When the federal vaccine committee hand-picked by anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. meets again this week, it will have yet another new chairperson to lead its ongoing work of dismantling the evidence-based vaccine recommendations set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the chairperson who has been in place since June—when Kennedy fired all 17 expert advisors on the committee and replaced them with questionably qualified allies—is moving to a senior role in the department. Biostatistician Martin Kulldorff will now be the chief science officer for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), HHS said. As such, he’s stepping down from the vaccine committee, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
Kulldorff gained prominence amid the COVID-19 pandemic, criticizing public health responses to the crisis, particularly lockdowns and COVID-19 vaccines. He was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration that advocated for letting the deadly virus spread unchecked through the population, which was called unethical by health experts.
As ACIP chair, Kulldorff frequently made false and misleading statements about vaccine safety and efficacy that were in line with Kennedy’s views and statements. While Kulldorff presided over the committee, it made a series of decisions that were sharply denounced by scientific and medical groups as being based on ideology rather than evidence. Those include voting for the removal of the vaccine preservative thimerosal from some flu vaccines, despite well-established data indicating it is safe, with no evidence of harms. The committee also added restrictions to a combination measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (chickenpox) MMRV vaccine and made an unprecedented effort to prevent Americans from getting COVID-19 vaccines, though the moves were largely ineffective.