The Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. military are investigating the deaths of service members following receipt of COVID-19 vaccines, a doctor with the Army said in a deposition made public on Sept. 17.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth assigned Lt. Theresa Long, the doctor, to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Long said in the deposition, which took place virtually in August. She said she is Kennedy’s senior medical military adviser.
Tens of thousands of reports were filed with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) alleging service members suffered problems following COVID-19 vaccination, including 2,544 deaths. Long said she has accessed the unredacted reports, as directed by Kennedy, and has acquired some autopsies and medical records.
Long said she hopes to finish her investigation within a year.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of War did not respond to inquiries by the time of publication.
COVID-19 vaccines have killed some people, although the exact number is undetermined. Health professionals, officials, and groups largely say COVID-19 vaccines, at least initially, helped prevent some COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, although the numbers and how long that lasted are contested.
The Department of War said in a report in March that incidences of myocarditis and a related condition, pericarditis, increased “in the short term after vaccination,” but that the increase “was not sustained over a 1-year period and the increase was small relative to post-infection incidence rates.” The report did not mention deaths.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is under Kennedy’s purview, in January tried narrowing COVID-19 vaccine recommendations to advising people to consult with a health professional before taking a shot, but a federal judge blocked that update.
Long was one of the first U.S. military officials to raise concerns with COVID-19 vaccines, filing internal reports in 2021 and 2022, and speaking during a November 2021 Senate hearing about what she described as “the life-threatening adverse side effects of COVID-19 vaccine[s].” She said it did not make sense to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for the force.
Long at the time cited her treatment of members who suffered problems and her search on VAERS of adverse event reports.
Long gave the deposition, and wrote an affidavit, as part of a case accusing former U.S. Army special forces officer Ivan Raiklin of defaming Dr. Terry Adirim, who cleared the way for mandating COVID-19 vaccination for the military by declaring vaccines that received emergency authorization interchangeable with vaccines that received approval.
Adirim said recently she relied on the Food and Drug Administration’s assessment of COVID-19 vaccines when recommending mandatory COVID-19 vaccination, and that she understood the benefits of vaccination to outweigh the risks. Raiklin attached portions of Long’s deposition to a motion to dismiss the case. He says he did not defame Adirim, because his statements about her were supported by documents and statements from doctors and officials such as Long and Kennedy.
Long, who was engaged by Raiklin as an expert witness, said in the case that Adirim failed to review relevant data such as information from the military’s health system, that the military should not have mandated vaccination, and that the products were not interchangeable. Military officials under President Donald Trump have said the mandate was “unlawful as implemented” and have worked to reinstate members discharged for declining vaccination.
Long also said she had personal knowledge of the deaths of 28 service members as a result of COVID-19 vaccination, as well as a pilot who “experienced sudden cardiac death at the controls of a helicopter during a training flight” and was later resuscitated. COVID-19 vaccines are known to cause heart inflammation, which can lead to death.
Long says Kennedy became acquainted with her after she became a whistleblower. She said she was 10 days from retirement when he tapped her to study the deaths reported after receipt of COVID-19 vaccines.
“He wanted somebody who was very knowledgeable on the military’s health surveillance system,” she testified, “and the data that came out of that during the military.”