Chautauqua NY
In 2022, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was about to decide to grant emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine in children 6 months through 4 years, attorney Mary Holland, as president and general counsel of Children’s Health Defense, wrote that there is absolutely no Covid emergency for children under 5.
“Considering that healthy children have virtually zero risk of complications or death from Covid, and that the adverse events being reported following Covid vaccination are at historic rates and climbing, it’s outrageous that the FDA is even discussing an EUA vaccine for this age group,” she wrote.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a non-profit advocacy group, founded by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has campaigned against vaccines, pesticides, fluoridation of drinking water, paracetamol (Tylenol), aluminum, and wireless communications. Holland is currently on leave from CHD, serving as an advisor to the Kennedy presidential campaign.
Holland is the Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua speaker for Week 7 of the Chautauqua season, at the Athenaeum Hotel parlor on Monday, August 7 at 3pm. The title of her talk is “Childhood Health: Are We On Track?”
ABC aims to provide intellectual diversity in its programs. Its mission is: “To achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua.” ABC lectures are not listed in the official Chautauqua Institution publications. But ABC has more than 700 supporters and their lectures are very well attended.
According to the CHD website, “Children’s Health Defense seeks to end the epidemic of chronic childhood diseases, hold those responsible accountable, and create safeguards to prevent future epidemics. Through its education, advocacy, litigation and research, CHD challenges federal and state governments, pharmaceutical companies, corporations and corrupt regulatory agencies to end the practices that are harming children’s health.”
Holland has been working with the health freedom movement for more than 20 years. She has worked closely with CHD founder Kennedy.
“Once I learned about the extreme liability protection that industry and healthcare providers enjoy and the suppression of accurate science and information about vaccine risk and injury, I understood the need for immediate, radical systemic change. I’ve been devoted to that change ever since,” she said.
She has testified in state legislatures to retain or expand religious, medical and philosophical exemptions to vaccine mandates.
In 2020, CHD successfully opposed a law that allowed children to get vaccines without their parents knowledge and consent.
Holland has co-authored two books on vaccines, Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health and Our Children, and The HPV Vaccine on Trial: Seeking Justice for a Generation Betrayed, as well as many articles about vaccine law and policy.
Holland earned a bachelor’s degree in Russian and Soviet studies, cum laude, from Harvard University, and a master’s degree in Russian studies from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. In 1989, she graduated from the Columbia