Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has unveiled eight people he has chosen to serve on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine advisory panel – just two days after taking the unprecedented step of removing all 17 sitting members.
On Wednesday, Kennedy listed the names and short bios of the new advisers who will join the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, at its upcoming meeting in late June.
"All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense," Kennedy said in a post on X, "They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations."
The new members are Dr. Joseph R. Hibbeln, Martin Kulldorff, Retsef Levi, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Cody Meissner, Dr. Michael A. Ross, Dr. James Pagano and Vicky Pebsworth.
"This is a huge win for the medical freedom [m]ovement," David Mansdoerfer, former deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services in the first Trump administration, wrote in a post on X, "they did everything by the book to put together this excellent slate of appointees."
Public health advocates are wary.
"Kennedy did not pick people with strong, current expertise in vaccines," says Dorit Reiss, a professor at UC Law, San Francisco, who studies vaccine policy. "It tells me that Kennedy is setting up a committee that would be skeptical of vaccines, and possibly willing to implement an anti-vaccine agenda."
Source: NPR, 11 June 2025
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