In January of 2020, the world began hearing rumors that a deadly virus was wreaking havoc in Wuhan, China. Shortly thereafter the virus made its way around the globe, causing the most pernicious pandemic since the influenza pandemic of the early 20th century, over 100 years earlier.

Governments around the globe invested heavily in the development of vaccines they hoped would relegate the disease named COVID-19 to a historical footnote. The FDA fast-tracked these vaccines, skipping large segments of the usual testing process before authorizing several different brands for emergency use in early 2021. Some of the new products, including those sold by Pfizer and Moderna, used technology never before applied to vaccines: Messenger RNA (mRNA) temporarily hijacks cells in the recipient’s body, forcing them to make the “spike” proteins that enable the SARS-CoV-2 virus to invade human cells.

Why would vaccinologists want the body to make the most problematic protein of a noxious virus? The intent was to provoke production of antibodies that would selectively bind to the spike protein, neutralizing the virus whenever it was encountered and rendering it harmless to human cells.

Never has vaccine development been followed so intently by the general public as it has for COVID vaccines. Suddenly, people who had never exhibited any prior interest in vaccine science or technology began debating the relative merits of the novel mRNA technology over conventional live-virus vaccines and dissecting the formal stages of the vaccine approval process. Many, including some well-known vaccine proponents, expressed concern and skepticism about the safety and/or effectiveness of the rushed COVID vaccines.

Despite purportedly putting science in the driver’s seat, governments and health authorities in the US and around the world enacted COVID policies that were, more often than not, anything but science-driven. This was especially true when it came to the vaccines.

Some of the most egregious actions health agencies and pharmaceutical companies collaborated on during the testing of COVID vaccines include

• Rushing to market vaccines that were insufficiently tested in clinical trials.
• Concealing and withholding crucial clinical trial data from the medical community and the public.
• Recommending vaccination of vulnerable subpopulations (pregnant women, children) although the vaccines were not adequately tested in these groups.

When it comes to monitoring the safety of COVID vaccines the same parties have been guilty of the following:

• Employing superficial and inadequate monitoring of post-marketing vaccine adverse events.
• Dismissing post-vaccination injuries out of hand as “unrelated to the vaccine”.
• Providing no tools for medical personnel to identify, diagnose, or treat vaccine injury.
• Discouraging doctors from reporting vaccine injury.
• Sponsoring virtually no science seriously investigating reported vaccine injuries.

With respect to public discussion of COVID policies in general and vaccine policies in particular, these agencies and corporations colluded with mainstream media and social media moguls to

• De-legitimize criticism and open debate, labeling critique from senior scientists, doctors and the public as “misinformation” or “anti-science”.
• Promote the false notion that COVID vaccines provide herd immunity in order to pressure the public into vaccinating “to protect others”.
• Initiate, publish, and promote bad science to support the lucrative vaccine agenda.
• Artificially inflate the market for COVID vaccines by smearing and banning safe and effective, over-the-counter medications (such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine).

Seeing how ineffectively and dishonestly the COVID pandemic was handled (particularly in the US, which fared worse than any other country but Brazil), many people around the world grew disillusioned with their governments and health agencies. At this point, however, most of the disillusioned restrict their criticism to the mishandling of the COVID crisis, and relatively few extend their critical analysis to vaccines in general, or to the childhood vaccines. Perhaps the majority are unaware of the grim broader reality of vaccine science or they fear being labeled “anti-vaxxers” (which would be understandable, as that epithet is thrown at anyone who dares question any aspect of vaccine dogma). Even now, in 2022, after all that has transpired in the last two years, vaccines are still the “sacred cow” of medicine that should always be defended and never doubted.

But is such reserve justified? Was COVID just a one-off, with the all-encompassing folly we have witnessed born of the need to do something and to do it quickly? Or did governments and their health agencies simply take their modus operandi to extremes in order to exploit a worldwide health crisis to advance their agenda and benefit their collaborators?

In the wake of the COVID fiasco, it is time for a deeper look down the larger vaccine rabbit hole: Are childhood vaccines so different from COVID vaccines?

