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Atlantic
15 hours ago
- Health
- Atlantic
‘I'm Not Quite Sure How to Respond to This Presentation'
The past three weeks have been auspicious for the anti-vaxxers. On June 9, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. purged the nation's most important panel of vaccine experts: All 17 voting members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which sets recommendations for the use of vaccines and determines which ones must be covered through insurance and provided free of charge to children on Medicaid, were abruptly fired. The small, ragtag crew of replacements that Kennedy appointed two days later met this week for the first time, amid lots of empty chairs in a conference room in Atlanta. They had come to talk about the safety of vaccines: to raise concerns about the data, to float hypotheses of harm, to issue findings. The resulting spectacle was set against a backdrop of accelerating action from the secretary. On Wednesday, Kennedy terminated more than $1 billion in U.S. funding for Gavi, a global-health initiative that supports the vaccination of more than 65 million children every year. Lyn Redwood, a nurse practitioner and the former president of Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization that Kennedy used to chair, was just hired as a special government employee. (She presented at the ACIP meeting yesterday.) A recently posted scientific document on the ACIP website that underscored the safety of thimerosal, an ingredient in a small proportion of the nation's flu vaccines, had been taken down, a committee member said, because the document 'was not authorized by the office of the secretary.' (A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told me in an email that this document was provided to the ACIP members in their meeting briefing packets.) What's clear enough is that, 61 years after ACIP's founding, America's vaccination policy is about to be recooked. Now we've had a glimpse inside the kitchen. The meeting started with complaints. 'Some media outlets have been very harsh on the new members of this committee,' said Martin Kulldorff, a rangy Swedish biostatistician and noted COVID contrarian who is now ACIP's chair. (Kuldorff was one of the lead authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a controversial proposal from the fall of 2020 to isolate seniors and other vulnerable people while reopening the rest of society.) In suggesting that he and Kennedy's other appointees are opposed to vaccination, Kulldorff said, journalists were misleading the public, weakening trust in public health, and fanning 'the flames of vaccine hesitancy.' This was, in fact, the most pugnacious comment of the two-day meeting, which otherwise unfolded in a tone of fearmongering gentility. Robert Malone, a doctor and an infectious-diseases researcher who has embraced the 'anti-vaccine' label and published a conspiracy-theory-laden book that details government psyops against the American people, was unfailingly polite in his frequent intimations about the safety of vaccines, often thanking CDC staff for their hard work and lucid presentations. With his thick white beard, calm affect, and soldierly diction—Malone ended many of his comments by saying, 'Over' into the microphone—he presented less as a firebrand than as, say, the commanding officer of a submarine. When Malone alluded to the worry, for example, that spike proteins from the mRNA-based COVID vaccines linger in the body following injection, he did so in respectful, even deferential, language, suggesting that the public would benefit from greater study of possible 'delayed effects' of immune-system activation. The CDC's traditional approach—its 'world-leading, rigorous' one, he clarified—might be improved by examining this question. A subject-matter expert responded that the CDC has been keeping tabs on real-world safety data on those vaccines for nearly five years, and has not detected any signs of long-term harm. Later, Malone implied that COVID or its treatments might have, through some unspecified, bank-shot mechanism, left the U.S. population more susceptible to other illnesses. There was a 'paradoxical, sudden decrease' in flu cases in 2020 and 2021, he noted, followed by a trend of worsening harm. A CDC staffer pointed out that the decrease in flu during those years was not, in fact, a paradox; well-documented shifts in people's health behavior had temporarily reduced the load of many respiratory illnesses during that same period. But Malone pressed on: 'Some members of the scientific community have concern that they're coming out of the COVID pandemic—exposure to the virus, exposure to various countermeasures—there may be a pattern of broad-based, uh, energy,' he said, his eyes darting up for a moment as he said the word, 'that might contribute to increased severity of influenza disease.' He encouraged the agency to 'be sensitive to that hypothesis.' Throughout these and other questions from the committee members, the CDC's subject-matter experts did their best to explain their work and respond to scattershot technical and conceptual concerns. 'The CDC staff is still attempting to operate as an evidence-based organization,' Laura Morris, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, who has attended dozens of ACIP meetings in the past and attended this one as a nonvoting liaison to the committee from the American Academy of Family Physicians, told me. 