OPINION — On March 3, the Fountain Hills Town Council majority made another troubling decision by voting 5-2 to hire Texas lawyer W. Scott McCollough to work on the town’s wireless ordinance. Rather than selecting a neutral, science‑based expert, the council chose a long‑time anti‑5G lawyers known for fringe positions and affiliations.
McCollough serves as chief litigation counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an organization founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that promotes discredited theories linking wireless exposure to neurological and developmental harm. His contract explicitly includes the services of CHD’s “educational, advocacy and public relations experts” to “obtain public support” — a provision that appears to effectively commits local taxpayers to fund CHD’s propaganda machine which will presumably be used to convince them to accept CHD’s extremist positions on the harms caused by 5G.
CHD claims that 5G devices and infrastructure open the blood-brain barrier and cause everything from autism to diabetes — claims that mainstream science and federal agencies reject. McCollough himself has faced sanctions by the Texas Public Utility Commission for misleading conduct. His Instagram page reads like an activist’s mission, not that of an impartial consultant.