Are they safer? Were they tested any better? Are their injuries better documented and investigated? Are medical professionals (or anyone else) allowed to question them any more than they were allowed to question COVID vaccines? And the most important question of all: Can we entrust our babies to vaccines produced, tested, and marketed by the same agencies and corporations, doctors and government officials, researchers and high-tech moguls that failed us so miserably over the last two years?

You are now holding the book that answers all those questions, and answers them definitively. This book dissects the CDC’s recommended childhood schedule with respect to the issues I highlighted above: the clinical trials, adverse event reporting, recognizing and treating vaccine injuries, vaccination recommendations that are not supported by science, science censored and contorted to support the vaccine agenda, mainstream media vaccine propaganda, and more. Throw in a thorough rebuttal of three foundational vaccination myths, and there you have it – everything you ever needed to know about vaccines, but were afraid to ask.

Turtles All the Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth was first published in Israel in early 2019. Later that year, it set a worldwide precedent for a vaccine-critical book when a mainstream medical journal published a positive review of it. The article in the September 2019 issue of Harefuah (“Medicine”), the leading medical journal in Israel, was authored by a pair of senior academic criminologists, Nati Ronel and Eti Elisha. To the dismay of the Israeli medical establishment, Ronel and Elisha “found the book to be well written, serious, scientific and important”, offering “a comprehensive view of the issue.” Though heavily criticized by some vaccine doctors as “only” criminologists who should stay in their lane, their appraisal of the book still stands today, unscathed: In the three years since its (Hebrew) publication, no medical or medical science professional has succeeded in refuting the book’s claims. Unable to demonstrate that the book or its Harefuah review actually contained any errors, critics – doctors as well as lay people – chose instead to target the review’s authors. The fierce personal attack on Ronel and Elisha for merely reviewing the book served to illustrate one of the major points in their article, that the science and medical establishment resorts to aggressive personal attacks to cover-up inconvenient truth: “It appears that science and medicine are becoming hostile to criticism in ways that are historically associated with the violence of fundamental religious orthodoxy or even inquisition committees similar to those of the Middle Ages.

They are convinced they know the ‘truth’ and reject every attempt to question this ‘truth’ as heresy.”

One academic, Daniel Mishori, Ph.D., a senior faculty member specializing in ethics and philosophy at the Department of Environmental Science at Tel Aviv University, was so disturbed by the lack of discussion of the book’s arguments that he offered a cash prize ($4,000 donated to the hospital ward of choice) to anyone who could refute them. Since Turtles is over 500 pages and contains more than 1,200 references, Mishori declared he would settle for a proper rebuttal to the harsh conclusions drawn in the first chapter of the book.

To this day no one has been able to meet his “Turtles challenge.”

Clearly, the main reason no one has been able to refute the book’s arguments thus far is that the authors made a very conscious effort to rely exclusively on publications available from “kosher” sources such as mainstream scientific journals and leading government agencies (CDC, FDA, WHO, etc.). The book contains virtually no references to studies, articles, or even quotes by anyone who has been painted as an “anti-vaxxer” by the media at any time, regardless of their quality or scientific validity. Thus, it has proved impossible, until now at least, for even the most venerated vaccine experts to refute conclusions that were based upon savvy and accurate analysis of scientifically sanctioned sources.

You may have noticed this book does not list an author. That is because the book’s authors have chosen to remain anonymous, and they have some good reasons for doing so. If you’re already familiar with the vaccine debate, you are probably aware that whenever someone questions any part of the official narrative surrounding vaccines, no matter how minor the point or reasonable the argument, that person is immediately attacked – to the point that well known, dedicated scientists in numerous countries have lost their careers for challenging vaccine dogma. The authors of Turtles are from Israel, a small country where, if someone were deemed enough of a threat to the powers that be, it would be quite simple to make their lives, as well as those of their family members, a living nightmare. This abysmal state of affairs was not lost on Ronel and Elisha, who found it disturbing that such a worthy scientific book had to be published anonymously, noting “The fact that the authors chose anonymity invokes criminological questions on the decision making processes by the medical establishment and on the issue of medical ethics surrounding the heated debate over vaccines.”

