By Carole Tanzer Miller HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, June 12, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Days after ousting all 17 members of the panel that makes U.S. vaccine recommendations, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has begun remaking it.
On Wednesday, he named eight appointees, three of whom are critics of mRNA coronavirus vaccines, The Washington Post reported.
“All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science and common sense,” Kennedy said, announcing his picks on X. “They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.”
Like Kennedy, three of the new members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) have a history of opposing vaccines:
Vicky Pebsworth, a board member of the nation’s oldest anti-vaccine group, the National Vaccine Information Center.
Martin Kulldorff, co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which in 2020 urged herd immunity through mass COVID infection. Harvard Medical School fired him when he refused to get a COVID shot.
Retsef Levi, a management professor at MIT, who has claimed mRNA vaccines “cause serious harm, including death in young people.”
“He is appointing a group of COVID contrarians,” former California state legislator Richard Pan, a pediatrician, told The Post. “They have and will undermine trust in vaccination.”
Other new Kennedy appointees include Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist; Robert Malone, a biochemist; Cody Meissner, a pediatrics professor; James Pagano, an emergency medicine doctor; and Michael Ross, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology.
Contacted by The Washington Post, Hibbeln and Kulldorf would not comment. Malone said he was honored to be chosen but would not answer other questions. Other appointees could not be reached.
Malone, a critic of mRNA vaccines, joined Kennedy last month at the White House when the Make America Healthy Report (MAHA) was unveiled.
On Monday, Kennedy ousted the entire 17-member panel, whose advice to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) helps shape vaccine policy. Kennedy said the old panel was a “rubber stamp” for vaccines and had been “plagued with persistent conflict of interest.”
His spokesman Andrew Nixon said Kennedy was “restoring public trust by reconstituting ACIP with highly-credentialed doctors, scientists, and public health experts.”
On Tuesday, Kennedy said the group would not be “anti-vaxxers.”
The panel’s June meeting will be held as scheduled on June 25-27, he said.
It is scheduled to vote on recommendations for coronavirus, influenza, HPV, meningococcal, and RSV vaccines for adults, infants and pregnant women. At least eight members must be in attendance in order to vote.
Kennedy had long criticized the former panel, accusing members of conflicts of interest, based on government reports about some having financial stakes in their decisions, The Post reported.
The panel did vote to reverse vaccine recommendations in the past, based on safety data.
That included recommendations for the Johnson & Johnson COVID shot and a rotavirus vaccine. When data showed that a nasal spray was no more effective than shots, it stopped recommending it as the preferred way to protect kids from flu.
“The whole goal is to have evidence that the vaccines work and are protecting people,” said Dr. Jamie Loehr, a New York pediatrician who served on the panel since 2021 until being ousted this week.
Kennedy’s moves have been strongly criticized by medical and professional organizations. At its annual meeting this week, the American Medical Association called for a U.S. Senate investigation.
In the past, nominees have undergone months of vetting. The ACIP charter says members should have expertise in public health or immunization practices as well as clinical experience with vaccines.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details which vaccines are recommended and when.
SOURCE: The Washington Post, June 10, 2025
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