It’s human nature for people to trust established institutions such as the media, academia, medical institutions, and government bureaucracies. Yet over and over we are reminded that many of these institutions cannot be trusted — not just because of human error and the limitations of knowledge, but because of corruption, greed, and outright deception by those in positions of authority.

In 1991, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — instituted the policy of vaccinating every newborn child in the United States before they could leave the hospital. This insane policy was instituted despite growing scientific evidence that stimulating the immune system early in life had harmful effects on brain development that could result in neurological problems later in life — especially with regard to learning, memory, and behavior.

The most rapid growth and the most intricate development occurs in the human brain during the last trimester of pregnancy and the first two years of life. And those are the very times vaccines are being administered.

One of the vaccines given during these crucial development stages is for hepatitis B, a virus that can cause liver damage. But ironically, the United States had one of the lowest hep B infection rates in the world, and most infections actually clear without treatment.

For years, parents were told by hospitals that they could not bring their newborn home until it had received this vaccine. Now, some 28 years later, hard scientific proof demonstrates that millions of babies have been harmed by this insane policy.

In 2016, researchers published a study in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology that examined the effect of giving the hepatitis B vaccine to mice at birth. They followed the cognitive brain function of the rats for 12 weeks, which would equal the time period of adolescence to young adulthood in humans.

In this study, they found that the hepatitis B vaccine caused the immune system to assume a Th2 predominant immune profile, and that this impaired the development of the hippocampus (plasticity) by inhibiting the growth of neurons and their connections in this vital area of the brain. This caused impairments in mood and cognition (thinking and learning).

One of the main effects was interference with the mechanism essential for forming memories (called LTP). The vaccine also reduced production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), the chemical used by the brain to develop its critical structures.

In addition, it activated microglia, which cause the destructive reaction called immunoexcitotoxicity.

Two years later, a follow-up study found that the vaccine caused a dramatic rise in an anti-inflammatory cytokine called IL-4. But just a few days after getting the vaccine, the reverse happened — there occurred an intense inflammatory reaction that damaged the hippocampus of the brain (again initiated by activated microglia), as was reported in the journal Cytokine.

The hepatitis B vaccine also delayed maturation of the blood-brain barrier, which is essential for protecting a baby’s brain.