Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s top vaccine adviser has compared vaccines to hot dogs while challenging the former heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to a scientific debate.
Three months after the Health Secretary fired all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee and installed several allies and vaccine skeptics in their place, the group met on Thursday to consider recommendations related to COVID-19 and shots on the pediatric schedule, such as Hepatitis B, measles, and mumps.
But in pointed remarks ahead of their two-day meeting, Martin Kulldorff, a vaccine sceptic who now chairs the group, hit out at critics he said were falsely claiming they were made up of “unscientific and dangerous anti-vaxxers.”
Rather, he said, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was made up of scientists who “let the data speak.”
They had made numerous “pro-vaccine” decisions, such as a recent move to remove mercury from vaccines, he said—although health experts note that vaccines for children have been mercury-free since 2001.
“If you had to choose between buying similar hot dogs with or without mercury for your kids, raise your hands if you would pick the mercury hot dogs?” the Swedish statistician asked, looking around the room. “Nobody would?”
Kuldorff is a former Harvard professor of medicine who lost his job after refusing the COVID vaccine. He became a leading anti-lockdown voice during the pandemic and advocated herd immunity through infection before vaccines became available.
In his remarks on Thursday, he also called out nine former CDC directors who wrote a New York Times opinion piece accusing Kennedy of “endangering every American’s health.”
“I suggest that you should only trust scientists that are willing to debate fellow scientists with different views. I hereby invite each of the nine former CDC directors to have a live public debate with me concerning vaccines,” he said, calling each of them out by name.
“If they are unwilling to engage in an open and honest debate with the chair of a committee that they are so severely criticizing, then I advise that you should not trust them.”
This week’s meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will reshape health policy in America. They will spend two days debating and voting on proposed recommendations for vaccines covering COVID-19, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella.
Among the issues the panel is considering is whether to recommend against a combined measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine for children younger than four. They will also consider who should get COVID shots this fall and whether all babies should get vaccinated against hepatitis B at birth.
But the meeting comes as Kennedy faces a firestorm at the CDC after the agency’s boss, Susan Monarez, was forced out of her job for resisting his controversial policies.
Monarez’s departure sparked a mass exodus at the top of the CDC and calls for Kennedy to resign.
Speaking at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, she said she was “very nervous” about the newly appointed ACIP members and what their recommendations might be.
“I know that the medical community has raised concerns about whether or not, again, they have the commensurate backgrounds to be able to understand the data, the evidence, and to evaluate it appropriately, but I certainly will be watching,” she said.
Monarez is not the only one to raise concerns about the committee and its members.
314 Action executive director Erik Polyak, whose group aims to elect more scientists to public office, noted that Kulldorff co-authored the Barrington Declaration, which advocated lifting COVID restrictions on lower-risk groups to develop herd immunity through infection while promoting the view that vulnerable people could be simultaneously protected from the virus.
“Martin Kulldorff is the last person who should be in charge of America’s immunization schedule,” Polyak said.
“Today, he compared mercury-filled hot dogs to vaccines. All children’s vaccines have been mercury-free since 2001. As demonstrated by his rambling monologues today, appointing Martin Kulldorff to serve as Chair of ACIP is not just a dangerous mistake; it’s a deliberate rejection of scientific consensus and a middle finger to future generations.”
But Kulldorff gave a staunch defence of his work in his opening statement, noting he had authored dozens of articles about vaccines and had a respected career.
“I dare to think that my contributions to vaccine research is highly regarded by my colleagues,” he said.
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