Anti-Vaccine Groups Given Unprecedented Access to CDC Vaccine Panel
Robert Kennedy Jr. has added new liaisons to ACIP, tapping old allies from the anti-vaccine movement.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is giving several prominent right-wing and anti-vaccine medical groups a formal role in meetings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee.
Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has sought to completely reshape the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) since taking over at HHS. Last year, he replaced all original 17 members with contrarians and prominent anti-vaccine voices. Since then, the committee has made controversial moves like voting to recommend only flu vaccines without the organomercury compound thimerosal, which some anti-vaxxers believe is linked to autism despite research indicating otherwise.
In his latest move to control ACIP, Kennedy has reshaped the body’s charter. The changes follow a court order in a suit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics temporarily blocking the committee’s work. The new charter broadens ACIP’s focus to identifying gaps in vaccine safety research and studying the cumulative effects of the childhood vaccine schedule and ingredients like aluminum.
It also adds four additional liaison organizations.
Liaisons are non-voting members of the committee who can comment and ask questions during presentations and assist the body with feedback. The groups Kennedy has added—Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the Independent Medical Alliance, Physicians for Informed Consent, and the Medical Academy of Pediatrics and Special Needs—have each promoted anti-vaccine narratives in line with his long-held beliefs.
Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert at UC Law San Francisco who helped the public health advocacy group Defend Public Health draft amicus briefs in the AAP lawsuit, told Important Context that anti-vax groups have never been part of ACIP.
“Traditionally, liaisons included expert groups and other professional actors,” Reiss said. “Even in the days when the National Vaccine Information Center had members on federal committees, it was not an ACIP liaison. This is new.”
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
AAPS is a right-wing political advocacy group founded in 1943 to fight government efforts to establish universal healthcare in America. The Republican-aligned group’s former members include Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and anti-vax former cardiologist Peter McCullough. McCullough, who lost his board certifications, is now part of a supplements company that sells his COVID vaccine detox. Kennedy’s HHS cited his work to justify cuts to mRNA vaccine research.
AAPS has long been on the medical fringes, promoting misinformation like HIV-AIDS denial and the long-discredited claim that vaccines cause autism, as well as staking out ideological positions against contraception and abortion rights. The group previously helped tobacco giant Philip Morris fight indoor smoking bans, and later came to the aid of President Donald Trump in downplaying the severity of the COVID pandemic.
In August 2020, as Trump and his allies were pushing back on the Food and Drug Administration over its revocation of the emergency use authorization for the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine against COVID, the group sued the agency. The EUA had been withdrawn due to evidence showing the drug was ineffective against COVID, and potentially harmful, but the president had billed it as a quick fix to the pandemic ahead of his 2020 reelection bid.
AAPS has targeted the lifesaving mRNA COVID vaccines in particular, which extensive research has shown to be safe and to have saved millions of lives. The group, however, has suggested that they cause harm like kidney damage and even death.
AAPS has “enthusiastically supported” Kennedy and his anti-vax Make America Healthy Again movement, and has enjoyed ready access to leading officials. At a meeting in September, it hosted James O’Neill, then the HHS Deputy Director and Acting CDC Director, who authorized the recent changes to the childhood immunization schedule.
Independent Medical Alliance
IMA has become a key player in the MAHA movement, working closely with Kennedy and his former anti-vax group Children’s Health Defense (CHD). It was originally founded in early 2020 as the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) by former critical care physicians Paul Marik and Pierre Kory, who earned reputations for spreading COVID misinformation and, like McCullough, had their board certifications revoked.
The group became popular in pro-Trump circles—in part due to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) boosting Kory and Marik. It subsequently rebranded ahead of a campaign pushing Kennedy’s confirmation as HHS Secretary. IMA has since served as a feeder to the new administration with three of the secretary’s appointed ACIP members having been associated with the group, including its chair Kirk Milhoan.
The group is best known for championing the antiparasitic drug ivermectin as a COVID treatment, which large-scale studies have shown to be ineffective against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. IMA has also promoted the drug for a number of other ailments, including cancer—a connection Kennedy’s National Institutes of Health is now pursuing.
At the same time, IMA has spent years promoting doubt about mRNA vaccines and fighting mandates. It was one of the sponsors of the 2022 “Defeat the Mandates” rally at which Kennedy spoke, along with CHD.
IMA, which has its own international fellowship program, has affiliated with controversial medical figures domestically and abroad, including Brazilian endocrinologist Flávio Cadegiani, who became an advisor to the group in 2021.
That year, he was among 68 individuals recommended for indictment for crimes against humanity by a Brazilian parliamentary commission. A study he conducted evaluating the androgen receptor antagonist proxalutamide as a treatment for COVID reported roughly 200 deaths among hospitalized participants, particularly in control groups, and drew ethical scrutiny.
Cadegiani has denied any wrongdoing.
The following year, he and Kory co-authored two papers based on a 2020 city-wide ivermectin experiment in Brazil. Both were criticized for methodological problems and one received a correction after it was reported that Cadegiani and another author received funding from an ivermectin manufacturer.
In 2024, IMA gave Cadegiani a research excellence award.
Physicians for Informed Consent
Formed in 2015, Physicians for Informed Consent is another anti-vaccine advocacy group that lists AAPS as a coalition partner along with Children’s Health Defense.
PIC’s activities over the years have included pushing back on COVID school mask mandates, HPV vaccine mandates in California, and sponsoring the 2022 Defeat the Mandates rally. The group was also behind a lawsuit against the State of California over its now-repealed anti-misinformation law, AB2098. The law empowered the state medical board to punish doctors who spread COVID and vaccine misinformation to their patients. Children’s Health Defense and IMA’s Kory were plaintiffs in the suit.
PIC’s website features a section called “Comparing 10 Disease Risks to Vaccine Risks,” which contains a graphic purporting to show that the risks of vaccination against diseases like hepatitis B, measles, tetanus, pertussis, and even polio potentially outweigh the risks those diseases pose to children.
It also includes a section on aluminum in vaccines, in which it casts doubt on long-established vaccines against diseases like hepatitis B.
Medical Academy of Pediatrics and Special Needs
The final new liaison is MAPSN, which boasts a number of corporate partners, including CHD, and promotes debunked anti-vaccine narratives.
On its website, under the tab “research,” the group features a report on the supposed risks of autism, including from vaccines. The report was published by the McCullough Foundation, founded by McCullough.
McCullough is listed as an author on the report along with disgraced researcher and Kennedy ally Andrew Wakefield, whose fraudulent 1998 paper spawned the vaccine-autism panic.
The New Establishment
Since the pandemic and ensuing government response brought the U.S. economy to a halt, right-wing groups have been working to supplant the traditional public health establishment—like AAP. Some have even launched their own medical journals to counter established publications where anti-vax and contrarian researchers have faced retractions and hurdles to publication.
Important Context has previously reported that IMA, as well as the RealClear Foundation and the Brownstone Institute, started their own medical journals after Kennedy took office. AAPS has run its own publication for years, presenting its advocacy materials as reports and research.
With the rise of Kennedy’s HHS, the groups now have federal muscle behind them and are actively influencing public health policy in the U.S.
Reiss told Important Context in all likelihood, “ACIP is, functionally, going to be marginalized until real changes can be made,” so it does not matter who the liaisons end up being.
“This change contributes to undermining the legitimacy of ACIP, which is why most states—across the political spectrum—have already taken steps to detach from it, and this will likely continue,” she said.