'There was some tension in terms of the capacity of the committee to ask and understand the appropriate methodological questions. The CDC was trying to hold it down.' That task became more difficult as the meeting progressed. 'The new ACIP is an independent body composed of experienced medical and public health experts who evaluate evidence, ask hard questions, and make decisions based on scientific integrity,' the HHS spokesperson told me. 'Bottom line: this process reflects open scientific inquiry and robust debate, not a pre-scripted narrative.' The most vocal questioner among the new recruits—and the one who seemed least beholden to a script—was the MIT business-school professor Retsef Levi, a lesser-known committee appointee who sat across the table from Malone. A scruffy former Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer with a ponytail that reached halfway down his back, Levi's academic background is in data modeling, risk management, and organizational logistics. He approached the proceedings with a swaggering incredulity, challenging the staffers' efforts and pointing out the risks of systematic errors in their thinking. (In a pinned post on his X profile, Levi writes that 'the evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death'—a position entirely at odds with copious data presented at the meeting.) Shortly before the committee's vote to recommend a new, FDA-approved monoclonal antibody for preventing RSV in infants, Levi noted that he'd spent some time reviewing the relevant clinical-trial data for the drug and another like it, and found some worrying patterns in the statistics surrounding infant deaths. 'Should we not be concerned that maybe there are some potential safety signals?' he asked. But these very data had already been reviewed, at great length, in multiple settings: by the FDA, in the course of drug approval, and by the dozens of members of ACIP's relevant work group for RSV, which had, per the committee's standard practice, conducted its own staged analysis of the new treatment before the meeting and reached consensus that its benefits outweighed its risks. Levi was uncowed by any reference to this prior work. 'I'm a scientist, but I'm also a father of six kids,' he told the group; speaking as a father, he said, he personally would be concerned about the risk of harm from this new antibody for RSV. In the end, Levi voted against recommending the antibody, as did Vicky Pebsworth, who is on the board of an anti-vaccine organization and holds a Ph.D. in public health and nursing. The five other members voted yes. That 5–2 vote aside, the most contentious issue on the meeting's schedule concerned the flu shots in America that contain thimerosal, which has been an obsession of the anti-vaccine movement for the past few decades. Despite extensive study, vaccines with thimerosal have not been found to be associated with any known harm in human patients, yet an unspecified vote regarding their use was slipped into the meeting's agenda in the absence of any work-group study or presentation from the CDC's staff scientists. What facts there were came almost exclusively from Redwood, the nurse who used to run Kennedy's anti-vaccine organization. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that at least one citation from her posted slides had been invented. That reference was removed before she spoke yesterday. (HHS did not address a request for comment on this issue in its response to me.) The only one of Kennedy's appointees who had ever previously served on the committee—the pediatrician Cody Meissner—seemed perplexed, even pained, by the proceedings. 'I'm not quite sure how to respond to this presentation,' he said when Redwood finished. He went on to sum up his concerns: 'ACIP makes recommendations based on scientific evidence as much as possible. And there is no scientific evidence that thimerosal has caused a problem.' Alas, Meissner's warnings were for nought. Throughout the meeting, he came off as the committee's last remaining, classic 'expert'—a vaccine scientist clinging to ACIP's old ways—but his frequent protestations were often bulldozed over or ignored. In the end, his was the only vote against the resolutions on thimerosal. Throughout the two-day meeting, Kuldorff kept returning to a favorite phrase: evidence-based medicine. 'Secretary Kennedy has given this committee a clear mandate to use evidence-based medicine,' he said on Wednesday morning; 'The purpose of this committee is to follow evidence-based medicine,' he said on Wednesday afternoon; 'What is important is using evidence-based medicine,' he said again when the meeting reached its end. All told, I heard him say evidence-based at least 10 times during the meeting. (To be fair, critics of Kuldorff and his colleagues also love this phrase.) But the committee was erratic in its posture toward the evidence from the very start; it cast doubt on CDC analyses and substituted lay advice and intuition for ACIP's normal methods of assessing and producing expert consensus. 'Decisons were made based on feelings and preferences rather than evidence,' Morris told me after the meeting. 'That's a dangerous way to make public-health policy.'
