The landmark lawsuit that put Merck’s Gardasil HPV vaccine on trial has ended in a confidential settlement.

After years of litigation, extensive discovery, and weeks of courtroom testimony, attorneys for plaintiff Jennifer Robi confirmed that her claims against Merck have ended.

Michael Baum, an attorney with Wisner Baum representing Robi, confirmed the settlement in a statement to MD Reports.

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Today, Professor Wafik El-Deiry will testify at a U.S. Senate hearing titled, “Plausible Mechanisms of COVID-19 Injections Causing Cancer and Attacks on Scientific Publications.”

The hearing will examine not only the biological mechanisms by which mRNA vaccines may contribute to cancer, but also what lawmakers describe as attacks on scientific publications and the researchers behind them.

For El-Deiry, those two issues have become inseparable.

For nearly two years, the Brown University cancer researcher has found himself under sustained attack on PubPeer, a website originally created to improve scientific accountability through post-publication peer review.

PubPeer began with good intentions.

It was launched as a digital extension of the peer review process—an open forum where scientists could flag concerns about published research and continue scrutinising research beyond the walls of academic journals.

At its best, PubPeer offered a space for scientists to highlight genuine errors, expose unethical practices, and improve the quality of the scientific record.

But somewhere along the way, critics say, that mission got lost.

In recent years, PubPeer has morphed into something darker. Anonymous users now comb through scientific papers not to improve science, but to discredit scientists—often over minor, debatable, or decades-old issues.

Critics argue that the platform has become a vehicle for reputational attacks rather than constructive scientific critique.

These anonymous commenters often operate behind pseudonyms. Increasingly, their targets are not fraudsters or charlatans, but respected researchers whose work challenges prevailing narratives or powerful interests.

And when these serial complainers succeed in forcing a correction, investigation, or retraction, it is often celebrated not as a service to science but as a trophy—a scalp to display.

Some have built entire careers around hunting alleged misconduct, earning financial rewards, media attention, speaking engagements and public recognition.

Critics call them something else — vigilantes.

They argue that PubPeer has created a system where anonymous individuals can publicly accuse scientists of misconduct, trigger institutional investigations, and inflict reputational damage without being subject to the same standards of transparency they demand from others.

The result, they say, is a climate of fear. Researchers are increasingly reluctant to pursue controversial questions, challenge orthodoxies, or publish findings that conflict with prevailing narratives.

The risk is not merely criticism, but becoming the target of a prolonged campaign of anonymous allegations that can follow a scientist for years, and shape public perceptions long before any wrongdoing has been established.

The platform has even acquired a nickname among some researchers: Pub-Smear.

El-Deiry is the latest scientist to find himself in the crosshairs.

He is no fringe figure. Over three decades, El-Deiry has built an international reputation in cancer biology, pioneered discoveries in tumour suppressor pathways, founded biotechnology companies, developed cancer therapeutics, and published hundreds of scientific papers.

More recently, he presented concerns about mRNA vaccines and cancer-related pathways to the CDC’s Covid-19 vaccine workgroup and co-authored a paper on the subject with Professor Charlotte Kuperwasser of Tufts University School of Medicine.

According to El-Deiry, the trouble began in 2024.

He published a provocative study suggesting that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein may interfere with the p53 pathway, one of the body’s most important tumour-suppressor mechanisms.

The paper did not claim that Covid-19 vaccines cause cancer. But it raised uncomfortable questions about whether the spike protein could affect pathways involved in cancer protection, and whether future vaccines could be designed to avoid such effects.

It was a politically charged topic. And in today’s scientific climate, questioning dominant narratives can come at a cost.

Within weeks, anonymous PubPeer users were combing through decades of El-Deiry’s previous publications, alleging flaws, demanding retractions, contacting journals and institutions, and casting doubt on his integrity.

Who were they? What were their scientific qualifications? Did they have conflicts of interest? And who, if anyone, was holding them accountable?

This isn’t about shielding scientists from scrutiny or excusing fraud.

Post-publication review, when conducted transparently and fairly, plays an important role in science. Fraud should be exposed and errors should be corrected.

But there is a profound difference between flagging genuine misconduct and launching a reputational ambush against scientists whose work challenges prevailing narratives.

Science thrives on debate.

It does not thrive on anonymous policing, online vigilantism, or self-proclaimed “science sleuths” pursuing personal crusades under the guise of scientific critique.

