The woman who was once known as the “flu shot cheerleader” and briefly became the poster girl for the anti-vaccine movement is now speaking out about her realization that she was used as the movement’s “PR machine”.
In a new interview with NBC, Desiree Jennings – who in 2009 was cast into the national spotlight after she went on video and expressed her belief that her seasonal flu shot led to an unexplainable disability involving erratic movements and slurred speech – said that vaccine skeptics recruited her, sensationalized her story and ultimately discarded her after she was accused of being a fraud.
Desiree, 25 at the time, was a communications manager and a cheerleading ambassador for Washington’s NFL team. After a flu shot, she claimed she started to experience mysterious symptoms, including a twisted gait, difficulty reading, memory loss, as well as painful body aches.
Several doctors suggested that Desiree’s condition might be psychogenic, meaning the illness has a psychological cause rather than a physical one, NBC reported.
Desiree’s account of her strange symptoms and their post-flu shot timing became viral. And they soon drew the attention of Generation Rescue, an organization spearheaded by actor Jenny McCarthy, who claimed without evidence that vaccines caused her child’s autism.
Generation Rescue’s then president Stan Kurtz reportedly saw Desiree’s story and reached out to her. Speaking to a local Fox station, Kurtz said: “The story is just – anyone that sees it, it’s just so compelling. Jenny was crying.”
He then announced that Generation Rescue would help Desiree “recover” from her alleged vaccine injury, NBC reported.
NBC also reported that Generation Rescue helped Desiree launch a website which featured products affiliated with the anti-vaccine organization, and it raised money through its own website to “to help pay for her mounting medical expenses”.
Yet Desiree told NBC that she never received any of the money.
“I felt [obliged] to buy into what they were saying,” Desiree told NBC, adding: “I didn’t know anything back then.”
At the time, Generation Rescue also filmed Desiree in her Virginia home for more than 40 hours, which they said was for a future documentary warning against vaccines. The documentary was never made, but Desiree let NBC review footage meant for the film.
One clip showed Kurtz accompanying Desiree to North Carolina to see Rashid Buttar, an anti-vaccine osteopathic physician who promoted cures for various illnesses including autism and cancer. In 2010, the North Carolina medical board reprimanded Buttar for using treatments that “have not been proven effective by randomized, double-blind placebo controlled clinical trials”.
Buttar went on to treat Desiree’s mysterious symptoms through intravenuous chelation therapy, various vitamins and a lotion that he claimed could “detox” patients of the heavy metals that vaccines leave inside them, NBC reported. At one point, Buttar also put Desiree in a hyperbaric chamber, a device commonly used to treat carbon monoxide poisoning, gangrene, decompression sickness and unhealing wounds.
Desiree’s symptoms appeared to improve 48 hours after the hyperbaric oxygen therapy – she could talk normally, and her tremors stopped, NBC reported. A week later, Buttar and other anti-vaccine websites that NBC reviewed claimed that she had been cured.
However, Desiree’s symptoms returned upon getting home, and she developed a new British-sounding accent. Various outlets subsequently labeled Desiree a fraud, including 20/20, who released an investigation called “Medical Mystery or Hoax?”
Online mockey ensured for Desiree, with various videos insulting her and her reported symptoms. In the latest interview, Desiree told NBC that Kurtz cut off contact, and Generation Rescue refused to pay the $32,000 medical bill owed to Buttar. The organization also removed her story from its website, NBC reported.
Desiree said she trusted Generation Rescue because they offered to help when she had “no other options”. She denied faking an illness or lying.
After multiple tests from various doctors, Desiree told NBC that her symptoms may have been caused by numerous reasons.
“There may have been a psychogenic component,” she said. I’m sure there was probably some component of stress involved that exacerbated the symptoms.”
Desiree graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology. She told NBC that she aspires to work for a biotech company that manufactures vaccines, adding that she took the coronavirus vaccine and a booster.
She also issued strong warnings for people who are being recruited to the anti-vaccine movement.
“I would tell them to run because they’re never going to benefit from that,” she said. “You’re going to be used.”
