From the Brownstone Institute

By Maryanne Demasi  

I recently purchased Aaron Siri’s new book Vaccines, Amen.  As I flipped though the pages, I noticed a section devoted to his now-famous deposition of Dr Stanley Plotkin, the “godfather” of vaccines.

I’d seen viral clips circulating on social media, but I had never taken the time to read the full transcript — until now.

Siri’s interrogation was methodical and unflinching…a masterclass in extracting uncomfortable truths.

A Legal Showdown

In January 2018, Dr Stanley Plotkin, a towering figure in immunology and co-developer of the rubella vaccine, was deposed under oath in Pennsylvania by attorney Aaron Siri.

The case stemmed from a custody dispute in Michigan, where divorced parents disagreed over whether their daughter should be vaccinated. Plotkin had agreed to testify in support of vaccination on behalf of the father.

What followed over the next nine hours, captured in a 400-page transcript, was extraordinary.

Plotkin’s testimony revealed ethical blind spots, scientific hubris, and a troubling indifference to vaccine safety data.

He mocked religious objectors, defended experiments on mentally disabled children, and dismissed glaring weaknesses in vaccine surveillance systems.

A System Built on Conflicts

From the outset, Plotkin admitted to a web of industry entanglements.

He confirmed receiving payments from Merck, Sanofi, GSK, Pfizer, and several biotech firms. These were not occasional consultancies but long-standing financial relationships with the very manufacturers of the vaccines he promoted.

Plotkin appeared taken aback when Siri questioned his financial windfall from royalties on products like RotaTeq, and expressed surprise at the “tone” of the deposition.

Siri pressed on: “You didn’t anticipate that your financial dealings with those companies would be relevant?”

Plotkin replied: “I guess, no, I did not perceive that that was relevant to my opinion as to whether a child should receive vaccines.”

The man entrusted with shaping national vaccine policy had a direct financial stake in its expansion, yet he brushed it aside as irrelevant.

Contempt for Religious Dissent

Siri questioned Plotkin on his past statements, including one in which he described vaccine critics as “religious zealots who believe that the will of God includes death and disease.”

Siri asked whether he stood by that statement. Plotkin replied emphatically, “I absolutely do.”

Plotkin was not interested in ethical pluralism or accommodating divergent moral frameworks. For him, public health was a war, and religious objectors were the enemy.

He also admitted to using human foetal cells in vaccine production — specifically WI-38, a cell line derived from an aborted foetus at three months’ gestation.

Siri asked if Plotkin had authored papers involving dozens of abortions for tissue collection. Plotkin shrugged: “I don’t remember the exact number…but quite a few.”

Plotkin regarded this as a scientific necessity, though for many people — including Catholics and Orthodox Jews — it remains a profound moral concern.

Rather than acknowledging such sensitivities, Plotkin dismissed them outright, rejecting the idea that faith-based values should influence public health policy.

That kind of absolutism, where scientific aims override moral boundaries, has since drawn criticism from ethicists and public health leaders alike.

As NIH director Jay Bhattacharya later observed during his 2025 Senate confirmation hearing, such absolutism erodes trust.

“In public health, we need to make sure the products of science are ethically acceptable to everybody,” he said. “Having alternatives that are not ethically conflicted with foetal cell lines is not just an ethical issue — it’s a public health issue.”

Safety Assumed, Not Proven

When the discussion turned to safety, Siri asked, “Are you aware of any study that compares vaccinated children to completely unvaccinated children?”

Plotkin replied that he was “not aware of well-controlled studies.”

Asked why no placebo-controlled trials had been conducted on routine childhood vaccines such as hepatitis B, Plotkin said such trials would be “ethically difficult.”

That rationale, Siri noted, creates a scientific blind spot. If trials are deemed too unethical to conduct, then gold-standard safety data — the kind required for other pharmaceuticals — simply do not exist for the full childhood vaccine schedule.

Siri pointed to one example: Merck’s hepatitis B vaccine, administered to newborns. The company had only monitored participants for adverse events for five days after injection.

Plotkin didn’t dispute it. “Five days is certainly short for follow-up,” he admitted, but claimed that “most serious events” would occur within that time frame.

