Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced eight of the 17 members he recently removed from a federal vaccine safety advisory committee due to concerns the panel had become riddled with corruption. 

Earlier this week, Kennedy retired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices over accusations that the panel had become overrun with conflict of interests, serving as a “rubber stamp” for the pharmaceutical industry. 

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On Wednesday, the HHS secretary revealed the names of eight new people he selected to repopulate the committee, hours after pledging to only select experts seeking to apply “evidence-based decision-making with objectivity” regarding vaccine recommendations. Some appointees hold some of Kennedy’s more critical views on vaccines, while other picks appear to be olive branches to Washington’s establishment. 

Kennedy announced Drs. Martin Kulldorff, Robert Malone, Cody Meissner, Retsef Levi, James Pagano, Joseph Hibbeln, Vicky Pebsworth, and Michael Ross will now make up the ACIP, which will hold its next meeting on June 25. Those named to the ACIP include also several prominent critics of the COVID-19 vaccines who broke with Biden-era health officials over pandemic lockdowns. 

“The slate includes highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians,” Kennedy said in a post to X. “All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense. They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.” 

MAHA and “medical freedom” advocates celebrated the appointments. 

“The new appointees come from many walks of life to provide excellent, and objective, viewpoint diversity which has been lacking,” David Mansdoerfer, former deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services in the first Trump administration, wrote in a post on X. “As important as who is on the slate is who is not – including representatives from the woke medical associations that are doing everything they can to keep the status quo.” 

Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s independent panel of vaccine advisers, called some of the new members “anti-vaccine activists,” in comments to CNBC. Others he praised, calling Meissner a “good choice.”

Kulldorff

The HHS secretary said Kulldorff has served on the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee and the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Subgroup of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. 

Kulldorff was fired from Harvard Medical School last year after criticizing the Ivy League institution over its vaccine mandates and other policies regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. A professor of medicine and biostatistician, Kulldorff refused to get the vaccine, arguing that he had immunity because he had already survived a COVID infection and that Harvard’s mandate was “unscientific” and “unethical.” 

The former Harvard professor was also known for signing the Great Barrington Declaration, an anti-lockdown document also endorsed by NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya. The declaration, signed by nearly one million infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists, argued that lockdowns were “producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.” The health experts pressed officials to instead institute “Focused Protection” policies sustaining protections for the elderly while allowing less vulnerable populations to develop herd immunity through resuming normal activities. 

Malone

Malone has held academic positions at institutions including the University of California, Davis, and the University of Maryland, and has served in advisory roles for the HHS and the Department of Defense, according to Kennedy. 

The scientist conducted early research on mRNA vaccine technology. The novel technology was used to develop the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, which Biden health officials used an emergency declaration to authorize for public use before obtaining full FDA approval. 

Malone has since expressed concerns about mRNA vaccines, saying during a December 2021 episode of the Joe Rogan Experience that they could have negative side effects, including increased risks of myocarditis and changes to the menstrual cycle that could lead to broader reproductive issues. 

The biochemist also attracted attention earlier this year when he weighed in on a measles outbreak in Texas. State officials reported that unvaccinated 8-year-old Daisy Hildebrand’s death was due to measles. The University Medical Center in Lubbock, where she died, stated that the child “was receiving treatment for complications of measles while hospitalized.” 

Malone was widely accused of spreading disinformation after saying that the child didn’t die from measles, but from sepsis after having been ill from mononucleosis and tonsillitis. He suggested that the measles narrative was construed to pressure parents into vaccinating their children for the virus. Medical professionals mismanaged Daisy’s case because they were fixated on her vaccination status, Malone argued, and failed to provide the care that could have prevented her death. Kennedy likewise suggested that Daisy died from a bacterial infection rather than attributing her death directly to measles. 

When asked if he believed his daughter died from measles during an interview in April, Daisy’s father said: “No, absolutely not.” 

“That last doctor we had, he just kept going on and on about measles this and measles that. He was trying to blame everything on the measles,” he said. “They didn’t think about testing for anything else. And that is why my daughter is dead today.”

Meissner

Meissner is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Kennedy touted him as a nationally recognized expert in pediatric infectious diseases and vaccine policy who has held advisory roles with the CDC and FDA. Meissner has also been a contributing author to the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statements and immunization schedules, Kennedy said. 

The pediatric specialist was a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee in 2020 when it voted on whether to grant Pfizer’s request for an emergency use authorization of their mRNA vaccine for patients 16 and older. The EUA allowed vaccine manufacturers during the pandemic to bypass the traditional FDA approval process. 

While Meissner spoke highly of the vaccine for vulnerable populations, he abstained from VRBPAC’s vote because the of inclusion of 16 and 17-year-olds in the request for authorization. The physician said he felt “uncomfortable” greenlighting the request due to a lack of clinical research on that age bracket and because the virus posed little risk to young people. 

“There were only 163 children who were included in this trial — or 163 adolescents 16 to 17 years old. And there were 44,000 people who were enrolled altogether. So it was a very small number. And about half of those 163 got a placebo, and half got the vaccine. So we’re talking about 80 16- and 17-year-olds,” he told NPR. 

Levi

Levi is the professor of Operations Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and was the Faculty Director of MIT Sloan’s Food Supply Chain Analytics and Sensing Initiative and co-led the Leaders for Global Operations Program. 

Like Malone, he has a background in researching mRNA technology, particularly in conducting studies on the COVID-19 vaccines.

Levi has also been critical of the novel technology, saying it could pose a safety risk and that the COVID-19 vaccines “completely fail to fulfill any of their advertised promises regarding efficacy.” 

“The evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people,” Levi wrote in a post on X in 2023. “We have to stop giving them immediately!”

Pagano

Pagano did his residency medical training at the University of California Los Angeles, becoming a board-certified Emergency Medicine physician with over 40 years of clinical experience according to Kennedy. 

Hibbeln

A psychiatrist and neuroscientist, Hibbeln was formerly Acting Chief of the Section on Nutritional Neurosciences at the NIH. He’s participated in more than 120 peer-reviewed publications and has extensive experience in federal advisory roles, per Kennedy. 

Pebsworth

A nurse on the board of The National Vaccine Information Center, Pebsworth holds over 45 years of experience in the health care field, Kennedy wrote. 

She is the  Pacific Region Director of the National Association of Catholic Nurses and formerly served on the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and the National Vaccine Advisory Committee’s 2009 H1N1 Vaccine Safety Risk Assessment Working Group and Vaccine Safety Working Group. 

RFK JR. PROMISES VACCINE SAFETY PANEL WON’T BE STOCKED WITH ANTI-VAXXERS

Ross

The HHS secretary said Ross is a Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at George Washington University and Virginia Commonwealth University. He has served on the CDC’s Advisory Committee for the Prevention of Breast and Cervical Cancer and advised major organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.