News24
3 days ago
- Health
- News24
RFK Jr's new vaccine panel opens with scandal after citing non-existent study
RFK Jr dismissed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP) and appointed eight new members. The panel's first meeting opened under controversy when a planned presentation cited a completely non-existent 2008 study. The new panel plans to revisit long-settled vaccine science. A medical panel appointed by US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr opened its first meeting on Wednesday under a cloud of controversy after a presentation it planned to review cited a non-existent study. The Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP), an independent body that reviews scientific evidence to recommend which groups should receive vaccines and when, rarely makes headlines. But its work has come under fresh scrutiny after Kennedy - who spent two decades spreading vaccine misinformation before becoming President Donald Trump's top health official - abruptly dismissed all 17 sitting ACIP members earlier this month, accusing them of pharmaceutical industry conflicts of interest. He then appointed eight new members, including scientist Robert Malone, widely known for spreading false claims during the Covid-19 pandemic, and Martin Kulldorff, chair of the panel and a co-signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for an end to lockdowns in October 2020 - months before Covid vaccines became available. The posted agenda signalled the panel would revisit long-settled debates around thimerosal, a vaccine preservative, and highlight rare side-effects linked to measles shots, with no planned discussion of their enormous public health benefits. READ | US Senate votes in Trump's controversial pick Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of health Lyn Redwood, a nurse and former leader of Children's Health Defence - an anti-vaccine group once chaired by RFK Jr - is set to present on thimerosal. Scientists reviewing her slides found she had cited a non-existent 2008 study by RF Berman titled "Low-level neonatal thimerosal exposure: Long-term consequences in the brain." In fact, no such study exists. While Berman did publish a paper that year, it appeared in a different journal and found no evidence linking thimerosal to autism. The presentation was quietly removed and replaced without explanation. Revisiting established science Opening the meeting, Kulldorff lamented his firing by Harvard University for refusing the Covid vaccine. He also announced the formation of a new working group to re-examine the wisdom of Hepatitis B shots for babies "at the day of birth." Experts met the announcement with scepticism. "The rationale for Hepatitis B vaccination prior to hospital discharge (not day or birth) for neonates is well documented and established - but it's another pet cause of the anti-vaccine movement so not surprising it's being mentioned," Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University told AFP. Similarly, thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative long used in medicines, with no evidence of harm at low doses. "Study after study showed that the ethylmercury in those vaccines never contributed in any important way to the burden of mercury that one is exposed to, living on this planet," vaccine expert Paul Offit of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia told AFP. Still, vaccine makers agreed to remove it from paediatric vaccines in 1999 in response to public concern. It remains in some flu shots. Measles running rampant For childhood immunisations, US parents can opt for a combined measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) shot or two separate injections - one for MMR and the other for varicella. The combination spares children an extra jab but carries a slightly higher risk of febrile seizures, a rare and typically harmless side-effect. Separating the shots is already recommended for the first dose at 12-47 months, leaving experts puzzled as to why the issue is being revisited. "This working group may also look at new research concerning the optimal timing of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to resolve religious objections that some parents have concerning the MMR vaccine being used here in the United States," said Kulldorff. The US, which declared measles eliminated in 2000, is currently experiencing its worst outbreak in decades, with more than 1 200 cases and three confirmed deaths. The panel's recommendations could have broad consequences, shaping school vaccine mandates and insurance coverage.