The impact on El-Deiry’s own career has been impossible to ignore.

In April, Brown University’s Dean of Medicine announced that El-Deiry would be “stepping down” as director of the Legorreta Cancer Center after seven years in the role.

No public explanation was provided for the change in leadership.

But for many scientists following the case, the development raised uncomfortable questions about the power anonymous actors can wield over careers, institutions, and the direction of scientific inquiry itself.

In the following interview, El-Deiry discusses the personal and professional consequences of becoming a target, the impact the controversy has had on his career, and why he believes PubPeer has become something very different from what its founders originally intended.

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For months, a clear message was circulating through Republican political circles.

Vaccine issues were becoming a liability.

As the Trump administration looked ahead to the 2026 midterm elections, strategists were reportedly urging the president to steer clear of vaccine policy and instead focus on other health priorities, alongside inflation, immigration, and the economy.

Concerns about pharmaceutical industry influence, childhood vaccine mandates and the expanding vaccine schedule were increasingly portrayed as politically risky terrain.

That narrative was reinforced by a polling memo released by Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio in late 2025, which was widely interpreted as showing that scaling back the childhood vaccine schedule was unpopular with voters.

The New York Times, for example, reported that polls indicated “Kennedy’s vaccine agenda is a dud, unpopular even with Republicans” and that the White House wanted Kennedy to downplay vaccine issues and focus instead on his more popular healthy-eating initiatives.

But there was a problem.

At roughly the same time that message was taking hold, another Fabrizio poll was telling a very different story.

According to a recent article by Daily Caller journalist Emily Kopp, Fabrizio conducted a survey in October 2025 that found widespread concern about both childhood vaccine mandates and the influence of pharmaceutical companies.

The poll reportedly found that 73% of voters were concerned about childhood vaccine mandates, while 90% expressed concern about the influence of pharmaceutical companies.

What made the findings particularly noteworthy was that Kopp reported that the survey had been commissioned by MAHA Action, the political organisation aligned with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again movement.

Yet the poll was never publicly released.

Kopp’s report on what she described as a “secret poll” immediately raised questions about whether MAHA Action had effectively buried findings that could have bolstered Kennedy’s vaccine agenda.

The story took an unexpected turn when Kopp’s article was later highlighted by The MAHA Report, a publication affiliated with MAHA Action itself.

The article acknowledged that the October survey had never been publicly released, but did not address the obvious question — why hadn’t MAHA Action released the poll.

Seeking clarification, I contacted Tony Lyons, founder of MAHA Action and president of Skyhorse Publishing.

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President Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order directing federal health agencies to re-examine America’s childhood vaccine schedule, reviving an effort that was halted by a federal court earlier this year.

The order instructs the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to revisit a government review that found significant differences between U.S. vaccine recommendations and those used in several other developed countries.

According to the White House, the goal is to align vaccine recommendations more closely with scientific evidence and international practice while preserving vaccine access and parental choice.

The move reopens a debate that has simmered for months.

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The documentary follows David Feldman, a software engineer who unexpectedly found himself at the centre of one of the most contentious debates in modern medicine — whether high cholesterol drives heart disease.

I first met Feldman around 2018 at a low-carb conference in Colorado. Back then, he was walking around with a laptop full of graphs and data, enthusiastically showing anyone who would listen his theories about cholesterol metabolism.

He wasn’t famous. He wasn’t trying to build a brand. He was just a curious engineer trying to solve a problem that didn’t make sense to him.

Like many people, Feldman had adopted a low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet to improve his health. He lost weight, improved his blood sugar, slept better, and felt healthier overall.

“Everything got better, except one thing. One thing that could not be ignored,” he says in the film.

His LDL cholesterol level skyrocketed.

For most people, that would have been the end of the experiment. They would have abandoned the diet and followed conventional advice, assuming the high cholesterol meant they were heading toward a heart attack.

But not Feldman.

“Suddenly a lot of my fear became fascination,” he says.

Instead of backing away, he started investigating. He tracked everything — meals, blood tests, weight changes, energy intake, and metabolic patterns. What began as self-experimentation soon became an obsession with understanding what was actually happening inside the body.

And that led to the central question driving the entire film:

Why were some people becoming dramatically healthier on ketogenic diets while simultaneously developing extremely high LDL cholesterol?

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In September 2025, then-U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr Marty Makary publicly acknowledged that the agency was investigating reports of child deaths following Covid-19 vaccination.

