About Us
Why We Do What We Do
The Children’s Health Defense California Chapter (EIN #26-0388604) is devoted to the health of people and our planet. Our mission is to end childhood health epidemics by working aggressively to eliminate harmful exposures, hold those responsible accountable and establish safeguards to prevent future harm. We fight corruption, mass surveillance and censorship that put profits before people as well as advocate for worldwide rights to health freedom and bodily autonomy.
We do what we do for many reasons. Some of us have children who have been injured. Some of us have seen an injustice and feel the need to step in where others fear to tread. Some of us are focused on the demand for scientific integrity, others on improving the health of this, and future, generations. Some of us are eager to help any way we can. But the one thing we all share is our passionate belief that we have public health policies and practices that are harming our children. For the future good health of our children and planet, we call for more research and transparency.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Founder and Chairman on Leave
[Note: As of 4/2/23, Mr. Kennedy is on leave as CHD’S Chairman and Chief Legal Counsel.]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Founder, Chairman and Chief Litigation Counsel for Children’s Health Defense. He is the founder of Waterkeeper Alliance, the world’s largest clean water advocacy group, and served as its longtime chairman and attorney.
Kennedy’s reputation as a resolute defender of the environment and children’s health stems from a litany of hundreds of successful legal actions. Most recently, Kennedy received recognition for his role on the trial team in the landmark victories against Monsanto in 2018, and against DuPont in 2019 in the contamination case that inspired the movie “Dark Waters” (2019).
Among Kennedy’s published books is the New York Times bestseller Crimes Against Nature (2005). His book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (2021) sold more than 1 million copies and was on the New York Times Best Sellers List for 17 weeks. Named one of Time magazine’s Heroes for the Planet for his success helping Riverkeeper lead the fight to restore the Hudson River, Kennedy’s reputation as a resolute defender of the environment stems from his proven track record of successful legal actions.
Kennedy is a graduate of Harvard University. He studied at the London School of Economics and received his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School. Following graduation, he attended Pace University School of Law, which awarded him a master’s degree in environmental law. He served on the Pace Law School faculty from 1986 to 2018 and cofounded and supervised Pace’s Environmental Litigation Clinic.
Advisory Council
Dr. Peter McCullough, MD, MPH
Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, is an internist, cardiologist, and epidemiologist who has been a leader in the medical response to COVID-19. His bestselling book, The Courage to Face Covid-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex is the story of how Dr. McCullough and his colleagues developed an early multidrug protocol consisting of Emergency Use Authorized agents, clinically indicated generic drugs, and supplements that has saved millions of COVID-19 patients from hospitalization and death.
In August of 2020 Dr. McCullough published “Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection” in the American Journal of Medicine. This paper presented the first synthesis of sequenced multidrug treatment of ambulatory patients infected with the virus and was subsequently updated in Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed papers on the infection and has commented extensively on the medical response in The Hill, America Out Loud, ABC, Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, Victory Channel, and a multitude of independent media outlets. He has testified on several occasions in the U.S. Senate and before several State Senate and Congressional Committees.
Dr. McCullough is a founding member and Chief Medical Officer of The Wellness Company. He is author of the daily “Courageous Discourse” substack and host of the weekly show “The Second Opinion.” Learn more about Dr. McCullough here.
Dr. Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E. | Professor of Biology
Dr. Hooker has been active in the autism community since 2001 and has an adult son with autism. He served on the board of trustees for Focus for Health and now serves on the national board of Children’s Health Defense. In 2013 and 2014, Dr. Hooker worked with the CDC Whistleblower, Dr. William Thompson, to expose fraud and corruption within vaccine safety research in the CDC which led to the release of over 10,000 pages of documents and the world renown documentary “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe.”
Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., PE, is a professor of biology at Simpson University in Redding California where he specializes in microbiology and biotechnology. He also taught chemistry at Shasta College.
Dr. Hooker dedicated over 15 years as a bioengineer and the team leader for the High Throughput Biology Team and Operations Manager of the DOE Genomics: Genomes to Life (GTL) Center for Molecular and Cellular Systems at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Dr. Hooker also managed applied plant and fungal molecular biology research projects at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where systems biology researchers are focused on understanding gene and protein networks involved in individual cell signaling, communication between cells in communities, and cellular metabolic pathways. Dr. Hooker also served as research director for the plant biotechnology company, PhytaGenics.
Dr. Hooker’s newest book, co-authored with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak is based on over sixty studies in the peer-reviewed literature that consider vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations. Each of these studies is analyzed and put in context of the difference in health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated infants, children, and adults. The book is set to be released on July 18, 2023. Available for preorder.
Michael L. Baum, Attorney | Sr. Partner at Wisner Baum
Michael Baum is a senior partner of Wisner Baum (formerly Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman) with nearly 40 years of experience. He was the managing partner of Baum Hedlund from 1993 to 2022.
Baum’s firm has successfully litigated personal injury, wrongful death and consumer fraud cases against major pharmaceutical companies such as Alpha Therapeutic, Armour Pharmaceutical Co., Baxter Health Care Corp, Bayer Corp., Dalkon Corporation, Eli Lilly, Forest Labs, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer.
