Joe Rogan Experience #2548 - Brian Simpson · Aired Sep 1, 2026
Claim summary · not a verbatim quotation
Anthony Fauci experimented on foster children in New York by administering an experimental AIDS vaccine that killed them.
The finding
What the evidence shows
It's true that HIV-positive foster children in New York were enrolled in NIH-funded AIDS drug trials in the 1980s and 90s, and some of those children died. But a formal investigation by the Vera Institute of Justice reviewed the deaths and found no evidence that trial medication caused them, since the vast majority of children who died had already developed serious AIDS-related complications before they even joined a trial. These were also experimental AIDS treatment drugs, not an AIDS vaccine, so the claim mixes real ethical problems with the trials into a much more extreme and unsupported story about children being deliberately killed.
Read the supporting source · politifact.com ↗Quick answer & review status
Quick answer
Is it true that Anthony Fauci experimented on foster children in New York by administering an experimental AIDS vaccine that killed them?
Partly. The claim stretches what the evidence shows. It's true that HIV-positive foster children in New York were enrolled in NIH-funded AIDS drug trials in the 1980s and 90s, and some of those children died. Joe Rogan said it (matched by voice) on Joe Rogan Experience #2548 - Brian Simpson, aired Sep 1, 2026, at 23:38. The supporting source is politifact.com, linked below.
The context belongs here.
No separately verified on-air correction is recorded for this check. That is not a claim that nobody corrected it.
- Attribution
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- Editorial context review
- Not recorded; generated finding
- Coverage
- One selected claim from the episode
Revisions to this check
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