Siri challenged the idea that such a narrow window could capture meaningful safety data — especially when autoimmune or neurodevelopmental effects could take weeks or months to emerge.

Siri pushed on. He asked Plotkin if the DTaP and Tdap vaccines — for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis — could cause autism.

“I feel confident they do not,” Plotkin replied.

But when shown the Institute of Medicine’s 2011 report, which found the evidence “inadequate to accept or reject” a causal link between DTaP and autism, Plotkin countered, “Yes, but the point is that there were no studies showing that it does cause autism.”

In that moment, Plotkin embraced a fallacy: treating the absence of evidence as evidence of absence.

“You’re making assumptions, Dr Plotkin,” Siri challenged. “It would be a bit premature to make the unequivocal, sweeping statement that vaccines do not cause autism, correct?”

Plotkin relented. “As a scientist, I would say that I do not have evidence one way or the other.”

The MMR

The deposition also exposed the fragile foundations of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

When Siri asked for evidence of randomised, placebo-controlled trials conducted before MMR’s licensing, Plotkin pushed back: “To say that it hasn’t been tested is absolute nonsense,” he said, claiming it had been studied “extensively.”

Pressed to cite a specific trial, Plotkin couldn’t name one. Instead, he gestured to his own 1,800-page textbook: “You can find them in this book, if you wish.”

Siri replied that he wanted an actual peer-reviewed study, not a reference to Plotkin’s own book. “So you’re not willing to provide them?” he asked. “You want us to just take your word for it?”

Plotkin became visibly frustrated.

Eventually, he conceded there wasn’t a single randomised, placebo-controlled trial. “I don’t remember there being a control group for the studies, I’m recalling,” he said.

The exchange foreshadowed a broader shift in public discourse, highlighting long-standing concerns that some combination vaccines were effectively grandfathered into the schedule without adequate safety testing.

In September this year, President Trump called for the MMR vaccine to be broken up into three separate injections.

The proposal echoed a view that Andrew Wakefield had voiced decades earlier — namely, that combining all three viruses into a single shot might pose greater risk than spacing them out.

Wakefield was vilified and struck from the medical register. But now, that same question — once branded as dangerous misinformation — is set to be re-examined by the CDC’s new vaccine advisory committee, chaired by Martin Kulldorff.

The Aluminium Adjuvant Blind Spot

Siri next turned to aluminium adjuvants — the immune-activating agents used in many childhood vaccines.

When asked whether studies had compared animals injected with aluminium to those given saline, Plotkin conceded that research on their safety was limited.

Siri pressed further, asking if aluminium injected into the body could travel to the brain. Plotkin replied, “I have not seen such studies, no, or not read such studies.”

When presented with a series of papers showing that aluminium can migrate to the brain, Plotkin admitted he had not studied the issue himself, acknowledging that there were experiments “suggesting that that is possible.”

Asked whether aluminium might disrupt neurological development in children, Plotkin stated, “I’m not aware that there is evidence that aluminum disrupts the developmental processes in susceptible children.”

Taken together, these exchanges revealed a striking gap in the evidence base.

Compounds such as aluminium hydroxide and aluminium phosphate have been injected into babies for decades, yet no rigorous studies have ever evaluated their neurotoxicity against an inert placebo.

This issue returned to the spotlight in September 2025, when President Trump pledged to remove aluminium from vaccines, and world-leading researcher Dr Christopher Exley renewed calls for its complete reassessment.

A Broken Safety Net

Siri then turned to the reliability of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) — the primary mechanism for collecting reports of vaccine-related injuries in the United States.

Did Plotkin believe most adverse events were captured in this database?

“I think…probably most are reported,” he replied.

But Siri showed him a government-commissioned study by Harvard Pilgrim, which found that fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported to VAERS.

“Yes,” Plotkin said, backtracking. “I don’t really put much faith into the VAERS system…”

Yet this is the same database officials routinely cite to claim that “vaccines are safe.”

Ironically, Plotkin himself recently co-authored a provocative editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, conceding that vaccine safety monitoring remains grossly “inadequate.”

