This article is published in partnership with the Accountability Journalism Institute.
On June 9, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the panel that makes recommendations about vaccines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and votes on updates to its vaccine schedule.
Now, Kennedy is replacing the advisors with medical contrarians, many of whom have expressed skepticism or spread misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccines that have saved millions of American lives and prevented millions of hospitalizations.
Since Kennedy’s confirmation, questions have swirled about the future of ACIP, which has provided independent guidance to the CDC for over 70 years. In addition to putting this anti-vaccine activist in charge of HHS, Trump has appointed his anti-vax ally Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And Makary, in turn, has stacked his agency with fellow physician contrarians and vaccine skeptics like Tracy Beth Høeg and Vinay Prasad.
Several indications earlier this spring suggested that ACIP might be facing trouble. At its April meeting, Makary’s special assistant Høeg cast doubt on the necessity of certain vaccines. Weeks later — before ACIP could convene its next meeting on Covid vaccines — Makary’ announced that the FDA would no longer recommend boosters for children or pregnant people without extensive (and arguably prohibitive) testing. But Kennedy’s move to purge all members of ACIP entirely — which was necessary to “restore public confidence in vaccine science,” as he claimed in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece — was a significant escalation in his attack on the medical mainstream.
That escalation continued last week as the secretary revealed eight of his picks to replace the former members of the panel. Typically, being accepted as an ACIP advisor is a process that requires thorough vetting and can take years, but Kennedy’s appointees were able to circumvent those hurdles by fiat.
The new members include the following medical contrarians:
Martin Kulldorff
One appointment comes as no surprise: Martin Kulldorff, who has reportedly been working with National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya on shaping the request for proposals for Kennedy’s highly anticipated and deeply controversial autism research project. A biostatistician and prolific public health contrarian, Kulldorff went from the vaunted Harvard Medical School to the medical fringes and the world of right-wing dark money during the pandemic. He has credited his refusal to get vaccinated against Covid with his being fired from Harvard.
Kulldorff and Bhattacharya have been close since they co-authored the business-aligned Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, which argued in favor of reopening the economy at the height of the pandemic and pursuing herd immunity through widespread infection before a vaccine was available. Together, they have written op-eds arguing against Covid mitigation measures and casting doubt on the efficacy of mRNA vaccines. They testified before Congress and provided pandemic responses to both the first Trump administration and Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration in Florida. They were also co-plaintiffs in a dark money-funded lawsuit against key members of the Biden administration, though the Supreme Court ruled against their allegations of online censorship for their fringe ideas.
Kulldorff and Bhattacharya have also been involved in several dark money operations working to undermine mainstream public health. In 2021, the pair helped launch the Academy of Science and Freedom, a D.C.-based offshoot of the far-right Hillsdale College in Michigan, as well as the Brownstone Institute, which has become a central hub of Covid misinformation and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Although they are no longer listed as affiliated with the nonprofit, Bhattacharya was a senior scholar at Brownstone, while Kulldorff was its senior scientific director.
In 2023, both men participated in Brownstone’s Norfolk Group, which crafted a “blueprint” for a congressional inquiry into the pandemic to coincide with the swearing in of the newly elected GOP majority. The 80-page document dedicated an entire section to “collateral lockdown harms.”
Kulldorff’s activism against “lockdowns” has extended to several international groups that also oppose Covid mitigation efforts. Those include the UK-based Collateral Global, a group that included Bhattacharya and their Great Barrington Declaration co-author Sunetra Gupta. The three authors were also advisors to the South African group Pandata (or PANDA), which now denies that the global Covid pandemic ever happened.
Working with Patrick Fagan, the former lead psychologist for Cambridge Analytica, Kulldorff also served as an advisor to an international anti-lockdown umbrella group called Covid-19 Assembly. In 2021, news broke that Fagan had been secretly coordinating anti-vax disinformation campaigns on social media.
More recently, Kulldorff and Bhattacharya helped launch a contrarian medical journal from the right-wing RealClear Foundation and its new Academy of Public Health. In its first issue, Kulldorff published an article urging changes at the NIH — some that mirror Bhattacharya’s actions, like imposing a 15% cap on overhead costs for research grant recipients.
Kulldorff’s work against public health has come with a price tag. In 2022, he raked in over $100,000 from Brownstone, and in 2024, as an expert witness in a failed lawsuit against Merck alleging that it covered up harmful side effects of its Gardasil HPV vaccine, he billed over $300,000 for that case, according to Reuters.
Cody Meissner
Cody Meissner, an expert in pediatric infectious diseases and a professor at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, has been a favorite of Kennedy’s for years and is mentioned by name in the dedication of the secretary’s conspiratorial book about Anthony Fauci, former head of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Meissner previously served as a member of ACIP from 2008–12. As the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy noted in its coverage of Kennedy’s new picks, previous conflict of interest disclosures show that Meissner received funding from pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Roche, which is at odds with the secretary’s crusade against Big Pharma.
More recently, Meissner was a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. He also chaired the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program for HHS and, as PBS noted in its coverage, has helped author policy statements and vaccination schedules for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
During the pandemic, however, Meissner turned toward contrarianism.
