A US woman who claimed vaccines were to blame for the death of her 18-month-old twins has been charged with their murder, and accused of suffocating them, reports The New York Times.
On 1 May last year, the young mother had said she found her toddlers dead in their beds, cold and lying on their tummies. Three days later, she sat for an interview with Children’s Health Defence, the anti-vaccine non-profit group co-founded by Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, claiming that vaccines caused their deaths.
The story was splashed on the group’s website as “breaking news” of “toddlers who were born together and died together, after vaccinations”.
The organisation named the woman, Andrea Renee Shaw (23), as the lead plaintiff in two legal actions against the American Academy of Paediatrics, which it alleged had lied about the safety of childhood vaccines.
Then, last week, after a nearly 14-month investigation by police, a grand jury indicted Shaw on charges of murder, claiming that she suffocated the children in an act that was either premeditated or taken in the course of aggravated battery.
The police and the county prosecutors did not release details about the evidence or return calls from The New York Times.
Neither the Children’s Health Defence nor Shaw is backing down from claims that jabs had killed both children, with the lawyer saying that he would argue that vaccines caused the suffocation.
Experts say there is no evidence vaccines can cause suffocation.
Mary Holland, the Children’s Health Defence chief executive, said the group planned to stand by Shaw’s claim. “They’re messing with the wrong people,” she said in a broadcast on the group’s website after the indictment was made public. “We stand for the truth, which is that vaccines can cause death, and there’s zero evidence so far that this woman killed her children, zero.”
The coroner said the autopsy records would not be available until the criminal case was resolved.
During the Children’s Health Defence broadcast, Shaw said the toddlers were born prematurely at 29 weeks, but had thrived. She said she had made sure they had most of their recommended shots and that they had no problems with any vaccine April 2025.
On 23 April, she said, they had been for several vaccines and the next day developed diarrhoea and lethargy, prompting her to take them to an emergency room. They were discharged within hours.
Hospital records provided by Children’s Health Defence show that one of the children had a temperature of 37.2. The doctor deemed them to have had a “post-immunisation reaction” that was treated with Tylenol and ice pops.
They died eight days after they got the vaccines – a shot for hepatitis A, another for flu, and a third for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, she said. Shaw said in the interview that during the second day of police questioning her about the toddlers’ deaths, officers suggested she was to blame.
“They said that it wasn’t medical. And that they figured it was asphyxiation, and that I had supposedly had a postpartum overwhelming blackout, and done it to my children.”
Shaw’s lawyer said she was arrested last week, five days after giving birth to another child. She remains in jail, unable to provide the $2m bail for her release.
The main issue in the case would be whether she or the vaccines had caused the suffocation.
Dr Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, said the theory lacked plausibility, especially given that both children died at about the same time more than a week after vaccination.
“I’m not aware of any vaccine that would be able to cause suffocation,” he said, adding, “If that were the case, you’d expect to see other cases appearing in the community.”
In January, Shaw became the lead plaintiff in a Children’s Health Defence lawsuit accusing the American Academy of Paediatrics of “racketeering”, which is defined as gaining money through “illegal enterprise usually involving intimidation”.
The case, which is pending, rests on the notion that Shaw and others were victims of the American Association of Paediatrics, which Children’s Health Defence said falsely claimed that vaccines were safe.
Backing a motion to dismiss the case in a court filing, the paediatricians group said: “Accusing people you disagree with of being criminal racketeers – and at the expense of children’s lives no less – is beyond the pale and a profound abuse of the legal system.”
Children’s Health Defence also tapped Shaw as the lead plaintiff in an effort to intervene in a lawsuit the paediatrician’s group has brought against Kennedy. That case is focused on Kennedy’s decision as federal health secretary to dismiss the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP), an independent panel of experts that advises the CDC on vaccine use, and replace them with people with few qualifications, many of whom have raised concerns about vaccines.
Children’s Health Defence and other groups filed an “emergency motion” to join the case to “speak for the children who have been injured or who have died from the vaccines”, based on the paediatrician group’s guidelines.
The judge rejected Children’s Health Defence’s motion to intervene.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Outcry after US childhood vaccine changes
Now Trump pulls plug on childhood vaccines
Trump picks celebrity TV doc among other controversial health appointees
Anti-vaxxers target doctors on social media and rating websites
Childhood jabs at risk as medical and religious freedom wins ground