‘Experts’ Cited By RFK Jr. to Justify mRNA Vaccine Funding Cut Have Ties to Anti-vax Supplement Company

Four authors of the non-peer reviewed, anti-vax bibliography cited by Kennedy’s HHS are involved with The Wellness Company.

A misleading document cited by the Department of Health and Human Services to justify gutting mRNA vaccine research was authored by a group of well-known anti-vaxxers and COVID-19 contrarians. Several were named in a congressional report detailing a pressure campaign by the first Trump White House to get an unproven COVID-19 treatment reapproved by the Food and Drug Administration, and some have ties to anti-vaccine groups, including a supplement company that sells COVID vaccine “detox” pills.

Earlier this month, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, announced that his department was cutting $500 million in funding to mRNA vaccine projects. While mRNA vaccine technology saved millions of lives through the COVID pandemic and earned its inventors a Nobel Prize in 2023, Kennedy has long opposed its use and peddled false claims about it. In support of the funding cut, the HHS website linked to a single piece of “evidence.”

The 181-page document, “COVID-19 mRNA ‘vaccine’ harms research collection,” which is hosted on an open website, is a bibliography of misrepresented studies—the overwhelming majority of which have nothing to do with the vaccines. It originally appeared in an independently published 2024 anti-vax book “Toxic Shot: Facing the Dangers of the COVID ‘Vaccines,’” according to its opening page.

Co-authored by Canadian immunologist Bryan Bridle, a professor at a veterinary college in Ontario and one of the authors on the bibliography, the book featured a foreword from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Naomi Wolff—both of whom have promoted conspiracy theories about the mRNA vaccines.

Bridle made headlines in 2022 when he sued his university for $3 million, alleging he faced online harassment and censorship pressure after speaking out about shortcuts in the development of mRNA vaccines. He dropped his suit last November. Today, he is an “international fellow” at the Independent Medical Alliance, a fringe medical group in Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement known for promoting the use of ivermectin as a treatment for a range of maladies including COVID, against which it is not effective.

Bridle’s co-author of the book, and a fellow co-author of the excerpt cited by HHS, is Yale physician-scientist Harvey Risch. Risch was an early proponent of MAGA’s first false COVID cure, hydroxychloroquine, pushed by Trump and his administration to re-open the economy ahead of the 2020 election. He and two other authors of the HHS-cited book excerpt, appeared in the August 2020 report from the Democratic-controlled House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, “A ‘Knife Fight’ With the FDA: The Trump White House’s Relentless Attacks On FDA’s Coronavirus Response,” which details a failed administration-backed push to reauthorize emergency use of the drug for COVID long after it had proven useless against the disease.

Another co-author of the HHS-cited document who appears in the HSSCC report is Dr. Steven Hatfill. An adjunct assistant professor at George Washington University, Hatfill joined the Trump White House in January 2020 as a full-time volunteer on the coronavirus response. He has been working in the second administration as well and was involved in efforts to smooth over public response to the mRNA research cuts.

Hatfill is featured prominently in the “knife fight” report as an organizer of the campaign against the FDA over its decision to pull the emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine for COVID. According to the report, Hatfill’s campaign involved recruiting Risch and another co-author on the anti-vax document cited by HHS: Dr. Peter McCullough.

A former cardiologist who made a name for himself spreading pandemic-related and vaccine misinformation, McCullough had his board certifications revoked last year. He has been a favorite of the political right for years, appearing on panel discussions about vaccines and the pandemic hosted by Sen. Johnson, on right-wing media like Fox News, and on podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience and former Trump strategist and white nationalist Steve Bannon’s War Room. In September, McCullough is speaking at an event hosted by the Conservative Partnership Institute, an influential right-wing dark money group in Washington, D.C., founded by businessman and former Senator Jim DeMint.

McCullough is also a member of various anti-vaccine groups, including South African pandemic denial group Pandata, also known as PANDA, and The Unity Project. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya was once an advisor to the former group. Both organizations have featured the involvement of famous anti-vaxxer Dr. Robert Malone, currently a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices thanks to Kennedy.

McCullough, who published problematic papers in support of the COVID “early treatment” drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and retracted anti-vax work, has also launched his own anti-vax initiative, The McCullough Foundation.

Both Risch and McCullough are on the medical board of The Wellness Company, a pro-Trump supplements company that sells an unproven “Ultimate Spike Detox,” which supposedly cleanses the body of COVID vaccines. The former is the organization’s “chief epidemiologist” while the latter is its “chief scientific officer” and the mastermind behind the spike “detox,” which is purportedly based on his “McCullough Base Spike Detoxification Protocol.”

Risch and McCullough are not the only Wellness Company medical board members on the document. Co-author Dr. Kelly Victory, an emergency and trauma physician who has frequented right-wing media to oppose pandemic mitigation measures and promote anti-vaccine narratives about the COVID shots, is the company’s “chief of emergency & disaster medicine.” Dr. James Thorpe, an anti-vax obstetrician, is its “chief of maternal and prenatal medicine.”

As Important Context has previously reported, Thorp, who appeared in the anti-vax conspiracy film Died Suddenly, participated in a recent hearing organized by Johnson about the supposed “corruption of science and federal health agencies.” The focus of the hearing, which also featured McCullough, was COVID vaccines. In his opening statement, the doctor falsely claimed that pregnant women had been duped about the safety of the shots.

“If [pregnant women] could be convinced the vaccine was safe and effective, it would imply it was safe and effective for everyone,” Thorp said. “From the outset of the pandemic, this vaccine was never grounded in biological science but rather in behavior science, specifically the manipulation of public perception through influence, fear, and persuasion.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists “strongly recommends COVID vaccination for all people, including anyone who is pregnant.” The professional association representing OB/GYN’s notes that pregnant people are more likely to get seriously ill from infection and the shots provide defense and may even protect the fetus.

Since Kennedy took over at HHS, the department has been gunning for mRNA vaccines—seemingly based on baseless anti-vax narratives. Back in March, the NIH cut funding for research into vaccine hesitancy. In May, the CDC removed the COVID shots from the recommended vaccine schedule for pregnant women and healthy children. That same month, the FDA announced plans to curtail access to new boosters for Americans under the age of 65 and mandated expanded safety labels for the shots based on rare, often mild side effects.