Among his many achievements, accomplished with the help of his team, are:
- His firm’s historic $289M and the $2B Roundup cancer verdicts against Monsanto (now Bayer) and the firm’s release of The Monsanto Papers;
- An unprecedented jury verdict against a brand-name drug manufacturer (GSK) for the wrongful
death of a man who took a generic form of Paxil; - Baum and his colleagues have lawsuits going to trial representing thousands of parents throughout the nation who allege their children developed autism and/or ADHD after consuming baby foods containing dangerous toxic metals;
- Representing dozens of young men and women throughout the country in lawsuits against Merck & Co., the manufacturer of the Gardasil human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. The HPV vaccine side effects lawsuits allege Merck fast-tracked its Gardasil through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval process and deceptively conducted the clinical trials for Gardasil to mask serious side effects and exaggerate the vaccine’s efficacy. In April, 2022, a motion was filed to consolidate over 30 Gardasil vaccine lawsuits that were pending in federal courts throughout the country. By July 28, 2022, 48 cases were pending with at least 100 more to be filed in federal courts nationwide.
- Being recognized, along with his firm, as a national leader in the antidepressant Paxil, Prozac, and Zoloft suicide litigation;
- Working to bring about the black box suicidality warning for children and young adults, now on most antidepressant labels;
- Arranging for the face-to-face presentation between pharmaceutical company executives and dozens of hemophiliac families that got to say, person by person, holding before and after photos of themselves or departed loved ones, how the hemophilia-AIDS epidemic, and the manner in which the companies caused and covered it up, impacted their lives;
- Being one of the leaders in the fight against federal preemption, a doctrine pushed by the pharmaceutical industry to wipe out consumers’ rights to sue drug companies for injuries caused by their drugs (Preemption was finally defeated in 2009 with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Wyeth v. Levine);
- Creating the first class action ever filed against an SSRI-antidepressant manufacturer, ending with the successful resolution of more than 3,000 Paxil injury cases;
Learn more about Attorney Michael Baum here.
Pastor Rob McCoy | Pastor, Mayor, Catalyst of Liberty
Rob McCoy, the Senior Pastor of Godspeak Calvary Chapel of Thousand Oaks (California). After the initial COVID-19 lockdown, Pastor Rob bravely continued to give sermons inside his church, refusing to follow state and county COVID-19 restrictions and orders not to. The world spotlight shone upon him for speaking out and speaking up for freedom. “You don’t quarantine the healthy, quarantine the sick. And we’re watching as our businesses are being destroyed, our families are being devastated. Our children are being traumatized by this, this is unconscionable,” McCoy was quoted as he stood in the atrium of the church.
Pastor Rob , an All-American Water Polo player and a National Finalist Swimmer, graduated from California State University Fresno with a B.A. in History and received his seminary training from The Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Fresno, California. He has served as the Senior Pastor of Godspeak Calvary Chapel of Thousand Oaks for 17 years. He has been a member of the Thousand Oaks City Council since 2015 and is the former Mayor of Thousand Oaks, term starting in December of 2018. He served as a Ventura County Sheriff’s Chaplain for 4 years and on the board of the Conejo Pregnancy Center. Pastor Rob works closely with Turning Point USA and TPUSA Faith. Learn more about Pastor Rob.
Toby Rogers, Ph.D. | Political Economist
Dr. Toby Rogers earned his Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Sydney in Australia. His doctoral thesis, “The Political Economy of Autism,” explores the regulatory history of five classes of toxicants that increase autism risk. Dr. Rogers shows that the public health problem of autism starts with the political economy problem of regulatory capture. He also has a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Rogers writes, speaks, and teaches on the costs and likely causes of autism, corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, and the revolution we need to stop the epidemics of chronic illness in children.
Dr. Rogers has stated, “What’s beautiful about being around all these warrior moms and dads and working together is these parents have figured out what it’s going to take legislatively to end these epidemics. They have more wisdom than everybody at the CDC put together. There’s this thing in the social science literature called “popular epidemiology.” It’s epidemiology from below. It’s the wisdom that people gather through lived experience and their own independent research, common sense and logic. What we’re seeing is this remarkable moment in the history of popular epidemiology where parents have figured out the causes of an epidemic a good twenty years before the mainstream medical and scientific community has figured it out. It’s remarkable and fascinating.” Learn more about Dr. Toby Rogers.
John Leake | Author
John Leake studied history and philosophy with Roger Scruton at Boston University. He then went to Vienna, Austria on a graduate school scholarship and ended up living in the city for over a decade, working as a freelance writer and translator. He is a true crime writer with a lifelong interest in medical history and forensic medicine.
His current book, which he co-authored with Dr. Peter McCullough, the bestseller, THE COURAGE TO FACE COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex is the story of doctors who developed a safe and effective early treatment for COVID-19 and their battle with the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex that suppressed it.
His first book, Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer was a New York Times Sunday Book Review “Editors’ Choice,” a Men’s Vogue “Best Book of 2007,” and the inspiration of The Infernal Comedy, starring John Malkovich.
His second book, bestseller, Cold a Long Time: An Alpine Mystery, was winner of the 2012 Independent Publisher Award. His investigative work for the Jack Unterweger, Duncan MacPherson, and Angelika Foeger stories has been the subject of numerous television documentaries produced by A&E Biography, Discovery, among others.
He is coauthor (with Dr. Peter McCullough) of the daily Courageous Discourse substack and cohost of the weekly show “The Second Opinion.”