“We do know at the FDA… that there had been children who have died from the COVID vaccine,” Makary said during a CNN interview.

By that stage, however, a fierce internal dispute had already emerged inside the FDA over what investigators believed the evidence showed — and whether the public should ever see the full findings.

“It really did feel like there was some sort of cover-up going on about the Covid-19 vaccines,” said one individual familiar with the discussions.

MD Reports spoke with several current/former agency officials, advisers, and individuals briefed on the discussions, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss internal FDA deliberations.

At the centre of the controversy was an internal FDA review led by Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, a physician-scientist who was working as a senior scientist inside the FDA’s vaccine division at the time.

FDA officials examined roughly 96 paediatric death reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the government database used to detect potential vaccine-related adverse events.

The review included medical records, autopsy reports, pathology findings, and follow-up investigations conducted by agency staff.

About 25 deaths following Covid vaccination were ultimately considered serious enough for high-level internal discussion inside the agency.

The findings were expected to be presented at a September 2025 meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP), the federal panel that shapes U.S. vaccine recommendations.

But before that could happen, details of the review leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Høeg quickly became the focus of intense media scrutiny and criticism from vaccine advocates and unnamed FDA officials who argued she was relying too heavily on VAERS reports and overstating preliminary findings.

People familiar with the fallout said some FDA staff strongly objected to Høeg’s methods and conclusions and allegedly sought to undermine her credibility by leaking details of the review.

The leak effectively ended plans for a public ACIP discussion and deepened divisions within the FDA over how the findings should be handled.

Some officials believed the findings warranted stronger warnings and greater transparency. Others feared public acknowledgement of vaccine-linked child deaths would damage confidence in the Covid vaccines.

“We know that there are these deaths that are due to the vaccine,” said one source, referring to myocarditis cases and published reports from countries including Korea and Israel.

The controversy intensified after then-FDA vaccine chief Dr Vinay Prasad ordered additional investigation into the deaths identified in Høeg’s review.

Months later, another leak brought the issue back into public view.

In November 2025, an internal memo circulated by Prasad became public. In it, Prasad acknowledged that “at least 10” children had died “after and because of receiving Covid-19 vaccination.”

He described the findings as “a profound revelation.”

“COVID-19 vaccines did result in the death of children,” Prasad wrote. “Dr. Hoeg was correct in her assessment.”

The memo triggered another round of backlash from media outlets and vaccine advocates, many of whom accused Prasad of overstating the evidence before the agency’s analysis had been finalised.

Inside Medicine reported on a Dec 5 memo about a subsequent FDA analysis using a World Health Organization causality framework, which classified zero deaths as “certain,” two as “probable/likely,” and five as “possible.”

But individuals involved in the discussions said pressure steadily mounted inside the agency to “downgrade” the findings with each successive review.

“It seemed like there was a lot of pressure to keep decreasing the number of deaths,” said one source.

“It does seem like they tortured the data to get something that was more palatable.”

At the same time, tensions were also growing around another unresolved issue inside the FDA — residual DNA contamination in Covid mRNA vaccines.

The issue surfaced repeatedly during ACIP discussions throughout 2025, with some advisory group members seeking additional information from the FDA about DNA levels and biodistribution studies involving lipid nanoparticles.

According to individuals familiar with the discussions, those requests were repeatedly delayed.

One individual identified Dr David C. Kaslow, director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR), as the official responsible for liaising with ACIP on the issue.

Another person involved in the discussions described Kaslow as the person “stonewalling” the issue of DNA contamination.

The controversy has since drawn Congressional scrutiny.

In May 2026, Senator Ron Johnson wrote to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. referencing an FDA memorandum examining paediatric deaths following Covid vaccination.

Johnson said the documents raised concerns about a potential “cover-up” of vaccine safety risks.

The letter confirmed that FDA officials reviewed 96 paediatric deaths following vaccination and ultimately classified seven cases as either “possibly” or “probably” related to Covid vaccination.

It also acknowledged that fatal myocarditis cases represented “new safety information” and documented discussions about revised vaccine warning labels.

By then, the internal dispute at the FDA had expanded beyond the deaths themselves and into a broader fight over vaccine safety warnings.

Høeg later delivered an internal presentation arguing that Covid mRNA vaccines warranted a black box warning — the FDA’s strongest warning reserved for products associated with serious injury or death.

The proposed warning would have explicitly acknowledged the risk of death in children.

