More Than Medicine
More Than Medicine
MTM - Interview with Brian Hooker PhD
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Start with the data, stay with the people. That’s the pulse of our conversation with Brian Hooker, PhD—biochemical engineer, researcher, and chief scientific officer at Children’s Health Defense—who traces how a family crisis led to two decades of FOIA digging, contested publications, and a book designed to make complex evidence visible to every parent. We unpack what happens when you compare vaccinated and unvaccinated groups in real-world studies, why some signals around chronic illness and neurodevelopment keep appearing, and how clear visuals can change minds faster than long abstracts.
Brian walks us through the backstory of Vax Unvax: Let the Science Speak, co-authored with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and why assembling studies with unvaccinated controls became an urgent mission after federal agencies declined to run direct comparisons. We talk about aluminum adjuvants, polysorbate 80, and potential mechanisms that could help explain observed outcomes. We also address one of the hardest topics: SIDS patterns around well-baby visits, with new state-level data suggesting higher risk after clustered two-month vaccinations, especially among girls. Throughout, we keep circling back to informed consent—what it looks like in a clinic room, why timing matters, and how to slow decisions without fear when immediate disease risk is low.
If you’re a clinician, a parent, or a skeptic who wants more than slogans, this episode invites you to weigh studies, question assumptions, and make decisions with eyes open. We share resources, discuss journal roadblocks, and reflect on how to practice medicine in a way that values transparency over pressure. If this conversation helps you think more clearly, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show.
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More than enough. More than enough.
SPEAKER_02:Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the country doctor's rusty, dusty scrapbook. Well, I'm privileged today to have online with me Brian Hooker, uh PhD. He's with Children's Health Defense. Uh, Dr. Hooker, delighted to have you on More Than Medicine. Welcome.
SPEAKER_04:Thank you, Robert. Uh uh, please call me Brian.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_04:And uh and I am I'm delighted uh to be on your podcast. I'm delighted to talk to such a wonderful uh and brave uh brother like you and uh looking forward to the conversation.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'm thankful to have you. Now tell me a little bit about yourself, your family, your background, let my listeners know a little bit about who you are.
SPEAKER_04:Sure. Um I am uh by training a uh biochemical engineer, and I've worked, you know, in in biotechnology and in epidemiology for the past uh 35 years or so. Um I got my PhD in 1990, that you know it sounds like a long time ago. It doesn't seem like it, but uh and uh I uh met my beautiful wife while I was in graduate school and we got married in 1991. Uh my son uh was born in 1998, and uh wonderful. I I'm so proud of my son, and he was injured by his uh 15-month vaccines uh and ended up uh developing a very, very high fever, uh uh high-pitched scream. Uh, we actually the fever endured and we uh treated it with uh rotating with baby aspirin and baby Tylenol for 18 days.
SPEAKER_02:Oh wow.
SPEAKER_04:And uh then he regressed uh very, very severely. Uh he is diagnosed with autism. Uh his presentation is very, very severe autism. Uh he is not uh neurologically impaired. He's very he's brilliant and bright, uh, but his big issue is sort of sensory motor and uh uh uh he's a non-speaker, he can't speak, he has to communicate using a letterboard and a keyboard to type. Uh, but uh I couldn't be prouder of him. He's 28 years old next month, and uh uh I'm a proud dad.
SPEAKER_02:Uh bless you, bless you, and bless him. Well, now how in the world you get connected to children's health defense?
SPEAKER_04:Well, because of my son's uh issues and uh because it was very, very uh clear that it was a vaccine injury uh that ended up causing his regression into autism, then I got very, very curious and I started to uh uh interact with CDC scientists in the early 2000s. And um, you know, the more I interacted with them, the more hostile they became. Um and so I started in 2004 to submit uh Freedom of Information Act requests because I knew that uh there were a lot of things that were fishy regarding the analysis that they were doing. Uh they were looking at the MMR vaccine and its connection to autism, they were looking at the Marisol, the mercury-containing preservative that used to be in a lot of shots that my son was exposed to and its connection to autism. And those studies were of such dubious nature that I started, you know, wanting background information for the CDC. And I investigated the CDC uh regularly, you know, the the limit to the number of Freedom of Information Act requests that you could, you know, you could submit to get background documents from the CDC. The limit was one per month. So I've literally submitted one request per month since 2004. Uh, and I continue to investigate them to this day, and and I've uncovered fraud and malfeasance, helped a whistleblower come out and talk about the connections between vaccines and autism in 2013 and 2014. Uh, and then I was fortunate to connect with uh Secretary Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in 2015 when he formed um uh what was called World Mercury Project that uh then became uh Children's Health Defense in 2018. Uh and uh I served on the board uh and was a university professor at the time, retired from the university and started working at children's health defense full-time, you know, in uh right during the COVID era, and uh been very, very fortunate to be involved in such an organization and to be able to publish the truth. I mean, we've looked at uh data sets that we've been able to obtain regarding vaccines and vaccine adverse events. I started publishing in 2004 and been very, very fortunate to continue publications, you know, to look at vaccine efficacy, uh, vaccine safety, you know, the fate of uh children and adults who have gone through adverse events and and to really bring that to the light of day through scientific publication.