Experimenting on the Vulnerable

Perhaps the most chilling part of the deposition concerned Plotkin’s history of human experimentation.

“Have you ever used orphans to study an experimental vaccine?” Siri asked.

“Yes,” Plotkin replied.

“Have you ever used the mentally handicapped to study an experimental vaccine?” Siri asked.

“I don’t recollect…I wouldn’t deny that I may have done so,” Plotkin replied.

Siri cited a study conducted by Plotkin in which he had administered experimental rubella vaccines to institutionalised children who were “mentally retarded.”

Plotkin stated flippantly, “Okay well, in that case…that’s what I did.”

There was no apology, no sign of ethical reflection — just matter-of-fact acceptance.

Siri wasn’t done.

He asked if Plotkin had argued that it was better to test on those “who are human in form but not in social potential” rather than on healthy children.

Plotkin admitted to writing it.

Siri established that Plotkin had also conducted vaccine research on the babies of imprisoned mothers, and on colonised African populations.

Plotkin appeared to suggest that the scientific value of such studies outweighed the ethical lapses—an attitude that many would interpret as the classic ‘ends justify the means’ rationale.

But that logic fails the most basic test of informed consent. Siri asked whether consent had been obtained in these cases.

“I don’t remember…but I assume it was,” Plotkin said.

Assume?

This was post-Nuremberg research. And the leading vaccine developer in America couldn’t say for sure whether he had properly informed the people he experimented on.

In any other field of medicine, such lapses would be disqualifying.

A Casual Dismissal of Parental Rights

Plotkin’s indifference to experimenting on disabled children didn’t stop there.

Siri asked whether someone who declined a vaccine due to concerns about missing safety data should be labelled “anti-vax.”

Plotkin replied, “If they refused to be vaccinated themselves or refused to have their children vaccinated, I would call them an anti-vaccination person, yes.”

Plotkin was less concerned about adults making that choice for themselves, but he had no tolerance for parents making those choices for their own children.

“The situation for children is quite different,” said Plotkin, “because one is making a decision for somebody else and also making a decision that has important implications for public health.”

In Plotkin’s view, the state held greater authority than parents over a child’s medical decisions — even when the science was uncertain.

The Enabling of Figures Like Plotkin

The Plotkin deposition stands as a case study in how conflicts of interest, ideology, and deference to authority have corroded the scientific foundations of public health.

Plotkin is no fringe figure. He is celebrated, honoured, and revered. Yet he promotes vaccines that have never undergone true placebo-controlled testing, shrugs off the failures of post-market surveillance, and admits to experimenting on vulnerable populations.

This is not conjecture or conspiracy — it is sworn testimony from the man who helped build the modern vaccine program.

Now, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. reopens long-dismissed questions about aluminium adjuvants and the absence of long-term safety studies, Plotkin’s once-untouchable legacy is beginning to fray.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Maryanne Demasi

Maryanne Demasi, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is an investigative medical reporter with a PhD in rheumatology, who writes for online media and top tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she produced TV documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and has worked as a speechwriter and political advisor for the South Australian Science Minister.

This is a special preview article from the:

By Tom Flanagan

When the book Grave Error was published by True North in late 2023, it became an instant best-seller. People wanted to read the book because it contained well-documented information not readily available elsewhere concerning the history of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (IRS) and the facts surrounding recent claims about “unmarked graves.”

Dead Wrong: How Canada Got the Residential School Story So Wrong is the just-published sequel to Grave Error. Edited by Chris Champion and me, with chapters written by knowledgeable academics, journalists, researchers and even several contributors who once worked directly in residential schools or dedicated Indian hospitals, Dead Wrong was published because the struggle for accurate information on this contentious subject continues. Let me share with you a little of what’s in Dead Wrong.

Outrageously, the New York Times, the world’s most influential newspaper among liberals and “progressives”, has never retracted its outrageously false headline that “mass graves” were uncovered at Kamloops in 2021. Journalist Jonathan Kay exposes that scandal.