“If a vaccine has potential to cause death to children, I think it should be on the label,” said one source familiar with the discussions.

Høeg’s proposal was ultimately rejected by the agency.

In December 2025, Makary publicly confirmed that the FDA had declined an internal recommendation for a black box warning on Covid mRNA vaccines.

Makary argued that earlier safety concerns emerged during the initial multi-dose rollout and might not apply to annual vaccination schedules.

According to individuals familiar with the discussions, Høeg’s persistent probing of Covid vaccine safety issues increasingly isolated her inside the agency.

Her eventual transfer out of the vaccine division and into the FDA’s drug division, CDER, effectively ended her involvement in those investigations.

Only last week, Høeg was fired from the agency after refusing to resign from her position.

To this day, the FDA has never publicly released the full paediatric death review examining 96 VAERS reports of child deaths following Covid vaccination, nor the multiple revised versions of the agency’s subsequent analyses.

“Why do we collect these VAERS reports if we’re not going to explain to the public what we find?” said one source.

Now, months after the internal disputes first erupted, the FDA continues to face questions about what officials knew, when they knew it, and why the agency failed to promptly release its investigations into paediatric deaths following Covid vaccination.

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The U.S. government has taken a major step toward rebuilding the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP) — the federal panel that helps shape vaccine recommendations.

In a Federal Register notice posted for public inspection today, officials announced the “re-establishment” of ACIP after admitting that an earlier attempt to renew the committee’s charter did not comply with updated federal advisory committee rules.

The notice says an April 6 renewal notice is being “withdrawn” because of “an administrative error” involving updated public notification requirements under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which was revised in late 2025.

“As a result, the charter lapsed and the committee must be re-established,” the notice states.

The timing is significant.

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Just days after the resignation of former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, one of his closest allies says she was summoned to her office and told to resign or be fired.

Dr Tracy Beth Høeg — the physician-scientist who became one of the most visible figures in the FDA’s post-Covid reform movement — says she first learned about her apparent departure through media reports.

At the time, she dismissed the reports as ‘rumours’ because nobody inside the agency had told her anything.

Then, hours later, two FDA officials arrived at her office and told her she could either resign or be terminated.

Høeg refused to resign.

“I said I didn’t want to resign,” Høeg told MD Reports in an exclusive interview. “I said I’m not signing a letter of resignation if it’s not my choice.”

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Dr Marty Makary built a public profile as a medical dissident willing to challenge orthodoxy. But once inside the FDA, reform proved far more complicated — and far more contradictory — than many expected.

His departure closes one of the more turbulent chapters in recent FDA history, marked by internal turmoil, senior staff turnover, and several high-profile resignations, including former vaccine chief Vinay Prasad.

In recent days, legacy media reports suggested Makary had come under increasing political pressure over issues ranging from vaping policy to mifepristone and broader regulatory disputes within the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump publicly shared Makary’s resignation message on social media while quickly naming Deputy Commissioner Kyle Diamantas as acting replacement.

Before entering government, Makary became widely known during the Covid era for criticising lockdowns, school closures, booster mandates for healthy young people, and what he saw as institutional groupthink inside public health.

To many people disillusioned by the pandemic response, he represented something hopeful - a prominent surgeon willing to openly break with medical consensus.

But running the FDA is different from criticising it from the outside.

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New internal documents reveal the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) examined reports of persistent sexual dysfunction linked to commonly prescribed antidepressants — but stopped short of strengthening warning labels.

In 2018, a citizen petition urged the FDA to update labels for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs and SNRIs), warning that sexual dysfunction could continue long after discontinuation.

The petition described “genital anaesthesia,” “pleasureless orgasm,” and other symptoms that could persist “for years or indefinitely” after stopping the drugs.

Under federal law, the FDA is required to respond within 180 days, but that response never came.

Years passed without any public indication that the agency had reviewed the evidence or reached a position on the issue.

In 2024, the petitioners sued the FDA to compel a formal response, but the case was dismissed on a technicality after the court ruled the plaintiffs lacked “standing,” meaning they could not show a direct, personal injury caused by the delay.

Now, newly released Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents reveal the FDA did in fact examine the evidence internally — but never formally communicated its conclusions to the petitioners or the public.

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Paxlovid, manufactured by Pfizer, was authorised in late 2021 for people aged 12 and older, catapulting the antiviral into one of the most profitable Covid drugs of the pandemic.

