First Meeting June 25: A Closer Look at the New ACIP Panel
Updated
On Monday, June 9, 2025, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 sitting members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP). As a component of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the ACIP is comprised of medical and public health experts who evaluate the safety, efficacy, and clinical need of the nation’s vaccines and pass their findings on to the CDC. ACIP’s findings then serve as public health guidance for the “safe use of vaccines and related biological products.” OK. A group of medical and public health experts reviewing data and delivering advice on vaccinations for every man, woman, and child living in the United States certainly sounds like a solid plan. Except there’s one massive problem, as clarified by Sec. Kennedy in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Kennedy fearlessly said the quiet part out loud, declaring:
“The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine. It has never recommended against a vaccine—even those later withdrawn for safety reasons. It has failed to scrutinize vaccine products given to babies and pregnant women. To make matters worse, the groups that inform ACIP meet behind closed doors, violating the legal and ethical principle of transparency crucial to maintaining public trust.”
RFK Jr. just EXPOSED Dr. Paul Offit for profiting $186 million from a vaccine that he voted to place on the CDC childhood schedule as a member of ACIP.
“In 2002, the Government Oversight Committee held hearings about ACIP … and they issued a scathing report about… pic.twitter.com/EhSK2XPLMb
— Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta) June 12, 2025
Indeed, with the enforcement of its conflicts of interest rules being “weak” to “non-existent,” Kennedy explained that the ACIP members regularly participated in deliberations and advocated for products in which they had a financial stake. Moreover, Kennedy noted that most of ACIP’s former members had accepted significant funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing the vaccines they were entrusted with recommending. Year after year, these conflicts of interest went unchecked, with 97 percent of completed conflict of interest forms full of omissions, buried in a system of “industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy.”
To illustrate the corruption that embodied the now-retired ACIP panel, member Paul Offit held a patent on a competing rotavirus vaccine and had received $350,000 from Merck to develop it. Without question, this is a conflict of interest. Yet, Offit still voted on rotavirus policy, and in 2006, as he sat on the panel, his vaccine, called RotaTeq, was licensed by the FDA. Offit went on to tell Newsweek that it was “like winning the lottery” when he sold the rotavirus patent for his vaccine, all while, as an expert in the field, he was supposed to be advising about vaccines from a non-biased position. At the time, mainstream news networks, of course, funded by Big Pharma, didn’t bother to report on this criminal behavior, and the debauchery has only gotten worse since then.
Upon “retiring” the 17 now-former members of the committee, some of whom were last-minute appointees of the Biden administration, Kennedy vowed that the new members wouldn’t “work directly for the vaccine industry.” This proclamation is quite refreshing, given the unprecedented increase in vaccinations on the childhood vaccine schedule, the dire health crisis facing our children, and the enormous depth of the debauchery to keep us unwell, which was revealed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the forced mRNA experimental jabs. Indeed, whether discussing vaccines, food safety, or any government agency responsible for ensuring our health, a clean sweep is needed to “restore trust, integrity, scientific impartiality, and zealous defense of patient welfare.”
Who are the initial eight people Kennedy chose to take over duties at the ACIP, each of whom he wrote would “exercise independent judgment, refuse to serve as a rubber stamp, and foster a culture of critical inquiry,” and importantly, “unafraid to ask hard questions“? Let’s take a closer look.
-Dr. Michael 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. By all accounts, he is a rigorous scientist who has investigated the mechanisms of developmental origins of obesity and appears to put science and data first. He has served on the boards of multiple private healthcare companies, and is an Operating Partner at Havencrest.
-Dr. Martin Kulldorff is a critical thinker who challenges conventional public health perspectives. For this reason, he has been marginalized within the establishment. He co-authored the pandemic-era Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), which rightly criticized COVID-19 restrictions, along with now-NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya has described Kulldorff as a close friend. When writing the GBD, both men undoubtedly had public health as their top priority. Kulldorff is a seasoned biostatistician and epidemiologist with a strong background in public health. While previously serving on the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee and the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Subgroup of ACIP, 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. Last year, Kulldorff was dismissed from Mass General Brigham, resulting in the termination of his faculty position at Harvard Medical School. His departure followed public criticism of the university’s approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting their willingness to challenge institutional policies. Kulldorff’s critiques of COVID-19 vaccines focused on questioning their application and tend to reflect a thoughtful approach rather than outright rejection. His independent thinking and analytical rigor will likely enhance vaccine safety discussions on the panel. Questions remain about his ability to extend his scrutiny of COVID vaccines to the childhood schedule, given previous stance in support of certain vaccines, regardless of the scientific basis for it.