The Hill
3 days ago
- Health
- The Hill
Kennedy is making a mistake injecting politics into immunization policy
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently revamped the federal Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices committee, firing all its members and naming eight new ones in their place. Such abrupt upheaval is in line with the disruptive nature of the current administration, focusing on putting people in positions of authority that support the administration's agenda. But Kennedy deflected any such criticisms, stating that all such changes were necessary due to conflicts of interest that the dismissed committee members had with pharmaceutical companies. Before simply bashing the eight new members, it is worthwhile to recognize that they are all highly accomplished in their fields. The biggest question is whether their experience and skills align with the responsibilities and needs of the advisory committee, and whether such a mix of people will serve the best interests of the nation with respect to immunization policy. Though I cannot comment on all of the new members, I have considerable background in common with two of them — Martin Kulldorf and Retsef Levi. Both graduated from the operations research doctoral program at Cornell University, the same program from which I graduated. Operations research is a field that creates and uses mathematical models to support decision-making. It is widely used across government and numerous industries, including transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, and finance. Kulldorf's background is in probability theory. His career path eventually took him to health policy and biostatistics. He was on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School for nearly two decades. His scholarly record is superb. He became most famous during the COVID pandemic for views that were contrary to the mainstream public health field at the time, since he supported natural immunity for young people while protecting the health of the most vulnerable. This was the primary thesis of the Great Barrington Declaration, which he co-authored. Levi is on the faculty of the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He is well trained in mathematical modeling for operations, with a focus on risk mitigation. He has done considerable research on healthcare issues, though it is just one of his many interests, as evidenced by his extensive and diverse list of publications. He is member of the Mass General Research Institute. So why is there such an uproar about these two individuals (as well as the other six members who will constitute the new advisory committee) joining the nation's primary advisory group for immunization policy in the U.S.? The reason is that these new members are not part of the mainstream immunization community. Their views, based on their writings and public statements, are not aligned with what has been recommended by previous members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices. This means that the recommendations of the new committee risks being different from those of previous committees. One place that this could be felt is with the Childhood and Adolescent Immunization Schedule, which is one of the committee's primary responsibilities. Yet before assuming that wholesale changes in this schedule are imminent, several decades of experience with these vaccines have produced a large body of data on their safety and effectiveness. Although the new members may have ideologies that are not considered mainstream, they are also sufficiently skilled to understand data and curious enough to ask questions before making sweeping changes that could affect population health and influence health insurance coverage policies. If Kennedy had added some of these new people to the advisory committee rather than simply firing the entire committee, he would have found far less resistance from the many medical associations and societies asking for reinstatement of the fired members. Instead, he opted to take a more radical approach, which has placed him and the new advisory committee members under needless attack. The recent JAMA article, coauthored by the fired members, masterfully articulates the long history of vaccines and their benefits. It also criticizes the process by which they were fired, and the risks with the new committee. Given the size of the committee, it would behoove Kennedy to reinstate some of the fired members, providing a healthy atmosphere for discussion and debate. Indeed, having a committee that is ideologically biased in any direction is certain to yield suboptimal policies, with the the meeting that starts today being the committee's first test. If Kennedy is so confident in his beliefs, then he should welcome having people on the committee who provide some resistance. Such a balanced environment would give all stakeholders a voice, with the necessary data used to support or deflect new or existing policies. That would temper the politics of any new recommendations and provide a pathway for immunization policy that would best serve the nation's public health interests. Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a professor in the Grainger College of Engineering and the Carle Illinois College of medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Gulf Insider
17-06-2025
- Health
- Gulf Insider
Fired Harvard Epidemiologist Named to CDC Vaccine Panel
World-renowned infectious-disease epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff — who was fired from Harvard Medical School last year after refusing the COVID vaccine — just got a new gig. Kulldorff has been named a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices. Kulldorff, who had refused the COVID vaccine because of his infection-acquired immunity, lost his appointment at a Harvard-affiliated hospital in the early days of the COVID era, and in March of 2024 was officially terminated as a med school faculty member. Since the COVID lockdowns began five years ago this month, Kulldorff argued that tactics such as social distancing, masking children, vaccines after infections, and other extreme measures were not the best course of action to fight the virus. He co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for sensible tactics that would allow the globe to reach 'herd immunity' and has been signed by nearly 1 million scientists worldwide. