By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
Why is public trust in vaccines falling? What are the implications for the public health apparatus? We took this on in studio at Prager University with Marissa Streit. Marissa Streit is the CEO of PragerU, a nonprofit media organization that produces educational and commentary content from a conservative perspective. She joined the organization in 2009 and became CEO in 2011, helping expand its reach through online videos, social media, and K-12 educational materials. Born in Los Angeles and raised partly in Israel, she served in the Israeli military before earning a degree in Business and Economics from UCLA and later a master’s degree in Education and Non-Profit Management. Before leading PragerU, she worked as a teacher and school administrator.
Summary: Dr. Peter McCullough Interview at Prager University (2026)
A wide-ranging conversation between cardiologist/epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough and Marissa Streit, framed around declining public trust in vaccination. Here’s the substance, organized by theme.
🧬 Core Thesis
McCullough argues that vaccines are a major driver of the modern pediatric chronic disease epidemic — specifically the rise in autism, ADHD, tics, seizures, and allergic disorders — with the post-2020 COVID vaccine campaign serving as the event that broke public trust open.
His organizing concept is “vaccine ideology” — his term for what he frames as a quasi-religious belief system in medicine, one he says is uncoupled from evidence. He contrasts it with what he calls “medical reality.”
🧠 Autism & Neuropsychiatric Disorders
McCullough describes his wake-up call as noticing year-over-year increases in autism, ADHD, tics, and epilepsy in his own practice.
He rejects the “better detection / overdiagnosis” explanation on three grounds:
Profound autism (~27% of cases, per him) is skyrocketing — nonverbal, low IQ, self-injurious, not a “quirky kid.”
The rise is only in children under four, not in adults being newly recognized.
He cites California above 5% childhood autism (CDC 2022 figure per his account), with >1% profound.
Mechanism claim: ~20 vaccine package inserts list encephalitis as a possible adverse event. He argues autism/ADHD/seizures fit a post-encephalitic syndrome pattern, and cites “over 100 peer-reviewed studies” pointing to vaccine-associated encephalitis as an autism risk factor.
He’s asked about unvaccinated children with autism and concedes it may be viral encephalitis (Coxsackie, etc.) in those cases — a notable concession that brain inflammation, not vaccines alone, is his core mechanism.
Critique of the literature: he argues no study has done the gold-standard work — calling parents, verifying records, and having an unbiased examiner assess children. He claims the Danish MMR cohort studies (Madsen/Hviid) are invalid because the “unvaccinated” group was actually vaccinated but unrecorded.
He cites the Mawson Florida Medicaid study (~49,000 children) as showing a 4-fold+ increased risk with cumulative vaccine visits.
He references the 2008 U.S. Court of Claims proceedings and the Poling v. HHS case (neurologist John Poling’s daughter Hannah) as evidence the government conceded causation — then says Poling was pulled from the omnibus, settled, and the remaining cases dismissed.
🗓️ Vaccine Schedule & Combination Concerns
McCullough counts 72 doses on the CDC childhood schedule by age 18 and argues children receive 16 products at once at 12–15 months.
He describes ACIP pushing the MMRV out past age four because of seizures in younger children — which he presents as the system implicitly conceding combination risk.
Aluminum: he acknowledges aluminum toxicity in dialysis patients presents as dementia, not autism, calling the autism link “theoretical” — but still argues the amount in the hep B shot at birth exceeds what an infant can clear. He notes Trump pressured manufacturers to remove aluminum and that ACIP moved to get mercury out.
He asserts combination vaccines are “done for convenience, not safety.”
🏛️ Institutional Critique
This is where the interview gets its edge.
McCullough says the CDC has never meaningfully investigated autism etiology despite its Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring network and decades of surveillance data. He claims its latest report only concludes: “get ready for more special needs services.” The agency in 2025 now says the link between childhood vaccination and autism has not been ruled out.
He says HHS has produced zero of the required biennial vaccine safety reports to Congress since 1986 (under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act) — and none under RFK Jr. either.
He frames an entire infrastructure of suppressed early treatment during COVID — hospitals (UCLA, Cedars) offering “nothing,” Fauci suppressing his protocol, the Senate PSI report concluding agencies covered up myocarditis to keep vaccination numbers up.
