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    Pregnant doctor denied Covid-19 vaccine sues Trump administration

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    A pregnant physician who was denied a Covid-19 vaccine is suing the Trump administration alongside a group of leading doctors associations, charging that the administration sought to “desensitize the public to anti-vaccine and anti-science rhetoric”, according to their attorney.The lawsuit specifically takes aim at health secretary Robert F Kennedy’s unilateral decision to recommend against Covid-19 vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children.Kennedy’s announcement circumvented expert scientific review panels and flouted studies showing pregnant women are at heightened risk from the virus, and made it more difficult for some to get the vaccine.“This administration is an existential threat to vaccination in America, and those in charge are only just getting started,” said Richard H Hughes IV, partner at Epstein Becker Green and lead counsel for the plaintiffs in a statement.The American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians and American Public Health Association are among a list of leading physicians associations named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.“If left unchecked, secretary Kennedy will accomplish his goal of ridding the United States of vaccines, which would unleash a wave of preventable harm on our nation’s children,” said Hughes. “The professional associations for pediatricians, internal medicine physicians, infectious disease physicians, high-risk pregnancy physicians, and public health professionals will not stand idly by as our system of prevention is dismantled. This ends now.”In late May, Kennedy announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would no longer recommend Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children or pregnant women. The announcement, made on social media, contradicted a raft of evidence showing pregnant women and infants are at especially high-risk from the disease, including from the administration’s own scientific leaders.In June, Kennedy went further by firing all 17 sitting members of a key vaccine advisory panel to the CDC. The advisory panel is a key link in the vaccine distribution pipeline, helping to develop recommendations insurers use when determining which vaccines to cover.That panel met for the first time in late June. Members announced they would review both the childhood vaccine schedule and any vaccines that had not been formally reviewed in seven years. They also recommended against a long-vilified vaccine preservative, in spite of a lack of evidence of harm.The news comes amid the largest annual measles case count in 33 years, and amid reports of more parents seeking early vaccination for their children, fearing vaccines will go into shortage or no longer be covered by insurance. More

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      US posts highest annual measles case tally in 33 years amid Texas outbreak

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      The annual tally of measles cases in the US is the highest in 33 years, as an ongoing outbreak in west Texas continues to drive cases.The latest figures mean Americans will have to look back to 1992 to find a worse year with the vaccine preventable disease. The official tally very likely undercounts the scope of the outbreak, experts told the Guardian.“When you talk to people on the ground, you get the sense that this outbreak has been severely underestimated,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Confirmed cases appear to be the “tip of a much bigger iceberg”, he said.Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. However, as the pandemic disrupted routine childhood visits to the doctors and anti-vaccine organizations saw their coffers swell during the pandemic, measles vaccination rates have fallen below a critical threshold to prevent outbreaks in some communities.As of 4 July, Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Outbreak Response Innovation counted 1,277 measles cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports 1,267 cases, but has not updated its data since 2 July.“The number of new cases has slowed down, but I don’t think there’s any reason to suggest this will be our last,” said Dr Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert and dean for the national school of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.He later added: “It’s a very dark epidemic that never had to happen.”The latest national tally will eclipse 2019, when unvaccinated members of New York City’s isolated orthodox Jewish community drove a large outbreak, and the nation ended the year with 1,274 confirmed measles cases.Americans will need to look back to 1992 to find a higher annual measles tally. In 1992, the CDC confirmed 2,126 cases, with the largest outbreaks in Kentucky and Texas. Texas has confirmed 753 cases in 2025, according to the state health department, opening up the possibility that Texas could exceed the 1992 annual total as well.The enormous outbreak comes as Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who once ran an influential anti-vaccine group, has injected upheaval into US vaccine policy and spread misinformation about treatments for the disease.Measles is a viral disease characterized by a top-down rash, high fever, runny nose and red, watery eyes. The virus is one of the most infectious diseases known to medicine. There is no cure for measles. The best way to prevent measles is by getting vaccinated with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR), which is 97% effective with two doses.Although most people recover, as many as one in five infected children require hospitalization; one in 20 get pneumonia and one in 1,000 can develop encephalitis, which can lead to lifelong disability, according to the CDC. The disease can also weaken the host’s immune system and lead to more future infections. In rare cases, measles can cause an incurable degenerative brain disorder. The US has already seen three deaths from measles this year, both in otherwise healthy children.Before a measles vaccine was licensed in 1963, an estimated 3-4 million Americans were sickened each year, 48,000 were hospitalized and an estimated 400-500 died, according to the CDC. From 1994 to 2023 in the US alone, the CDC estimates the measles vaccine saved 85,000 lives and prevented 104m illnesses.Although the vaccine has been wildly successful, it has also been the target of sustained misinformation by people who have a financial stake in reduced vaccine uptake.In 1998, a British doctor hypothesized a link between the MMR and increasing autism rates. The doctor, Andrew Wakefield, was later found to have committed fraud, failed to report conflicts of interest and lost his license. The article was retracted.Reams of science has since examined and re-examined the evidence, and found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Still, the debunked connection has found an afterlife as a talking point for anti-vaccine groups who have attracted a vocal minority of parents. The overwhelming majority of Americans still vaccinate children against measles.Now, alongside longtime anti-vaccine talking points about autism and “medical freedom”, Hotez said a new threat was the, “very pernicious health and wellness and influencer movement that’s got a big profit motive”.Outbreaks appear to be “occurring in the same [parts] of the US that had some of the lowest Covid vaccination rates”, said Hotez, introducing the possibility that anti-vaccine sentiment is “spilling over to childhood immunizations”.In June, Kennedy unilaterally fired all 17 expert members of a CDC advisory panel on vaccines and stacked the committee with seven ideological allies. The advisory committee is a key link in the vaccine distribution pipeline.Among those allies now serving on the committee are medical professionals with fringe beliefs and known anti-vaccines advocates. In June, the group met for the first time, and said it would form a new committee to re-evaluate the childhood vaccine schedule.“We’ve not only eliminated measles, we’ve eliminated the memory of measles,” said Offit. “People don’t remember how sick this virus can make you – or how dead it can make you.” More

