The Anti-Vaccine Takeover of ACIP
RFK Jr has gotten his 25-year fantasy realized: he hand-selected science deniers who now will dictate US vaccine policy
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A lot has been happening lately — and if you’re feeling overwhelmed and living with a sense of existential dread, that’s expected. And you’re not alone.
While I may not have been writing many newsletters or hanging out on social media recently, I’ve been busy doing what I have always done: science.
I’ve been busy with high priority work projects, including the creation of a method to validate processes for biologics medicine quality control—ironic given our FDA Commissioner has zero expertise on this.
I’ve also been doing lots of science communication in the real world.
Last week I presented at the International Conference for Lyme Borreliosis and and Other Tick-Borne Diseases (ICLB)
Yesterday I spoke at the CIHR Pan-Canadian Network for HIV and STBBI Clinical Trials Research (CTN+)
Tonight I’m joining a panel discussion at Hood College following a screening of “Shot in the Arm,”
Friday morning I’ll be joining WGN Morning News for another health disinformation fact-check segment
and then I’m flying to Chicago
To speak at the North American Congress of Clinical Toxicology on Saturday.
Hopefully, when I get a minute to breathe, I will try to write up some takeaways from my talks at these conferences, because I think there are some important messages that all of us in science and healthcare can use in our day-to-day lives.
But given that today starts the next Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting, a reminder: in June, RFK Jr. kicked out all 17 existing ACIP members. People with legitimate qualifications and decades of expertise in fields relevant to vaccine science, infectious disease, safety, and health administration.
Read more detail about this here:
Since that article I wrote, RFK Jr staffed ACIP with a cadre of his allies: conspiracy theorists, science deniers, and people with long histories of undermining evidence in favor of personal opinions. In June, he replaced the former panel of 17 with 8 of his allies, including:
Robert Malone: originally claims to have “invented mRNA vaccines,” which is false. He had a small contribution to early research in the lipid-based delivery methods decades ago. When he didn’t get accolades for this, he changed his tactic to spreading conspiracy theories and lies about vaccines, including:
COVID-19 vaccines cause ‘vaccine-induced AIDS’
People were hypnotized by mass formation psychosis
Heavy menstrual bleeding was a silent miscarriage caused by COVID vaccines
1 in 2000 kids will get brain damage from COVID vaccines
For every 3 lives saved, 2 people will be killed by vaccines
Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine treat COVID
And that 17 million people were killed by COVID vaccines.
Vicky Pebsworth: A board member of National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), an anti-vaccine activist group originally founded under the name “Dissatisfied Parents Together".” NVIC and it’s employees have fueled much of the anti-vaccine rhetoric that has existed since the 1990s, including the lie that vaccines cause autism, that vaccines overwhelm kids’ immune systems, that they’re filled with ‘toxic ingredients,’ and promoting alternatives to vaccines for deadly and debilitating diseases. NVIC was found to be one of the biggest propagators of anti-vaccine disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with RFK Jr and his organization Children’s Health Defense. Of course RFK Jr would pick her!
Martin Kulldorf: He has a PhD in Operations Research, a type of applied math that utilizes statistics and mathematical modeling to improve operations and decision-making. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which promoted the idea of letting COVID-19 rip through our population, without consideration of individual or public health impacts. He also discouraged COVID-19 testing, especially for children for school screening, because he didn’t “feel” that there was a risk to kids—or I guess to teachers, school administrators, or other staff. Good guy. He’s also personally involved in lawsuits targeting the HPV vaccine, a la RFK Jr, where he stands to profit by claiming false harms from a vaccine that prevents cervical, penile, throat, anal, vaginal, and vulvar cancers.
Retsef Levi: He has a PhD in Operations Management (not even Operations Research like Kuldorff), which is a field that focuses on planning, organizing, and implementing business practices to improve efficieny and profit. So, yeah. He has zero scientific or health qualifications to speak on vaccines in ANY capacity, yet he’s now part of ACIP. Throughout the pandemic, he has claimed that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people.
Watch this clip from my recent appearance on WIRED’s Tech Support for a quick overview of these folks:
I have a lot more to say on why it is a very bad thing to have science deniers leading what should be an impartial outside organization that provides recommendations to vaccines for an entire nation, as well as the abject lies they will circulate about Hepatitis B, MMRV, and COVID-19 vaccines (although I’ve written about them already before, see below for some articles).
Unfortunately, most of that is going to have to wait until my paying job and day-to-day real-life demands quiet down.
But if you want to hear some of my real-time thoughts on the anti-science and anti-vaccine movement
you should join the free (and online) screening of Shot in the Arm and the Panel discussion tonight, starting at 6 pm.
Dr.
will also be on the panel (you should know him if you don’t!) as will several other science and health experts.Some of you had replied that you never received the Zoom link, so I also wanted to provide it here. Access the entire evening event here:
https://zoom.us/j/95147843893?pwd=VNVgpaRdVEXZDOei8lJdQYbFbVIZbp.1
Meeting ID: 951 4784 3893 | Passcode: 717140
Join Me: Watch Shot in the Arm and Talk Vaccine and Public Health History
When I was an undergrad, I took a class that combined several of my passions [okay, obsessions] — infectious diseases, public health, and history. If you trace human history, you quickly see a pattern: disease outbreaks don’t just cause illness, they upend societies. Epidemics disrupt daily life, force cultural shifts, and (ideally) push us toward deeper knowledge and understanding.
Unfortunately, too many of us don’t know, or don’t care, about these seismic events that shaped science, culture, and public health.
In this very moment, we are seeing RFK Jr and his anti-science allies turn our health and science safeguards into ideological tools. He, and those who enable him, are threats to global health.
This isn’t just about vaccines—it’s about combating disinformation before it becomes bad policy that erodes science and harms our health. And we all need to take action to help fight against it.
Now, more than ever, we all must join in the fight for science.
Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.
More science education, less disinformation.
- Andrea
ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by sharing with your friends and family:
Reputable scientists must wake up each morning with a sick feeling in the pit of their stomach. This is absolutely beyond belief! I am profoundly appreciative of the scientists I follow most closely (you, Katelyn Jetelina, Michael Osterholm and Peter Hotez) for your willingness to persevere. In a recent interview, Peter Hotez was talking about the multitude of death threats he gets. I assume you all get harassed and threatened, which is horrifying. I know history (if we live through this) will remember you well and recognize Kennedy and his cohorts as a scourge. But, in the short run, this must be terribly difficult. I appreciate your courage and vision.
I appreciate all you’re doing. Thank you