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Editor’s note: This is the first of several articles about today’s roundtable discussion, “Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding?” hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

Medical experts, political figures, journalists and whistleblowers today accused public health agencies and the mainstream media of censoring and covering up information relating to COVID-19 vaccine injuries and adverse events during a U.S. Senate roundtable discussion.

Sen. Ron Johnson hosted the discussion — “Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding?” — which his office said was intended to “expose the truth about how the COVID cartel — federal health agencies, Big Pharma, legacy media, and Big Tech — engaged in censorship and coverups.”

“It was heartening to hear these courageous experts willing to risk careers and reputations in order to tell the truth despite tremendous pressure to look the other way,” said Laura Bono, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) vice president.

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Bono, who attended the roundtable, added:

“We can’t ensure that the global devastation caused by the COVID crisis will never occur again unless we are able to analyze what happened and speak about it freely. We are immensely grateful to Senator Johnson for presenting this crucial discussion to the American public.”

The discussion focused on six topics: COVID-19 vaccine issues, the history of vaccine injury cover-ups, the corruption of medical research and federal public health agencies, media censorship and propaganda, the COVID-19 response in other countries and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) proposed “pandemic agreement.”

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD chief scientific officer, told The Defender he was “riveted listening to the panelists during the entire four-hour session.”

“Being here among these heroes was such an encouragement,” he said. “Sen. Johnson was an extremely gracious host and a true hero himself.”

Hooker, co-author with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” participated in the roundtable, highlighting the health risks posed by vaccines and the lack of adequate testing by federal health agencies.

HHS never submitted required vaccine safety report to Congress

In his testimony, Hooker said, “The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has never tested the cumulative effect of the vaccine schedule on childhood health outcomes.”

He referenced several scientific studies to support his testimony.

“Vaccinated children were at least twice as likely to be diagnosed with developmental delays, ear infections and gastrointestinal disorders. The likelihood of an asthma diagnosis among the vaccinated group was four-and-a-half times higher than the unvaccinated group,” he said.

Hooker said unvaccinated children have shown “incidence rates between 4-20 times lower” than vaccinated children for autoimmune, neurodevelopmental and other disorders.

He also referred to the sharp rise in myocarditis diagnoses following COVID-19 vaccination.

“Myocarditis is a serious disorder and 76% of all cases following COVID-19 vaccination, as reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System [VAERS], required emergency care and/or hospitalization,” he said. Yet, the “CDC significantly downplays myocarditis as a side effect of the vaccine.”

Further highlighting government inaction in studying and responding to vaccine injuries, Hooker said:

“The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act requires that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report to Congress on the state of vaccine safety in the U.S. every two years.”

Yet HHS has “never submitted a vaccine safety report to Congress,” he said.

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Big Pharma ‘controls the levers of power,’ suppresses unprofitable treatments

Edward Dowd, a former BlackRock executive who has extensively studied the increase in excess deaths during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, also participated in the roundtable.

Dowd, author of “‘Cause Unknown’: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022,” said that government and WHO statements claiming the COVID-19 vaccines were “safe and effective” have “been proven false.”

“It has become clear that the U.S. government, along with the health regulators, do not desire an honest accounting of … policies that were imposed mostly under federal mandates,” he said, noting that this has resulted in high human costs.

Dowd told the panel:

“The total excess deaths since the rollout of the vaccine in the U.S. is approximately 1.1 million for 2021, 2022 and 2023. We estimate the economic cost of productive working age people dying at $15.6 billion [and] estimate 28.4 million individuals are chronically absent, resulting in an estimated economic cost of $135 billion since 2021.”

Jessica Rose, Ph.D., an immunologist and biochemist, told The Defender in advance that her testimony would focus on an “Analysis of the VAERS pharmacovigilance database in the context of the COVID-19 injectable products,” which “has revealed strong emergent safety signals — from myocarditis to death — that are not being acknowledged by the owners of the data.”

“This goes against standard operating procedures and begs the question: Why?” she said.

Rose also referred to recent revelations, later confirmed by Canadian public health authorities, about the contamination of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

“Is there a risk associated with DNA insertion in the context of the modified mRNA shots? Yes,” she said.

Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, discussed the suppression of potentially effective treatments by public health agencies.

“We are only now beginning to understand that many long-established drugs may have other uses that we don’t even know about, effectively treating diseases we never imagined using them against,” he said. “So why on earth aren’t we systematically testing them for potential new uses?”

Kory told the panel:

“The ugly truth is it’s not profitable. Big Pharma makes money on complicated new drugs, and it controls the levers of power. Nearly half of FDA’s [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] budget is bankrolled by the drug industry, and its tentacles are deep in academia, medicine and other regulatory agencies like the NIH [National Institutes of Health].”

He cited ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as examples of treatments that were suppressed during the pandemic despite evidence they were effective.

Johnson: Those who ask questions ‘vilified,’ ‘ridiculed’

In an interview with The Gateway Pundit Sunday, Johnson discussed adverse events related to the COVID-19 vaccines, the discovery by embalmers of “strange white fibrous clots” in bodies of the deceased since the vaccine rollout began in late 2020 and efforts to suppress ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as COVID-19 treatments.

Referring to the clotting phenomenon, Johnson said, “What’s unfortunate is the medical establishment in general, and certainly, our federal health agencies, are discouraging autopsies. So, the only evidence we’re getting of this is from embalmers that are having a difficult time getting embalming fluid into [the] cadavers.”

Johnson suggested that Big Pharma and government health agencies promoted mRNA vaccines because of a profit motive.

He said:

“They’ve had this mRNA platform. It never succeeded in animals, but they knew how profitable a platform it could be. They’ve already found out how profitable vaccines are because there’s no worry of liability. You just get those things on the childhood vaccine schedule, and you just start printing money.

“Nobody can question the efficacy. Nobody can question the safety of them. So, vaccines are highly profitable for pharmaceutical companies, so they’re going to push them. And of course, they’ve got their individuals in government that push them right along with them.

“Again, our health agencies have been completely captured by Big Pharma.”

Johnson also questioned the addition of an increasing number of vaccines to the childhood vaccination schedule in the U.S.

“With the number [of vaccines] we administer to children now, gee, what could go wrong?” he said. “Every time you inject a child with a vaccine, you’re messing with their immune system. Is that why autoimmune diseases are up?”

“We need to ask these questions,” Johnson said. “My problem is we’re just not even able to ask questions, and those who ask questions, those who put forward evidence are immediately ostracized, criticized, vilified, ridiculed — and that’s not science.”

Johnson also implied that some of his congressional colleagues have sustained injuries related to the COVID-19 vaccines but are not speaking out.

“My guess is they understand how people that do question this stuff are ridiculed and vilified. And they just don’t want to put up with the hassle,” he said.

Johnson also spoke out against pharmaceutical company advertising, suggesting it should be subject to a government ban.

“Pass a law,” he said. “We are one of the very few countries that allow that.”

Johnson said that while he is “a free-market guy” who usually “would not be on the side of imposing that kind of government restriction on business,” he said that having seen how Big Pharma “spends the billions and how they use that to capture the narrative and destroy anybody who questions the narrative,” he believes “that’s got to stop.”

Participants at the roundtable included:

Several of the participants — and Sen. Johnson — previously spoke at this past weekend’s International Crisis Summit in Washington, D.C., which Malone organized. Rep. Greene recently spoke in support of vaccine injury victims at a U.S. House of Representatives vaccine safety hearing.

Watch Sen. Johnson’s roundtable discussion here: