“When 2020 unfolded, I could see where this was headed. I actually said to my husband in early January, ‘Okay, we're here. They’re finally going to really go for it. They're going to use this as an opportunity to coerce and force vaccinations.’”
Over two decades ago, Leslie Manookian was in London working in finance, when she unintentionally caught a glimpse of the dark side of the pharmaceutical industry.
“He sat down and, sitting across the table from me, he says ‘Listen, in very, very rare instances, people have died from the drug.’ And he said, ‘The bad news is, the FDA is going to make us put a black-box warning on our packaging. The good news is: We still think we can do $7 billion in peak sales,’” says Ms. Manookian. “And I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh. This is the reality of what I’m doing, and I'm playing for the wrong team.’”
Today, she is founder and president of the Health Freedom Defense Fund. She has filed numerous lawsuits against the government to ensure bodily autonomy for all Americans, including the landmark 2022 case in which a federal judge struck down a nationwide mask mandate for travel.
“The administrative state is all of these federal agencies that are headed by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. And the whole administrative state sits underneath the executive branch of government. It was never envisioned by our founders,” says Ms. Manookian.”
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Leslie Manookian, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.Leslie Manookian:
So great to be here with you, Jan.
Mr. Jekielek:
I've been thinking about your work ever since your organization helped end this first federal mandate, and a lot of people have been very inspired. There were images of airplanes and masks being tossed. You have an interesting path leading you into the Health Freedom Defense Fund. Please tell me about that.
Ms. Manookian:
I was just your average person working on Wall Street, and I had actually gotten transferred to London. I was working in finance there, and my job was at a company called Alliance Capital. It was one of my clients when I had been at Goldman Sachs. Essentially, my job was to interview the CEOs of multinational corporations to decide which European companies should be in our portfolios. I ran Alliance's European growth portfolio management and research businesses.
I got to meet all of these incredible people in my role there. The CEO of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, a named brand company, came into our office. They were coming in to reassure investors. We owned a big chunk of their stock, probably a billion dollars. Their new blockbuster drug, which was in phase three trials, was having some stumbles. In fact, rumors were leaking out that some people were dying on the trial.
The CFO, the head of R&D, and the head of investor relations came in. Sitting across the table from me he says, "Listen, in very rare instances, people have died from the drug." He said, "The bad news is that the FDA is going to make us put a black box warning on our packaging. The good news is, we still think we can do $7 billion in peak sales." I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach. I couldn't believe it. I thought, “Are you being serious?” I just sat there stunned at his cavalier attitude about the trade-off between his profits and human life, and I couldn't believe it.
After that meeting ended, I went to my office and paced back and forth. Then I walked down the hallway to our pharmaceutical analyst's office, flung the door open, and said, "This is wrong." She shrugged her shoulders and looked at me like, "Yes, I know lady. What do you want me to do about it?" I thought, “This is the reality of what I'm doing. I'm playing for the wrong team.”
I had a front row seat that most people don't ever get. I realized that there's much more going on in the world of business than most people understand. That was one impetus behind me actually leaving and dedicating my life to doing good on the planet and to playing on the team of the people, rather than for the corporate captains. So, I planned my exit.
Mr. Jekielek:
What year was that?
Ms. Manookian:
I don't remember the exact year. I could look it up because I could pinpoint it with the product, but it was around 2000, or 2001 at the latest.
Mr. Jekielek:
Along with the mandate decision that I referenced earlier, your 2011 film, “The Greater Good,” was an absolutely wonderful film. It was a very reasonable treatment of a very difficult issue. I watched it when we were making, “The Unseen Crisis,” our documentary about the vaccine injured not being treated well by the system. Indeed, your film was about previous recipients of vaccines who had been similarly injured and were not being treated well by the system. It was almost like ours was part two of your film, which I would recommend to anyone. You have some really interesting characters in that film, so please tell me about it.
Ms. Manookian:
Yes. Essentially, I was planning to retire. I was sick, struggling with my health, and I didn't know what was going on. I kept going to my very mainstream doctor in London and he said, "Listen, I can't help you. Conventional medicine can't help you. You should go and see a homeopath or an acupuncturist."
I thought, "Okay, that's strange, but all right." I actually went and saw a homeopath because homeopathy is very popular in London. In fact, it's very popular in Europe and around the world. It's the fastest growing system of medicine on the planet today.
I waited to get in to see this woman for three months. When I saw this homeopath, it resonated with me very deeply. It just made sense, so much so, that I actually enrolled in homeopathy college. I didn't tell anybody I was doing that, I just did it. I was still a director running this business, and this was all going on at the same time.
I went to the college orientation on the very first day. The person leading orientation said, "Over the next three years, we're going to touch on many topics. We're going to talk about finding causes, the mind body connection, and nutrition. We're going to talk about vaccine damage." I raised my hand and said, "What are you talking about? Vaccines are the greatest invention of mankind." He said, "That's one perspective, and we're going to learn another."
After the class, he handed me a book and said, "You've got to read this book." I went home and read that book. Being the analyst nerd that I am, I looked at the back of the book. There were over 960 footnotes documenting all these things that were in that book; rheumatoid arthritis after vaccines, seizures after vaccines, learning disabilities after vaccines, and death after vaccines. I thought, “If this is true, then somebody needs to do something about it.” At that moment, I literally felt that I was going to make a movie about it. That was literally the impetus behind making, “The Greater Good.”
I didn't believe everything that was in that book. I wanted to go and find out for myself, so I started interviewing anybody and everybody that I could. I interviewed Dr. Paul Offit, the Chief of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He was a developer of vaccines and has a vaccine on the market for intestinal issues in children.I interviewed Dr. Stanley Plotkin of the Wistar Institute, a vaccine developer.
We interviewed Dr. Neal Halsey of Johns Hopkins University. We interviewed Dr. Walter Orenstein, who was former head of the National Immunization Program at CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], and Dr. Melinda Wharton, who was the Deputy Director of the Immunization Program when we were there.
We interviewed pediatricians, doctors, and scientists. We interviewed activists like Barbara Loe Fisher who founded the National Vaccine Information Center to get this whole spectrum of information to present to viewers. Along with all of that testimony, we wove in the stories of families whose children had been affected by vaccinations.
We basically offered up all the information so that everybody could make their own decisions. We showed there's a National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act that actually recognizes that vaccines injure and kill some children. They set up a program to try and help resolve these issues or adjudicate them, and we showed how it has backfired.
We touched on the fact that the vaccine makers have no liability for their products. It's not just the Covid shot, this all started in 1986. The film unpacks the issues that surround the whole vaccine conversation and debate, which actually predated the Covid vaccine conversation by 40 years.
Mr. Jekielek:
What you saw happen with Covid was not that surprising to you based on the laws and policies that have been implemented over the last few decades.
Ms. Manookian:
Once you really start digging into any subject, it then gives you a model to view the rest of the world by. That's very much the case with vaccinations. I started digging deep into this 20-plus years ago, and I found out our institutions have been corrupted. The medical journals have been corrupted. Our journalism has been corrupted. The media outlets have been corrupted. How did that all happen?
You can go back to the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. The Bayh-Dole Act was the act of Congress that allowed scientists working in NIH [National Institutes of Health] on the backs of taxpayer dollars to retain the patents to the products that they developed. It actually pays them money to keep them in government, but the problem is that it incentivizes them to then push products that they might profit from, like vaccines. This is why Fauci and his team at NIAID [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] own half the Moderna patent, because of that law passed in 1980.
This really facilitated the corruption of all of our federal health agencies, the NIH in particular. In 1992, the Prescription Drug User Fee Act was passed, and that act allowed the pharmaceutical industry to capture the FDA [U. S. Food & Drug Administration]. Originally, this legislation was to enable the pharmaceutical industry to say, “We have this special drug. There's no way to treat this disease, but this special drug will treat it. We want to fast track this product and get it to market for people who are in dire straits and need this product right away.”
Initially, that sounded like a really good idea. The program started out at about $100 million. Last year it was at $2.655 billion. That equates to 65 percent of the drug approvers’ salaries at the FDA and about 45 percent of the FDA's budget. The pharmaceutical industry is paying user fees directly to the FDA, essentially capturing the agency that it is supposed to regulate.
These two pieces of legislation really changed the shape of our federal health agencies. Two weeks after the 9/11 event, the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act legislation was introduced. This legislation accorded extraordinary powers to state governors and state health departments in the event of a public health emergency. At this time, that has been passed in whole or in part by 43 states.
Mr. Jekielek:
In 1986, there was legislation where vaccine makers were indemnified from liability.
Ms. Manookian:
Yes, I did mention that. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a lot of children were catastrophically injured or killed by their DPT [Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus] shots. It was a whole cell pertussis shot, meaning it was not attenuated or weakened like the shot that's on the market today. It still has issues, and it's not as dangerous as the original one was, but it actually also doesn't work.
As a result of that, juries awarded millions and millions of dollars to families whose children had been injured or killed by the shot. The pharmaceutical industry went to Congress and said, “We're not going to make vaccines anymore unless you protect us.” Congress obliged and they passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which almost completely indemnifies the pharmaceutical industry from financial and legal liability. It's a little bit more complex than that, but basically that's it.
Now, if your child is injured by a vaccine, you have to go to vaccine court. It’s a special court that's funded by the federal government and by a 75 cent tax on every vaccine administered in the United States. It is manned by judges called special masters, and there's no due process. There's no discovery and there's nothing independent. It's like a rigged court essentially. Either three-fourths or four-fifths of all cases are dismissed, so a very small minority actually ever make it through.
