RFK Jr. Re-Staffs ACIP With Half As Many Experts But Infinitely More Anti-Vaxx Crackpots

Failures

from the promises-made-promises-broken dept

Mere days ago, and only a few weeks out from a meeting in Atlanta to discuss immunization policy and vaccination recommendations, we talked about the batshit move by RFK Jr. to fully wipe out and fire the entirety of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an immunization advisory panel. All 17 members of the panel were given their walking papers, effective immediately, leaving a gaping hole in American healthcare when it comes to vaccination policies. ACIP recommendations aren’t always adopted by the CDC and HHS, though deviations from them have historically been rare. Those recommendations typically result in adopted policy from the CDC, which is in turn followed by everyone from insurance companies in terms of what they cover, to clinicians around the country, all the way down to members of the public as they seek to follow the published guidance. It’s a very, very important group of advisors when it comes to American health.

Well, Kennedy has re-staffed ACIP in record time. And, to the surprise of exactly nobody, among the 8 people he appointed are a bunch of anti-vaxxers. Kennedy, who announced the firings of ACIP in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, went an even less professional route by announcing the new members on ExTwitter. When he followed up on his WSJ op-ed on ExTwitter as well, Kennedy had this to say about who he would put on the panel to replace them.

In case you can’t see the screenshot, that’s RFK Jr. saying:

Yesterday, I retired 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices or ACIP, the @CDCgov external panel that wields the grave responsibility of adding new vaccines to the recommended childhood schedule. Over the coming days, I will use this platform to announce new members to populate ACIP. None of these individuals will be ideological anti-vaxxers. They will be highly credentialed physicians and scientists who will make extremely consequential public health determinations by applying evidence-based decision-making with objectivity and common sense.

He lied to everyone. As I said, he absolutely put ideological anti-vaxxers on this panel. And if you don’t believe me, let’s take the case of Robert Malone. Malone claims to have invented mRNA vaccines. While Malone absolutely conducted important research into this technology, the claim he invented it is disputed widely, with the technology instead resulting from the work of hundreds of individuals and researchers. Despite his work on those vaccines, or perhaps because of it in an misguided way, Malone has spread misinformation about vaccines, including speaking at anti-vax rallies. And if that isn’t specific enough for you to accept that Kennedy lied about his intentions, I’ll just drop this here, straight from Malone’s own mouth:

Before COVID-19, the term anti-vaxxer was targeted towards people who are against all vaccines. Targeted as a way to delegitimize their complaints and observations, by personally delegitimizing them. More PsyWar. But times have changed. The defamatory attack has become a badge of honor.

Various news articles state that 35–45% of Americans, including myself, find vaccine mandates unacceptable. The government and corporate media have defined this group of people as being anti-vaxxers. Some people still believe that the term anti-vaxxer is a pejorative. I do not – I view it as high praise.

He may desire to frame his being labeled as an anti-vaxxer purely a result of his distaste for “mandates” that were both temporary and narrowly targeted when it came to what the federal government required, but his framing of this whole thing is a straw man, anyway. He’s labeled an anti-vaxxer because he speaks at rallies claiming that vaccines, or at least mRNA 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.” Oh, and he once claimed that the COVID vaccines cause a “form of AIDS.” If that isn’t an anti-vaxxer, then the term no longer has any meaning.

Malone is not the only troubling appointment in Kennedy’s cadre of clowns.

Another is Martin Kulldorff, one of the co-authors 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 co-authored with COVID-contrarian and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.

And so there you have it. Because of a flawed Congress that can’t do real oversight on the nominations of an even more flawed President, America will now get its vaccination guidance from a panel that is no less than half full of anti-vaxxers who have engaged in misinformation around those very same vaccines. Freedom has been restored, just in time for many of us to get sick, and possibly die, from diseases that need not be a problem, but likely will be. Like measles. Or COVID, again.

Or, universe forbid, the next novel pandemic that comes to be as a result of our national infection of distrust of actual experts on matters of science.

Filed Under: acip, anti-vaxxers, covid, health and human services, martin kulldorff, retsef levi, rfk jr., robert malone, science, vaccine recommendations, vaccines, vicky pebsworth