The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA) on Tuesday launched the “Smart Moms Ask” campaign, mobilizing mothers to demand that federal health agencies take the COVID-19 shots off the childhood immunization schedule.
IMA, founded by a group of critical care specialists, is asking mothers to sign a petition they will present to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress.
“Moms have been bullied into accepting mRNA shots with devastating risks,” said Dr. Kat Lindley, IMA Fellowship program director. “We’re uniting our voices to demand transparency and safety for our kids.”
Lindley told The Defender:
“We’ve seen that there is no statistical benefit for using this vaccine in healthy humans, especially in children and pregnant women. We are boldly asking the HHS not to consider it. We want them to actually stop this, especially in children and pregnant women, because we’re seeing a risk of severe COVID autoimmune diseases, myocarditis and many, many other things.”
Pediatrician and CEO of GMO Science, Dr. Michelle Perro, who is not affiliated with the campaign but signed the petition, told The Defender, “It is incomprehensible that a campaign had to be initiated to do what’s right for children and pregnant mothers. This is a clear message from the MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] moms to Secretary Kennedy, the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] and the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] that we will not tolerate giving COVID shots to our children any further.”
Lindley said the campaign also aims to empower parents to ask questions about vaccines and about informed consent as it relates to everything that happens in the doctor’s office.
The CDC added COVID-19 vaccination in February 2023 to its routine immunization schedule for children and adults after a unanimous recommendation from the agency’s advisory committee.
The schedule is the basis for vaccine recommendations made by most physicians.
The CDC’s immunization schedule also provides formal guidance for state and local public health officials who set the rules for which vaccines are required to attend school. Children must typically receive all of the vaccines on the schedule to be considered “up to date” on their vaccinations.
The CDC now recommends that children as young as 6 months old get vaccinated against COVID-19with three doses of Pfizer’s shot or two doses of Moderna’s shot.
The CDC also recommends that children 6 months and up receive an annual booster dose at least eight weeks after the most recent dose.
COVID shots for kids under 12 not licensed
The latest COVID-19 vaccines for children 12 and under received emergency use authorization (EUA) from the FDA, but are not licensed.
Before a vaccine can be fully licensed, the vaccine maker typically is required to conduct numerous clinical trials to demonstrate that the product is safe. However, the safety requirements for EUA vaccines are more flexible.
Perro said allowing the shots to be administered to children was outrageous, especially considering that the incidence of severe illness was always “near zero,” and that after the vaccines were rolled out, there was evidence of large numbers of vaccine injuries, including widespread reports of myocarditis and skyrocketing miscarriage rates.
“I have received hundreds of requests for help from parents from COVID vaccine reactions for a broad range of conditions, including cardiac, immunologic and neurologic issues,” she said. “Many children are now experiencing a weakened immune system (called VAIDS) from the COVID jab.”
How could the vaccine be taken off the schedule?
There are several avenues through which the vaccines could likely be removed from the childhood schedule, according to several experts who spoke with The Defender.
For vaccines to get onto the schedule, they are first recommended by the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and then approved by the CDC director.
When Rotashield, Wyeth’s (now Pfizer) rotavirus vaccine, caused intussusception in infants one to two weeks following vaccination, it was was suspended pending ACIP review. Then the committee recommended removing it, and the CDC took it off the schedule in 1999.
However, experts pointed out that ACIP is only an advisory committee, and the CDC director is not bound by ACIP’s recommendations. For example, former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky decided to recommend COVID-19 boosters for everyone age 16 and older, overruling ACIP, which recommended against the boosters because there were no safety or effectiveness data for 16- and 17-year-olds.
That means the CDC’s current acting director, Susan Monarez, could make the decision herself, or she could convene an ACIP meeting to discuss the proposal, and then make the decision, according to Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense senior research scientist.
The CDC did not respond to The Defender’s request to comment on the process.
Lindley said the FDA could also suspend the shots based on its own pharmacovigilance data showing the dangers of the COVID-19 shots. The agency’s mission is to protect people from adverse events from drugs, Lindley said, “and essentially they failed at it.”
Other experts said the FDA could also pull the COVID-19 vaccines for children on the basis that it is mislabeled, because the label doesn’t disclose the presence of DNA plasmids.
Others said there is a more direct way to end the shots for kids: Because they are available only under EUA, the EUA could be lifted, either by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary or by Kennedy.
EUAs are granted only under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act.
The act authorizes the HHS secretary to declare that “a disease or other health condition or other threat to health constitutes a public health emergency” and grants a “covered person” immunity from legal liability for all claims for loss relating to the administration or use of covered “countermeasures,” such as drugs, biological products, medical devices and vaccines.
Under that emergency declaration, the FDA can issue EUAs.
When the Biden administration ended the COVID-19 emergency in 2023, many people expected that the EUAs would also be terminated.
Instead, the administration in January extended the PREP Act emergency declaration — and therefore the EUAs — through the end of 2029, Sasha Latypova, a former pharmaceutical industry executive with 25 years of experience in pharmaceutical research and development, told The Defender.
Latypova said, “If RFK Jr. terminates the COVID emergency declaration (as he is supposedly allowed to do by law), that’s the fastest method to remove COVID-19 shots from the market,” a point she made to him in an open letter.
By law, she added, the decision “requires no justification other than his opinion on whether there is a real emergency lasting a full decade, and whether the mRNA shots ‘may be effective’ for infants.”
If Kennedy were to take that action, “the PREP Act, an unconstitutional piece of law that was used to implement the covid atrocities and for deploying billions of doses of regulation-free and liability-free products, wrapped in false labels as ‘vaccines’ onto unsuspecting consumers, can be finally used for good,” Latypova said.
However, Latypova said she thinks the U.S. government decisions around COVID-19 are a military operation, and there are likely limits on what Kennedy is being allowed to do.
“The shots are military property, and so to speak, above HHS Secretary’s pay grade,” she said.
There have been indications that some change in recommendations or availability for the COVID-19 shots for children will be coming soon. One source who spoke with The Defender said that a team within HHS is working on a way to address the issue. Politico also reported last month that Kennedy is considering pulling the shots from the childhood schedule.
In an interview Makary did on “The Charlie Kirk Show,” posted yesterday, Makary indicated that a policy shift is forthcoming.
Makary said, “I’d love to see the evidence to show that giving young, healthy children another COVID shot would help them, but that evidence does not exist, and so we’re not going to rubberstamp things at the FDA.”
“There’s no data. There’s no good randomized control data that the current version, the latest formulation, of the COVID shot, is necessary for young, healthy children.”
Makary added:
“I don’t think you’re going to see a push at the CDC to be pushing COVID shots in young, healthy children. That is something that’s being discussed right now. I think you’re going to see some announcement on that in the coming weeks, but I know they are trying to review all of the scientific data.”
BREAKING: FDA Commissioner says there's "no evidence" to support covid shots for healthy children and a formal announcement on the subject is expected in the coming weeks.@charliekirk11: "Will the COVID shots remain on the child vaccination schedule?"@MartyMakary: "I'd love… pic.twitter.com/0Dx3eS8jjt
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) May 13, 2025
A growing number of groups worldwide have called for an end to the shots, not just for children, but also for adults, based on safety and efficacy concerns.