The American Academy of Pediatrics – Mining Children for Profit
In North America, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) holds enormous influence over how children’s medical care is shaped. Its public positions and policy priorities steer the direction of pediatric practice, often setting the tone for what’s considered standard care
What’s less visible is how those priorities are formed, and how the balance between child health, industry interests, and parental authority is struck.
Over the past several decades, the health landscape for children has shifted dramatically, with chronic illness becoming far more common. Yet the way the AAP addresses these changes reveals as much about its focus as it does about what it leaves out.
By examining what the organization elevates — and what it avoids — it becomes clear how policy direction affects the day-to-day decisions parents face.
This isn’t just about medical recommendations; it’s about the framework that decides whether prevention, treatment, or industry-driven measures take center stage. The details of the AAP’s own published priorities show where the balance tips, and why the very first item on their list directly impacts your ability to make informed choices for your child.
AAP’s Priorities Reveal a Profound Shift Away from Parental Rights
The AAP is structured to prioritize its members’ income over children’s well-being, according to David Bell, senior scholar at the Brownstone Institute and a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO).1
The published article by the Brownstone Institute outlines how the AAP’s top priority is to remove parents from decision-making about whether their children receive certain medical procedures, especially vaccinations.
With 67,000 members in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, the AAP’s influence is enormous. Its funding from pharmaceutical companies like Moderna, Merck, Sanofi, and GlaxoSmithKline creates a direct financial link between the organization’s policy positions and industry profit.
•The organization’s published priorities reveal striking omissions that directly affect children’s health outcomes — Among its top 10 goals, the AAP does not address three of the most urgent and widely discussed issues affecting children today: increasing obesity, the autism epidemic, and the overall rise in chronic illness.
While these problems are acknowledged elsewhere by the AAP, the focus is on managing — not preventing — them. This means that as a parent, you’re unlikely to see the organization push for real, root-cause solutions that would improve your child’s long-term health.
•Its strategy aligns with creating lifelong pharmaceutical customers rather than fostering lifelong health — The article points out that promoting chronic illness in children nearly guarantees those conditions will persist into adulthood, ensuring ongoing revenue for drug manufacturers. This isn’t simply a byproduct of flawed policy — it’s an outcome that benefits the same corporations funding the AAP.
•The AAP’s stance on bodily autonomy erodes long-standing human rights norms — The group operates on the view that personal medical decisions should be subordinate to state requirements or a doctor’s orders, even when those orders involve products the doctor is financially incentivized to promote.
This approach mirrors early 20th-century technocracy and medical authoritarianism, where “experts” made health care decisions without patient consent. For you, this translates into diminished control over your child’s body and health choices.
•Their vaccine policies ignore the reality of already low measles mortality before mass vaccination began — In the U.S. and other wealthy nations, nearly all measles-related deaths had already ended before the introduction of mass vaccination programs.
Improved nutrition, especially in micronutrients, was likely the key factor. This is important context, because it challenges the AAP’s justification for overriding parental choice based on rare outbreaks.
Financial Influence Drives Pediatric Policy Choices
When an organization receives funding from companies whose business model depends on high product use, the policies it produces will often reflect those companies’ commercial priorities.
In this case, it means promoting more pharmaceutical interventions for children, removing parental veto power, and ignoring preventive health strategies that would reduce dependency on medical products.
•AAP uses selective statistics to justify eliminating exemptions — Dr. Jesse Hackell, chair of the AAP’s Committee on Pediatric Workforce, cited the deaths of two children in recent years from measles to argue for removing personal choice.
The article stresses that claiming vaccines are “safe” without acknowledging that they carry risks and cause adverse effects is “a stupid claim in medicine and biology.” For you as a parent, this means policy decisions are being made using emotionally charged but statistically rare events, rather than a balanced risk-benefit analysis.
•Religious and cultural objections to certain vaccines are dismissed outright — Many parents have concerns about vaccines developed using cells from induced abortions, yet the AAP officially supports overriding these objections.
This disregard for moral or cultural beliefs signals that your deeply held values could be deemed irrelevant in decisions about your child’s care.
•The broader impact is a public health model that treats children as a market, not individuals — The AAP’s actions align less with science-based health care and more with marketing strategies for an expanding pediatric pharmaceutical market.
If these priorities succeed, future generations of children will grow up in an environment where medical compliance is enforced, personal choice is diminished, and preventive care is sidelined.
•AAP’s published priorities are a direct signal of where pediatric care is headed — Unless challenged, these policies could mean fewer rights for parents, greater exposure of children to medical interventions without your consent, and an ongoing neglect of prevention-focused health care.
Understanding this shift is the first step in protecting your ability to make informed decisions for your child’s long-term well-being.
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Header image: PR Newswire
Some bold emphasis added