CDC Vaccine Committee, Two Skeptics Among New Experts Appointed by Kennedy

Just two days after removing the entire U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Vaccine Advisory Committee , Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has appointed several prominent critics of the government’s response to Covid-19 in their place.

Expert Committee Halved

Eight new members join the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Kennedy said Monday that the 17 members of the committee that makes recommendations about who should receive vaccines had conflicts of interest and that he would appoint new “highly qualified” experts in time for the June 25 meeting, which is expected to discuss, among other things, guidelines for COVID-19 and HPV.

Now, as CNN reports, Kennedy explained that the assembled expert panel will require "definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations, and will also review data from the current vaccine program."

The positions of Kulldorf and Malone

Among the eight new members is Robert Malone , a biochemist who pioneered messenger RNA innovations but has been a vocal critic of mRNA technology in Covid-19 vaccines in recent years. Another new member is Martin Kulldorff , a biostatistician and epidemiologist who co-authored with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya , now director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, an October 2020 herd immunity strategy known as the Great Barrington Declaration . Kennedy also picked Dr. James Pagano , an emergency medicine physician he described as a “strong advocate for evidence-based medicine” who has served on hospital committees and medical boards.

Retsef Levi , an MIT professor who has published studies on mRNA vaccines and cardiovascular events, will be on the panel. Cody Meissner , a pediatrics professor at Dartmouth who is also a signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration, will be on the panel; and Vicky Pebsworth , the Pacific regional director of the National Catholic Nurses Association, served on the FDA panel and a national panel that reviewed the 2009 H1N1 swine flu vaccine.