It was supposed to be no fault and easy for these grieving families. Instead it has morphed into this horrendous process that can take 10 years. These people are not treated as though they have no fault. They're treated just horrifically by the federal government. It's one of these externalities. They've taken this damage that is happening and they've put it into this federal bureaucracy that's not actually serving the people at all.
I know people whose children have died from shots. I knew people whose children had seizures and who have been paralyzed. I have friends whose children are still in diapers in their 20s who will never speak again because of the catastrophic injuries from vaccinations. This program essentially allows the pharmaceutical industry to continue producing vaccines without any liability. They have no incentive whatsoever to make a safer product. That's insane.
Mr. Jekielek:
There are a few more key pieces of legislation that I've heard about.
Ms. Manookian:
Then in 2005, you have the PREP Act [Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act]. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act provided immunity to the vaccine makers of childhood vaccinations. But now you've got all this infrastructure in place for a health emergency. The PREP Act in 2005 provided immunity to any company that makes a medical countermeasure in the event of a public health emergency.
Anybody who made a mask, a test, or a vaccine under the Covid Emergency Declaration was shielded from any liability for their products. Of course, the government is actually paying for the shots using our tax dollars and printing money to do it. It's a license for these people to do whatever they want with no liability.
In 2012, they rescinded the Smith-Mundt Act. This act prohibited the CIA and federal government from propagandizing American citizens. People have probably heard of Radio Free America and other programs like this. It's been legal for decades for the CIA and the federal government to disseminate propaganda to foreign citizens in order to influence their social fabric and their cultures in order to support democracy and to support uprisings against dictators.
Rescinding the Smith-Mundt Act in 2012 legalized our CIA to disseminate knowingly false information to the U.S. public, and the critics were clearly very concerned when this happened. As a result of that, the people who passed it said, "Don't worry. We're not setting up a program and we don't have any funding for it." In 2013, they set up the program, and in 2016, they funded the program. What is the upshot of this yarn? Essentially, anything that you see in the news today could be propaganda. It could be coming straight from the government, and that is legal.
Mr. Jekielek:
The Health Freedom Defense Fund is a relatively new thing, correct?
Ms. Manookian:
First of all, in 2011, all this stuff was going on in the background. I was doing all this research and I was starting to realize that things weren't quite right here. While I'm making the movie, I'm thinking, “Why would they pass this model State Emergency Health Powers Act legislation? Then the Swine Flu came out in 2009, the federal government declared an emergency, and yet the data didn’t support that. Sharyl Attkinson did some amazing investigative journalism uncovering this, which you can find on our website.
I pieced all of this together, and some of this made it into the movie. The movie came out in 2011, but I still kept on doing my research. In 2009, California started attacking parental rights and exemptions to vaccinations. They never had a religious-specific exemption, but they had a philosophical one that covered religious exemptions. They took that away. They allowed children 12-years-old to submit to vaccination without parental knowledge or consent, and the parents were barred from knowing about this.
Somewhere around 2016, a New York state legislator introduced a quarantine law that would allow the state of New York to quarantine a person indefinitely for unspecified diseases and take them someplace without anybody's knowledge or any power to get them out of it. There was no proof that they were sick or that they were a threat to anybody. Do you understand what I'm saying? There's all this stuff going on where our individual rights and parental rights are being eroded.
As a keen observer and researcher of the whole vaccine paradigm, when 2020 unfolded, I could see where this was headed. In early January, I actually said to my husband, "Okay, we're here. They're finally going to really go for it. They're going to use this as an opportunity to coerce and force vaccinations."He said, "Don't be silly. It's never going to get to that." I was like, "No, it's here. This is what I've been saying now for 20 years, and it's here."
By the spring of 2020, I was contemplating what I was going to do about what was happening, and I tried bugging anybody who would listen to me. Most people weren't interested in listening, and I just decided I was going to start a nonprofit. I actually was prodded by someone who had supported the movie and said, "You should start a nonprofit."
So, I founded the Health Freedom Defense Fund. We filed our first lawsuit in March of 2021, which was challenging the Los Angeles Unified School District's [LAUSD] emergency use authorization mandate. They have mandated the emergency use authorized shot, which is actually prohibited by federal law. But they did it anyway, and they didn't seem to care.
Having all this knowledge for 20 years just really opened my eyes. The veil was ripped from my eyes, and I could see that there were certainly forces with an agenda that were eroding the integrity of our institutions and causing major problems for the average American. The other thing that it gave me, Jan, was this awareness that the CDC didn't have the power that it was claiming.