Governments bought the drug in bulk, health agencies promoted it aggressively, and by the time the dust settled, Pfizer had generated about US$28 billion in sales.

Now, years later, two major randomised trials published in the New England Journal of Medicine are challenging the illusion that Paxlovid’s effectiveness had ever been firmly established in real world use.

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The United States has moved to address growing concern about the widespread use of psychiatric drugs, with a new federal plan that puts deprescribing on the national agenda.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today announced an initiative to curb what officials describe as overprescribing in mental health and to support patients who want to reduce or stop medication.

At the same time, four major HHS agencies issued a “Dear Colleague” letter urging clinicians to rethink how mental health care is delivered.

Dear Colleague Letter

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The letter calls for expanded use of non-drug approaches, stronger informed consent, and regular review of whether psychiatric medications remain necessary — including, where appropriate, reducing or discontinuing them.

It emphasises that patients should be informed not just at the start of treatment, but throughout — including the risks of side effects, withdrawal and abrupt cessation.

The announcement follows a summit in Washington, D.C. on the over-medicalisation of mental health, hosted by the MAHA Institute in partnership with the Inner Compass Initiative (ICI).

“Too often when people speak about them, their stories are dismissed as merely anecdotal or unfortunate,” said Cooper Davis, executive director of ICI. “But anecdotes are in fact evidence. Subjective experience matters.”

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A 200-page policy report argues that global public health is no longer being driven by the needs of countries, but by financial incentives.

At the centre of that argument is Professor Ramesh Thakur—a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and principal writer of Kofi Annan’s UN reform report.

He spent years inside the system helping shape it. Now, he argues that in public health, global authority has gone too far.

Thakur says decisions have shifted away from national governments and towards international institutions—particularly the World Health Organization.

The report was developed by a panel of global health and policy experts, co-chaired by David Bell, a former WHO researcher who has been openly critical of pandemic responses.

They are not just calling for reform—they are questioning the entire model: how it’s funded, how decisions are made, and who is actually in charge.

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Jay Bhattacharya has faced a wave of criticism after reports he stopped publication of a CDC study said to show the “benefits” of COVID vaccination while overseeing the agency.

The paper had been slated for the CDC’s in-house journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

The reaction from public health figures and legacy media was immediate and largely one-sided, focusing on suppression rather than the evidence itself.

Now the study has been released.

Published exclusively on Inside Medicine, it reports a 50–55% reduction in COVID-related urgent care visits and hospitalisations — a figure already being used to reinforce claims about vaccine effectiveness.

But the central question has been largely sidestepped — is the study itself reliable?

Critics have not been deterred by the weak study design. If anything, they have doubled down and defended it.

What actually happened

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Recently, I wrote about why the lipid hypothesis won’t die — how the cholesterol story keeps evolving, not by confronting uncertainty, but by shifting the goalposts.

It began with total cholesterol. Then LDL. Then came subfractions, ApoB and Lp(a) — and now, another contender has entered the frame: remnant cholesterol.

Each shift comes with the same promise that this is the missing piece, the explanation for the risk we still can’t account for.

Yet after decades of treatment with cholesterol-lowering drugs, cardiovascular events remain common, even when LDL is low — what’s often described as “residual risk.”

Remnant cholesterol is now being positioned as the explanation for that gap. Some have gone further, promoting it as the next major treatment target.

But our new study suggests it’s time to pause.

When you look at the evidence — not modelling or genetic analyses, but clinical trials where people take drugs and outcomes are measured — the story looks very different.

What is remnant cholesterol?

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Last year, I reported on Robi v Merck — a jury trial in the United States examining claims that Merck’s Gardasil HPV vaccine caused serious harm.

The trial began in January 2025. A jury was empanelled, witnesses were called, and expert evidence was tested in open court.

Then, after 17 days, the proceedings were abruptly adjourned.

Since then, the case has been repeatedly delayed.

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In 2020, Dr Peterson was prescribed the benzodiazepine ‘clonazepam’ during a period of intense personal stress.

According to his family, the medication triggered a prolonged and debilitating reaction that left him with ongoing neurological symptoms.

In her latest update, his daughter says those symptoms have returned, despite him having been off the medication for years.

She describes episodes of akathisia—an extreme state of inner agitation—in stark terms: “the worst thing I’ve ever seen anyone go through… intolerable discomfort that makes people want to crawl out of their skin.”