SPEAKER_02:Well, now were you getting much pushback from scientific journals when you first started publishing your findings?
SPEAKER_04:Uh yes, I you know, I wish I could answer that differently, but yeah, the pushback is phenomenal.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's what I mean.
SPEAKER_04:It's very difficult to find any type of uh mainstream journal, especially if they're indexed in the National Library of Medicine or they're available on you know PubMed.org, which is the National Library of Medicine, uh, to get those journals that are, you know, that are indexed there, that, you know, are the work can be displayed there. Uh it's been such a tough road. I had a paper retracted in 2014 uh based on uh false accusations that they made with me and a conflict of interest that didn't exist. Um uh the paper was never reinstated by the journal, uh, it was finally republished by a more uh friendly journal, uh the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, uh, in 2018. And yeah, it is uh this is a contact sport. It is not for the weak at heart. And uh right now, when uh my research colleagues and I from Children's Health Defense submit a paper, it usually is rejected uh by mainstream journals. Probably we, you know, go to maybe upwards to 11, 12 rejections before we can find a journal that will even peer review it to publish it.
SPEAKER_02:Man, that is amazing. That is amazing. Well, now, do you have anybody on children's health defense that has status as a previous peer-reviewed physician or or journal article writer that now routinely gets rejected?
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely. I you know, I thank God every day for uh my research colleague, uh Dr. Carl Jablinowski, uh, who was very prolific in publishing his work uh between you know 2016 to 2022 when he joined us. Uh, he was a medical researcher and a bioinformaticist at the University of Washington. And um we were able to recruit him during COVID, you know, he was kind of a COVID refugee because uh he didn't like the countermeasures that were being uh uh squelched uh by you know his employer. Uh and he started in 2022 at at uh Children's Health Defense. Uh we published very, very prolifically, but you know, I think it was his first publications that we did get uh eventually published online uh in a PubMed review journal. He went through 12 rejections. 12 rejections. And that was, you know, that was you know, not unanticipated, but uh uh but I'm so thankful that, you know, he's stuck with it, he's stuck with us, uh, and he's we're continuing to work together.
SPEAKER_02:But he was somebody who was previously peer-reviewed and published frequently, but then all of a sudden, because he's working with you guys and he's and he's publishing an alternative perspective, now he's being rejected routinely.
SPEAKER_04:Well, and I was in the same boat. You know, I started publishing research in, you know, the late 1980s, early 1990s, you know, on uh plant-based products, plant-based natural products, genetically modified products, uh environmental restoration through bioremediation. And, you know, so the first the first public paper that I published on vaccine safety in 2004, you know, I already had like 20 articles that were on PubMed.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And so it was, you know, it was startling. It was very, very startling to go from, you know, being able to publish prolifically and then just crickets after that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, I understand. I understand. Well, now I'm looking at your book, Vax Unvax, Let the Science Speak, that you publish with Robert F. Kennedy, and it's and he's a New York Times best-selling author. And uh the foreword to your book is by Dell Bigtree, and it was published by Children's Health Defense. Now, did you guys have to publish this book yourself, or did you have pushback by other major publishers?
SPEAKER_04:Well, we were very fortunate. We went with Skyhorse Publishers, and and Sky Horse is the publisher of the book with what's called a CHD imprint.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_04:Um, and they are so friendly to you know, there's a lot of controversies that need to be elucidated, you know, not just the issue with vaccines, your medical freedom or health freedom. And Skyhorse is the most amenable, and they and they were very, very gracious to us. Uh, and you know, it was a thrill to for me to be able to collaborate uh with Secretary Kennedy on this book.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, yep. Well, tell us about the book. Um, I mean, I I've I went through it like lightning speed. I was fascinated by the book. Now, some of the book, believe it or not, I had seen in many other vaccine books already, because they were using your book as their source of information. So when I read through your book, I kept saying, Well, I've seen this before. I've seen this graph before, because they're using your book as their source material. So it was not new to me entirely, but uh it was a it was a fascinating read, and I have to tell you, I tore through it. Um so anyway, tell us about Vax Unvax and how how did it come to be?