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      Nurse on new CDC vaccine panel said to have been ‘anti-vax longer than RFK’

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      One of the new members of a critical federal vaccine advisory board has argued for decades that vaccines caused her son’s autism – a connection that years of large-scale studies and reviews refute.Registered nurse Vicky Pebsworth is one of eight new members to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (Acip), all hand-picked by the vaccine skeptic and Donald Trump’s health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.“She’s probably been anti-vax longer than RFK has,” said Dr David Gorski, a Wayne State University School of Medicine professor, who is considered an expert on the anti-vaccine movement.Kennedy fired all 17 of the committee’s previous members in June and stacked it with ideological allies. Pebsworth and Kennedy would have probably been known to each other, because their respective non-profits supported one another’s efforts.“If I had a child who I believed had been harmed by whatever – it doesn’t have to be vaccines – I wouldn’t then trust myself to be on a federal safety commission on that issue,” said Seth Mnookin, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor in science journalism who met and profiled Pebsworth in the mid-2000s.Pebsworth was also part of a 2020 lawsuit against Covid-19 vaccine mandates that aligns with Kennedy’s agenda. In a declaration to federal court, Pebsworth argued that “increases in the number of vaccines in the CDC schedule may be causally related to increases in the rates of chronic illness”, an assertion that appears to be based on a debunked study, but has long been a talking point of anti-vaccine activists.“They’re the oldest prominent organization,” said Mnookin, whose book is called The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear. The information center represents “the start of the modern-day anti-vaccine movement in the US”, said Mnookin.Pebsworth joined Acip from the National Vaccine Information Center, where she has served as volunteer research director since 2006, according to a résumé filed in the same case. The Guardian sent a list of questions and an interview request to Pebsworth, but did not receive a response.The National Vaccine Information Center started in Virginia as Dissatisfied Parents Together in 1982, before changing its name in 1995. The group went on to receive major funding support from Dr Joseph Mercola, once described as “the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online”.Like other new members of Acip, Pebsworth comes to the role with medical credentials; she has a doctorate degree in nursing, taught college research courses and served as a consumer representative on federal panels.For decades, she has publicly argued that her son, Sam, was injured by the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in 1998 – despite evidence showing there is no connection between vaccines and autism.Pebsworth organized conferences about alternative treatments for autism as early as 2001, including one in Michigan where then-doctor Andrew Wakefield spoke and where she told a reporter she had placed her son on a restrictive diet and administered chelation therapy – a treatment for heavy metal poisoning. Neither has been found to effectively treat autism.“Back then in the early 2000s or the late 1990s, there were two main flavors of the anti-vax,” said Gorski.In Britain, Wakefield’s paper in the Lancet proposed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. His paper would be retracted in 2010 amid evidence of fraud and conflicts of interest.“But then there was the American flavor with mercury and thimerosal, which had been used in several childhood vaccines as a preservative,” said Gorski. “Back in the day we used to call them the ‘mercury militias’, but others used to call it the ‘mercury moms’.”Thimerosal is a vaccine preservative that has been used since before the second world war. Its safety is considered settled science and yet it has been the subject of misinformation for decades.A galvanizing moment for the anti-vaccine movement came in 2015, when one of the worst measles outbreaks in years tore through Disneyland in California. The outbreak prompted lawmakers to tighten vaccine requirements for schools, drawing parents into the fray and providing a platform for anti-vaccine groups.“I used to call anti-vax the pseudoscience that spanned the political spectrum – you could find leftwing anti-vaxxers, rightwing anti-vaxxers,” said Gorski. “But now it’s really, really built into the right,” he said. “You can’t deny that any more. It’s become part of rightwing ideology.”In 2017, Pebsworth testified before a Virginia house subcommittee against a school mandate for a meningitis vaccine. In 2020, as Americans anxiously waited for a Covid-19 vaccine, she warned Americans could face unknown consequences from the vaccines. Pebsworth later testified in 2021 before the University of Hawaii’s board of regents, arguing against Covid-19 vaccines.In most public testimony, Pebsworth identifies herself not only as the volunteer research director for the National Vaccine Information Center, but also as “the mother of a child injured by his 15-month well-baby shots in 1998”.“Groups like hers and probably even more prominently the Informed Consent Action Network have seen that most vaccine policy is at the state level,” said an expert in state vaccine law who declined to go on the record for fear of retaliation from the Department of Health and Human Services.“They have a list of model legislation they encourage supporters to try to get introduced,” the expert said. At the same time, the groups have failed to accomplish their “big swings”: getting schools to drop vaccine mandates.The expert continued: “My sense is that legislators know they’re hearing from a very vocal minority. Landslide majorities still support requirements. It’s lower than it was before the pandemic, but the public still understands the needs for these laws.”By 2017, Trump was weighing whether this vocal group could become part of his coalition. Before his first inauguration in early January 2017, Trump publicly said he was considering Kennedy to head a new committee on vaccines and autism.Only days before she was appointed to ACIP, Pebsworth and the founder of the National Vaccine Information Center argued against Covid-19 vaccines, stating in part: “FDA should not be recommending mRNA Covid-19 shots for anyone until adequate scientific evidence demonstrates safety and effectiveness for both the healthy and those who are elderly or chronically ill.” More than 270 million Americans have received Covid-19 vaccines, and the federal government has closely monitored for rare events.That old trope of thimerosal played a leading role in the first meeting of Kennedy’s reconstituted Acip panel. Committee members heard a presentation against thimerosal from Lyn Redwood, the former president of the World Mercury Project, which would become Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense. A report on thimerosal’s safety by career CDC scientists was pulled from the meeting by Kennedy’s office.Ultimately, members recommended against seasonal influenza vaccines that contain thimerosal in a decision that shocked medical and scientific communities. Pebsworth abstained, arguing she wanted to vote separately on whether to recommend influenza vaccines.Pebsworth later said she wanted to vote separately on whether to recommend seasonal flu vaccines. She did not respond to questions from the Guardian about how she would have voted on flu shots, if she had the chance. More

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      RFK Jr grilled on vaccine policies and healthcare fraud in bruising House hearing