She also recounts her own experience after stopping an SSRI antidepressant, saying the withdrawal lasted more than two years and left her, at times, unable to function.

Her account is confronting, but it is not unique. It reflects a pattern that has been described for decades and is often under-recognised.

The first time I heard about it

I first came across akathisia more than a decade ago while working on a documentary about antidepressants for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC TV).

I interviewed patients, as well as psychiatrists and researchers from around the world.

Many patients who had tried to reduce or stop their medications reported a cluster of symptoms—marked agitation, insomnia, and anxiety—that did not fit a straightforward relapse of their original condition.

In one conversation, a patient described the sensation as “unbearable,” saying she felt an urge to jump out of her skin and that it induced suicidal thoughts. The account was consistent with what others reported.

The documentary was researched for months, interviews were completed, and scripts were written. It reached the final stages in the edit suite before being pulled at the last minute.

The network was concerned about the public’s reaction—specifically, that the program might lead some viewers to question their medication, or even stop it—despite repeated messaging that these drugs should not be stopped abruptly and require medical supervision.

That decision censored real patient experiences from the public—especially those that challenged prevailing clinical assumptions.

What is akathisia?

Akathisia is still often described in clinical settings as “restlessness.”

But that description fails to capture the reality of the patient experience.

It is a severe, whole-body state of inner agitation.

It has been described in medical journals as “an intense inner restlessness and a compelling need to be in constant motion,” often accompanied by marked distress and an inability to remain seated.

Case reports describe a feeling of terror, a persistent sense of dread, and an urgent need to escape one’s own body.

This is why akathisia has been associated with suicidal ideation—not necessarily driven by depression, but because the sensation becomes unbearable, and death is perceived as a means of escape.

In some cases, symptoms can persist—a pattern now described in the literature as benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction, or BIND, where neurological and psychological symptoms can continue for months or even years after the drug is stopped.

This has been described in cases like Peterson’s.

Akathisia is not limited to benzodiazepines.

It has long been recognised as a potential adverse effect of a range of psychotropic medications, including antidepressants and antipsychotics.

It is frequently described as ‘rare,’ but the volume and consistency of patient reports suggest it may be more common than often assumed.

Withdrawal and the problem of misdiagnosis

For many years, withdrawal from antidepressants was described as mild and short-lived. That position has begun to shift, particularly as more patients have remained on these medications for years.

Research now shows that withdrawal symptoms are common. More than half of people stopping antidepressants report some form of withdrawal, and a proportion describe those symptoms as severe.

The difficulty is that withdrawal symptoms—anxiety, agitation, insomnia, and despair—overlap with the conditions these drugs are prescribed to treat.

When a patient deteriorates after reducing a dose, the symptoms are often misinterpreted as relapse.

The medication is reinstated or increased, and the cycle continues.

Why tapering cannot be rushed

Patients are often advised to taper over a few weeks, but that is inadequate for many.

Mikhaila Peterson addresses this directly, saying: “If you have a doctor that suggests you wean off of a long-term psych med in two to four weeks — run.”

She argues that reductions need to be much slower and individualised to avoid severe withdrawal.

There is now ample evidence to support this approach.

Researchers such as Dr Mark Horowitz have shown that tapering, for some people, may need to follow a hyperbolic pattern—smaller and smaller reductions as the dose decreases—because of the way these drugs interact with receptors in the brain.

In practice, this can mean tapering over many months or years.

Guidelines from NICE and some medical colleges now recognise that withdrawal can last months and that tapering must be individualised.

Suicidality

Antidepressants are commonly prescribed to treat conditions in which suicidal thoughts may occur.

But in placebo-controlled trials involving children and adolescents, SSRIs were associated with an increased risk of suicidal ideation—approximately 4% on the drug compared to 2% on the placebo.

That signal led to formal black box warnings from regulators.

In other words, in the very population where these drugs are often used to reduce suicide risk, the trials detected an increase in suicidal thinking during treatment.

Separate experimental work has shown that even healthy volunteers, with no psychiatric history, can develop agitation and suicidal thinking when exposed to these drugs.

These findings do not apply to every patient. But they suggest that in some individuals, these medications can produce the very symptoms they are meant to treat.

That reality is still not being communicated clearly.

The gap that remains

After years of reporting on this, it is evident that people are not routinely given clear information about what stopping these drugs may involve.

