RFK Jr. Taps New Slate of Members for Vaccine Advisory Panel

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday appointed eight new members to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine recommendation committee — and at least half have a history of vaccine skepticism.

The new appointments come just days after Kennedy retired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices earlier this week. The board is responsible for making recommendations on the safety and efficacy of vaccines and sets the immunization schedules for both adults and children in the U.S.

“The slate includes highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians,” Kennedy said in an announcement Wednesday evening. “All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense.”

Kennedy said on Tuesday that committee shakeup was a long time coming, and a necessary step to restore public trust in a committee he claimed was riddled with conflicts of interest. Historically, members of ACIP who have relationships with pharmaceutical companies are required to disclose their affiliations and recuse themselves from discussions about vaccines they have done research on. But Kennedy argued their involvement with private companies in itself was a sign of “corporate capture” and created a database of the conflict of interest disclosures, despite them already being publicly available.

The board members announced this week who are expected to attend the committee’s June 25 meeting are: Dr. Cody Meissner, Dr. James Pagano, Dr. Michael A. Ross, Dr. Robert W. Malone, Martin Kulldorff, Vicky Pebsworth and Retsef Levi.

He also said on Tuesday he would not appoint “anti-vaxxers” to replace all of the ACIP members. But at least four of the newly appointed members have a history of criticizing the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccinations.

Kulldorff was let go from Harvard University after signing on to an open letter in 2020 known as the “Great Barrington Declaration.” The document criticized the U.S. government’s COVID-19 response and instead promoted the idea of seeking herd immunity through mass infection.

Pebsworth is listed on the board of the National Vaccine Information Center, the country’s oldest anti-vaccine group. And Levi and Malone both publicly criticized the efficacy of mRNA vaccines in the fight against COVID.

314 Action, a progressive nonprofit that seeks to elect Democratic scientists, on Wednesday called on Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee, to hold a hearing on the new appointments.

“RFK Jr. will go down as the most dangerous Health Secretary in American history. With no CDC Director in place, and eight new vaccine critics selected to advance his discredited conspiracy theories — how America responds to outbreaks, pandemics, and preventable deaths are now in the hands of a small group of ‘experts’ who are loyal to him,” the group’s statement reads. “This was never about ‘radical transparency’, and it is a complete betrayal of the promise he made to leave this critical advisory panel untouched.”

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Amelia Benavides-Colón is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.