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, faced a bruising day on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, including being forced to retract accusations against a Democratic congressman after claiming the lawmaker’s vaccine stance was bought by $2m in pharmaceutical contributions.In a hearing held by the House health subcommittee, Kennedy was met with hours of contentious questioning over budget cuts, massive healthcare fraud and accusations he lied to senators to secure his confirmation.Kennedy launched his attack on representative Frank Pallone after the New Jersey Democrat hammered him over vaccine policy reversals. “You’ve accepted $2m from pharmaceutical companies,” Kennedy said. “Your enthusiasm for supporting the old [vaccine advisory committee] seems to be an outcome of those contributions.”The accusation appeared to reference Pallone’s shift from raising concerns about mercury in FDA-approved products in the 1990s to later supporting mainstream vaccine policy – a change Kennedy suggested was motivated by industry money rather than science.After a point of order, the Republican chair ordered Kennedy to retract the remarks after lawmakers accused him of impugning Pallone’s character. But the pharma attack was overshadowed by accusations that Kennedy lied his way into office. Representative Kim Schrier, a pediatrician, asked Kennedy: “Did you lie to senator [Bill] Cassidy when you told him you would not fire this panel of experts?”Two weeks ago, Kennedy axed all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, despite assurances to Cassidy during confirmation hearings.“You lied to senator Cassidy. You have lied to the American people,” Schrier said. “I lay all responsibility for every death from a vaccine-preventable illness at your feet.”Kennedy denied making promises to Cassidy.The hearing exposed the deepening fractures in Kennedy’s relationship with Congress, even among Republicans who initially supported his confirmation. What began as a routine budget hearing devolved into accusations of dishonesty, conflicts of interest and fundamental questions about whether Kennedy can be trusted to protect public health.In one moment, representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pressed Kennedy about his ignorance to the Trump administration’s reported investigation of UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest health insurer, for criminal fraud in Medicare Advantage plans.“You are not aware that the Trump Department of Justice is investigating the largest insurance company in America?” Ocasio-Cortez asked again after suggesting he couldn’t confirm that it was happening.When she said that for-profit insurers such as UnitedHealthcare defraud public programs of $80bn annually, Kennedy appeared confused about the scale: “Did you say 80 million or billion?”“80 with a ‘B’,” Ocasio-Cortez said.For Democrats, Tuesday’s performance confirmed their worst fears about a vaccine-skeptical activist now controlling the nation’s health agencies. For Kennedy, it marked an escalation in his battle against what he calls a corrupt public health establishment pushing back on his radical vision.But behind the political theater lay a fundamental reshaping of America’s public health architecture. Kennedy’s cuts have eliminated entire offices and centers, leaving them unstaffed and non-functional. While he defended the reductions as targeting “duplicative procurement, human resources and administrative offices”, he hinted that some fired workers might be rehired once court injunctions on the layoffs are resolved.Kennedy recently replaced the fired vaccine advisers with eight new appointees, including known spreaders of vaccine misinformation. The move alarmed even supportive Republicans such as Cassidy, who called Monday for delaying this week’s advisory meeting, warning the new panel lacks experience and harbors “preconceived bias” against mRNA vaccines.Kennedy has long promoted debunked links between vaccines and autism, raising fears his appointees will legitimize dangerous anti-vaccine theories.He also explained why he was pulling Covid-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women, claiming “there was no science supporting that recommendation” despite extensive research showing the vaccines’ safety during pregnancy.“We’re not depriving anybody of choice,” Kennedy insisted. “If a pregnant woman wants the Covid-19 vaccine, she can get it. No longer recommending it because there was no science supporting that recommendation.”In another sidebar, Kennedy unveiled his vision for America’s health future: every citizen wearing a smartwatch or fitness tracker within four years. The ambitious scheme, backed by what he promised would be “one of the biggest advertising campaigns in HHS history”, would see the government promoting wearables as a possible alternative to expensive medications.“If you can achieve the same thing with an $80 wearable, it’s a lot better for the American people,” Kennedy said. More

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      Key RFK Jr advisers stand to profit from a new federal health initiative

