18,000+ Kids Injected With Vaccines While Unconscious At Colorado Hospital

A March 2026 publication by The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) confirms that Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHCO) has injected “more than 18,000” pediatric patients under “deep sedation or general anesthesia” who were undergoing surgery or other medical procedures.

The revelation comes after this website reported yesterday that Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has injected 2,054 children with flu vaccines under anesthesia.

The AAP News piece behind a $35 paywall was written by Drs. Caroline A. Pasquariello and Kim M. Strupp, both anesthesiologists.

Their article admits that under anesthesia or sedation, “[a]dditional vaccinations are administered … particularly for children with neurocognitive conditions who are unable to tolerate vaccination without sedation.”

The practice raises serious questions about informed consent and the safety of children being vaccinated while under anesthesia.

Who independently verified the safety of vaccinating children under anesthesia? What happens when vaccine reactions are mistaken for surgical complications? And who is accountable if these vulnerable children are harmed?

Medical Studies Warn Vaccinating Children Under Anesthesia Could Conceal Dangerous Complications

Multiple peer-reviewed studies address why administering vaccines during or immediately around surgery and anesthesia can create problems, primarily around fever, diagnostic confusion, and immune effects.

The following literature repeatedly show that vaccine-induced fever and other side effects can be difficult to distinguish from surgical or anesthetic complications.

And that there is limited direct data on immune responses when the two are combined.

When I read this, I didn’t get it from the title, and as I read it, I realized they were talking about immunizing kids who were having anesthesia for other things...kids who get so worked up they can’t be vaccinated without sedation.

I admit to not considering that possibility that with the subject under sedation, reactions might be masked or mistaken for surgical reactions, but my first thought was back to my own history and my family, especially my youngest sister.

(NOTE: This is long, but I write it as part of a personal record for the future when the memories don’t come as easily for me anymore. If it is too long, I certainly am not offended if someone won’t read it...I am getting some benefit out of it, and enjoy writing it.)

I grew up in a military family. From our youngest ages, we were vaccinated against all variety of diseases, beyond what most Americans have to get. Of course, anyone who has been in the military understands this well.

I mean, everyone got polio, smallpox, measles, those kinds of things. We got all those too, but in addition we had to get vaccines for things like Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Bubonic Plague, and Cholera.

I think the Cholera was the worst.

We had six kids in our family, all a year apart, and when we got the Cholera vaccine, I remember we all got sick as dogs, and our deltoid muscles turned an angry beet red. We all had that worst kind of sickness, where you get an almost delirious fever with the sickness.

My poor mother, she put us all to bed, drew the shades, and made us stay in that room with an abrupt command to “Sleep!” as she closed the door even though we couldn’t sleep. I remember that sick fever as I drifted in and out of sleep.

But that almost wasn’t the worst of it. Our arms remained angry and sore to even the slightest touch. In the car, my brother slugged me in the arm, and that made me scream aloud, and not one of those wimpy screams meant only to alert my mother “Mom! He’s hitting me!” It was a sincere yelp of pain. I can remember the pain of it even today.

So we had to, every year or two, go to the base hospital to get boosters and such.

And we were so sensitized to getting shots and if we knew we were being ordered into the car to go get shots, would avoid capture by my mother until she was crazy.

So she resorted to subterfuge, and would get us into the car by telling us we were going clothes shopping or some story like that. The lie would be revealed when someone invariably would say in a tremulous, quavering voice “This isn’t the way to the Navy Exchange!”

In that moment, we would all know we were “going for shots”. My youngest sister was the most affected, and she would begin crying. Various verbal indications from my other siblings, groans and exclamations of everything from anger to dread would issue forth from them, all mixing together.

But I would always get quiet. I was terrified of shots. I completely went silent and internalized everything.

When I was was seven or eight, I feel off the roof of an abandoned stable into a pile or rusty scrap metal of old rusted bed springs and jagged angle irons, I had a piece of something penetrate my right shin, and it left a huge hole about half an inch wide and at least an inch deep.

My older brother helped me over to a nearby neighbor’s house, and when I rolled up my dungaree leg, it was simply a red, meaty hole, oozing thick blood, and I could see far enough in to know it was deep, and recall seeing a light colored vessel of some kind...it looked white against the bloody background. I used our neighbor’s garden hose to wash it off, but the thick blood refilled that gaping hole and oozed back out.

It was utterly appalling to me.

I implored my older brother to not tell mom, because I didn’t want to get a tetanus shot and even worse...a novocaine shot and then stitches. My brother readily agreed, because he had been partially responsible for my fall by telling me it was safe to “let go” as my legs hung off the roof eave trying to feel around for the window ledge.

