RFK Jr.'s HHS Assigns Army Doctor to Review 2,544 Unverified Military COVID Vaccine Deaths, Flags Fauci Over $900,000 Prize

An Army Doctor Gets a Year to Reexamine 2,544 Deaths

Dr. Theresa Long, an Army physician certified in aerospace medicine with a master's in public health, told a federal court in an August deposition that War Secretary Pete Hegseth appointed her as HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s senior medical military adviser, according to Politico's reporting, which obtained the deposition from an ongoing federal lawsuit involving former Defense Department health official Terry Adirim and was later summarized by the Daily Wire.

Long's assignment: dig back through 2,544 reported but unverified service member deaths logged in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, the CDC and FDA's early-warning database, to determine whether COVID-19 vaccination caused them. She told the court she hopes to finish within a year of her testimony, meaning a result could land around August 2027.

Long also testified she personally knows of 28 service members who died because of the vaccine, and others who lost pregnancies, but said she wasn't permitted to give the court additional details on those cases, per the Daily Wire's account of the deposition.

MedPage Today's reporting, citing the New York Times, frames Long differently than the Daily Wire does. It notes she has no formal training in vaccines or viruses and has previously echoed Kennedy's unproven claim that vaccines may cause autism. The Daily Wire's writeup leads with her aerospace-medicine certification and MPH without addressing that gap. Both facts are true; readers deciding how much weight to give her findings should know both.

Context the investigation will have to grapple with: a March 2026 Pentagon report, cited by the Daily Wire, found myocarditis and pericarditis did rise short-term after vaccination but the increase didn't persist over a full year and was smaller than the heart-inflammation rates seen after COVID infection itself. That's the military's own data, and it complicates any narrative that the shots were broadly lethal.

The probe runs alongside Hegseth's COVID-19 Reinstatement and Reconciliation Task Force, created in May, which the Pentagon says had reinstated or re-accessed nearly 170 service members as of April, with more than 800 additional former troops expressing interest in returning.

An Ethics Referral for Fauci's Prize Money

Separately, HHS acting general counsel Robert Fox Foster issued a legal advisory in late August stating that officials who solicit award nominations from people and institutions their agency funds or regulates—as Anthony Fauci did—"warrants investigation under the Standards of Ethical Conduct," according to the Epoch Times, which obtained the three-page memo.

The case in question: Charles Dinarello, who received more than $1 million from Fauci's institute during his tenure, nominated Fauci for the 2020 Dan David Prize. Fauci won and collected $900,000. Foster said that had the facts been known at the time, HHS lawyers would have advised NIH leadership to review whether the nomination was appropriate. He also said his office has no authority to rescind the award or claw back the money now that Fauci has retired.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) praised the advisory on X and said he's introducing legislation to bar federal employees from personally accepting financial prizes while serving in government, arguing the rule "should not rest on the interpretation of any administration or agency." Neither Fauci nor Dinarello responded to the Epoch Times' requests for comment on the prize dispute specifically.

Fauci's broader position on his pandemic record is on record elsewhere. In a two-hour interview with Georgetown colleague Lawrence Gostin published by Science and summarized by MedPage Today, Fauci defended the early COVID response, rejected claims that mRNA vaccines are unsafe, and criticized cuts to global health aid. That interview didn't address the prize-nomination question directly.

Funding Cuts Are Squeezing the Scientist Who Debunked the Lab-Leak Theory

Bob Garry, the virologist whose March 2020 paper concluded SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in bats rather than a lab, is now watching his own research, including work on a Lassa fever treatment, get squeezed by Trump administration funding cuts, according to Bloomberg. Garry says he can no longer guarantee funding to take on new doctoral students.

A Kansas Senator's Pre-Politics Record Resurfaces

Before Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), a physician, held office, he sued more than 700 patients over unpaid medical bills while practicing as an OB-GYN, the New York Times reported. Eighty-one of those patients were arrested for missing court dates, many in a rural, high-poverty county, over bills as small as $101, carrying 18% annual interest and resulting in garnished bank accounts. Marshall is on the ballot this fall.

While Washington Refights COVID, China Is Pulling Ahead on Cancer Care

China's biotech sector keeps advancing. The Wall Street Journal, via Hindustan Times, reported that CAR-T cell therapy, pioneered in the U.S., now costs $150,000 to $230,000 in China versus $550,000 or more in the U.S., drawing patients like New Zealanders Michael Walters and Josh Bronkhorst to Shanghai hospitals. In June, Chinese regulators approved the world's first CAR-T therapy for a solid tumor, a stomach cancer indication not yet cleared in the U.S., according to Sairah Ahmed of MD Anderson Cancer Center.

China's National Medical Products Administration approved a record 76 innovative drugs and 76 innovative devices in 2025, and state-run Xinhua reports major Chinese hospitals logged 1.28 million foreign patient visits that year, up 73.6% from three years earlier, with visits from Europe and the U.S. doubling. Xinhua is Chinese state media reporting favorably on its own government's health system, so its figures should be read as one data point rather than independent verification, but the individual patient accounts corroborated by the Journal back up the cost gap on the ground.

Long's review is due within roughly a year. Paul's bill on federal prize money hasn't been introduced yet. No charges or formal ethics complaint has been filed against Fauci. All three are open files worth watching.