This story is a collaboration between ProPublica and The New Yorker.
On the morning of April 19, 2016, Melanie Lilliston received an urgent call from the Little Dreamers day care center, in Rockville, Maryland. Her 6-month-old daughter, Millie, was being rushed to the hospital. Doctors there found that Millie had fractured ribs, facial bruises and a severe brain injury. Melanie watched as her daughter was loaded onto a helicopter for emergency transport to Children’s National Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., where doctors discovered more injuries: a fractured leg and arm, as well as bleeding in her eyes. Millie died three days later.
The day care operator, Kia Divband, told police that Millie had started choking while drinking a bottle of milk and lost consciousness. The Montgomery County medical examiner, however, determined that her injuries were caused by blunt force. Investigators discovered, on Divband’s phone and computer, internet searches for “broken bones in children” and “why are bone fractures in children sometimes hard to detect.” A former employer of Divband’s told them that the day before Millie was hospitalized, Divband had called to inquire about a job, and a baby could be heard wailing in the background. Divband told him the baby wouldn’t stop crying and that “he just couldn’t take it anymore,” the former boss recalled. Divband was arrested and charged with fatally abusing Millie.
At Divband's trial, last year, a radiologist named David Ayoub testified for the defense. Ayoub, who is a partner in a private radiology practice in Springfield, Illinois, told jurors he had reviewed X-rays and other medical records, and concluded that Millie had rickets, a rare condition that causes fragile bones. The disorder, which is usually brought on by a prolonged and severe lack of vitamin D, could explain Millie’s injuries, Ayoub said.
Seeking to cast doubt on Ayoub’s credibility, the prosecutor brought up a different issue. Was it true, she asked, that Ayoub believed Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a charity funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to increase vaccination rates in poor countries, was committing genocide? “That’s right,” Ayoub said.
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The prosecutor asked if Ayoub believed that Gavi — along with the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation and UNICEF — were using vaccinations to force sterilization on people in third-world countries. “Yes, that’s my belief,” Ayoub said.
As evidence, he cited a 1972 report of a commission headed by the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III and a 1974 study overseen by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, warning about the dangers of population growth. It’s “no leap of faith” to believe that vaccination is being used to carry out this agenda, Ayoub said.
The prosecutor also questioned Ayoub about a speech he delivered in 2005 in which he said his views on vaccination — including his belief that it has contributed to a rise in autism — put him in a “fringe group” and even in the “fringe of that fringe.” Ayoub acknowledged making the statement. “Thinking that vaccines were associated with autism, you’re clearly a minority view if you’re a physician,” Ayoub testified. “If you think it’s done intentionally for nefarious purposes, you’re clearly another level of — you know — different.”
In an email, Ayoub said he did not mean to accuse the alliance or the Gates Foundation of intentional genocide, though he realized that his 2005 lecture might give that impression. “I was concerned by confirmed sporadic reports that some vaccines distributed in third-world countries contained fertility-reducing substances,” he said. “Regardless of whether this was deliberate, careless, unintentional or a cost-cutting measure, I felt that there was a potential for abuse and that this should be investigated.”
Over the last decade, Ayoub, who is 59, has become one of the most active expert witnesses in the United States on behalf of accused child abusers. He estimates that he has testified in about 80 child abuse cases in the United States, Sweden and the United Kingdom. He has consulted or written reports in hundreds more.
Prior to his child abuse work, Ayoub was a prominent supporter of a movement that blames the rise in autism — the neurological and developmental disorder that starts in early childhood — on vaccinations that contain mercury, aluminum or other substances. These claims are mostly dismissed by scientists, but they have nonetheless spurred a burgeoning worldwide “anti-vaxxer” movement, which has fueled a decline in vaccination rates. Both positions reflect a deep suspicion of government and mainstream medicine as well as a rising backlash against scientific consensus in an era when misinformation quickly spreads online.