SPEAKER_04:Right. Well, um it the way that it came to be was uh Secretary Kennedy, you know, back before he was Secretary Kennedy in 2017, uh him, Del Bigtree, uh a lawyer named Aaron Seary, and then the former uh director, executive director of children's health defense before she retired, Lynn Redwood, all met with Anthony Fauci and uh an AH director at the time, Francis Collins, uh, to talk about vaccine safety and to ask the question why isn't, you know, why has the government never done a study of vaccinated children following the schedule versus unvaccinated children that didn't follow the schedule? And so uh, you know, the outcome of that meeting, you know, Dr. Fauci swore up and down, yeah, we've done that test study, we've done that study. And uh, but they didn't. They had never done that study. And uh the outcome of that meeting was an exchange of emails and letters between uh Secretary Kennedy and uh Francis Collins. And Francis Collins abruptly ended the conversation in 2018 and said, look, vaccines are safe and effective. We're not gonna do that study. We just know that vaccines are safe and effective. Uh and so uh Bobby came to me at in 2019 after that happened, and he said, let's just look for studies, let's just look and see in the open literature if we can find such a study. And so I thought, okay, well, this will take an afternoon because I don't think anything's there. And I started to find these studies uh uh that were either intentionally or unintentionally had an unvaccinated control group. Um, you know, I found a few at the very beginning. Uh, with those few studies, uh uh uh Robert F. Kennedy and I uh would collaborate together. He'd find some, I'd find some, and then he would feature them on his Facebook and Instagram accounts. He would just do, you know, just a snapshot view, the lay person view on these vax, unvax studies. Um, and he continued to do it. I continued to look, you know, by 2001, you know, I think I found about 50 or so such studies. Uh, and he was continuing to feature them. And then he got deplatformed from Facebook and Instagram, uh, primarily because of these posts that he was doing on these vaxx unvax studies.
SPEAKER_02:No surprise.
SPEAKER_04:So yeah, we looked at each other at that point in 2021 and said, let's write a book. Okay. And it, you know, it was plain as a nose on our face. A lot of it had already been written and, you know, distilled down in lay terms. Uh, so we continued the work for about two years, found another 50 or so studies, a lot coming out regarding uh the COVID vaccine, uh, and ended up publishing it in August of uh 2023, what is essentially a compendium of what we found, you know, with you know, is intentionally, you know, eye-catching graphics, uh, charts that really distill it down that show, you know, these are the rates of different, you know, conditions and disorders in vaccinated children and adults versus unvaccinated children and adults.
SPEAKER_02:And I've told some of my friends that are doubters about the safety of a vaccine. I said, look, get the book and just look at the graphs. I said, you don't even have to read the book. If you'll just look at the graphs, you're gonna be shocked and you're gonna be convinced that vaccines are not safe nor effective.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I I appreciate that. And and I'm so thankful for my wife, who's an artist, um, uh, because the graphics were, you know, I I would I would show sort of my rudimentary nerd scientist graphics to her, and she'd be like, no, no, no, we got to make it user-friendly. And so uh we we spent uh many evenings together hashing these things out. And and yeah, absolutely, you know, look at the graphs, read through the book, read through the uh descriptions, you know, of the graphics. We want people to use this as a handbook so they know, you know, in specific instances, specific vaccines, whether it's the schedule, individual vaccines, that they can get information uh easily, you know, and see what happens when you vaccinate versus when you don't.
SPEAKER_02:Well, now which which chapter in the book strikes a chord with you the most?
SPEAKER_04:Well, I'd have to say chapter two, because in chapter two, we looked at the effects of the entire vaccination schedule on children. And um there it features about I think 10 or 11 different studies that we found where you know individuals, scientists had researched the vaccination schedule. And and I have to say, hands down, Robert, that uh the unvaccinated children were faring the best when you were looking at chronic illness, when you're looking at neurodevelopmental disorders, and when you were looking at things like recurrent infections, like recurrent ear infections or respiratory infections, strep, whatever, uh the unvaccinated children were much healthier. And that was such an epiphany to me. You know, I had never really, you know, considered or talked or thought about an unvaccinated child until my son's vaccine injury. But the more that we studied the the the more that the we found that they were extremely healthy.