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      Federal health officials are seeking to launch a “bold, edgy” public service campaign to warn Americans of the dangers of ultra-processed foods in social media, transit ads, billboards and even text messages.And they potentially stand to profit off the results.Ultra-processed foods are a fixation for the US health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine skeptic who believes the US industrialized food supply is a “primary culprit” behind many chronic diseases.“We need to fix our food supply. And that’s the number one thing,” Kennedy said at his confirmation hearing.Bringing healthier foods to Americans has proved to be one of the most resonant issues of Kennedy’s “Make America healthy again” (Maha) campaign – and arguably the only one that Democrats and Republicans agree on in principle.Kennedy has spent most of his tenure as health secretary dismantling key components of US vaccine infrastructure, instituting mass firings and defunding chronic disease prevention programs, such as for tobacco use.The secretary has been less successful in reigning in food makers. Food advocates have described voluntary changes between the government and manufacturers “disappointing”. Kennedy was criticized by congressional Republicans for targeting agricultural pesticides in the “Maha” report before it was even released – showing the limits of Republicans appetite for regulation, then the report itself was riddled with errors, likely generated by AI.“The campaign’s creative content will turn heads, create viral moments on social media, and – above all else – inspire Americans to take back their health through eating real food,” said a document published by the federal government that described the campaign.The campaign is expected to cost between $10m to $20m, according to documents. Anyone seeking to apply for the award will have a quick turnaround – the deadline is 26 June.“The purpose of this requirement is to alert Americans to the role of processed foods in fueling the diabetes epidemic and other chronic diseases, inspire people to take personal responsibility for their diets, and drive measurable improvements in diabetes prevention and national health outcomes,” it continued.The new public relations campaign also highlights the Trump administration’s unconventional approach to hiring – including its reliance on special government employees.A key adviser to Kennedy, Calley Means, could directly benefit from one of the campaign’s stated aims: popularizing “technology like wearables as cool, modern tools for measuring diet impact and taking control of your own health”.Calley Means is a senior Kennedy adviser, and was hired as a special government employee to focus on food policy, according to Bloomberg. He founded a company that helps Americans get such wearable devices reimbursed tax-free through health savings accounts.Casey Means is Calley’s sister. She also runs a healthcare start-up, although hers sells wearable devices such as continuous glucose monitors. She is Kennedy’s nominee for US surgeon general, and a healthcare entrepreneur whose business sells continuous glucose monitors – one such wearable device. Calley Means’s company also works with Casey’s company.Due to Calley Means’s status as a special employee, he has not been forced to divest from his private business interests – a situation that has already resulted in an ethics complaint. Consumer advocates, such as the non-profit group Public Citizen, had warned such hiring practices could cause conflicts of interest. HHS did not respond to a request for comment about Calley Means’s private business interests, or his role in crafting the publicity campaign.Although the publicity campaign focuses on the ultra-processed foods connection to diabetes, at least one high profile nutritionist was queasy about its focus.“The ultra-processed foods – some of those include breakfast cereals that are ultra-processed because they are fortified with vitamins,” said Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. “Those are good if they’re whole grain breakfast cereals and whole grain breads,” he said.Ultra-processed foods are generally recognized as sodas, salty snacks and frozen meals engineered to be shelf-stable, convenient and inexpensive. Such foods are associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes – or insulin resistance.The mechanism by which such foods could increase risk of diabetes is unknown, a problem that extends in part from the “heterogeneous category” of foods that the ultra-processed category encompasses. The publicity campaign proposal does not venture into defining the category, even as Kennedy has fixated on it “poisoning the American people”.“When you say processed foods you don’t envision a Coke in your brain, and that’s the biggest problem,” said Willett, who added that most public service campaigns are carefully crafted and tested for effectiveness. More

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      CDC vaccine panel to review ingredient RFK Jr has targeted for removal