-Retsef Levi is a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management who has also served as faculty director of the school’s food supply chain analytics and sensing initiative. He brings extensive expertise in logistics and operations, which will intersect well with public health, particularly in ensuring food safety through collaboration with the FDA and other regulatory agencies. His work highlights the critical overlap between operational efficiency and public health priorities, including vaccine distribution and safety, demonstrating a rigorous, analytical approach to vaccine evaluation, exemplified by his request for additional methodological details in a study examining the link between COVID-19 vaccines and miscarriage. Levi’s critical yet constructive perspective underscores his commitment to scientific integrity. Moreover, his affiliation with MIT Sloan is a notable asset, signaling the potential for top-tier management schools like Sloan to drive innovation in public health—a promising direction for the field’s future.
-Dr. Joseph Hibbeln is a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and expert in the effects of nutrition on the brain. A critical but often overlooked component in the Big Pharma-driven quest to “help us be well,” Hibbeln frequently discusses the powerful link between our diets and brain health. He very recently presented research demonstrating how the balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids can influence neuronal connectivity, emotional regulation, and thinking in ways that can increase or reduce aggression and violence. He has also pioneered research for maternal health and children’s brain development. There is little to suggest he is anti-science or anti-vaccine. Instead, there is much to suggest that he understands that proper nutrition is a fundamental factor in helping to reduce the increasing rates of aggression, violence, and anti-social behavior in schools and communities. Indeed, we must not continue to overlook the effects of poor nutrition on the brain and behavior.
-Dr. Cody Meissner is a pediatric infectious disease expert at Dartmouth and perhaps the most experienced of the eight new appointees in vaccine policy. He has held advisory roles with both the CDC and the FDA and has served as a voting member of the ACIP and the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee. During his five-year term as an FDA advisor, which coincided with the pandemic, Meissner was continually asked to review and vote on the safety and effectiveness of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines. He voted against the Biden administration’s plan to recommend an extra dose of the shots to all American adults. Still, Meissner was involved in the decision by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to recommend COVID-19 jabs for all “children and adolescents 12 years of age and older who do not have contraindications using a COVID-19 vaccine authorized for use in their age.” In the past, he has supported the routine use of influenza vaccines in the prevention and treatment of influenza in children. He has also written that for each licensed vaccine, the risk of an adverse reaction after vaccination is significantly lower than the risk of complications associated with the illness it prevents.
-Vicky Pebsworth is a nurse with a PhD in public health who has previously served on FDA vaccine advisory committees. She is also the mother of a child who was vaccine-injured in 1998 at fifteen months old. During a 2020 FDA vaccines committee meeting, Pebsworth, who was representing the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), argued that coercive measures or penalties to enforce the uptake of experimental vaccines for adults or children are both unethical and illegal, bravely advocating for informed consent. She brings a unique perspective to the panel, shaped by personal experience and much-needed advocacy for informed vaccine choice.
-Dr. James Pagano is a board-certified emergency medicine physician who has served on multiple hospital committees. Kennedy has described him as a “strong advocate for evidence-based medicine,” which is much needed. In the past, he has expressed disappointment over Republicans’ failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. He has said very little about vaccines, which should make him a fair and balanced panel member.
-Dr. Robert Malone is a physician and establishment-labeled “vaccine critic” who conducted early research on mRNA vaccine technology. With the soundness of humanity in mind, he remained unwavering in his opposition to the experimental mRNA gene-modifying COVID-19 injections. On May 27, 2025, following the removal of the mRNA COVID products from the CDC schedule for pregnant women and healthy children, Malone wrote, “Like many, I would prefer that these COVID gene therapy-based technology products that cause your entire body to manufacture the genetically modified, highly toxic SARS-CoV-2 spike protein for extended periods be withdrawn from the US market. On the basis of data from all over the world, approximately three years ago, it was my impression that the risk/benefit ratio of these products did not merit continued use in any cohort, as the same cohorts at elevated risk for significant COVID disease or death were also at elevated risk of disease or death attributable to these genetic vaccines. But to date, that has remained a minority opinion.” Malone’s addition to the panel will undoubtedly drive tough debates and prompt ACIP to have absolute transparency in its recommendations.
The ACIP has scheduled meetings for June 25-27, 2025, which will be digitally open to the public and will include time for comments. The eight new members will attend the meetings.