SPEAKER_02:Yep. Well, and see, I observed that in 40 plus years of medical practice. I had a huge contingent of homeschooled children in my practice, and by and large, their moms did not vaccinate them. And guess what? I hardly ever saw those children for sick visits. Their moms would bring them for a well visit, but they hardly ever came for sick visits compared to the vaccinated population that were there all the time for sore throats, ear infections, for eczema, for asthma, for all manner of other illnesses that you see in children, but by and large, that contingent of homeschool children who did not get vaccinations, I never saw them. They were healthy kids.
SPEAKER_04:And these studies, you know, I I was involved in, you know, a a couple of the studies that are featured in that chapter. Um and and I can say, you know, I I published my first study with uh a medical researcher named uh Neil Miller in 2020, and then a follow-up study in 2021. We would give the vaccinated children as much of a benefit of the doubt as possible. We wanted to make sure that this was a fair, fair assessment of this. And you know, it didn't, it, you know, it's not something that you know I look at gleefully or uh anything, but just pure, you know, I want to put my scientist hat on here purely, and and then look at the risk-benefits of vaccines versus the risk-benefits of not uh obtaining vaccines. And again, you know, the more that I see unvaccinated kids, the more I see healthy kids.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Well, now what I know you had a child with autism. Well, what is your assessment of vaccines versus unvaccinated children in regards to the autism issue? Because my patients that come to see me, that's their number one question. Is Dr. Jackson right? Is is are these vaccines connected to autism? Is my child going to get autism if I let them get vaccinated? What's the data say?
SPEAKER_04:Well, when I look at studies that considered the entire vaccination schedule done by independent scientists and independent researchers, the rate of autism in children who are following the vaccine schedule is consistently four to five times higher than in the children who are unvaccinated. Now, not vaccinating is not a guarantee. I know unvaccinated autistic children. You know, I know plenty of them. Okay. Yep. You know, it there's a neurotoxicity element that uh is not, you know, it's no respecter of person. So if you're neurotoxic, Based on antimony in fire retardant pajamas or mercury exposure uh you know through the air, or um, you know, arsen exposure through your water, aluminum exposure uh through water and soil. Um, you know, it's not a good thing. There are other causes.
SPEAKER_02:That's exactly right. We all know that. We all know that. Yeah. But there's but there's no reason to be exposed to mercury or other neurotoxins from a vaccine if it's not necessary.
SPEAKER_04:Correct. And there's aluminum adjuvants uh that are very, very concerning to me. Uh, there are other components formaldehyde. There's a detergent called polysorbate 80 that's used consistently in vaccines that allows access of some of these other contaminants like aluminum to the brain. You know, it actually hastens the uptake of aluminum uh to the brain through the blood-brain barrier. And, you know, so I when I look at that recipe and then, you know, connect the dots in terms of what we found, uh, it does from a mechanistic standpoint, it makes perfect sense. And, you know, when you when you're with a child who's struggling with severe autism every day, uh, I do anything to uh uh warrant families and parents. So they don't have to go through the same thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Well now about three months ago, I had a grandmother in my office who was weeping because her uh I think it was a four-month-old grandson had died suddenly and unexpectedly. And very innocently I asked her, I said, Well, had he received uh a childhood vaccine? And she looked at me and she thought a moment and she said, Well, he did about and I said, Well, how many days before he died? And she said, um, four days before he died. And then she got wide-eyed and she looked at me and she said, Um, do you think that vaccine had anything to do with his death? And I said, Ma'am, I don't know. I was just asking. So, so Sid's deaths, Brian, do you think vaccines are connected to Sid's deaths?
SPEAKER_04:I do know that uh when studied that Sid's deaths tend to cluster, you know, right after, well, baby checkups where vaccines are given. And so uh we know that following the CDC schedule prior to Secretary Kennedy, uh there was a birth hepatitis B shot. Uh there were about six vaccines given at two months, uh, another cluster of vaccines four months, six months, uh, and then another cluster of vaccines 12 to 15 months. And the propensity of children to die, you know, within a week, within three days of a vaccination point appointment, it was a much, much higher frequency than you would see deaths that more maybe two weeks, two months, you know, after a well-child visit. Uh, I've recently worked with uh my research colleague Carl Jablinowski with data that we were able to obtain from Louisiana. And we saw that infant death uh in some instances, you know, depending on the number of vaccines, uh, was 63% more likely after a vaccination visit uh at two months compared to those kids that did not get vaccines at two months. So, and for girls, it was almost double, you know, the the number of SIDS deaths or or uh unexplained deaths, uh, you know, things that weren't like car accidents or or uh things that we knew wouldn't be ascribed to vaccines. Um we saw double the incidence in females uh if they got the full complement of vaccines at two months versus those that didn't get any.
