After Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed and replaced the members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, Kennedy and his new appointees to the panel have received a retaliatory onslaught of criticism in the media’s coverage.
Kennedy’s announcement of the move argued that replacing the committee is necessary to restore public trust — a trust that has “been broken because of issues with transparency and conflicts of interest within the committee.” Kennedy pointed out that the previous members “regularly participated in deliberations and advocated products in which they had a financial stake,” and that most of ACIP’s members “have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies.” (RELATED: ‘A Clean Sweep’: RFK Jr. Fires 17 Members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices)
Kennedy said that his new ACIP members are “credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians.” However, media companies have since attempted to portray the new appointees as having their own conflicts of interest, despite meager support for their allusions.
The New York Times released an article on Friday alleging conflicts of interest with three of Kennedy’s new appointees. The article’s grievances with the new appointees are that they “assisted in legal cases that were either against vaccine makers” or “suggested widespread vaccine-caused harm.”
In particular, Vicky Pebsworth, Dr. Robert Malone, and Martin Kulldorff have served as expert witnesses in cases against vaccine manufacturers and were compensated for their time (as expert witnesses typically are). CNN and other outlets have made a big deal of the fact that Malone was compensated $350 per hour as an expert witness, even though that number is below the national average (which ranges from $356 for initial case reviews to $478 for trial testimony). Malone has also committed the grievance of having a Substack with a tier of paid subscribers.
However, these pretend controversies are not at all comparable to the real conflicts of interest that previous ACIP members had with pharmaceutical companies.
According to Kennedy, former ACIP member Dr. Paul Offit made $186 million by selling his share in a patent for the vaccine he voted to add to the childhood vaccine schedule. On the other hand, Kennedy’s new appointees are now facing criticism not for making millions from vaccine companies, but for expressing their opinions.
The New York Times authors admitted that “the legal involvement of the three new panelists does not appear to violate the rules,” but they nonetheless asserted that “critics of Mr. Kennedy said it created the appearance of a conflict.” The article alleged that members of the panel having negative opinions about any particular vaccine signal corruption. The New York Times interviewed Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, who said, “If there is someone who is clearly biased against a particular vaccine for whatever reason, there’s an issue.”
But there is clearly at least one reason why criticizing a particular vaccine should not be an issue: if, in the panelist’s opinion, a particular vaccine is likely unsafe or ineffective for the American people. Painter’s criticism assumes that the committee ought to be “little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine,” just as Kennedy alleges. But the committee’s very job involves opposing or supporting particular vaccines, using their best information and judgment. The fact that Kennedy’s new appointees have opinions about particular vaccines does not hinder their capacity to fill the role, unlike previous members who had direct financial ties to vaccine companies.
The center of the media’s ire has been focused on Malone. He played an early role in mRNA research in the 1980s and, according to the New York Times, “has claimed to be the inventor of the technology.” In more recent years, he has become critical of mRNA COVID vaccines and called them “experimental gene therapy treatments.” CNN attacked him for his position that mRNA COVID vaccines are risky and were too rapidly authorized by drug regulators. But again, the fact that Malone has opinions about mRNA vaccines, especially given his experience in the technology’s development, shouldn’t disqualify him from a position that specifically entails forming opinions about vaccines.
Kennedy fervently responded to media attacks in a post on X. He said that the New York Times and “other Pharma-funded” media outlets had contacted his office, “feigning indignation,” at his new appointments before releasing their negative pieces on Friday.
In light of recent media criticism, Kennedy’s mentioning that many of those very companies are significantly funded by pharmaceutical companies should not be ignored. According to one report, Pharma advertisers spent $3.4 billion in linear TV during the first eight months of 2024, with nearly half of the ad impressions split between ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, ION, MSNBC, and NBC.
Kennedy countered the mainstream media’s pretended outrage at his new appointments: “Where has the Times been for the last 20 years during which individual panelists regularly voted to recommend new vaccines owned by companies with which they personally had obscene financial conflicts?” In contrast to the media’s treatment of Kennedy’s appointees, the mainstream media largely ignored “years of complaints about conflicts and corruption at ACIP — from Congress, the HHS Inspector General, and others.”
After decades of corruption and lack of transparency, Kennedy and the Trump administration, not the mainstream news, are the ones restoring confidence in America’s health institutions.
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