They are told about the benefits, but are not given meaningful details about withdrawal, akathisia, the need for slow tapering, or the possibility of persistent sexual dysfunction after the medication is discontinued.

That is a failure of informed consent.

The Peterson case has brought attention back to a problem that has never gone away.

Patients have been describing these experiences for years — often dismissed, often misdiagnosed, often left to navigate it alone.

As Dr Horowitz suggests, if a drug can induce physical dependence and withdrawal, then a plan for stopping it should be part of the prescription.

Share

Resources:

Inner Compass Initiative (ICI): theinnercompass.org

Prescribed harm: prescribed-harm.com

Antidepressant Coalition for Education: antidepressantinfo.org

MISSD (MISSD.co)

Taper Clinic: taperclinic.com

Brisbane ACT Centre: brisbaneactcentre.com.au/tapering/

Further reading:

Quitting antidepressants can be tricky

Starting a medication is easy...stopping it can be much harder

Antidepressants can cause ‘chemical castration’

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President Donald Trump has nominated Dr Erica Schwartz to lead the CDC, following a year of instability at the agency.

Schwartz brings strong credentials. A former deputy surgeon general, she has spent decades inside federal health agencies, including leadership roles during national emergencies.

Her nomination now heads to the Senate for confirmation.

Early reactions have been divided.

Former US surgeon general Jerome Adams welcomed the choice, calling Schwartz “a battle-tested leader” with a long record of public service—a response that mirrors the broader establishment reaction.

Others were sharply critical.

Attorney Aaron Siri, a close ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., argued the agency doesn’t need “another cheerleader for industry,” warning that her leadership would “likely be a disaster.”

These responses reflect two very different views of what the CDC should be—and what this appointment signals.

The CDC has been on a merry-go-round of acting directors, abrupt exits, and internal disagreements spilling into public view. Stability has been in short supply.

In that environment, the priority shifts to getting someone through the Senate and into the role.

That constraint has already been tested.

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In this interview for Reality Check Radio (RCR), I speak with Retsef Levi, an MIT professor and former member of the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP), who also chaired its Covid-19 vaccine workgroup.

Levi looks back on the final phase of ACIP’s work before it was abruptly halted last month.

He says discussions within his Covid workgroup were wide-ranging, with “no suppression about any topic.”

But efforts to include vaccine injury within the workgroup’s remit met “strong objections” from CDC leadership, with lawyers drawn into a debate over whether it even fell within ACIP’s scope.

Levi is blunt about the health system itself, describing the way vaccine injuries are recognised and managed as “utterly broken,” with no clear diagnostic pathways and patients often left without answers.

In our conversation, I put the key questions to him — what was on the agenda for the cancelled meeting, how decisions were being shaped, and how he responds to claims the process was being constrained or influenced.

I also put to him a policy document prepared by the Covid workgroup — leaked to MD Reports — and ask him to respond to it.

Levi describes the internal dynamics of the committee, the role of workgroups, and the challenge of navigating risk, uncertainty, and public trust.

He also raises unresolved questions about DNA fragments in mRNA vaccines, saying regulators and manufacturers have failed to provide clear, basic data on what was tested and what was found.

More broadly, Levi addresses reports of child deaths caused by Covid vaccination — including data referenced by the FDA but not publicly released — and says it should be made available to the scientific community.

His account sits alongside other perspectives that have emerged in recent weeks, including from former vice-chair Robert Malone, who publicly criticised the government for not defending the credentials of those appointed to ACIP.

Levi says he understands Malone’s frustration, but takes a different view. He does not feel he needs the government to defend his credentials, adding that his track record speaks for itself.

For anyone trying to understand what was unfolding inside ACIP before it was halted, this conversation is worth hearing in full (75 minutes).

FURTHER READING:

Leaked report to federal advisers calls for urgent recognition of Covid vaccine injuries

Court ruling forces cancellation of ACIP meeting

The presentation ACIP never heard

ACIP charter rewritten — sweeping changes reshape vaccine advisory panel

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The bar for treating high blood pressure has shifted — again.

Last August, the American Heart Association (AHA) and American College of Cardiology (ACC) quietly revised their guidelines.

The numbers haven’t changed since 2017, but the rules for treatment have.

Doctors are now encouraged to start medication earlier — even in people considered lower risk — a move that could push millions more onto lifelong treatment.

It’s part of a familiar pattern in medicine: the steady expansion of who counts as “unwell.”

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