Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said he is not an advocate for COVID-19 vaccination for individuals under 50 and that there are cases of “significant cognitive dysfunction” in individuals injured from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Redfield appeared on a 90-minute podcast with Dana Parish, revealing more information about Dr. Anthony Fauci, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the COVID-19 virus, and the mRNA vaccines.

Dr. Redfield said he will be involved in a consulting role with Kennedy as he works to “Make America Healthy Again” as part of the incoming administration under President-elect Donald Trump. In a September interview, Redfield said, “Kennedy is right: All three of the principal health agencies suffer from agency capture. A large portion of the FDA’s budget is provided by pharmaceutical companies. NIH is cozy with biomedical and pharmaceutical companies, and its scientists are allowed to collect royalties on drugs NIH licenses to pharma. And as the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I know the agency can be influenced by special interest groups.”

The discussion turned to Dr. Fauci when Redfield described the exchange between Senator Rand Paul and Fauci during a Senate hearing. Redfield said, “You see how emotional Tony Fauci gets when Rand Paul asks him a question. He said, ‘You’re accusing me of killing 4 million people.’ Rand wanted to come back and say no, ‘I’m accusing you of killing 20 million people’.”

Fauci has testified at several Senate and House hearings about the origin of COVID-19 and has frequently denied that the NIH and NIAID funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Both Senator Paul and Redfield disagree with Fauci’s definition of gain-of-function research.

“I’ve fought him since 2012 on this issue,” Redfield said. “He’s the poster boy of gain-of-function research. He owned all of the money for research. He had billions and billions of dollars. In 2002, 2003, Dick Cheney decided the United States needed a much more aggressive biodefense program, so he took it away from Fort Detrich and the US Army where it belongs, and he put it at NIH under Fauci and gave him 40 billion dollars to run it. Fauci has been running our nation’s biodefense program in addition to running the NIH and NIAID’s medical research program.”

The HighWire reported on other taxpayer-funded research facilities researching dangerous viruses, including a facility in Colorado that conducts gain-of-function research on viruses like ebola and cedar virus. The initial reports of COVID-19 said the virus came from the wet market across the street from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they were studying coronaviruses. The lab origin was considered a conspiracy theory, but the FBI assessment is that a lab leak origin is the most likely.

Redfield revealed the possibility that the virus was first created in the Chapel Hill, NC lab under the leadership of Ralph Baric. Redfield said China is accountable for not following international health regulations after they realized there was a problem. “The US role was substantial,” Redfield said. “One is they funded the research. Both from NIH, the State Department, USAID, and the Defense Department. All four of those agencies helped fund that research. The scientific mastermind behind this research is a guy named Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina. He was very involved in this research. I think he probably helped create some of the original viral lines, but I can’t prove that. But he was very involved. I think there is a real possibility that the virus’s birthplace was chapel hill.”

Redfield has come out against the sweeping recommendations for the COVID-19 vaccination and said the vaccine doesn’t stop transmission; it only prevents severe injury and death. Redfield said he doesn’t advocate for anyone under 50 to get the COVID-19 vaccination, comparing it to the RSV vaccine recommendations.

He defended Kennedy against claims of being “anti-vax.” In an interview with Dr. Drew, he said, “Bobby Kennedy wants to have an honest, open, transparent discussion about vaccines…I happen to have changed my view again. I practice two days a week, and much of my practice now is on Long COVID. And within that Long COVID, there’s a subgroup that are there because they had bad reactions to the mRNA vaccines, and I mean really bad reactions.”

Kennedy has received mixed reactions from the politicians in Washington and the mainstream media following the announcement that he will be the HHS Secretary in Trump’s administration as reported last week by The HighWire. He has received criticism for being “anti-vax” and a “conspiracy theorist,” but there has also been positive feedback from individuals connected to the federal health agencies, including Redfield and Deborah Birx. Birx was a White House Coronavirus Task Force member in the early days of the pandemic.

In an interview on CBS Face The Nation, Birx said, “I think when we talk about things in public health, we don’t acknowledge the concerns. When my children went to school, there were maybe 1-in-1000 kids with autism diagnosed. Now it’s 3-per-100. So every mom is seeing a classroom of kindergarteners where one of the children has autism…It’s not good enough for us to just ‘say vaccines don’t cause autism‘. It’s us finding what is the cause of autism and reverse it.”

Birx said there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that vaccines cause autism, but the work should be done to figure out what is causing the significant increase in autism rates. When asked about Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism, Birx said, “I’m actually excited that in a Senate hearing, he would bring forward his data, and the questions that come from the Senators would bring forth their data. What I know for sure is he is a very smart man who can bring his data and his evidence base forward and we can have a discussion that many Americans believe already is a problem. Until we can have that transparency and open discussion from both sides. That hearing would be a way for Americans to see that data. Addressing what the cause is will be critical.”

Birx and Redfield express excitement that there is a movement towards transparency within the federal health agencies under Kennedy’s pending leadership. Trump and Kennedy have yet to announce who will be in charge of the CDC, FDA, and NIH. Del Bigtree addressed the recent change in the conversation around medical freedom on the latest episode of The HighWire.