In August 2020, he joined Kulldorff and Bhattacharya — along with Joseph Ladapo, an anti-vax doctor who is now Florida’s surgeon general — in an Oval Office meeting with President Trump to discuss the pandemic response and push for reopening schools and businesses. Two months later, he signed on to the Great Barrington Declaration.
Meissner has a mixed record on vaccines. He has touted their usefulness in saving lives and previously even praised the Covid shots. However, Meissner emerged as a voice of dissent on the FDA committee when it came to approving the mRNA vaccines for younger age groups. In December 2020, he abstained from the vote to grant the Pfizer vaccine emergency use authorization for teenagers as young as 16, telling NPR that the risk-benefit analysis was unclear for that age group. In the summer of 2021, Meissner spoke out against clearing Covid vaccines for children under age 12, raising the same concerns. He was also an opponent of vaccine mandates.
But lockdowns and vaccines for youngsters weren’t the only mitigation measures Meissner opposed. That August, he co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed with Makary arguing against mask mandates for children, calling them “abusive.” The article asserts that masking is perhaps not effective at reducing the spread of the virus (even though it is) and argues that it could cause children “harm” — like fogging their glasses or exacerbating acne.
More recently, Meissner spoke out in support of Kennedy curtailing vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant people, despite the scientific literature — including a recent publication from Makary — in favor of continuing to recommend boosters for these populations.
Robert Malone
Perhaps the most galling addition to the CDC’s vaccine advisory group is Robert Malone, a physician and biochemist whose claim to fame is overstating his role in the development of mRNA technology and spreading misinformation about Covid vaccines. For example, Malone has spread misinformation about the shots causing 17 million deaths worldwide.
Malone suddenly surfaced in the national consciousness through an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast in December 2021. During the interview, he compared pandemic control measures during the Biden administration to life under Nazi rule in Germany. His most memorable moment, however, was when he claimed that Americans were suffering “mass formation psychosis,” meaning that people had been “basically hypnotized” into trusting the mainstream Covid “narrative,” including that the mRNA vaccines would help save lives. An estimated 232,000 preventable deaths occurred among unvaccinated people during Covid’s delta and initial omicron waves when Malone ramped up his media and online activity.
Malone is involved with several anti-vaccine organizations including The Unity Project, which sponsored the January 2022 Defeat the Mandates rally where he and Kennedy both addressed the crowd with conspiratorial, inflammatory rhetoric. His own Malone Institute, which purports to be aimed at conducting research and restoring “integrity to the biological sciences and medicine,” was a sponsor of Project 2025, the far-right blueprint developed by the Heritage Foundation to jump-start Trump’s second term. Malone has been a prominent figure in a right-wing push to kill the World Health Organization’s pandemic preparedness treaty, signing on to a so-called sovereignty declaration along with The Unity Project and his own institute.
More recently, Malone has been named a senior advisor to the Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), the ivermectin-pushing, anti-vaccine dark money group previously known as the Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, which has strong ties to both Kennedy and Brownstone.
Malone is a longtime ally of Kennedy’s and has already been running interference for him with the recent measles outbreaks cropping up across the country, which many have pinned on the secretary for his fear-mongering about the MMR vaccine.
“There are statements that RFK was somehow responsible for the outbreak,” Malone has said. “This is political propaganda.”
After the second death of an unvaccinated child in Texas, Malone suggested that the disease was not really to blame. Kennedy has been equally defensive of the doctor and even named him in the dedication of his aforementioned Fauci book.
Like Kulldorff, Malone has also received payment for serving as an expert witness in lawsuits against Merck over its vaccines.
Vicky Pebsworth
Less well known than Malone, Vicky Pebsworth, a registered nurse with a PhD, is a regional director of the National Association of Catholic Nurses. Like Meissner, she is a previous member of the FDA’s vaccines panel.
But Pebsworth has also been affiliated with the National Vaccine Information Center, a storied anti-vax group that fights for vaccine exemptions and promotes alternatives to vaccines. In his announcement of his ACIP replacement picks, Kennedy did not mention that she has served as a board member and volunteer director of the Center. In the past, the group has received significant funding from chiropractor Joseph Mercola, who hawks supplements and is known for spreading vaccine misinformation.
Pebsworth has also claimed that her child was injured by vaccines and is named in Kennedy’s Fauci book as a “historic healer.”
Mary Holland, CEO of the Children’s Health Defense anti-vax group Kennedy founded, released a statement saying that she is “especially” pleased to see Pebsworth appointed as a returning member of ACIP.
Retsef Levi
Another anti-vaxxer Kennedy has added to ACIP is Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a former intelligence officer in the Israeli Defense Forces. Levi has come under fire at his school for vilifying pro-Palestine student activists.
The professor has limited experience with vaccines, something he admitted on a podcast with Høeg, who recently worked at the MIT business school. As far as Kennedy is concerned, his relevant expertise appears to be the years he has spent casting doubt on them.