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      A key vaccine advisory panel reconstituted by health secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr is slated to discuss thimerosal-containing influenza vaccines in its first meeting – an ingredient which has been a fixation of anti-vaccine activists for decades.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will hold two separate votes later this month: one on “influenza vaccines” and one on influenza vaccines that contain thimerosal.Thimerosal is an ethylmercury preservative used in multi-dose vaccine vials to prevent fungi and bacteria growth. The preservative has been studied and deemed safe, but was nevertheless removed from all routine childhood vaccines in 2001 as a precaution.“I was there when we went through this the first time,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center and an attending physician in the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, about debates over the preservative in the early 2000s.Offit served on the ACIP panel in question from 1998 to 2003. He said the issue of thimerosal was vigorously debated and found safe then, prompting him to ask: “What’s the point?”In a short history of the thimerosal controversy published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Offit described how some parents became convinced thimerosal gave their children autism, resulting in thousands of autistic children receiving heavy metal chelation treatments each year.Studies have found no link between thimerosal and autism, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has also denied claims of a thimerosal-autism link. Kennedy, however, has written a book arguing against the use of thimerosal.Offit said the discussion of thimerosal appeared to geared to, “accomplish [Kennedy’s] goals of making vaccines less affordable, less accessible and more feared”, he said.“Here’s what you do know – you do know RFK Jr is an anti-vaccine, science-denying conspiracy theorist. He is devoted to this, he is a zealot, there is no middle ground with him,” said Offit. “He believes we have merely substituted infectious diseases for chronic diseases.”The panel’s advisory recommendations are critical because they result in vaccine “schedules”. These schedules are relied on by health insurers to determine which vaccines to cover and by clinicians who use them as an evidence-based guide on immunization – effectively giving the American public access to the medicines.Although the CDC does not always take the panel’s advice, the CDC typically affirms the panel’s decisions. However, the agency is currently without a leader, as Senate hearings have not yet been held for nominee and CDC career official Susan Monarez. As a result, Kennedy has signed off on some previous ACIP recommendations.Kennedy wrote a book on the preservative thimerosal in 2014 called Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak, in which he argues that “there is a broad consensus among research scientists that thimerosal is a dangerous neurotoxin that should be immediately removed from medicines”. Kennedy said in the book he is “pro-vaccine”.Until 9 June, the ACIP was an independent panel of 17 experts who served staggered terms and were rigorously vetted by career CDC staff. Kennedy broke with tradition when he fired the entire panel, claiming in a Wall Street Journal editorial that he was working to “restore public trust in vaccines”.The same week, Kennedy appointed eight new members to the committee, including medical professionals with little vaccine expertise and known vaccine skeptics.A wide spectrum of groups criticized the decision, from MomsRising, who said they were “alarmed and disgusted”, to major doctors’ groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, to public health leaders who described Kennedy’s actions as “a coup,” to the former members of the committee, who warned the independent panel was at “a crossroads”.The group is scheduled to meet the last week of June. Prior to Kennedy’s changes, they had been expected to discuss reducing the number of shots needed for human papilloma virus (HPV) and a meningococcal vaccine.On Wednesday, the panel released a draft agenda for its upcoming meeting. A wide range of vaccines will be discussed – including those against influenza; the tropical disease chikungunya; the measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox) vaccine; anthrax; Covid and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).The agenda scheduled a vote on recommendations for flu vaccines, including the multidose versions that still contain thimerosal. These vaccines are used only in adolescents and adults. The panel is also scheduled