Another good reason the authors chose anonymity, and perhaps the more important one from your perspective as a reader, is to “immunize” the book against ad hominem attacks, a favorite tactic employed by the pharmaceutical industry and the medical establishment. When they can’t disprove an argument scientifically, vaccine loyalists typically resort to personal attacks against the people making it, following the notorious PR motto of “smear the authors – kill the book.” However, this “shoot the messenger” tactic only works if there is someone to shoot. Thus, Turtles’ authors artfully disarmed their antagonists, taking the smear campaign option off the table.

Personally, I sympathize with the authors and fully understand their motives. I have witnessed many smear campaigns targeting advocates of vaccine safety. One noteworthy example is my colleague Robert F. Kennedy, who was a well-known environmental lawyer, when he looked into the long-term negative effects of repeatedly injecting mercury into infants’ bodies. Before he published Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak, about a mercury-based preservative that was present in many childhood vaccines until someone in the FDA actually added up how much mercury infants were receiving, his media connections made it easy to get on television to talk about whatever he wanted. He could present the dangers of environmental mercury in any other context and the media would cheer him on, but mention the word vaccines and suddenly no one in mainstream media wanted anything to do with him. Despite the fact that he made it clear he was steadfastly in favor of vaccines as long as they weren’t laced with a neurotoxic metal, he was increasingly vilified in the media, called everything from “anti-vaxxer” to “crazy and dangerous.” But if his arguments were simply misinformation,” as the media implies, why would they need a smear campaign? Wouldn’t it be better from their point of view to invite him to a public debate where their hand-picked “experts” could crush him into a fine powder? When it comes to Turtles, a scholarly analysis with no author to attack, the so-called experts’ only options are to debate the book’s content or be silent.

While character assassination can be an effective public relations strategy, it has no place in the search for scientific truth. When it comes to science, it shouldn’t matter who is making the argument. All that should matter is whether or not the argument is valid. In other words, good arguments should stand – or not – on their own merits, not on the credentials or popularity of the person making the argument. Albert Einstein was a patent clerk when he published the Theory of Relativity, but his dull job and lack of academic standing obviously didn’t stop him from having brilliant insights in physics. If the more established scientists of his day were allowed to shout down his theory because its originator lacked credentials, science would have lost one of its brightest lights.

The information on vaccine science contained in this magnificent book is far too important to be allowed to be co-opted in this way. Our children’s lives depend on getting this right. The authors of Turtles don’t want you to take their word for anything. They want you to read the arguments in this book and verify the references and quotes they are based on (which the authors went out of their way to make accessible). And they want you to think about what you read – not about who wrote it. In this day and age, it seems that the only way to keep the focus on what is said in a vaccine-critical book, and not on who is saying it, is to say it anonymously.

So that is what they did.

With that, I challenge every physician and scientist to read Turtles All the Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth and make your best effort to shoot holes in the arguments it makes. I suspect that for the vast majority it will be an eye-opening experience. If you choose not to take the challenge because you don’t have the guts, then you have no place in the vaccine debate. In other words, speak now or forever hold your peace.

“I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.”

If you are reading this introduction, we can safely assume that you are aware, at least to some extent, of the controversy surrounding vaccines. On one side of this prominent public debate stands the health establishment with its many representatives repeatedly assuring us that vaccines are safe and effective.

Opposing them is a large and growing group of parents claiming that vaccines can, and do, cause severe side effects, and even their efficacy is exaggerated.

Due to the inherent complexity of its underlying subject, the vaccine debate challenges medical professionals and scientists alike – and, to an even greater extent, the average parent. In order to attain even a moderate level of expertise on this topic, one needs to have at least a basic understanding of numerous and varied medical and scientific disciplines, which are described and noted in parentheses below.

To begin with, one has to have a good grasp of vaccine-preventable diseases (expertise in infectious diseases). Some of these illnesses are specific to infants and children (expertise in pediatrics), while others are common to all age groups (family medicine). Next, one has to understand how vaccines for these diseases are developed (vaccinology): First, one must identify the causative agent (pathogen) – typically a bacterium (bacteriology) or a virus (virology) – and study its interaction with the body’s immune system (immunology).

Furthermore, researchers need to investigate the pattern of disease in various populations and how a vaccine may affect disease dissemination and severity (epidemiology).

