by Dr. Joseph Mercola, Mercola:
Story at-a-glance
- Pharmaceutical companies have embedded themselves into the media, medical schools, nonprofits, and federal agencies. Their far-reaching influence has allowed them to shape public health narratives
- Journalist Sharyl Attkisson reveals how pharmaceutical companies, federal agencies, and mainstream media work together to bury vaccine injuries, suppress clinical trial failures, and silence experts who speak out
- Many trusted nonprofit health organizations receive funding from pharmaceutical companies, creating conflicts of interest that affect their public health recommendations
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
- Medical students are trained using pharma-funded materials that downplay drug risks. They’re conditioned to prescribe medications instead of investigating root causes or offering real, lasting treatments
- To protect yourself from deception, don’t hesitate to question health narratives and seek independent voices who prioritize public health over corporate-aligned messaging
You want to trust your doctor, your pharmacist, and the headlines guiding your health decisions. But what if the advice you’re following has been shaped not by unbiased experts but by people with profits in mind?
Over the past decades, Big Pharma has quietly embedded itself into nearly every institution responsible for shaping public health, including mainstream media, medical schools, nonprofits, and even federal health agencies. Instead of offering checks and balances, these institutions now echo one another. When the same message is repeated from every direction, it becomes nearly impossible to recognize when you’re being misled.
In the featured video above,1 former CBS investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson pulls back the curtain on a web of money, messaging, and manipulation that reaches into every corner of modern healthcare. If you’ve ever wondered why dissenting voices disappear or troubling data goes unreported, this investigation explains why and reveals how the choices you’re given may be carefully curated by the very industry that profits from them.
How One Vaccine Investigation Changed Everything
Attkisson began her career trusting the medical system. Like most Americans, she believed that government health officials and medical professionals operated with integrity and that drug safety was managed with vigilance. However, her firsthand exposure to the program’s inner workings changed that belief permanently.
•The post-9/11 smallpox program raised new concerns — Attkisson was sent by CBS News to cover the federal government’s restart of the smallpox vaccination program after the September 11 attacks, prompted by fears that terrorists could weaponize the virus.
The smallpox vaccine carries a high rate of adverse events, so the government was supposed to track every serious health outcome after vaccination, regardless of whether a link was confirmed.
•Severe vaccine reactions emerged in real time — As part of her investigation, she reported directly from military operations, witnessing the smallpox vaccine rollout. However, she soon noticed that healthy people who received the vaccine began experiencing severe reactions, and one of them, NBC correspondent David Bloom, unexpectedly died not long after of a blood clot.
•Bloom’s death was deliberately excluded from reporting systems — Attkisson found out that Bloom had recently gotten the smallpox and anthrax vaccines. When she asked officials if there could be a link to his death, they pushed back and avoided her questions.
“It was said that he had genetic predispositions, and he had been cramped up in a tank the whole day, and he’d had some pain in his leg and so on. But I knew from the research that I’d been conducting for covering these stories that the smallpox vaccine, according to some research, had blood clots as a potential side effect, as many other things. Deep vein thrombosis that could be fatal,” Attkisson shared.
“In a program they’re thinking about restarting and they were supposed to be measuring all adverse events that occur after the vaccine — whether or not they think it was related, they have to monitor all of them and report them so they can be counted and looked at — nobody was reporting David Bloom’s death as a potential vaccine side effect.”2
•Only media pressure forced the government to acknowledge his case — When Attkisson broke the story, only then was Bloom’s death ultimately reported as a potential vaccine-related event. Not long after, due in part to public pressure and mounting adverse event reports, the government quietly halted the smallpox vaccination program entirely.
•This investigation exposed a pattern of narrative control — This experience opened Attkisson’s eyes to how medical narratives are manipulated.
“I came to learn this is a very convenient catch-22. Whenever you try to find out something from the government that may implicate a product from the pharmaceutical industry, suddenly, everything’s a big secret. But if it’s something that they want to have released for reasons that benefit somebody, they will tell you everything,” she said.3
Nonprofits That Serve Corporate Interests
Aside from uncovering institutional failures in government and military vaccine oversight, Attkisson also discussed another cornerstone of public trust — nonprofit organizations.
•Nonprofits are widely trusted, but many have hidden industry ties — Nonprofit organizations are widely perceived as altruistic, mission-driven protectors of the public good. But behind the curtain, many of them are tied to the very industries they claim to monitor or oppose. Attkisson recounts a longtime CBS producer telling her, “If they say they’re the ‘Citizens Against Cancer,’ it’s probably started by R.J. Reynolds or a tobacco company.”4
•The link between antiperspirants and breast cancer — Attkisson shares an example that began with an unexpected tip from a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official that antiperspirants had been linked to breast cancer. According to Attkisson:
“He told me that the FDA had been fighting for years to try to potentially put a warning about the antiperspirant and cancer link on the label for antiperspirants, but had been beaten down year after year by the power of the antiperspirant industry …
I asked for an interview with the antiperspirant industry — basically it’s the cosmetics industry … They didn’t want to do an interview, but they kept saying, ‘Interview the American Cancer Society.’ And I’m thinking why do they think the American Cancer Society is going to defend them? Why are they so sure of that? … I bet there’s a money tie.”5
•The connection raised red flags — When Attkisson contacted the American Cancer Society, their head of science dismissed the connection as a “myth,” echoing language used on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and FDA websites. But when questioned further, the spokesperson admitted they’re not familiar with the latest science.
•Donations present a major conflict of interest — When she asked directly whether the organization received funding from the antiperspirant industry, the spokesperson admitted they did.
“I asked how much, and they would not tell me … no dollar figure, not even a percentage. He just said, as I kept asking, ‘It’s a small amount.’ That’s a huge organization. If they get a ‘small amount’ of funding from every industry that’s implicated in cancer, you can see how the conflict of interest could stack up,” she noted.6
•Nonprofits are industry shields disguised as public advocates — This is how the shell game works. Industry money flows to nonprofits, which then present biased conclusions under the veil of objectivity, all under the banner of charity.
