The groundswell of support for anti-vaccine proponents during the Covid-19 pandemic translated into millions of dollars generated in support for a number of groups, filling their coffers and financially boosting their efforts to oppose the jabs and spread false and misleading information, writes The Washington Post.
Four major US non-profit organisations that rose to prominence during that time – by capitalising on spreading medical misinformation collectively – gained more than $118m between 2020 and 2022, enabling them to deepen their influence in courtrooms and communities countrywide, a Post analysis of tax records shows.
Children’s Health Defence, an anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F Kennedy Jr, received $23.5m in contributions, grants and other revenue in 2022 alone, eight times what it collected the year before the pandemic began, allowing it to expand its operations to cover half the country.
And anti-vaccine group Informed Consent Action Network nearly quadrupled its revenue to about $13.4m in 2022, enabling it to finance lawsuits seeking to roll back vaccine requirements as faith in vaccines drops.
Two others – Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance and America’s Frontline Doctors – went from receiving $1m combined when they formed in 2020 to collecting more than $21m combined in 2022, show their latest tax filings.
The four groups routinely buck scientific consensus.
Children’s Health Defence and Informed Consent Action Network raise doubts about the safety of vaccines despite regulators’ assurances. Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance and America’s Frontline Doctors promote anti-parasitic or anti-malarial drugs as treatments for Covid, despite regulators and clinical trials finding the medications ineffective or potentially harmful.
Arthur Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, believes the four groups are endangering lives.
“They gave jet fuel to misinformation at a crucial time in the pandemic,” Caplan said. “They’re spouting dangerous nonsense that kills people.”
The influx of pandemic cash sent executive compensation soaring, boosted public outreach, and seeded the ability to wage legislative and legal battles to weaken vaccine requirements and defend physicians accused of spreading misinformation.
Some doctors following guidance by Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance or America’s Frontline Doctors have been disciplined or face the possibility of discipline from state medical boards alleging substandard medical care. In cases involving two doctors who allegedly followed Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance guidance, three patients died.
Many of the contributors are unknown because non-profits are not required to publicly report their donors. But they are supposed to disclose groups to which they contribute more than $5 000.
The Post also reviewed more than 330 filings by NPOs that donated to them during the pandemic. Half of those gifts of more than $100 000 were via “donor-advised funds”, allowing them to obscure their identities.
The Post identified two funds that had each given at least $1m in total to at least three of the groups since 2020.
Pierre Kory, president/chief medical officer of Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, said the group gained prominence – and donors – during the pandemic, and the money has allowed it to expand its influence into other areas.
Jose Jimenez, a lawyer for America’s Frontline Doctors, said donors recognised the group was “fighting for freedom of choice and healthcare … and for physician independence”.
Boosting executive compensation
As the groups’ coffers grew, so did their executives’ salaries. Children’s Health Defence paid Kennedy, then chairman/chief legal counsel – now an independent candidate for president – more than $510 000 in 2022, double his 2019 salary.
Informed Consent Action Network paid executive director Del Bigtree $284 000 in 2022, a 22% increase from 2019. Bigtree is now communications director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
Some individuals behind the family foundations or trusts that fund the four groups also contributed the legal maximum in personal donations to Kennedy’s presidential bid, shows OpenSecrets, which tracks political donations.
The salaries of Kory and Paul Marik, chairman and chief scientific officer of Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, also swelled. In 2022, Kory earned $368 815 from the FLCCC – nearly 60% more his 2021 salary. Marik earned $400 000, eight times his 2021 earnings.
Kory said he and Marik had resigned as “full-time physicians and medical educators” to “dedicate their attention to the FLCCC”.
The American Board of Internal Medicine wants Kory’s and Marik’s certifications taken away for spreading misinformation, which both men are appealing.
America’s Frontline Doctors paid group founder Simone Gold $581 000 in 2022, more than 17 times what she earned from them in 2020. Gold’s lawyer, Jimenez, said she was released after serving 48 days of a 60-day prison sentence in 2022 for trespassing in the US Capitol during the 6 January 2021 insurrection by Donald Trump supporters.
In a November 2022 lawsuit, America’s Frontline Doctors accused Gold of using non-profit money to fund her lifestyle: buy a $3.6m home, luxury cars, and hire a housekeeper and security officer. She was also accused of using the organisation’s employees to work at her for-profit wellness company, GoldCare.
Gold denied improper spending. The lawsuit was dismissed in December 2022.