Along with any potential health benefits, vaccines are also liable to have undesirable side effects. Vaccines are composed of a multitude of diverse biological and chemical compounds, some of which are considered toxic (toxicology). To diagnose adverse side effects, assess their severity, and find suitable treatments, one needs considerable knowledge of clinical medicine, with the specific fields depending on which organs are affected and the level of harm sustained (neurology, gastroenterology, dermatology, allergology, rheumatology, autoimmune diseases, etc.)

The above is by no means an exhaustive list. Vitally important aspects of the vaccine debate lie outside the domain of medical science, and one must also devote time to those as well in order to truly understand this complex issue. One must learn how vaccine research is conducted and vaccine policy is formed in the real world – where power, money, and politics shape the rules. Vaccines are manufactured by corporations intent on maximizing their profits. As is the case for every other business sector, vaccine company executives are first and foremost obligated to their shareholders, rather than to the health and well-being of the general public. Licensing, regulation, and marketing of vaccines are all carried out by governmental entities, which are influenced by political and financial considerations. Supposedly objective and impartial, scientific research dedicated to vaccines and vaccination practices is mostly funded by these same governmental entities and vaccine manufacturers whose considerations and interests may be at odds with the interests of the general public.

Vaccine research is published in scientific and medical journals which are, in every sense, also commercial enterprises endeavoring to maximize profits for their shareholders. Physicians and researchers working in the field of vaccines (or related areas) operate inside a confined system with strict rules, both formal and informal, that limit their freedom of investigation and expression. Media coverage of vaccines is also not immune to bias and conflicts of interest. Media outlets have financial relationships with some of the entities mentioned above, and these relationships shape their reporting on the subject of vaccination.

Legal and constitutional matters, especially with regard to severe vaccine side effects, occasionally crop up in courts across the globe. And ethical questions arise from legislative initiatives to compel immunization by law. Every one of these aspects (and this is still just a partial list) is an essential piece of the intricate tapestry that is the world of vaccines. It is impossible to grasp the whole picture without understanding how each of its diverse parts fits into it.

Thus, some knowledge in all the aforementioned academic and non-academic disciplines is required if one is to gain a comprehensive understanding of all the issues surrounding vaccines. Vaccination, then, has to be one of the most complex issues – if not the most complex – to be publicly debated over the last few decades. It’s safe to assume there isn’t a single person on Earth with expertise in all of these fields, even among those celebrated as “experts” on vaccination and those responsible for shaping vaccine policy. Despite the extreme complexity of this wide-ranging topic, at the end of the day it is you, the parents, who have to make vaccination decisions: Get vaccinated or not? Vaccinate your children or not? Vaccinate on schedule or space them out? Skip some of the shots or get them all?

Like everyone else nowadays, when you need information in order to make important decisions, you go to the Web, launch Google, and type in some relevant search terms, hoping the results will help you make an informed decision. But after surfing the Web in search of the answer to the to-vaccinate-or-not-to-vaccinate dilemma, you realize in short order that nailing this one will be anything but easy. A vaccine war is raging out there: Proponents and critics, parents and doctors, authorities and executives – all are stirring an enormous cauldron of… controversy soup. You’ll find a dizzying variety of material – photographs, videos, testimony, articles, quotes, opinions, arguments, explanations, proofs, and rebuttals – an endless assortment of information, interpretations, and conflicting opinions being published 24/7. And, as you delve deeper, it just gets more and more confusing.

So, where do you start? How do you put all this chaos in some kind of order? How do you collate all the seemingly random pieces of information floating around the Web into a logical and coherent mental image? How do you reconcile the contradictions between the different positions? Do you really have to spend years diligently reading in WhatsApp or Facebook groups and carefully analyzing multitudes of scientific papers in order to make decisions about a procedure that, up until a few years ago, wasn’t questioned by the vast majority of parents? Is it even possible to make informed decisions without proper medical training? And who should one believe – the parents who warn against the harms vaccinations inflicted upon their children or public health experts staunchly asserting that vaccines are proven safe and effective?

Who in heaven’s name is right?! Come on, we have to make this @#$& decision!

Take a breath. You can relax. You have come to the right place.

After spending a few days reading this book, your question – Who is right? – will be answered. The answer to this question that troubles millions of parents around the world is out there, its pieces scattered across hundreds of cyberspace locations – visible to all, yet hidden in plain sight for the vast majority of the public.

