RFK Jr. Adds Five More Unqualified, Anti-Vaxx Members To ACIP

We've all become entirely too familiar with ACIP, the CDC panel that discusses and recommends vaccination schedules across a wide swath of vaccines. The method by which ACIP became part of the general American lexicon traces all the way back to June, when RFK Jr., as head of HHS, fired every single member of the ACIP panel he inherited. All 17 of them. In their place he unilaterally appointed 8 new members, all or nearly all of whom were derided immediately by the medical community for being unqualified, anti-medicine, anti-science, and anti-vaxx. It was so bad that Bill Cassidy wanted ACIP to simply not conduct its first meeting, but that desire was ignored. And when they did meet, the discussion predictably veered into conspiracy theories.

The proper response to this would be a movement building to oust Kennedy from his post. A slightly less proper response would be for Kennedy to re-staff ACIP with people who know what the fuck they're talking about.

But this is 2025, so what actually happened was for Kennedy to instead add five more unqualified, anti-vaxx folks to ACIP instead. Apparently the echo chamber had more seating capacity than Kennedy first realized.

Health secretary and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has appointedfive more peopleto the federal advisory committee that sets national vaccination recommendations. Like the existing members, the new appointees have questionable qualifications for being on the panel, and many have expressed anti-vaccine views.

Now, it's one thing to state that these people espouse views not compatible with good medicine. It's another thing to show your work in doing so, pointing out exactly what you mean by that. Kirk Milhoan is a pediatric cardiologist who contributed to a group that pushed COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and advocated for alternative treatments. Evelyn Griffin was a doctor in Louisiana who lost her job over the COVID vaccine mandate she refused to comply with. Hillary Blackburn is relatively unnotable, a pharmacist, though she happens to be related by marriage to Senator Marsh Blackburn. Raymond Pollak is a semi-retired transplant surgeon," which means he has fuck-all specialization in vaccines.

And then there's Catherine Stein.

Catherine Stein, a professor at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University in the Department of Population & Quantitative Health. AsArs previously reported, Stein has advocated against vaccine mandates and wrote a 2021 article arguing that people should not be afraid of contracting COVID-19 because: Our Lord has given us a mission to share the gospel. If we live in fear of death, that weakens our testimony. Remember, the Lord Jesus did not fear lepers, and leprosy was (and continues to be) a highly contagious infectious disease."

Leprosy, or Hansen's disease, isnot a highly contagious disease, and about 95 percent of people are naturally immune.

Based on that 2021 article, I have to wonder why Stein thinks we should be practicing medicine at all. At the very least, I would hope we can agree that the last people we should want advising the nation on immunization practices are those advocating for any flavor of Pray the sick away." Yet, here we are.

ACIP is meeting in a few days. They'll be discussing every vaccine schedule from MMR to Hep B to COVID-19. And it's quite clear that the collective medical community is holding its breath and waiting to see what comes next.