It took months and months for it to heal, it got gnats in it, and I had to hide it from my mom. Finally, it did heal over with a bizarre thin purple membrane, but being too squeamish, I never pushed down on it any more than I did when I realized that it felt almost like a cavity beneath the surface.

Two years later, when I lived in Japan, I was walking on a jagged seawall, slipped and tore that thing open. I also lost my eyeglasses, and there was no way I could hide both of those things, so...I finally did get the tetanus, novocaine, and stitches that I had warded off for those two years.

Anyway, I tell the story to illustrate just how terrified I was of needles of all types. I could manage to wordlessly get my shots, but internally, if an observer could see into my mind, I was in the most horror-movie terrors of panic and distress.

However, my youngest sister who was at the age of six or seven, only a little over four feet tall, became so possessed with terror, that when they held her down, they really had a difficult time as she would emit blood-curdling, high-pitched screams that that made them flinch. I recall once, when she was perhaps seven, she squirmed and screamed so violently they couldn’t hold her down to give her the shots, and they had to call my father in from the Subic Bay Fleet Activities Building which was not far from the Base Hospital.

So, we struggled in our family with shots, and it had a deep and lasting impact on me.

When I joined the Navy, as everyone knows, you get a lot of shots. It was awful for me, like weeks of mental torture.

The most terrifying one, in my mind, was “The A Shot”.

They classified all the shots (or groups of shots) with a letter designation such as the “A” shot, the “B” shot, etc, and most were forgettable and I could bear those well. They even used pneumatic guns for some, and I thought that was far better than a needle of any kind, even though I found the guns made you bleed a lot more.

From the day we arrived in Boot Camp, we would get the “veterans” (guys who had been there a week or two longer than us) who would rag you as you marched by saying enthusiastically “Hey Boots, just wait until you get your “A” Shot!”

So, we were all filled with a degree of foreboding, most especially me, who dreaded shots.

Finally, the day for the dreaded “A” shot came. They marched us into a huge room, had us all lined up in a row, and had us all drop our pants and underwear.

There are few things that can make you feel as utterly ridiculous as being lined up in a brightly lit room, and standing there with your trousers and boxers down around your ankles and everything hanging out in the breeze.

Of course being naked in a large group of people was itself not that awkward, and most guys were accustomed to taking open, non-private showers in high school gym class, football teams, etc. So that in and of itself was not what made it feel awkward.

What made it feel awkward was the fact that you were vulnerable, nervous, exposed, and didn’t know what to expect.

So, here we are, maybe 80 of us, lined up, motionless, pants around ankles, looking straight ahead, and they had a big stainless steel cart with all the giant syringes stacked on it, and each syringe had a huge needle attached to it. Apparently (as I was told) it was a shot of penicillin. It was a 50 cc syringe, which is giant.

This was back in the Seventies, and the administration of penicillin was ubiquitous, so I never questioned if it really was. Out in the fleet, if you got the clap on liberty (and guys did) you had to go to Sick Call and get a shot in the ass. I never had to go, but guys who did described it to me in graphic terms, probably with sadistic embellishment.

They started at one end of the long row, and began by walking behind the line with the cart, and sticking that needle onto each guy’s buttock. No warning. No slap of the butt to distract you, not even a grab of the flesh and a pinch.

They just walked up behind you and stuck the needle in your buttock without even so much as a “By your leave”.

So, I am sweating it out, looking straight ahead, but in my peripheral vision, I could see them getting closer. Then, they stuck the guy next to me with that big ass needle. (it might have been my best friend, I cannot remember!) He let out a loud “Arrrrgggggghhh!” which completely terrified me! I thought they would warn me before sticking me, but they didn’t.

As the guy to my left was pulling up his trousers and stumbling away, I watched him with wide eyes and a pounding heart, waiting for them to say something like “Just hold still” but they didn’t.

They just plunged that big old needle into my bare ass cheek with no warning.

I let out an even louder “Arrrrgggggghhh!” than the guy before me, and clutching my collapsed trousers around the floor with hands that had turned into claws, I stumbled forward, clumsily pulling my pants up from my ankles even as I was walking away.

That shot hurt. There was what felt like solid baseball sized lump of penicillin in your butt cheek, and they made us do all kinds of exercises to try to make it break up or get absorbed faster, but for about four days to a week, it was damned sore.

I got over my fear of needles after I got out of the Navy, as I needed to give people injections for my job when I got out of college, but boy, I sure did hate those days of getting jabbed with all those needles!

Now, it is easy as pie for me...thank goodness.

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