Financing social, political influence
The groups contributed to a media ecosystem that spread misinformation during the pandemic. Children’s Health Defence started an internet TV channel with daily programming casting doubt on vaccine safety, said Prof Dorit Reiss, from the University of California College of the Law (San Francisco) who tracks these organisations’ influence.
Informed Consent Action Network spent nearly $6m on online “educational programmes” in 2022, allegedly reaching 6m viewers in 209 countries.
Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance received more than $8m in contributions, grants and other revenue in 2022 – 23 times more than in 2020 – touting Ivermectin, which it also began promoting to prevent and treat flu and RSV.
The CDC said there was no clinical data supporting Ivermectin for flu and RSV. Kory, the group’s president, said he and Marik frequently appear on shows run by Children’s Health Defence and Informed Consent Action Network. The latter group gave the FLCCC $210 000 in 2022.
Kory and Marik have testified countrywide espousing their views of Ivermectin for Covid or against legislation promoting vaccines. Marik’s testimony in Tennessee helped pass a Bill expanding access to Ivermectin.
Merck, which manufactures Ivermectin, says there’s “no scientific basis” or “meaningful evidence” to prescribe the drug for Covid. Regarding flu and RSV, the company said last year that use of the drug was not supported beyond what regulations have approved it for.
Children’s Health Defence, which in 2020 had just two state chapters, in California and New York, has expanded to 19 states, as well as one focused on the military. These enable it to “spread misinformation” about vaccines in a more sophisticated way, with potential legislative consequences, said Becky Christensen, founder of the pro-vaccine Safe Communities Coalition & Action Fund.
Children’s Health Defence says its legal team works closely with state attorneys general to protect off-label use of Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to prevent or treat Covid; attorneys general in six states have done so.
The group donated $50 000 in 2021 to the Republican Attorneys General Association; IRS rules bar charities from making political contributions.
Children’s Health Defence told Popular Information the donation was to “educate attorneys general on health policy issues” and “we regret our mistake”.
The Republican Attorneys General Association returned the funds.
Tax records from 2022 show Children’s Health Defence spent $3m in legal fees. The group has filed lawsuits, written amicus briefs or launched appeals in more than two dozen cases since 2020, including an ongoing antitrust lawsuit against The Post and other media companies alleging suppression of “accurate and legitimate reporting” that “self-appointed ‘truth police’” deemed “misinformation”.
The Post and co-defendants have filed a motion to dismiss, which is pending.
The organisation says it helped defeat coronavirus vaccine requirements for New York healthcare workers. In January, it collaborated with Kory, president of Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, in suing to stop California’s medical board from punishing doctors who spread misinformation.
America’s Frontline Doctors spent nearly $1.5m on legal fees in 2021 and again in 2022, funding work, including its opposition to vaccine mandates. In 2023, it had to defend itself in an ongoing lawsuit alleging that its promotion of hydroxychloroquine led to the death of a man who had been prescribed the drug by a doctor affiliated with the organisation. Jimenez disputes the allegations.
The group has used its pandemic fundraising to file more than 40 lawsuits since 2020, including suing federal agencies for records on vaccine safety data to drive vaccine scepticism, said Reiss, the law professor. It spent more than a third of its 2022 contributions and grants on legal fees.
Additionally, it supported a 2022 lawsuit that created religious vaccine exemptions for Mississippi schools – which has one of the highest childhood vaccination rates – and is raising money to “free the five” other states that still bar exemptions for people whose religious beliefs prevent them from being vaccinated.
Nationally, the proportion of children with a vaccine exemption reached a new high of 3% in 2022-2023. Public health experts predict more outbreaks of preventable disease, like the measles cases among people who remain unvaccinated.
Inside the donor groups
While many donors are shielded by tax vehicles for the wealthy, The Post used ProPublica’s Non-profit Explorer – a database of charitable organisations’ IRS filings – to identify two of the donor-advised funds that contributed the most money to the groups during Covid.
The National Christian Foundation donated than $1.8m in total to the four groups from 2020 to 2022.
DonorsTrust contributed $1m altogether to Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, America’s Frontline Doctors and Informed Consent Action Network in 2021/2022.
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said: “We should be really concerned that people are spending this much money to distort the truth.”
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
US doctors charged for anti-vax actions sue regulator
Family sues anti-vax body, doctor, over hydroxychloroquine death
US anti-vax doctor’s licence in the balance
US anti-vax group sues founder in control battle
Unproven Ivermectin resurfaces as treatment for long COVID patients