The purpose of this book is to reveal that answer and shine a spotlight on it for everyone to see.

This book is intended, first and foremost, for parents, those who are taking their first steps into the confusing world of vaccines and those who want to deepen their understanding of the field. Please note: This book does not provide comprehensive information regarding vaccine-preventable diseases, nor does it directly discuss questions concerning vaccination, such as Should I vaccinate? Which vaccines should I give? and When should I vaccinate? Instead, the book focuses on decisively answering the all-important question at hand: Who is right in the vaccine debate – vaccine proponents or their opponents?

In addition to parents, the book is intended for medical professionals, as well as medical researchers, who are interested in approaching the hot topic of vaccines from an unconventional, non-dogmatic, perspective. (Pro tip: You might want to think twice before taking this book to the office.)

Finally, the book is also intended for all those professionals whose work sometimes touches on vaccine-related topics – reporters, politicians, government officials, lawyers, teachers, social workers, therapists – and anyone else who cares about the health of their country, most notably, its children.

The book is replete with citations and references backing up its claims. The referenced documents are drawn almost entirely from mainstream sources, with a handful of exceptions. These sources include medical journals, publications and websites of health authorities (such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization), vaccine manufacturers’ publications, news stories and articles from mainstream media, and history and science books.

References are marked in the body of the text by a superscript number (like¹⁴³⁷). For each reference, the exact quote to which the text refers is provided (if possible or relevant), including the page number (if applicable), the document name, its main author, year of publication, and a link to the original text on the internet.^[a] Since there are more than 1,200 references, in order to reduce costs and avoid unnecessary waste of resources, we chose not to include a “References” section in the printed version of the book. An electronic PDF document that includes all the references, arranged by chapter, can be downloaded for free from the internet (see the link and QR code on the book’s back cover or first pages). For convenient access to the references while reading, we recommended that you read the book with your favorite screen display by your side and the reference document open to your current chapter. (not necessary with this edition, as stated above, all references and footnotes are placed on the same page)

Whether you are a medical professional, medical science researcher, or a parent who wants to make the best choices for your child’s health, we urge you to spend some time browsing through the references, at least reading the specific quotes the text alludes to or cites. In addition, we encourage you to read as many of the original documents as you can. Since it is unlikely that you’ll have enough spare time to fully explore all the book’s references, we advise starting with those references that apply to any claims that seem particularly far-fetched to you. For each such reference, you might want to verify where it was published and who its authors are, making sure that the quotations used are accurate and that they faithfully represent the spirit of the original document (that is, are not taken out of context). Moreover, you are more than welcome to challenge your contacts in the medical profession – your family doctor, pediatrician, friends working in medical sciences, etc. – with the claims made in this book (making sure to attach the relevant references). Ask them to provide you with evidence that contradicts the book’s assertions, but make sure they cite proper references from credible sources.

In addition to numbered references, the book also includes footnotes, denoted by superscripts of lower-case English letters (^[a], ^[b], ^[c]…), that usually provide a little more detail. Like the references, you can find the footnotes at the right margin of the page where each appears.

There are two possible answers to the central question in this book. If the answer is the one you’d expect, that vaccine authorities are right, you will just go on with your week somewhat better informed. If, on the other hand, the answer is that the parents are right, the earth beneath your feet may start to tremble.

Thus, you are now standing on the verge of an intellectual adventure that has the potential to violently rock your world. Once you pass through the gate, there will be no going back. You won’t be able to “un-know” what you already know.

If you choose to continue reading, you will have to gather the courage required for a journey to the other side of reality, courage to face new facts and examine them objectively, courage to ask hard questions when you are expected to merely obey, and courage to stand your ground in the face of pressure from family, friends, doctors, government officials, and what will probably feel like everyone else.

If you aren’t brave enough to get through this book, you might want to put it down, at least for now. Give it to someone else that you think is ready for the challenge. Come back to it in the future, when the time is right.

If, however, you choose to accompany us on this journey, you might want to make yourself a cup of coffee, get a smartphone or tablet and download the reference document so you have it next to you, and get comfy before we embark on our odyssey to the godforsaken corners of the vaccine version of Wonderland, where nothing is quite as it seems.