8 New Vaccine Advisory Members Announced, Including Robert Malone and Martin Kulldorff

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced eight new members for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Wednesday, just two days after announcing that the members appointed during the Biden administration would be replaced. Kennedy called

“The slate includes highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians,” Kennedy wrote on X. “All of these individuals are 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. I’m proud to announce ACIP’s new members.”

The new members are Joseph R. Hibbeln, MD; Martin Kulldorff, MD, PhD; Retsef Levi, PhD; Robert Malone, MD; Cody Meissner, MD; James Pagano, MD; Vicky Pebsworth, OP, PhD, RN; and Michael A. Ross, MD.

Dr. Meissner previously served on ACIP and has 12 listed disclosures in the newly created ACIP conflicts of interest database. The disclosures outline payments from pharma companies to Tufts University, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, MedImmune, Roche, and Wyeth. In July 2021, Meissner spoke out about risks associated with the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and called for an appropriate risk/benefit analysis.

“Right now, the rates of hospitalization for myocarditis after the second dose in young adults and adolescents is 10 times higher than the hospitalization rate for COVID infection,” Meissner told BioSpace in July 2021. “So you’d have to balance the risk versus the benefit for each age group, and this is not, in most cases, a serious disease in young children.”

Dr. Martin Kulldorff is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital. He is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration alongside Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who is now serving as NIH Director. Kulldorff strongly opposed vaccine mandates and testing asymptomatic children as a prerequisite to attending school. Last year, Kulldorff said public health officials “did enormous damage to vaccine confidence when pushing COVID vaccine mandates on those with superior infection-acquired natural immunity.” Kulldorff also said that while COVID-19 is “very dangerous” for the elderly, “for children, it’s much less dangerous than the annual flu.”

Dr. Robert Malone is a “physician-scientist and biochemist known for his early contributions to mRNA vaccine technology.” Dr. Malone has been outspoken about the current mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, including an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. In March, Malone said, “The Moderna royalties being paid to NIAID for their work developing the toxic spike-based mRNA COVID “vaccines” should be used to treat and compensate the vaccine injured.” Malone considers himself anti-vaccine on the basis that he is against all vaccine mandates.

Since 2006, Pebsworth has worked with the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit that shares information about vaccine harms with an emphasis on informed consent. Pebsworth’s son was vaccine-injured during his 15-month well-baby visit, which started her advocacy work.

Secretary Kennedy’s post states, “Dr. Levi has collaborated with public health agencies to evaluate vaccine safety, including co-authoring studies on mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and their association with cardiovascular risks. His research has contributed to discussions on vaccine manufacturing processes, safety surveillance, and public health policy. Dr. Levi has also served on advisory committees and engaged in policy discussions concerning vaccine safety and efficacy.”

In 2023, Dr. Levi called for an end to the mRNA vaccinations in a post on X. He wrote, “The evidence is mounting and indisputable that MRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people. We have to stop giving them immediately!”

When Secretary Kennedy announced he would be removing the 17 members on ACIP Monday, he described a need to root out conflicts of interest. During a 2018 ACIP meeting, ACIP Executive Director Amanda Cohn dismissed concerns about giving multiple adjuvanted vaccines at the same time. She said, “While pre-clinical trials were not done using these vaccines simultaneously, our general approach to immunizations is that they should be given – they can be given at the same time in different limbs.”

Cohn has since taken a job with Sanofi after being involved in the recommendation of Sanofi-manufactured vaccines, including the Hepatitis B vaccine. In December 2020, Cohn released a video for the CDC explaining that “ACIP is dedicated to making evidence and science-based recommendations to prevent and control vaccine-preventable diseases.”

On Tuesday, Secretary Kennedy said he would be providing examples of “the historical corruption at ACIP to help the public understand why this clean sweep was necessary.” He added, “The most outrageous example of ACIP’s malevolent malpractice has been its stubborn unwillingness to demand adequate safety trials before recommending new vaccines for our children. Today, a compliant American child receives between 69 and 92 routine vaccines (depending on brand/dictated dosage) from conception to 18 years of age. This is up from 11 shots in 1986. ACIP has recommended each of these additional jabs without requiring placebo-controlled trials for any of them. This means that no one can scientifically ascertain whether these products are averting more problems than they are causing.”

Kennedy took shots at CNN and called the media outlet a “shameless propagandist for big pharma.” He explained the difference between a placebo-controlled trial and the vaccine safety trials that typically use a previous vaccine or adjuvant for the control group. Kennedy said the FDA and CDC both define a placebo as an “inert substance,” which 245 out of 257 studies cited by CNN did not use. Kennedy said the studies using an inert substance were not safety trials relied upon to license a routine vaccination for the childhood vaccine schedule.