Leslie Manookian had it all — a top career on Wall Street, rubbing shoulders with CEOs, CFOs, and power players from the world’s biggest pharmaceutical giants. But one shocking moment made her walk away from it all.

She recalls sitting across the table as executives from a household-name drug company admitted their phase three trial drug — the stage just before FDA approval — had killed people. The CEO looked her in the eye and brushed it off as “very, very rare.” Then came the kicker: “The bad news is the FDA is going to make us put a black box warning on our packaging. The good news is we still think we can do seven billion in peak sales.”

That cold calculation — lives lost balanced against corporate profits — was the turning point for Manookian. She left Wall Street and committed her life to health freedom, launching the Health Freedom Defense Fund to take on what she calls the authoritarian medical regime.

Her nonprofit has already left a massive mark. In 2022, the group won a landmark case that struck down the federal mask mandate on airplanes. Now, it’s pushing forward with lawsuits, advocacy, and public education aimed at exposing how powerful pharmaceutical interests, backed by government allies, strip away basic rights in the name of “public health.”

Manookian argues that what began in 2020 was no accident. To her, the lockdowns, mandates, and mass vaccine pushes followed a “perfect script” prepared over two decades to concentrate power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and corporate lobbyists. And she’s not staying quiet.

Her revelations underscore a chilling reality: the same system that dismissed trial deaths as a cost of doing business is still shaping health policy today. With billions of dollars on the line, transparency and accountability take a back seat to profit margins.

That’s why the Health Freedom Defense Fund frames its mission not just as a policy fight, but as a battle for human rights. From stopping forced masking to challenging unjust vaccine rules, the group is working to ensure that health choices remain in the hands of individuals — not government agencies acting as arms of Big Pharma.

The story Manookian shares is a rare glimpse behind the curtain of corporate power, where executives know the risks, accept the casualties, and move forward anyway. It’s a reminder that the fight for health freedom is not abstract — it’s about protecting people from a system that too often views them as statistics on a balance sheet.

Do you want me to lean harder into the stakes for ordinary Americans here — that if Big Pharma’s power isn’t checked, this same profit-first mindset could shape every health crisis we face in the future?