by WorldTribune Staff, October 22, 2026 — Real World News
A New York Times hit piece on a new Health and Human Services (HHS) clinic dedicated to the study of vaccine injuries failed to mention that the individual who leaked criticism of the clinic to the media outlet is closely tied to Big Pharma, a report said.
HHS said that its new Vaccinology and Immunology Center (VIC) at the NIH Clinical Center in Maryland will focus on researching and treating vaccine injuries. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced its launch earlier this month.
The New York Times omitted key information from Jack Leslie’s biography.
Last week, the Times reported that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) hospital board unanimously approved a statement criticizing the new center and Kennedy, accusing him of undermining public trust in the hospital’s work.
The information was leaked to the Times by Jack Leslie, a senior adviser and former chairman of Weber Shandwick, the world’s second-largest public relations firm, The Defender reported on Oct. 20. Leslie chairs the NIH Clinical Center Research Hospital Board. Weber Shandwick represents several major pharmaceutical companies.
According to The Disinformation Chronicle, Leslie leaked the statement to Times health policy correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg. The newspaper published her story within hours but did not disclose Leslie’s ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Leslie’s biography on Weber Shandwick’s website lists his past consulting work for Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Sanofi — alongside his consulting work for the World Health Organization, Gates Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation.
“Critics argue that Leslie’s dual role on the NIH hospital board while affiliated with Weber Shandwick — a firm representing major vaccine producers like Pfizer, Moderna, and GSK — presents an unaddressed conflict of interest that merits public scrutiny.
Leslie is also a colleague of Dr. Anthony Fauci at Georgetown University, where they both teach and serve in advisory capacities,” the report said.
The Times story only disclosed Leslie’s work with global health organizations and nonprofits, stating:
“Mr. Leslie, a former chairman of the global public relations firm Weber Shandwick, has advised the World Health Organization and numerous health-oriented philanthropies, and government bodies under presidents of both parties. He also chairs the board of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and advises global health institutes at two universities, Duke and Georgetown.”
The Times’ report does not mention that Leslie is senior adviser to the Georgetown University Global Health Institute, which is affiliated with Fauci, a participant in the institute’s global health discussions.
Leslie and Fauci also serve on Georgetown’s Health Sciences Board of Advisors and hold teaching positions at the university. Leslie is a distinguished professor on the adjunct track at Georgetown’s School of Health, while Fauci is a distinguished university professor at its School of Medicine.
HHS spokespeople and attending pediatricians defended the VIC as a long-overdue initiative meant to study vaccine injuries with gold-standard scientific rigor.
Paul D. Thacker, investigative reporter and author of The Disinformation Chronicle, told The Defender that he believes the Times published the story to discredit Kennedy and people who say vaccines have injured them.
“Everyone knows the pharma industry hates RFK Jr. So, it’s beyond perplexing that a New York Times reporter saw ‘news’ when PR man Jack Leslie said something denigrating about him, and spit on people harmed by their products. That’s what Big Pharma pays Weber Shandwick to do,” Thacker said.
A spokesperson for HHS, which oversees the NIH, defended the new center in a statement to The Defender.
The VIC “reflects the Trump Administration’s commitment to restoring gold-standard science, transparency, and accountability to our public health institutions,” the spokesperson said.
“This work will help ensure that people who experience health problems following vaccination are taken seriously and studied with the same scientific rigor applied to other medical conditions,” the spokesperson added.
Investigative reporter Christine Dolan noted:
As a journalist, I have been interviewing Covid vaccine-injured and doctors treating these injuries since January 2021, as spelled out in ‘Urban Legends.’ The Covid vaccine-injured need to remind the public that when they were in contact with the NIH in 2021, the NIH’s position was that the agency would be studying the Covid vaccine-injured sometime in the future.
NIH’s Dr. Brian Walitt told one Covid vaccine-injured woman in a December 2021 phone call that NIH studies do not necessarily transform into treatments. In a heart-breaking call, the woman pleaded for help. Dr. Walitt told her there was nothing NIH could do at that point and referred her to doctors in New York. The Covid vaccine-injured need more clarification on this HHS announcement. The immediate goal should be to officially recognize the vascular and neurological injuries since there is a plethora of existing medical evidence.
All HHS has to do is host a panel of doctors from Drs. Mary Talley Bowden, Peter McCullough, Paul Marik and Pierre Kory and other doctors who are treating, or have treated Covid vaccine-injured since 2021. It is time for the bureaucrats to stop creating more hurdles to get the Covid vaccine-injured medical help, and pull these Covid shots off the market world-wide.
