaccine-preventable diseases.

Then came the ultimatum.

“Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and effective,” Cassidy declared. “Study after study shows they do not cause autism.”

“Any equivocation on these facts,” he warned Schwartz, “and I shall not be able to support your nomination.”

Only then did the questioning begin.

Confirmation hearings are meant to test a nominee’s judgment, independence and fitness to lead. Instead, Cassidy announced the conclusions he expected Schwartz to affirm before she had given a single substantive answer.

From the outset, it was clear there was no room for dissent.

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Recently, I wrote about how blood pressure guidelines have steadily shifted lower. Treatment thresholds fell, risk calculators expanded, and far more people now start medication years before they develop any symptoms.

After that piece, several clinicians contacted me with a different concern. This time, they weren’t worried about blood pressure being too high. They were worried about it being pushed too low.

What are the harms of lowering blood pressure too much in older people?

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Study 329, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2001, concluded that the antidepressant Paxil was “generally well tolerated and effective” in adolescents.

It has since become one of the most controversial papers in modern psychiatry after internal company documents and subsequent legal proceedings uncovered evidence that its published findings were misleading.

Earlier this year, a lawsuit seeking to force the paper’s retraction was dismissed after a judge found the plaintiff lacked legal standing.

Now, attorney George W. Murgatroyd III has returned with a different legal strategy—one that shifts the focus from the paper itself to Elsevier’s sale of Study 329.

Instead of asking the court to order a retraction, Murgatroyd wants Elsevier to attach a corrective notice to the article before customers pay to access it through its ScienceDirect platform.

At its core, the lawsuit asks whether a publisher can continue selling a paper as trustworthy once it knows the paper no longer meets its own standards.

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One of the world’s leading biostatisticians has concluded that key analyses used to reassure regulators and the public about Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil was fundamentally unsound.

His report, released through the recently settled Robi v. Merck lawsuit, argues that key studies created an illusion of safety rather than providing rigorous proof.

Martin Kulldorff—a biostatistician, former Harvard professor, and senior scientific officer at the US Department of Health and Human Services—examined the data and reports Merck submitted to defend Gardasil.

He identified what he describes as fatal methodological flaws, statistical manipulations, and inadequate analyses that failed to properly evaluate potential risks.

“Merck has done a great disservice to public health,” Kulldorff concludes.

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The Lancet’s latest review of mRNA vaccines, by Blakney and colleagues, presents itself as an authoritative synthesis of the evidence.

Titled “Safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines: a mechanistic and public health perspective,” it promises to examine the mRNA platform from mechanistic, preclinical, clinical and public health perspectives.

Instead, it delivers a remarkably confident account that gives little attention to many of the scientific and regulatory questions that have shaped debate over the past five years.

What makes the review effective as messaging is not that it ignores controversy, but that it appears to engage with it.

It names difficult issues — residual DNA, biodistribution, frameshifting and IgG4 class switching — only to swiftly minimise them with reassuring language.

The effect is to create the appearance of critical scrutiny while reassuring readers that these concerns are either resolved or insignificant.

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For more than two decades, Karl Stefanovic was one of Australia’s most recognisable and highest-paid television personalities, helping to shape breakfast television for millions of viewers.

So when Channel Nine parted ways with him after an interview with Tommy Robinson on his independent podcast, it once again sparked the familiar debate about free speech in the media.

Robinson is a polarising British figure. His critics describe him as a far-right, anti-immigration activist, while his supporters argue he has been willing to raise issues that others are reluctant to discuss.

Whether you agree with Robinson, or with Stefanovic’s decision to interview him, is beside the point.

Journalism has never required reporters to agree with the people they speak to — particularly in podcasting, where the boundaries between journalism, commentary and entertainment are often blurred.

What stood out to me, however, was something Stefanovic said afterwards.

Speaking with Piers Morgan this week, he observed that to survive in high-profile anchor roles, presenters often become “bland” in order to stay within the bounds of what the establishment will accept.

To me, it was a quiet admission that staying in those roles often means narrowing the range of questions you're prepared to ask.

I had learned the same lesson years earlier when I was fired from the ABC.

