The Liberty Daily 
(The Daily Caller)—Career staff at the Food and Drug Administration spun the autopsy results of dead children to reduce the number of children suspected of dying from the COVID vaccine, according to internal FDA emails released by Sen. Ron Johnson, two former FDA officials, and a forensic pathologist who investigated two of the deaths.
Even after downplaying some of the previously suspected deaths, the FDA’s Division of Pharmacovigilance recommended a change to the label of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines to warn the public about the risk of “myocarditis with fatal outcomes” — heart inflammation and death — but that change never happened.
Johnson released the new FDA emails in a June 16 letter demanding more information about a recent $1.24 billion purchase by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for Pfizer vaccines despite bipartisan concerns about their safety.
The FDA did not respond to a request for comment. Pfizer and Moderna did not respond to requests for comment.
Johnson’s Homeland Security and Government Affairs Select Subcommittee on Investigations has received a trove of millions of emails and other records from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his investigative team has released reports and conducted hearings drawing from the documents.
“The safety issues with the COVID-19 injections that the Subcommittee has uncovered so far should have raised serious concerns at HHS and CDC about the mRNA COVID-19 Injections,” Johnson wrote in the letter. “Instead, CDC’s reported awarding of approximately $1.24 billion in new contracts to Pfizer for a vaccine linked to serious adverse events—including potentially the deaths of children—suggests CDC continues to fail to take its vaccine safety responsibilities seriously.”
The newly released emails show that the FDA identified 10 deaths in children after the COVID vaccine last fall, but within days reduced the tally to 7 deaths and downgraded others to appear less likely.
“Although what drove the decision to change these three cases remains to be seen, what is clear is that these officials appear to have determined that the seven cases warranted warning about the risks,” Johnson wrote.
But the new FDA documents show that two of the cases were downgraded in part because of positive tests for parvovirus, and Yale School of Medicine pathologist James Gill, a forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsies of two teenage boys who died of myocardial injury days after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, called the mention of parvovirus a “red herring.”
Parvovirus can be found in the tissues of about half of the population, and sensitive PCR tests can pick up the virus years after the infection, Gill told the DCNF.
“Essentially they could exclude about half of the potential complications because of this finding,” Gill said.
But heart issues from parvovirus and the heart issues discovered after the vaccine have different histologies, or microscopic markers, Gill said.
“It’s like saying everyone with blue eyes must be excluded. It’s kind of arbitrary I think,” he said. “It’s a red herring. Whether or not it was intentionally used as one, I don’t know, but certainly that would be a case of looking at the pathology.”
One former FDA official said the emails amount to a coverup by FDA and CDC.
The Timeline
Last fall, “under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, it appeared that federal health officials were taking steps to address the failure of the Biden administration to take COVID-19 vaccine safety issues seriously,” Johnson wrote in his letter.
On Nov. 22, 2025, under new leadership under the Trump administration, the FDA office overseeing COVID vaccine safety identified 10 pediatric deaths as probably or possibly connected to the COVID-19 injections, the emails show.
Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) Vinay Prasad had earlier announced the figure in a Nov. 28 memo to staff in which he called for higher standards for vaccines and “humility” from FDA in light of the tragic news. Prasad’s “Black Friday memo” leaked to reporters within hours, and a media firestorm erupted.
By Dec. 5, 2025, CBER officials had changed their findings on three pediatric deaths from “probably” or “possibly” caused by the COVID-19 injections to “un-assessable” or “unlikely.” They also downgraded a death from “probably” vaccine-induced to “possibly” vaccine-induced.
“This was a MONUMENTAL effort from all of us, to do a diligent review while being bombarded with media articles on the subject,” wrote Meghna Alimchandani, deputy director of the FDA Division of Pharmacovigilance in the December 5 email.
“The career FDA scientists identified new safety information not on the label – that COVID-19 shots have caused deaths – that information should be added to the label, but has not been. During the heightened media scrutiny of this topic, scientists downcoded their initial impression of deaths,” a former FDA official granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters told the DCNF. “There is little desire for an accurate appraisal of covid vaccine benefits and harms inside the agency.”
The email “raises questions about the case adjudication process and FDA transparency, for example, why these 10 cases were not brought to public attention earlier than the end of 2025,” a separate former FDA official told the DCNF.
The deaths occurred in 2021 and 2022, but did not come to light until 2025 after the Trump administration came into office.
“One wonders if there was internal pressure at the FDA during that time not to report these pediatric deaths in a timely manner,” the second official said.
The official pointed to how career staff at FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention handled a 2022 study coauthored by Gill on the two teenaged boys with fatal heart issues after the COVID vaccine.
The study provoked and urgent rebuttal from the FDA and CDC — according to internal documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Epoch Times. The CDC had stored slides containing tissues from the boys sent in by Gill’s team and tested them, finding evidence of the clostridium septicum bacteria, the cause of gas gangrene, and parvovirus. They claimed in their own paper that these tests muddied Gill’s conclusions.
Gill’s team disagreed, pointing out that parvovirus would cause a different pattern in the heart muscle than what his team had observed, and that bacteria is bound to grow on cells that have been sitting around for weeks.
Documents released in Johnson’s investigation show that in its 2025 assessment, FDA classified one of the Gill cases as “probably” vaccine related and another as just “possibly” vaccine related, documents obtained by Johnson show, citing evidence of parvovirus.
FDA’s conclusion on the second case contrasts with that of Gill, the leading pathologist on the case.
Gill said the FDA and CDC did not reach out to discuss the cases with him either in 2022 or during the 2025 review.
“Why would you even not want to discuss it with me professionally and sort it out?” he said.
“I tried to engage them in that dialogue and they shut it down because they had already made up their mind that this was not a death due to the vaccine,” Gill added.