With similarly warped judgment, the legacy media were enthused about last year’s so-called documentary Sugarcane, a feature-length film sponsored by National Geographic and nominated for an Academy Award. The only reporter to spot Sugarcane’s dozens of egregious factual errors was independent journalist Michelle Stirling; her expose is included in Dead Wrong.

In spring 2024, the small Interior B.C. city of Quesnel made national news when the mayor’s wife bought ten copies of Grave Error for distribution to friends. After noisy protests by people who had never read the book, Quesnel city council voted to censure Mayor Ron Paull and tried to force him from office. It’s all described in Dead Wrong.

Also not to be forgotten is how the Law Society of B.C. has forced upon its members training materials that assert against all evidence that children’s remains have been discovered at Kamloops. As told by James Pew, B.C. MLA Dallas Brodie was expelled not from the NDP but from the Conservative caucus for daring to point out this obvious and incontrovertible
falsehood. But the facts are that ground-penetrating radar (used at the former Kamloops IRS) can detect only “anomalies” or “disturbances”, not identify what those might be; that no excavations have been carried out; and that no human remains whatsoever, let alone “215 children’s bodies”, have been found there. Brodie is completely correct.

Then there is the story of Jim McMurtry, suspended by the Abbotsford District School Board shortly after the May 2021 Kamloops announcement. McMurtry’s offence was to tell students the truth that, while some Indigenous students did die in residential schools, the main cause was tuberculosis. His own book The Scarlet Lesson is excerpted in Dead Wrong.

Historian Ian Gentles and former IRS teacher Pim Wiebel offer a richly detailed analysis of health and medical conditions in the schools. They show that these were much better than what prevailed in the Indian reserves from which most students came.

Another important contribution to understanding the medical issues is by Dr. Eric Schloss, narrating the history of the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton. IRS facilities usually included small clinics, but students with serious problems were often transferred to Indian Hospitals for more intensive care. Schloss, who worked in the Camsell, describes how it delivered state-of-the-art medicine, probably better than the care available to most non-native children anywhere in Canada at the time.

Rodney Clifton’s contribution, “They would call me a ‘Denier,’” describes his personal experiences working in two IRS in the 1960s. Clifton does not tell stories of hunger, brutal punishment and suppression of Indigenous culture, but of games, laughter and trying to learn native languages from his Indian and Inuit charges.

And far from the IRS system being a deliberate, sustained program of cultural genocide, as Toronto lawyer and historian Greg Piasetzki explains, the historical fact is that “Canada Wanted to Close All Residential Schools in the 1940s. Here’s why it couldn’t.” That’s because for many Aboriginal parents, particularly single parents and/or those with large numbers of children,
residential schools were the best deal available. In addition to schooling their kids, they offered paid employment to large numbers of Indigenous Canadians as cooks, janitors, farmers and health care workers, and later as teachers and even principals.

Another gravely important issue is the recent phenomenon of charging critics with “residential school denialism.” This is a false accusation hurled by true believers in what has become known as the “Kamloops narrative”, aimed at shutting down criticism or questions. A key event in this process was when NDP MP Leah Gazan in 2022 persuaded the House of Commons to approve a
resolution “That, in the opinion of the House this government must recognize what happened in Canada’s Indian residential schools as genocide.”

In 2024, Gazan took the next step by introducing a private member’s bill to criminalize dissent about the IRS system.  Remember, the slur of “denialist” is a term drawn from earlier debates about the Holocaust. Gazan’s bill failed to pass, but she reintroduced it in 2025. Had such provisions been in force back in 2021, it might well have become a crime to point out that the
Kamloops GPR survey had identified soil anomalies, not buried bodies. Frances Widdowson examines this sordid political campaign of denunciation.

As the proponents of the Kamloops narrative fail to provide convincing hard evidence for it, they hope to mobilize the authority of the state to stamp out dissent. One of the main goals behind publication of Dead Wrong is to head off this drive toward authoritarianism.

Happily, Dead Wrong is already an Amazon best-seller based on pre-publication orders. The struggle for truth continues.

The original, full-length version of this article was recently published by C2C Journal.

Tom Flanagan is the author of many books on Indigenous history and policy, including (with C.P. Champion) the best-selling Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us and the Truth about Residential Schools.