U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named eight new vaccine policy advisers to replace the panel that he abruptly dismissed earlier this week.
They include a scientist who researched mRNA vaccine technology and transformed into a conservative darling for his criticisms of COVID-19 vaccines, and a leading critic of pandemic-era lockdowns.
Kennedy's decision to "retire" the previous 17-member panel was widely decried by doctors' groups and public health organizations, who feared the advisers would be replaced by a group aligned with Kennedy's desire to reassess — and possibly end — longstanding vaccination recommendations.
The new appointees to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices include Dr. Robert Malone, the former mRNA researcher who emerged as a close adviser to Kennedy during the measles outbreak.
Malone, who runs a wellness institute and a popular blog, rose to popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic as he relayed conspiracy theories around the outbreak and the vaccines that followed. He has appeared on podcasts and other conservative news outlets where he's promoted unproven and alternative treatments for measles and COVID-19.
He has claimed that millions of Americans were hypnotized into taking the COVID-19 shots. He's even suggested that those vaccines cause a form of AIDS. He's downplayed deaths related to one of the largest measles outbreaks in the U.S. in years.
Other appointees include Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist who was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 letter maintaining that pandemic shutdowns were causing irreparable harm.
The other six appointees are Dr. Cody Meissner, a former ACIP member, Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, Retsef Levi, Dr. Michael A. Ross, Dr. James Pagano, and Vicky Pebsworth.
Kennedy said on X that the new appointees "are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense."
The new members align with Kennedy's history of vaccine skepticism, according to Dorit Reiss, a professor at UC Law, San Francisco who has researched vaccine policy.
"There are very few of the appointees that have real scientific expertise in vaccines, and it clearly was, to some degree, looking for bias," she said.
The new appointees have medical credentials but mostly "they haven't been involved in studies of vaccines," says Dr. Arthur Reingold, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkely School of Public Health and former member of ACIP.
He says some of the members' noted vaccine hesitancy could "slow the process" of recommending vaccines or changing vaccine schedules in the future.
But some are cheering the decision by Kennedy to shake up the panel.
Former deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services during the first Trump administration David Mansdoerfer called it a "huge win" on X.
"I think it brings a good diversity of opinion for the ACIP committee," Mansdoerfer said in an interview. "I think they did an excellent job, everything ranging from different technical backgrounds to different credentials, to even different parts of the geographic regions in the United States. I think that they did a pretty solid job on the first eight panelists."
What the new members of the panel decide when it comes to vaccine recommendations could impact which vaccines Americans get and how much they pay for them.
Generally, the CDC adopts recommendations on vaccines from ACIP, and most insurers, including Medicare, are then required to cover them. If that changes, Americans could be forced to pay out of pocket for certain shots, according to Jen Kates, a senior vice president at KFF, a health policy research organization.
"We know that if anyone faces a barrier to getting a vaccine, whether that's cost, distance, or lack of information, they're unsure, they're not going to get it," Kates said.
The panel is set to meet from June 25 to June 27. Because there are just eight members on the panel now and the committee's charter allows for up to 19, it's unclear if it currently has a quorum required to vote. Kennedy could appoint ex-officio members to reach that quorum ahead of its meeting.
