Anti-Vaxxers Plan to “Make Europe Healthy Again”
An anti-vaxxer sitting on the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee pitched European parliament members on “MEHA.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vax, anti-science “Make America Healthy Again” movement made its official European debut this week. On Wednesday, Dr. Robert Malone, an anti-vax conspiracy theorist who Kennedy tapped as a vaccine advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, addressed a group of European parliament members in Brussels who had gathered to launch “Make Europe Healthy Again.”
According to Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vax group Kennedy founded and led for years, MEHA is meant to be “a European-wide campaign offering solutions to the crises in public health exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.” The Brussels event was organized by a new group bearing the MAHA spin-off name.
Malone, who made a name for himself peddling misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines and was named to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices over the summer after Kennedy fired all original 17 members of the panel, was there on behalf of the group Patriots for Europe. His talk focused on how European powers could implement the secretary’s anti-public health policies.
As HHS Secretary, Kennedy has sought to reshape the nation’s public health institutions to accommodate his anti-vaccine agenda. He has slashed scientific research, gutted critical agencies, and fired senior personnel, bringing in conspiracy theorists and ideologue contrarians to set the nation’s public health policies.
MEHA is not Malone’s first foray into international public health politics. He and his nonprofit, the Malone Institute, which sponsored the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan for the second Trump administration, signed the so-called “American Sovereignty Declaration” calling on the U.S. to withdraw from the World Health Organization over its efforts to craft a pandemic preparedness treaty. Malone was a featured speaker at an event in Geneva last summer protesting the WHO’s annual meeting where the pandemic treaty was to be signed. The treaty was delayed and finalized earlier this year—without the U.S., which pulled out of the international body as part of an executive order from President Donald Trump.
Malone has also spoken at various events across Europe and the UK over the years, including with lawmakers. For example, in early 2024, he spoke on a panel hosted by former far-right UK MP Andrew Bridgen, who has appeared with Children’s Health Defense and was “expelled from the Conservative Party”—as he put it—“for asking questions about the Covid 19 vaccines safety and efficacy in early 2023.” Other speakers at Bridgen’s panel were affiliated with the GOP-aligned anti-vax medical groups America’s Frontline Doctors and the Independent Medical Alliance (previously the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance).
While Malone is not officially involved with MEHA, the new organization does feature other prominent voices in the anti-vax movement.
Its founder and president, Dr. Maria Hubmer-Mogg, who organized the Brussels event, previously organized rallies in Austria against COVID mitigation efforts. She appeared alongside Malone at an anti-vax event during last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference that was hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and has served on the steering committee of the UK-based, internationally active anti-vax group World Council for Health. The Florida chapter of WCH calls the COVID vaccines “weapons of mass destruction” and has hosted the state’s anti-vax Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo on several occasions.
On the MEHA executive board and steering committee is Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a UK-based cardiologist who serves as a medical advisor to another Kennedy-allied organization, MAHA Action, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that exists to promote Kennedy’s efforts at HHS. This week, MAHA Action held a virtual media hub with 8,000 people tuning in, with speakers included Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) and Ladapo.
MEHA also features leadership from Children’s Health Defense. Its CEO Mary Holland sits on MEHA’s steering committee, while its chief scientific officer, Brian Hooker, is listed on MEHA’s international advisory board along with other anti-vax voices.
Another international advisory board member is Dr. Ryan Cole, who served as the medical director for America’s Frontline Doctors, spoke at the previously mentioned Bridgen panel and Sen. Johnson’s CPAC event, and is currently an international fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance.
Mattias Desmet, a professor of psychology at Ghent University in Belgium and the author of “Psychology of Totalitarianism” about COVID mitigation measures, is also on the MEHA international advisory board. He spoke at the 2024 annual conference of the U.S.-based, anti-public health dark money group The Brownstone Institute. As we noted in our coverage of that event, Desmet presents himself as “the world’s leading expert on the theory of mass formation as it applies to the COVID-19 pandemic,” a reference to a conspiracy theory promoted by Malone that the population had been hypnotized into accepting the mitigation measures.
Another international MEHA advisor is Canadian computational biologist Jessica Rose, who is a fellow at the Brownstone Institute and a senior fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance. Rose, who also spoke at Johnson’s CPAC event, is a longtime collaborator of prolific anti-vaxxer Dr. Peter McCullough—one of the co-authors on a widely rebuked anti-vax bibliography Kennedy cited to justify cutting mRNA vaccine research. Rose’s name also appears on the book from which the bibliography originated.
COVID misinformation and anti-vaccine rhetoric have been central to the resurgence of the far-Right in the U.S., serving as the tip of the spear for anti-government, anti-liberal radicalization. But the pandemic era anti-vax movement has been radiating out for years, becoming a global force as the launch of MEHA demonstrates.
Kennedy himself has been internationally active during the COVID pandemic. For example, held a press conference in Berlin in August 2020 to launch Children’s Health Defense Europe while in town to speak at a rally protesting COVID lockdown and mitigation measures. The rally also featured elements of the German far Right.
With Kennedy atop the HHS, the second Trump administration has not only spurred an increase in preventable disease burden in the US, but has dangerously exported anti-vax rhetoric with the help of this network. As the BMJ recently reported, public health policy leaders speaking at the World Vaccine Congress Europe in Amsterdam this week were worried about a “domino effect” of anti-vax messaging from the U.S. The MEHA launch, with a member of Kennedy’s ACIP in attendance, highlights those concerns.
“Dear European colleagues, I strongly advise you to forcefully repudiate this initiative before they end up in a position to influence policy,” virologist and Accountability Journalism Institute scientific advisor Dr. Angela Rasmussen posted in response to the MEHA launch. “Let me know if I can help.”