He dismisses the CDC’s “95% of measles cases unvaccinated or unknown” as dishonest, arguing “unknown” likely conceals vaccinated people who cannot find their vaccine records.
💉 Historical Claims About Vaccines & Disease Decline
He argues nearly every vaccine arrived after its target disease had already declined ~99%, crediting sanitation, clean water, nutrition, and improved personal hygiene as the real drivers.
Specific claims:
Pertussis — Sweden went 17 years without a pertussis vaccine (1990s, cellular→acellular gap) with no rebound, he says.
Diphtheria/tetanus — treated with antibiotics, not a big deal in practice.
Polio — he calls it over-attributed historically; cites a University of Michigan study where only ~25% of putative cases actually had it. He questions Mitch McConnell’s polio claim on the grounds there was no outbreak cluster where he grew up.
Measles — “a transient skin rash,” ~125,000 European cases with ~36 deaths, none adjudicated as measles deaths. He notes the Texas/Mennonite outbreak and one death he says resulted from inadequate antibiotic treatment for secondary pneumonia, not measles itself. The risk of death from measles before modern use of steroids, antibiotics, and ICU care was 0.2/1000 as reported by Miller et al, 1964.
Amish/Mennonite/Quaker populations: he claims autism and gender dysphoria “essentially don’t exist” there, and cites “13 studies” showing unvaccinated children are healthier.
Herd immunity a “theoretical construct” and says most vaccines don’t stop transmission.
🦠 COVID Vaccines
McCullough said the spike protein as the toxin — “the lethal part of the virus” — and argues mRNA vaccines give the body the genetic code to produce it in uncontrolled quantity and duration.
Pseudouridination (Karikó/Weissman) made the mRNA “indestructible by human enzymes.”
Myocarditis, clots, autoimmunity, stroke, and cancer risk are attributable to spike protein. Specifically spike inhibits P53 and BRCA tumor suppressors are inhibited.
SARS-CoV-2 infection itself does not cause myocarditis, citing autopsy studies and the Big Ten JAMA athlete screening finding no proven cases. The OpenSafely large population study in the UK found myocarditis was exclusively caused by mRNA vaccination, not infection.
Cites the Verma NEJM 2020 case and two teen deaths (Michigan, Connecticut) published in Archives of Pathology as fatal vaccine myocarditis.
Says Novavax was the safest vaccine and was never promoted by authorities.
💊 Treatment & Practical Solutions
McCullough Protocol (published American Journal of Medicine, Aug 2020) — nasal sprays/gargles, nutraceuticals, oral antivirals, steroids, aspirin, anticoagulants.
Ultimate Spike Detox— nattokinase, bromelain, curcumin, high-dose, plus kid gummies, both needed for years after vaccination.
Flags bleeding risk and pregnancy contraindication — with a caveat that breastfeeding is okay per his board’s OB-GYN.
Recommends spike antibody blood testing as a proxy for spike burden. If > 1000 U/ml, then Spike detoxification is reasonable.
⚖️ On Tylenol & Pregnancy (RFK/HHS Controversy)
He’s critical here — notably against the HHS Tylenol warning:
He calls pregnancy “a natural, robust immune state” needing little medical intervention.
Notes he finds it implausible that two Tylenol capsules cause autism years later, contrasting with vaccination which he calls “far more plausible” as a neuropsychiatric risk factor.
Cites the Prada 46-study review (Mount Sinai/Harvard) — mixed results: 27 associative, 9 null, 4 protective.
Points out women take Tylenol largely because of vaccine-induced fever — and that fever is itself a miscarriage/preterm risk. He notes the RSV vaccine insert warns of premature delivery.
Calls the Tylenol press briefing “irresponsible” for redirecting attention off vaccines.
🧭 Closing Advice to Parents
“Safer to Wait” — a World Council for Health guidance document (Tess Lawrie) he endorses.
Points to AAPS (Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, est. 1943), which passed an anti-mandate resolution in 2000.
Notes 88 countries have no school vaccine mandates (Sweden, Norway among them).
Call to action: fund independent research (McCullough Foundation), build a national autism registry, dramatically increase HHS autism research funding.
Frames the conflict theologically — humans “changing God’s creation” — and says the public “knows something’s up.”
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Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
President, McCullough Foundation
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