SPEAKER_02:Wow, that is astounding. And and you know, it's and that's part of informed consent. I I feel obliged to tell my patients that information. And I and before uh COVID, I I was oblivious to all of this, honestly. And I gave vaccines routinely. I never talked to my patients about the dangers of vaccines, but since COVID, it's like the blinders have been taken off my eyes, and I've learned all of this information about pediatric vaccines, and I I feel obliged to give my patients full informed consent about the dangers of pediatric vaccines, about which I was totally oblivious five, six years ago. And and when I tell my patients this, some of them look like I've got two heads. They think they think I'm crazy. But I'm telling you, I I have to tell them to give them full informed consent. And when I share this, some of them look at me like, Why has nobody ever told me this? And I say, Well, I didn't tell you because I didn't know. I didn't learn this in medical school. And I say other doctors probably don't know either. And I I I refer them to your book, Vaxx Unvax, Let the Science Speak. I refer them to Aaron Seary's book. And so, you know, I I just feel like full informed consent is is something that I'm obliged to provide to my patients.
SPEAKER_04:Exactly. And that is so refreshing, you know, because when you look at a typical vaccine information sheet that uh the CDC published, um, you know, that are handouts that are given, you know, for uh quote unquote informed consent, it's woefully inadequate. It doesn't tell it doesn't talk about these things. It doesn't. Uh but true informed consent is giving the most up-to-date and the most unbiased information um to uh parents and and you know patients themselves if they're the age of consent, uh you know, and giving them the best information. That's good medicine.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it is. I I tell my patients they should read Vax Facts by Dr. Paul. I tell them they should read your book, and if they're readers, which a lot of my patients are not, unfortunately, then I tell them they should um look at Aaron Seary's book as well. And I said, I I don't want to give you a single vaccine. There's no hurry. None of my patients have died from polio or measles or tetanus in 40 years of my practicing medicine, so there's no hurry for you to do this. You go home and get those books and read them, and then you come back and we'll talk about it. And I said, if your family's putting pressure on you to to get a vaccine for this little baby, you just tell them. So Dr. Jason said nobody's died from polio or measles or tetanus in 40 years of his practice. So don't be in a big fizz about getting a vaccine. But he said to read these books and then come back and we'll talk about it.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I am so thankful for that. And you know, the the art of being able to, you know, address medicine from an individual basis, you know, give an absolute honest assessment, you know, of the state of the science and vaccines. And also, you know, understand, I mean, you know, we've uh you know, we've got measles going through uh the United States, you know, started in Texas primarily, you know, and there's now a big cluster in in South Carolina. There's there are so few doctors that really don't understand the measles or even how to treat the measles. And um, so you know, I'm you know, I'm thankful for doctors like you, doctors like Dr. Ben Edwards, uh, Dr. Richard Bartlett down in Lubbock, Texas, that you know, they're they're they're their their eyes are open, they're observant, and they're they're practicing medicine, you know, rather than standard of care.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. You're exactly right. All right, our time's about up, Brian. What else? Any last comments before I let you go?
SPEAKER_04:Well, I just I want to thank you uh for your work, uh, for your ministry. Uh God bless you for just uh uh being faithful. Um, you know, it's you know, it's encouraging. And and ask that uh your uh your listeners pray for me uh and uh pray for you know that uh you know that the truth can be proclaimed in love and in boldness.
SPEAKER_02:That's right.
SPEAKER_04:Uh that lives can be saved.
SPEAKER_02:I agree with that. Speaking the truth in love, that's been my motto for so long. And uh I want you to know I pray for you and Secretary Kennedy and the work that you guys do, and I really appreciate uh everything y'all do at Children's Health Defense. All right, my guest today is uh Brian Hooker, and he works for Children's Health Defense. He's their you call it the chief biologist, is that correct?
SPEAKER_04:Chief Scientific Officer, which sounds sort of like Spock from Star Trek, but yeah, Chief Scientific Officer.
SPEAKER_02:All right. Well, I thank you for being my guest. I'd like to have you back another day. We'll talk about some other things. Would that be okay?
SPEAKER_04:That would be a pleasure.
SPEAKER_02:All right. Well, thank you, sir. Are you listening to More Than Medicine? I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson. We'll be back again next week.
SPEAKER_01:Until then, remember Jesus loves you and your doctor loves you.com.
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