Large institutions, including media organisations, have invisible boundaries. No one sits you down and explains where they lie — you only discover them after you cross one.

While making factual documentaries for the national broadcaster, I came to understand that journalism often makes institutions uncomfortable when it asks questions they would rather not confront.

You don’t necessarily get into trouble because your reporting is inaccurate — mine wasn’t. More often, it’s because you’ve moved outside the range of opinions your organisation is willing to defend.

Years later, while reporting for The BMJ on topics such as regulatory capture, Covid vaccines and the UK Covid Inquiry, I encountered a similar problem. Certain experts would quietly become off-limits. Some were regarded as too controversial to interview. Others, I was told, had effectively been “blacklisted.”

But journalism isn’t about protecting audiences from difficult voices. It’s about challenging claims, testing arguments, and trusting readers to weigh the evidence for themselves.

That’s why the Stefanovic story resonated with me. Not because I hold any strong view about Tommy Robinson — to be honest, I knew very little about him until this controversy broke, and I wasn’t a regular viewer of breakfast television.

What interests me is the larger question it raises — why have we become so uncomfortable listening to people we disagree with?

Journalists have always interviewed controversial figures. It’s part of understanding the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.

What worries me is that we’ve become less confident—both in our own ability and in the public’s—to hear competing ideas without feeling threatened.

A healthy democracy should trust its citizens to listen, think critically, and reach their own conclusions.

I’ve now spent enough time in both mainstream media and independent journalism to know that neither model is perfect.

Every approach comes with its own pressures and incentives — advertising, sponsorships, algorithms, and the constant need to capture attention in a crowded media landscape.

The internet is full of commentators, influencers and entertainers competing for attention. Many have built successful businesses around opinion, outrage and the free speech debate. Good luck to them. Audiences clearly value that kind of content.

I didn’t become an independent journalist to become an influencer. I did it because I want my work to be influential.

My goal has always been to produce original reporting — obtaining documents, interviewing sources, scrutinising evidence, and holding powerful institutions to account.

That kind of work is slower and often less financially rewarding than reacting to headlines, but I believe it still matters.

I've deliberately chosen to remain free of advertising on Substack and independent of industry funding. I'm fortunate that the Brownstone Institute helps supports me through a fellowship, giving me the freedom to pursue investigations that might otherwise be difficult to sustain.

I still hope that, over time, MD Reports will be sustained primarily by readers who value careful, evidence-based, independent journalism.

If you believe this kind of reporting still matters, I’d be grateful if you considered becoming a paid subscriber.

A subscription costs US$75 / year, which amounts to about US$6.25 / month, and helps fund the time and research required for this work.

If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you — your support means a lot to me. And if you know someone who might value this kind of journalism, I’d appreciate it if you considered gifting them a subscription.

Thank you for reading, for sharing my work, and for making it possible for me to keep digging into important stories and asking the tough questions.

Maryanne

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The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced it will end the emergency declarations that allowed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to fast-track Covid-19 products under Emergency Use Authorisations (EUAs).

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the extraordinary circumstances that justified those emergency powers “no longer exist.”

On the surface, it sounds like a major shift, but for most people, very little will actually change.

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Behind closed doors at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2016, senior figures from the Gates Foundation and the World Bank proposed a new approach to pandemic preparedness: large-scale simulations modelled on military war games.

Newly obtained internal emails show how the idea — referred to as “Germ Games” — gained rapid momentum and drew in the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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A cache of internal emails obtained from within the US National Institutes of Health has exposed years of strategic planning for future pandemics involving governments, foundations, international organisations, and pharmaceutical companies.

The documents, stretching back to at least 2016, show that Dr Francis Collins, Director of the NIH from 2009 to 2021, was at the centre of these efforts.

In that role, he oversaw the allocation of the agency’s substantial research budget, which ran into tens of billions of dollars annually.

The emails reveal Collins working closely with the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, World Bank, World Economic Forum, the African Academy of Sciences, and major pharmaceutical companies to strengthen research infrastructure, regulatory readiness, and international coordination well before Covid appeared.

For the public, the Covid response was presented as an unexpected crisis. Governments appeared to be making difficult decisions while navigating profound uncertainty.

But these emails tell a different story.

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