RFK Jr. appoints new ACIP members

On Monday, Kennedy fired all 17 members of ACIP, arguing in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that ACIP has been "plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine," adding that ACIP has "never recommended against a vaccine — even those later withdrawn for safety reasons" and has "failed to scrutinize vaccine products given to babies and pregnant women."

While Kennedy argued the financial conflicts of interest were cause for the firings, a White House official and person close to Kennedy said on Tuesday to the New York Times that Kennedy was also concerned that all the members had been appointed by former President Joe Biden and that some had donated to Democrats.

In a post on X, Kennedy announced the eight doctors and researchers who would be part of ACIP, saying his picks included "highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America's most accomplished physicians." All of Kennedy's picks are either medical doctors or doctorates.

The new ACIP members include:

• Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist and nutritional scientist with expertise in the effects of nutrition on the brain. Hibbeln has published research suggesting vegetarian diets could be linked to depression and has argued that a variety of psychiatric disorders could be caused by deficiencies in omega-3 fatty acids. According to STAT, it doesn't appear he's done much research on vaccines.
• Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse with a Ph.D. in public health who previously served on FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC). Pebsworth is currently on the board of the National Vaccine Information Center, a nonprofit previously known as Dissatisfied Patients Together, which questions the safety of vaccines.
• Michael Ross, a licensed physician and former professor with a background in obstetrics and gynecology. Ross has served on the boards of various companies and healthcare-related groups, including a cancer screening test startup, a corrective contact lens maker, and a preclinical oncology company. Ross recently became CMO of Manta Pharma, a startup in Maryland working to develop an AI-based drug delivery system for treating autoimmune disease, diabetes, addiction, and HIV/AIDS.
• James Pagano, an ED physician with over 40 years of experience in the medical field. Kennedy said Pagano is a "strong advocate for evidence-based medicine" and has served on multiple hospital committees.
• Robert Malone, a physician and researcher who has claimed to be one of the inventors of mRNA and has also denounced the technology. He gained fame among the anti-vaccine world and critics of the COVID-19 pandemic response through various appearances on podcasts, including an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast in late 2021 where he questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.
• Martin Kulldorff¸ a Swedish biostatistician and previous member of ACIP's vaccine safety subgroup and FDA's Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee. Kulldorff helped develop statistical tools for CDC's Vaccine Safety Datalink project, which tracks adverse vaccine effects. He also cowrote the Great Barrington Declaration, alongside NIH Director Jay Bhattachrya, in 2020, in which he and his coauthors advocated for lifting lockdowns to build herd immunity to COVID-19. Kulldorff became a leader at the Brownstone Institute in 2021, a think tank based on opposing COVID-19 restrictions that has also published articles disputing the safety of COVID-19 shots and other vaccines.
• Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine and a previous member of ACIP from 2008 to 2012, as well as a previous member of VRBPAC. Meissner recently supported Kennedy's decision to stop recommending COVID-19 shots for health children and healthy pregnant women and in 2021, wrote an essay alongside FDA Commissioner Marty Makary arguing against masking children to limit the spread of COVID-19. Meissner has also previously argued against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and expressed concerns about people at low risk of serious COVID-19 getting vaccinated during the pandemic. However, Meissner has also said vaccines have saved millions of lives across diseases and called COVID-19 vaccines "extraordinary," saying the shots are safe and effective for adults.
• Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Levi has worked on projects around healthcare system management but doesn't appear to have much of a publishing record on topics related to vaccines or infectious diseases, according to STAT. However, Levi started coauthoring papers and letters to the editor during the COVID-19 pandemic raising safety concerns about COVID-19 vaccines, and in 2023 said that the vaccines should be halted, alleging they were causing deaths.

Kennedy said the new members will attend ACIP's next meeting, which is scheduled for June 25, and that they will demand "definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations." ACIP will also "review safety and efficacy data for the current schedule as well," Kennedy added.

Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who previously served as a member of ACIP, said he was mainly concerned about the appointments of Pebsworth and Malone who, he said, "is a clear anti-vaccine activist."

As for the rest of the committee, Offit said "they seem reasonable — what they lack, it seems to me, is the kind of expertise or experience in vaccines that was on that committee. I think we lost experience, expertise, and institutional memory, and so I think we've taken a giant step backward in terms of the kind of advice that we're going to be getting. And I wonder whether the medical and scientific community will look at this committee now and not trust their advice."

Abram Wagner, from the University of Michigan's school of public health who investigates vaccination programs, said he's not happy with the appointments.

"The previous ACIP was made up of technical experts who have spent their lives studying vaccines," he said, adding that most of the appointees "don't have the technical capacity that we would expect out of the people who would have to make really complicated decisions involving interpreting complicated scientific data."

However, Offit and other experts specifically praised Meissner for his depth of vaccine knowledge. Richard Hughes, who teaches vaccine law at George Washington University Law School, called Meissner a "legitimate vaccinologist."

Hughes said three of the new members are "legitimate physicians" who have "no discernible expertise" in immunology or vaccines. But he characterized the remaining four as "Covid-19 deniers, skeptics and outright anti-vaccine individuals."