Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr.), Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), cleared the deck on Monday of Big Pharma’s control over vaccine policy. RFK Jr. fired everyone on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which has never recommended any vaccine, including those later withdrawn as unsafe.
“A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science,” RFK Jr. wrote in the Wall St. Journal, which itself has been a mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry. OpenSecrets.org identifies Big Pharma as the most influential group in Washington, D.C., and more than two-thirds of the U.S. Senate receives Big Pharma donations.
Many Americans have no idea what ACIP is, or understand that ACIP’s vaccine recommendations automatically become vaccine requirements for children to attend public schools. Private schools also require the same laundry list of ACIP-recommended vaccines, and Illinois this year considered legislation to require homeschool children to receive all these vaccines too.
Big Pharma’s lobbyists have cleverly obtained legal requirements in every state that automatically impose on children whatever ACIP approves. So although it appears that ACIP is merely making recommendations, in fact its recommendations become requirements for children unable to refuse the injections.
It used to be that nearly every state had a religious exemption to vaccination, and large states like California even had a philosophical exemption that did not require any religion. But Big Pharma has diligently worked to remove exemptions, such that California has neither a religious nor a philosophical exemption, while several other blue states including New York have eliminated their religious exemption.
Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) is an important part or partner of the MAGA movement that helped elect Trump along with a strong 53-47 GOP majority in the Senate. Among many stunning achievements by Trump’s Cabinet and special advisers, RFK Jr.’s overhaul of ACIP is one of the biggest and boldest reforms.
Personal observations of children after vaccination have led many to suspect that they are being harmed by injections they do not need. An alarming increase in autism, allergies, heart problems, and cancer cries out for an explanation, and one difference between younger and older Americans is that younger generations have had far more vaccines.
Covid was relatively safe in children and yet the Covid vaccine was pushed on them by ACIP, and has been required by many colleges as a condition of enrollment. In some cases children were injected with the Covid vaccine without their parents’ approval.
Hospitals give most infants the Hepatitis B vaccine soon after birth, although its purpose is to protect against a sexually transmitted disease. New Jersey, where the pharmaceutical industry has many offices, requires 3 doses of this and many other vaccines in children as a condition of merely entering kindergarten.
The liberal media understood immediately the significance of RFK Jr.’s housecleaning move, and some websites featured headlines about this with greater priority than news about the Los Angeles riots. When Tucker Carlson and James O’Keefe previously took on Big Pharma, they were soon forced out of their jobs.
The blowback against RFK Jr. will be intense, and it appears that Big Pharma already controls Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) who was initially planning to vote against RFK Jr.’s confirmation. Only a grassroots outpouring by MAHA in support of RFK Jr. caused Tillis to eventually vote in favor of him.
CNN quoted one of the fired members of ACIP as blustering that “I’ve never seen anything this damaging to public health happen in my lifetime.” The adviser asserted, “This will fundamentally destabilize vaccination in America.”
Instead, it might end vaccine tyranny in the United States, where children are forced to receive more vaccines than anywhere else in the world. American children typically receive 30 doses of vaccines by the age of one, due to how ACIP has relentlessly recommended virtually every vaccine.
Every member of ACIP whom RFK Jr. fired had been appointed by Biden, who famously abused his power by ordering all large employers to require Covid vaccination of their employees. The U.S. Supreme Court intervened on an emergency basis to block Biden’s vaccine mandate as unjustified by any law.
There has been a chorus of complaints about RFK Jr.’s mass firing from those who feed at the trough of Big Pharma. As an advisory committee, ACIP should be a diverse group that includes people who are skeptical about vaccine mandates.
RFK Jr. vows that the replacements he picks for ACIP “won’t directly work for the vaccine industry” and “will exercise independent judgment, refuse to serve as a rubber stamp, and foster a culture of critical inquiry — unafraid to ask hard questions.” This is just what a good doctor would want for MAHA vaccine policy.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.