The health secretary recently removed all the members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has chosen eight new members for the panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines.
The new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices include Joseph R. Hibbeln, Martin Kulldorff, Retsef Levi, Robert W. Malone, Cody Meissner, James Pagano, Vicky Pebsworth, and Michael A. Ross, Kennedy announced on June 11.
“All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense. They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations,” he said.
Kennedy heads the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency. The department on Monday notified the 17 previous members of their dismissals.
“The Committee will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas,” Kennedy said in a statement at the time.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is a panel convened by the CDC to offer advice about vaccines, including childhood and adult immunization schedules.
Members “are knowledgeable in the fields of immunization practices and public health, have expertise in the use of vaccines and other immunobiologic agents in clinical practice or preventive medicine, have expertise with clinical or laboratory vaccine research, or have expertise in assessment of vaccine efficacy and safety,” according to the committee’s charter.
Kennedy told reporters in Washington this week that the new members would be credentialed scientists and doctors “who are going to do evidence-based medicine, who are going to be objective, and who are going to follow the science and make critical public health determinations for our children based upon the best science.”
Some Members Were Paid by Pharmaceutical Companies
Eight of the members whom Kennedy fired had been paid by pharmaceutical companies in the past, according to an Epoch Times review of disclosures and payment information.
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, for instance, whose term started in 2024, received $4.6 million in research funding from Pfizer and $39,547 in payments from Pfizer and Merck in recent years. Her conflict of interest disclosures said she worked on clinical trials for Pfizer’s meningococcal, COVID-19, and RSV vaccines and that she abstained from related votes.
