In this issue:
Check out the results of our August 12 reader poll
CDC Reports Kindergartner MMR and Varicella Vaccination Rate Decrease Nationally - WA goes to prior levels
Washington Department of Health Vilifies Andy Wakefield
Primary Election Results
Washington Parental Medical Freedom Rights Caught in the Middle of a Political Chess Match
Guest: Maureen “Maura” McDonnell.
Holistic pediatric nurse Maura McDonnell talks about the growing burden of chronic illness in children - and, more importantly, what parents can do about it. Maura created the Children’s Health Solutions Series, a no-cost resource bringing experienced holistic pediatricians directly to parents with practical, affordable approaches to childhood anxiety, ADHD, autism, vaccine injury, Lyme disease, common childhood illnesses, immune health and other chronic conditions. The current series features Elizabeth Mumper, MD, on childhood anxiety and autism; Mary Ann Block, DO, on ADHD; Larry Palevsky, MD, on vaccine injury and caring for children through illnesses such as measles and whooping cough; and Michelle Perro, MD, on Lyme disease in children.
Watch replay on CHD-TV, and CHD-WA chapter’s: Website, Rumble, X
Listen to replay: KKNW AM 1150, SoundCloud, Apple Podcast, Spotify
References:
Children’s Health Solutions series
Note: Millions Against Medical Mandates (MAMM) now points to the Children’s Health Solutions website.
Free e-book: Vax Facts & Rebuttals — co-authored by Maura McDonnell. It answers 70 common vaccine questions and includes more than 150 linked resources. Free through Millions Against Mandates.
MedMAPS - Pediatrics Medical Courses, Workshops, CME Conferences
Upcoming events:
Today August 26: Healing for the A.G.E.S. Masterclass. 5 p.m. Watch the first 30 minutes of the livestream masterclass for FREE. The Healing for the A.G.E.S. website. Use code: ICWA to watch all replays.
Friday August 28: Informed Life Radio. Data centers—advocating for strong local rules. Ep. 381: Sam Romain, chairman of Americans for Energy Dominance, joins us to discuss how residents can respond when attempts to ban a proposed data center are unlikely to succeed. We look at how communities can advocate for temporary moratoria and stringent rulemaking to protect water and power supplies, limit noise, light and pollution, prevent secret deals and blank-check tax breaks, and ensure developers bear the full cost of infrastructure and decommissioning. We also examine Washington’s growing data-center footprint and practical steps citizens can take before a project is approved.
Sept. 25-26, ChiroFEST, Vancouver, WA Hilton. For our many readers in Chiropractic offices, we hope to see you at the West Coast’s premier annual event where we remind doctors how we’re helping defend informed consent in Washington state.
2026 FPIW Vision Tour
Dates: Starting Sept. 28; Locations: 8 across the state
ICWA is a strategic partner with the Family Policy Institute of Washington. Both groups work hard in Olympia on legislation regarding parental rights and protecting our God-given right to protect our and our kid’s bodies.
Join for an evening of biblical encouragement and practical vision-casting for faithful engagement in Washington state.
Last week, The Defender covered, in its “Big Pharma Watch” section, an ABC News report titled, “Vaccine Exemption Rate for Kindergarteners Reaches Record High: CDC.”
ABC News reported that exemptions from routine vaccines among U.S. kindergartners increased to a record high 4.2% during the 2025-26 school year, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Monday. This is up from 3.6% compared to the previous school year. During the 2020-21 school year, the exemption rate was 2.2%.
The majority of exemptions were for non-medical reasons, CDC data shows.
Amid a record-breaking year of measles cases, ABC News further reported, the percentage of kindergartners who received the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine inched down to 92.4%, below the 95% rate seen pre-pandemic and the threshold doctors say is needed to maintain herd immunity.
The following map from the CDC shows that Washington’s MMR vaccination rate for kindergartners for the 2025-2026 school year was at 90.6%, which was 1.8% below the national average.
The following listing for kindergartner MMR vaccination rates in Washington shows that this has been a downward trend since the pre-pandemic years.