to vote on recommendations for maternal and pediatric versions of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).Notably, despite Kennedy’s repeated pledges of “radical transparency”, the draft agenda does not include the names of many speakers, which are listed as “TBD” (to be determined) for instance on “Covid-19 safety update”.New ACIP members have not been added to a conflict of interest tracker for ACIP members developed by the Trump administration. A spokesperson for HHS said the new members ethics agreements “will be made public” before they start work with the committee.In addition to the new draft agenda, there have also been changes to the committee’s meeting times not reflected in the Federal Register, according to Politico. The group will meet for two days instead of three, and there does not appear to be a vote scheduled on Covid vaccines. More

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      What SJP’s selfie trick tells us about the terrifying rise of conspiracy theories | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Sarah Jessica Parker, the Sex and the City star and Booker prize judge, has a nifty trick for getting out of taking selfies with her fans. “I did this for a really, really long time and it worked for ever,” Parker said in an interview with Howard Stern. “I used to say, ‘I can’t, because of the government,’ and I’d do this,” Parker said, pointing up to the sky. “It really confused people. This was through different administrations, so it wasn’t political.”It is not entirely clear why Parker – who has said she refuses to take selfies and would rather “have a conversation” instead because “it’s much more meaningful” – stopped using this brilliant excuse. But one does have to wonder whether it is because the US has become a nation of conspiracy theorists. Rather than backing away from the weird “the government is watching” woman, perhaps fans started to excitedly engage her with theories about how Bill Gates has implanted us all with mind-controlling microchips. Or maybe she just got tired of the joke. I don’t know. But I’m sure someone out there (the government) does.Conspiracy theories have become so mainstream that they are even prompting nonsensical legislation. Earlier this month, Louisiana lawmakers sent a bill to the state’s governor seeking to ban “chemtrails” – which don’t actually exist. They are a longstanding conspiracy which posits that the white lines sometimes left behind by aircraft aren’t just due to condensed water vapour but are far more sinister. Some people believe that the government is spraying toxic metals to reduce populations; others believe they are evidence that dark forces are trying to control the weather or people’s minds.Lawmakers in at least 11 other states are trying to advance similar “chemtrail” bans. “Every bill like this is kind of symbolic, or is introduced to appease a very vocal group, but it can still cause real harm by signalling that these conspiracies deserve this level of legal attention,” a member of the National Association for Media Literacy Education told the Associated Press.Also causing real harm in the US with his obsession with imaginary problems is health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. The vaccine sceptic recently fired every single member of a critical advisory committee on immunisation practices. He has replaced them with people who reportedly have very little vaccine expertise and are accused of spreading misinformation. The ousted members of the vaccine committee have said that the shake-up may “impact people’s access to lifesaving vaccines, and ultimately put US families at risk of dangerous and preventable illnesses.”RFK Jr is also fixated on conspiracy theories about fluoride, which he calls “a dangerous neurotoxin”. There are, to be clear, valid concerns about ingesting too much fluoride, including its effects on IQ as well as potential tooth discoloration. But experts are pretty unanimous that fluoride in drinking water is a great public health achievement that has done wonders for preventing tooth decay. There are worries that RFK Jr’s meddling will cause a significant increase in dental cavities, especially among children in lower-income groups.Anyway, I’ve got a good idea for Parker. Since acting like a conspiracy theorist no longer seems to ward off unwanted attention, why not try engaging selfie-seeking fans with a rational fact-based discussion? Increasingly large numbers of Americans seem allergic to that; some fans will immediately run a mile. I have some other thoughts too but I’m afraid I can’t elaborate any more on this issue for top secret reasons. But here’s a hint: it’s because of the government. More