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in announcing the new members of the panel last week on X, wrote that his selections signify a 'major step towards restoring public trust in vaccines.' Kennedy wrote he retired the 17 current members of the committee and is repopulating ACIP with eight new members '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. The committee will review safety and efficacy data for the current schedule as well,' Kennedy stated. MassLive reported that in 2021, 'Kulldorff posted on X that 'thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should.'' 'COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers,' he wrote. 'Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.' According to the New York Times , after Kennedy's announcement, some infectious disease and vaccine experts accused the health secretary of going back on his pledge not to pick so-called anti-vaxxers. 'When Mr. Kennedy fired the entire committee, known as the A.C.I.P., he cited financial conflicts of interest and said a clean sweep was necessary to restore public trust in vaccination,' the Times reported. As for Harvard's role in the controversy, writing in City Journal last year, Kulldorff argued that Harvard turned its back on him, open debate, and medical freedom. 'The beauty of our immune system is that those who recover from an infection are protected if and when they are re-exposed. This has been known since the Athenian Plague of 430 BC—but it is no longer known at Harvard,' he wrote. 'Three prominent Harvard faculty coauthored the now infamous 'consensus' memorandum in The Lancet, questioning the existence of Covid-acquired immunity. By continuing to mandate the vaccine for students with a prior Covid infection, Harvard is de facto denying 2,500 years of science.' Kennedy, in announcing Kulldorff, noted he is a biostatistician and 'a leading expert in vaccine safety and infectious disease surveillance.' '… Dr. Kulldorff developed widely used tools such as SaTScan and TreeScan for detecting disease outbreaks and vaccine adverse events. His expertise includes statistical methods for public health surveillance, immunization safety, and infectious disease epidemiology. He has also been an influential voice in public health policy, advocating for evidence-based approaches to pandemic response.' Also read: Early COVID-19 Vaccine Patent In China Raises New Questions For U.S. Investigators
Perth Now
16-06-2025
- Health
- Perth Now
Anti-vaxxers need an injection of common sense
The teachers were already hoarse from shouting, coping the best they could with a gaggle of kids even more excitable than usual. 'Make a line and be quiet, knuckleheads!' growled Mr Woods. We were a squirming, '70s vaccination line, until scrawny Sean's turn. He staggered forward, put both arms behind his back and promptly threw up on the nurse and her trolley of medical paraphernalia. The class fell quiet at last — a pause before the deafening cheers. Public health is rarely glamorous. As with seatbelts, pool fences and speed limits, when your job is to prevent something happening, the credit is only theoretical. The most exciting outcome is a downward trend on a graph. This gives rise to survivor bias, which leads to people removing effective safety measures — precisely because they are working. Begrudgingly I went for blood tests the other day to prove my immunity, for the hospital administration. They wanted to see my vaccination card from the day Sean threw up, but Mum had filed it under 'not my problem' decades ago. As a nurse expertly drew my blood, I thought of Edward Jenner — not Kim Kardashian's uncle, but the 18th-century physician. A thoughtful scientist, Jenner heard that milk maids who contracted cowpox did not suffer from the similar, but far more severe disease of smallpox. He grabbed a school kid, infected them with cowpox, then later smallpox — ah the good old days — and voila, the kid was fine. 'We are getting through COVID-19 so far with much better outcomes than the rest of world, because we delayed infection until after vaccination' says Andrew Miller. Credit: Adobe Stock / Mia B/ - stock.a Jenner had invented vaccination, and just like that — anti-vaxxers. With every medicine, there can be side effects and problems, but his initiative has saved more humans from death and disability than any other medical intervention, by a long shot. There are 27 main vaccines available for preventable diseases in Australia and together they form one pillar of our good fortune. Our children rarely die early, and some cancers — such as cervical — are in rapid decline. We are getting through COVID-19 so far with much better outcomes than the rest of world, because we delayed infection until after vaccination. It is dark news indeed that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jnr has replaced the world-recognised experts of the US Advisory Committee for Immunisation Practices with an oddball assortment including anti-vaxxers and public health sceptics. Among them, Professor Martin Kulldorff, co-author of the infamous 'let-it-rip and see who survives' Great Barrington Declaration plan for COVID-19. Also, Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse who asserts that much of the chronic disease burden in the US was caused by vaccination. Then there is Dr Robert Malone, who weighed in on the April measles death of unvaccinated eight-year-old Texan Daisy Hildebrand, minimising the danger of the virus and spreading debunked claims about the MMR vaccine. Malone claims that it was botched treatment, not measles, that led to her death. The problem for Australia is that vaccine hesitancy is contagious online, and it's easier to not get a jab than to bother. Normal people are busy and just want the best for their kids. Our slothful governments are not investing enough money, ingenuity and passion in public health promotion. To maintain herd immunity, where those few who cannot be vaccinated are protected because almost everyone else is, we need coverage of over 95 per cent of the population with MMR vaccine. Our fortunate population has little experience of children dying from infectious diseases, so can be prompted to wonder if vaccines are strictly necessary, or worse, if they might be causing more harm than good. With well-resourced misinformation it would not be hard to give measles the comeback nobody needs. Jenner might have dared dream that 200 years after his invention we could have eliminated most plagues. Unfortunately, that would have accorded too much wisdom to our species. Yet may we hope, as there are many countries like ours watching on in horror as the US sabotages its own future. Let their misfortune be no wasted lesson for us.