2024-25: 90.9
2023-24: 91.3
2022-23: 91.4
2021-22: 92.5
2020-21: 94.4
2019-20: 94.4
However, the latest measure is basically equivalent to the vaccination uptake percents in the three school years from 2016-2019:
2018-19: 90.8
2017-18: 90.6
2016-17: 90.5
ABC News also reported that rates for the varicella, or chickenpox, vaccine fell from 94% to 93.4% during the 2025-26 school year. However, rates for two doses inched up from 92.1% to 92.2%.
The two-dose varicella vaccination rate for kindergartners here in Washington for the 2025-26 was at 89.6, which was 2.6% below the national average.
The rate in Washington had an ever-so slight increase from the 2024-25 school year. The listing below shows that the overall rate has been decreasing since pre-pandemic years.
2024-25: 89.5
2023-24: 90.0
2022-23: 90.1
2021-22: 91.3
2020-21: 93.2
2019-20: 92.7
Again, for Washington state, the latest 89.6 measurement is basically equivalent to the three school years leading up to the Covid era.
2018-19: 89.7
2017-18: 89.4
2016-17: 89.3
As a cofounder of the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, Robert De Niro had announced plans in 2016 to screen Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s new documentary, Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe. As he made this announcement, De Niro’s wife, Grace, called up TV Journalist Sharyl Attkisson and asked, “What do you think of British gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield.”
In her book Follow the Science, Attkisson gave the following account of their conversation from back then:
The answer is complicated. I tell her he’s been smeared and destroyed by those at the highest levels who make a living doing that sort of thing on behalf of pharmaceutical interests. I tell her he’s also one of the most knowledgeable sources on the topic that I know is about to be discussed with the mention of his name. Grace agrees Dr. Wakefield is a credible authority. She’s already done some homework scratching beneath the superficial propaganda. Interesting.
Well as much as the Washington Department of Health (DOH) championed Dr. Tony Fauci as a credible authority at the August 12 Board of Health meeting, this same agency sees Wakefield as just the opposite. The DOH’s contrary views to Attkisson’s on Wakefield as a “credible authority” is clearly evident in its Vaccine Confidence Resource Library.
A click on its “Autism and Vaccines” dropdown button leads to links for healthcare professionals that vilify Wakefield along the way.
Do Vaccines Cause Autism? (PNG) Infographic for parents and families.
Do Vaccines Cause Autism? Short article with cited studies for providers.
The Facts About Autism & Vaccines (PDF) Infographic for parents and families.
MMR Vaccine Does Not Cause Autism—Examine the Evidence! (PDF) 3-page summary with evidence and citations for providers.
Autism and Vaccines: Read the Science Literature review with links covering multiple vaccines, ingredients, and the vaccine schedule for providers.
The Truth About Autism and Vaccines Guide (PDF) 14-page guide for providers.
Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism Brief Johns Hopkins article with links to evidence-based studies for providers.
WHO Expert Group’s New Analysis Reaffirms There Is No Link Between Vaccines and Autism Article with Q&A about vaccine safety and autism for providers.
Andy Wakefield is mentioned in non-flattering terms in half of their references: those numbered 2,4,6 and 7.
The second link “Do Vaccines Cause Autism” leads to an article from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (VaccineSafety.edu) in which it takes the following shots at Wakefield under the heading, “Why This Is an Issue.”
Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in England, published a case series in the medical journal The Lancet in 1998. In this article he described 12 children with pervasive developmental disorder associated with gastrointestinal symptoms, 8 of whom had behavioral issues temporally associated with MMR vaccination via retrospective accounts by their parents or physicians. Despite study authors acknowledging that this did not prove an association between the vaccine and autism, the lead author went far beyond the paper’s conclusions in a press release and ongoing interactions with the media. Public concern on the topic grew quickly.
In 2010, Dr. Wakefield’s license to practice medicine in the UK was revoked by the British General Medical Council and his study was retracted by The Lancet as evidence of serious professional misconduct mounted. Among other infractions, Wakefield was found to have ordered unnecessary invasive procedures on children without approval of the hospital ethics committee and received undeclared financial considerations from the Legal Aid Board, a group pursuing multiparty legal action for allegedly vaccine-damaged children. In addition, he had applied for patents for vaccines to rival MMR vaccine. It was also revealed that, for most of the children in the original study, their symptoms either started well before or long after MMR vaccination. Despite the complete refutation of Wakefield’s fraudulent findings by the scientific community, concern still exists among some parents.