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      CDC official in charge of Covid data resigns ahead of vaccine meeting

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      The scientist responsible for overseeing the CDC team that collects data on Covid and RSV hospitalizations resigned on Monday.Dr Fiona Havers told colleagues in an email that she no longer had confidence the data would be used “objectively or evaluated with appropriate scientific rigor to make evidence-based vaccine policy decisions”, according to Reuters.She resigned before a planned meeting of a new vaccine panel put in place by Robert Kennedy Jr after he fired all 17 members of the CDC’s independent vaccine advisory panel. Kennedy also dropped a recommendation to get the Covid shot for healthy children and pregnant women.Havers, leader of the Resp-Net hospitalization surveillance team, did not respond to requests for comment.Her resignation follows moves by Kennedy, the health secretary, to abruptly fire all 17 members of the CDC’s independent vaccine advisory panel and drop a recommendation for administering Covid shots to healthy children and pregnant women.Kennedy, who has long sown doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, replaced the advisory board with eight members of his own choosing, some of whom have histories of objecting to Covid shots or vaccines in general.Havers said in her email that the Covid and RSV data collected by her team had been used in more than 20 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 15 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports issued by the CDC.The newly installed vaccine panel, known as the advisory committee on immunization practices, is expected to meet 25-27 June to vote on the use of Covid-19 boosters and other vaccines by the American public.A Health and Human Services spokesperson told Reuters that the agency is committed to “gold standard science” and that the vaccine policy will be based on objective data, transparent analysis and evidence. More

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      Who are the eight new vaccine advisers appointed by Robert F Kennedy?

