Anti-vaccine advocate and current Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to social media Wednesday to announce the names of eight people he is appointing to a critical federal vaccine advisory committee—which is currently empty after Kennedy abruptly fired all 17 previous members Monday.
In the past, the vetting process for appointing new members to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) could take years. But Kennedy has taken just two days.
The panel, typically stocked with vaccine, infectious disease, and public health experts, carefully and publicly reviews, analyzes, and debates vaccine data and offers recommendations to the CDC via votes. The CDC typically adopts the recommendations, which set clinical practices nationwide and determine insurance coverage for vaccinations.
Yesterday, Kennedy pledged that none of the new ACIP members would be “ideological anti-vaxxers.” However, the list of today’s appointees includes Robert Malone, who falsely claims to have invented mRNA vaccines and has spent the past several years spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories about them.
Speaking at an anti-vaccine rally in 2022, Malone spread dangerous falsehoods about mRNA Covid-19 vaccines: “These genetic vaccines can damage your children. They may damage their brains, their heart, their immune system and their ability to have children in the future. Many of these damages cannot be repaired.”
Troubling List
Malone aligned with the anti-vaccine crowd during the pandemic and has become a mainstay in conspiratorial circles and an ally to Kennedy. He has claimed that vaccines cause a “form of AIDS,” amid other nonsense. He has also meddled with responses to the measles outbreak that erupted in West Texas in January. In April, Malone was the first to publicize news that a second child had died from the highly infectious and serious infection, but he did so to falsely claim that measles wasn’t the cause and spread other dangerous misinformation.
In a newsletter post earlier this week, Malone proclaimed: “Some people still believe that the term anti-vaxxer is a pejorative. I do not—I view it as high praise.”
Malone is just one of the eight names released today. Another is Martin Kulldorff, one of the coauthors of the widely criticized Great Barrington Declaration, which called for letting Covid-19 spread largely unabated. Health experts called it “unethical.”
Vicky Pebsworth is also on the list, as well as on the board of the National Vaccine Information Center, one of the nation’s oldest anti-vaccine groups that promotes the false claim that vaccines cause autism.
Kennedy also appointed Retsef Levi, who has penned articles alleging dangers of Covid-19 vaccines, including a flawed 2022 article that was later corrected and an unpublished article coauthored with Covid-contrarian and Florida surgeon seneral Joseph Ladapo.
The other four appointees are Joseph R. Hibbeln, a psychiatrist; Cody Meissner, a pediatrician; James Pagano, an emergency medicine physician; and Michael Ross, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology.
The appointments are likely to increase concern that federal vaccine recommendations will be corrupted and lead to Americans losing access to lifesaving vaccines.
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