Levi’s pinned post on X (from January 2023) is a clip of him calling to immediately suspend the use of mRNA vaccines. The video is an embedded clip from Kennedy and Bhattacharya ally Aseem Malhotra, a controversial anti-vax doctor from the UK who has been working as a chief medical advisor for MAHA Action.
“The evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people,” Levi’s caption reads. “We have to stop giving them immediately!”
He has suggested that the vaccines may be linked to autism and called it “incomprehensible” that they were “still recommended in pregnancy.”
But Covid vaccines aren’t the only approved inoculations Levi opposes for pregnant people. In a post tagging Bhattacharya, Makary, and anti-vax, right-wing businessman Bill Ackman, he wrote that the CDC approval of “yet another Hepatitis B vaccine for use in pregnancy is outrages [sic] & underscores much of what is broken!”
“Considering that most pregnant women in the US have close to ZERO risk to contract Hep B during pregnancy, this is gross negligence!” he wrote. “This is NOT Science or something we should trust!”
Bhattacharya has also suggested that the Hep B vaccine should perhaps not be included in the childhood immunization schedule.
Other ACIP Additions
Other doctors Kennedy has picked as ACIP replacements include James Pagano, an emergency medicine doctor; Michael A. Ross, a former professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Virginia Commonwealth University; and James Hibbeln, a psychiatrist and nutrition scientist. Their past statements and positions on vaccines are not readily available.
An X account that appears to belong to Pagano indicates that he is fiercely right-wing, posting thumbs up and double thumbs up to multiple tweets fromTrump. In 2015, he wrote, “What’s wrong with being an islamophobe? There’s so much there not to like.” He has also spoken out against the Affordable Care Act, declaring that “no good comes from the ACA.”
Meanwhile, Ross has virtually no online presence nor experience with vaccines. Kennedy misrepresented his employment in announcing his selection for ACIP, erroneously saying that he was still a professor at George Washington University even though he has not taught there for eight years. His only publication in a scientific journal is an open letter pushing back against a study that showed ivermectin was not effective against Covid (Kennedy promoted the anti-parasitic as a cure). Ross’ career has primarily been limited to the world of business, where he has advised a supplements company and worked for a pharmaceutical company. He currently sits on the board of an AI-focused biotech company called Manta Pharma and works at a private equity firm called Havencrest Capital Management.
Hibbeln similarly has no apparent experience with vaccines. His focus has been on the impact of fatty acids — particularly fish oils — on mental health. As a member of the Scientific Nutrition Advisory Council of the Seafood Nutrition Partnership, he is listed on the organization’s website as “renowned Omega-3 expert and practicing psychiatrist with Barton Health” and a former “Acting Chief, Nutritional Neurosciences in the Laboratory of Membrane Biophysics & Biochemistry, NIH.” Hibbeln has spoken about the supposed impacts of dietary fats on the mental health of young people.
“We have long been interested in whether or not dietary fats can change very fundamental and basic problematic behaviors with kids, their aggression, and their violence,” he said. “And we found a really remarkable, robust effect.”
“War on Science”
Mainstream public health experts have reacted with alarm to Kennedy’s overhaul of the vaccine panel. The American Medical Association (AMA), which remained silent during Kennedy’s nomination process, released a statement warning that the move “undermines… trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives.” The group noted that “with an ongoing measles outbreak and routine child vaccination rates declining, this move will further fuel the spread of vaccine-preventable illnesses.”
This week, the recently dismissed members of ACIP released their own public statement in JAMA Network, declaring that the “abrupt dismissal of the entire membership of the ACIP, along with its executive secretary…, the appointment of 8 new ACIP members just 2 days later, and the recent reduction of CDC staff dedicated to immunizations have left the US vaccine program critically weakened.”
“These actions have stripped the program of the institutional knowledge and continuity that have been essential to its success over decades,” the statement points out. “Notably, the ACIP charter specifies that committee members serve overlapping terms to ensure continuity and avoid precisely the disruption that will now ensue. The termination of all members and its leadership in a single action undermines the committee’s capacity to operate effectively and efficiently, aside from raising questions about competence.”
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who sits on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, called for an investigation into the “unprecedented decision that will make it harder for Americans to access safe and effective vaccines.” In a statement released on June 16, Sanders called Kennedy’s “reckless decision to fire these nonpartisan scientific experts and replace them with ideologues… deeply disappointing” but “not surprising,” noting that, “For decades, Secretary Kennedy has spread lies and dangerous conspiracy theories about safe and effective vaccines that have saved millions of lives.”
“Unfortunately, since he has been confirmed I am very concerned that Secretary Kennedy is doubling down on his war on science and disinformation campaign that will lead to preventable illness and death,” Sanders warned.
On the MAHA fringes, however, Kennedy’s vaccine coup has been heralded as a major step forward. The Kennedy-allied IMA, for example, put out a press release last week applauding the secretary’s “decisive action” and calling for “a complete overhaul” of the vaccine board appointment process. The following day, the group tweeted its delight at the selection of Malone, in particular.
“Congrats IMA Senior Advisor Dr. Robert Malone,” the graphic reads.
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