The fourth link leads to a pdf page in which the left column devotes its efforts to vilifying Wakefield:
Rumors about the safety of MMR vaccine arose in 1998 after a British physician (a gastroenterologist, not trained in vaccine sciences or neurology) claimed he had found virus from measles vaccines lingering in the intestines of 12 autistic children. He believed this accounted for their autism.
Other researchers, however, were never able to replicate these results, implying the gastroenterologist’s conclusions were wrong. Later, an investigation revealed that this doctor had falsified patient data and relied on laboratory reports that he had been warned were incorrect. The journal that originally published his study took the unusual step of retracting it from the scientific literature because it was the product of dishonest and irresponsible research. British authorities revoked the doctor’s license to practice medicine.
This same left column then provides the following box:
Attkisson had written that De Niro’s wife had done her homework. The above evidence provided by the DOH shows that the agency needs to do the same. The best place for them to start is Vax Facts, by Dr. Paul Thomas, who clears out the static concerning Wakefield’s claim that vaccines cause autism:
Andrew Wakefield discovered that children vaccinated with the MMR vaccine often developed GI issues, including a chronic inflammatory bowel syndrome. What he didn’t know at the time was that there is a common link between bowel inflammation and brain immunoexcitoxicity. The stimulus to the brain travels by two routes, the vagus nerve and the bloodstream. Both activate brain microglia and precipitate chronic immunoexcitoxicity in these children, with a resulting drastic rise in autism spectrum disorders. The actual mechanism, despite what promoters of these vaccines say, has been well demonstrated.
Dr. Thomas then also referred to the film documentary Vaxxed:
A long-term CDC researcher, William Thompson, told scientist, autism dad, and vaccine watchdog Brian Hooker that he and four CDC colleagues had played fast and loose with their data when reporting the results of a study on MMR timing. That story of research fraud is detailed in the documentary Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe. Dr. Thompson issued a statement through his attorneys after the film came out: “I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.”
The “increased risk” Dr. Thompson was talking about was a three times greater rate of autism in the Black boys who got MMR “on time.” The original paper actually found a statistically significant increased risk of autism in the general population as well. The authors just dismissed that result by claiming, without any evidence whatsoever, that the kids with autism got the vaccine early so they could get early intervention. Thompson later said that his coauthors literally threw the omitted data into a garbage can to get rid of it. They were able to bury this malfeasance for more than a decade before Thompson confessed the fraud to Dr. Hooker.
Andy Wakefield fights for medical freedom to this day. He retells his side of the story in this 2023 interview.
A message from Vote for Health Freedom
First and foremost: THANK YOU!
You showed up. You voted informed. You shared the voter guide. And after weeks of waiting for several races to be decided, we can FINALLY share the results (and there is a lot to celebrate)!
Health freedom candidates are advancing across Washington, from Congress and the State Legislature to important local offices, giving us plenty to be excited about as we turn our attention toward November.
One race we’re particularly excited about is Spencer Meline in Congressional District 8!
We supported Spencer heavily in the weeks leading up to the election, and he has officially advanced to the General Election where he will have the opportunity to take on incumbent Kim Schrier (whose record has made clear that she is not a friend to health freedom). This is a race we will be watching closely, and we’re thrilled that voters will have a strong health freedom choice on the ballot this November!
These victories belong to all the advocates who showed up.
Every voter guide shared, every conversation with a neighbor, and every informed vote helps us build a stronger health freedom movement. Now we have an incredible opportunity to carry that momentum into the General Election.
Between now and November 3:
Get behind the health freedom candidates who advanced. Our candidates need us to show up strong: volunteer, donate, attend events, and help spread the word.
Talk to your friends and neighbors. Help more Washingtonians know which candidates will stand for health freedom, and encourage them to vote for these candidates in November.
Watch for more endorsements. We’re continuing to vet candidates and will likely issue additional endorsements and recommendations as we move toward the General Election in November.
Make your plan to vote on or before November 3. (We will email you once early voting is open and send the updated voter guide at that time.)
The primary got our candidates into the race. Now let’s help our health freedom champions get elected.
Thank you for showing up. Now let’s carry this momentum all the way through November!
With gratitude and steadfast determination,
The Stand for Health Freedom Team
Let’s Meme:
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