When the CDC issued its federal travel mask mandate, I said to our attorneys, "This is not right, the CDC can't do this.” The CDC is mostly an advisory agency. For instance, the CDC can create a recommended vaccination schedule for children, but it cannot enforce it. They cannot implement it, because health laws are state laws.
Health laws are part of what are called the police powers, and the police powers are reserved to the states. This is why every individual state has different laws surrounding health issues and vaccinations in particular. When they mandated that, I said, “We need to look into this.” Our attorneys said, "You're right."
We filed suit in July of 2021 to challenge the federal travel mask mandate. But we didn't go for an injunction and we didn't try and stop it right away. We just said, "Let it work its way through the courts and let’s see what happens."
About nine months later on April 18th, 2022, the federal judge in district court in Tampa, Florida issued her ruling, vacating the mask mandate. There were nationwide celebrations and videos and photos of people literally jubilant that the face rags were no longer mandated to go on a plane or a train or a bus.
Number one, it was a blow to this behemoth, the administrative state, that in my view has plagued society. The administrative state is all of these federal agencies that are headed by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, and the whole administrative state sits underneath the executive branch of government. It was never envisioned by our founders.
That was one thing. It really struck a blow because the CDC was playing outside its sandbox in a big way. But it did something much more fundamental, Jan. It inspired people and gave Americans hope that they were not helpless.
I just can't tell you how many people called us and emailed us and reached out. It was one of those moments that actually provided a tremendous amount of inspiration to people who felt like there was no one listening and no one fighting for them. That was probably its biggest success.
Mr. Jekielek:
What are you working on these days?
Ms. Manookian:
The Health Freedom Defense Fund has a mission to establish in the public consciousness the idea that each and every one of us owns our bodies. The idea that we need to ask the government for an exemption is upside down. We shouldn't have to ask anybody for an exemption, because we and we alone get to make choices about our bodies. That's our long-term mission.
In order to achieve that, we try to educate people about their rights. We help teach them how to advocate. We provide all sorts of resources on our website, which is healthfreedomdefense.org. There's a tab called resources to help people fight for their rights. Then we also litigate when necessary. Even though we've only been around for a few years, we have filed over a dozen lawsuits, and we have better than a .500 batting average, which is pretty fantastic.
We've sued the federal government three times, and the Los Angeles Unified School District twice. We are in two cases right now against Nike and Disney, one against LAUSD, and we're still in one against the federal government on behalf of federal employees. But the most unique and important one that we're working on right now is the Los Angeles Unified School District.
This school district is still mandating the shot today, despite the fact that we've known since August of 2021 that the shots don't stop transmission or infection. We also know that they are dangerous. Why would any business, school district, or government body continue with this insanity where you're actually pushing people to potentially harm themselves by submitting to this shot?
Mr. Jekielek:
Especially children.
Ms. Manookian:
Yes, it's statistically zero risk from Covid for children. Yes, it really makes no sense. For young people and even for young adults it makes no sense. The biggest thing we deal with is a body of law in the United States. There's a case called Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which essentially said that a city could mandate a vaccination that was believed to be safe and effective in an extreme emergency, such as smallpox, with a 30 to 40 percent death rate. In an extreme emergency, they could mandate that or they could fine people who didn't want to take the shot.
That lawsuit, that ruling from the Supreme Court has been used for a century to justify the erosion of our rights. The problem is that ever since the Nuremberg Trials and the Nuremberg Code, there's been a growing body of case law in the United States which says that you have a zone of privacy around you. You have the right to refuse unwanted medical interventions, and you have the right to refuse life extending treatment.
Those two bodies of law are at odds with each other. Our case against the Los Angeles Unified School District says that this drug is not a vaccine. It's a therapeutic with no public health benefit. As such, it's imperative that people have the right to make their own choices. You cannot use the Jacobson case to justify this, because Jacobson does not apply.
What really needs to happen is this disparity between the recent case law and Jacobson must be reconciled. This case will be instrumental in doing that for the benefit of all Americans, so it's a really important case. The other two important cases are with Disney and Nike, which are in defense of employees who've either been bullied and discriminated against.
In the case of Nike, they were fired for exercising their First Amendment-protected religious freedoms and their medical rights. One employee had a medical disability, and Nike fired them. These are senior employees that Nike fired, and the Supreme Court has recently ruled that you cannot fire someone. You can't refuse to accommodate their religious exemptions unless it's a substantial financial burden on the operation of the business.
These are incredibly important lawsuits that we are fighting. They are all in the public interest because these people could be any person in America. You could be a school teacher, an employee in a business, or a worker at Nike or Disney or any one of these corporations that have trampled American rights. We are going to keep fighting and doing our work, and we're super grateful for anybody that wants to support us.
Mr. Jekielek:
Leslie Manookian, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Ms. Manookian:
Thanks so much for having me on.
Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Leslie Manookian and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.