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, named eight new vaccine advisers this week to a critical Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel after firing all 17 experts who had held the roles.New members of the panel include experts who complained about being sidelined, a high-profile figure who has spread misinformation and medical professionals who appear to have little vaccine expertise. Kennedy made the announcement on social media.“All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense,” Kennedy said in his announcement. “They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.”Formally called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the panel advises the CDC on how vaccines should be distributed. Those recommendations in effect determine the vaccines Americans can access. This week, Kennedy also removed the career officials typically tasked with vetting ACIP members and overseeing the advisory group, according to CBS News.Kennedy is a widely known vaccine skeptic who profited from suing vaccine manufacturers, has taken increasingly dramatic steps to upend US vaccine policy.“ACIP is widely regarded as the international gold standard for vaccine decision-making,” said Helen Chu, one of the fired advisers, at a press conference with Patty Murray, a Democratic US senator.“We cannot replace it with a process driven by one person’s beliefs. In the absence of an independent, unbiased ACIP, we can no longer trust that safe and effective vaccines will be available to us and the people around us.”Robert W MaloneArguably the most high-profile new member, Robert W Malone catapulted to stardom during the Covid-19 pandemic, appearing across rightwing media to criticize the Biden administration while describing himself as the inventor of mRNA technology.Messenger RNA technology powers the most widely used Covid-19 vaccines. While Malone was involved in very early experiments on the technology, researchers have said his role was limited.Malone’s star rose quickly after appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2022, where he and Rogan were criticized for spreading misinformation. On the show, Malone promoted the idea that both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine could be possible treatments for Covid-19, but said research on the drugs was being suppressed. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have not been shown to improve outcomes from Covid-19.“Malone has a well-documented history of promoting conspiracy theories,” said Dr Jeffrey D Klausner, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the University of Southern California, who recently told the New York Times he was in touch with Kennedy about his appointments.Martin KulldorffKulldorff is a former Harvard professor of biostatistics and an infectious disease epidemiologist originally from Sweden. He said in an essay for the rightwing publication City Journal that he was fired because he refused to be vaccinated in line with the school policy.Like Malone, he rose to prominence during the pandemic as a “Covid contrarian” who criticized the scientific consensus – views he said alienated him from his peers in the scientific community. He voiced his opposition to Covid-19 vaccine mandates and, in his essay, complained of being ignored by media and shadow-banned from Twitter.Kulldorff co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for limited closures instead of pandemic lockdowns before vaccines were available. The document became a touchstone for the American political right.Before the pandemic, Kulldorff studied vaccine safety and infectious disease, including co-authoring papers with members of CDC staff, such as on the Vaccine Safety Datalink. He was a member of the CDC’s Covid Vaccine Safety Working Group in 2020, but said later he was fired because he disagreed with the agency’s decision to pause Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine and with Covid-19 vaccine mandates. He served on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) drug safety and risk management advisory committee around the same time.He has since enjoyed support from people already within the administration, including the Great Barrington Declaration co-author Dr Jay Bhattacharya, current head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Dr Vinay Prasad, head of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which handles vaccines.Cody MeissnerMeissner is a professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. He previously held advisory roles at the FDA and CDC, including ACIP from 2008-2012.In 2021, Meissner co-wrote an editorial with Dr Marty Makary, now the head of the FDA, which criticized mask mandates for children. In April, he was listed as an external adviser to ACIP on the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) committee.Notably, Meissner is listed in a new conflicts of interest tool launched by the health department in March. Kennedy had criticized the fired ACIP members as “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest”.“He’s a card-carrying infectious disease person who knows the burden of these diseases, and he knows the risk and the benefit,” Dr Kathryn Edwards told CBS News. Edwards previously served as chair of the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel.Vicky PebsworthPebsworth is a nurse and the former consumer representative on the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee. She is also the Pacific regional director for the National Association of Catholic Nurses, according to Kennedy’s announcement.In 2020, Pebsworth spoke at the public comment portion of an FDA advisory panel meeting on Covid-19 vaccines. There, she identified herself as the volunteer research director for the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), “and the mother of a child injured by his 15-month well-baby shots in 1998”.The NVIC is widely viewed as an anti-vaccine advocacy organization “whose founder Barbara Lou Fisher must be considered a key figure of the anti-vaccine movement”, according to an article from 2023 on how to counter anti-vaccine misinformation.Retsef LeviLevi is a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management who Kennedy described as an “expert in healthcare analytics, risk management and vaccine safety”.In 2021, he opposed Covid-19 booster shot approval during the public comment portion of an FDA advisory committee hearing. In 2022, he wrote an article calling for EMS calls to be incorporated into vaccine safety data, arguing that cardiovascular side-effects could be undercounted – an article that later required correction. The potential effects of Covid-19 vaccines on heart health have been a focal point of right-leaning criticism.Last month, Levi was criticized for publishing a pre-print paper – a paper without peer review – that he co-authored with Dr Joseph Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, a vaccine skeptic. The paper alleged that people who took the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine were more likely to die than those who received the Moderna vaccine.Michael A RossKennedy described Ross as “a Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at George Washington University and Virginia Commonwealth University, with a career spanning clinical medicine, research, and public health policy”.However, as first reported by CBS News, Ross’s name does not appear in faculty directories for either school. A spokesperson for George Washington University told the outlet that Ross did work as a clinical professor, but “has not held a faculty appointment … since 2017”.A spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University described Ross as “an affiliate faculty member” at a regional hospital system in the Capitol region.He is also listed as a partner at Havencrest Capital Management, as a board member of “multiple private healthcare companies”.Joseph R HibbelnHibbeln is a California-based psychiatrist who previously served as acting chief for the section of nutritional neurosciences at the NIH. He describes himself as an expert on omega-3, a fatty acid found in seafood.He also serves on the advisory council of a non-profit that advocates for Americans to eat more seafood. He practices at Barton Health, a hospital system in Lake Tahoe, California. His work influenced US public health guidelines on fish consumption during pregnancy.Dr James PaganoPagano is an emergency medicine physician from Los Angeles “with over 40 years of clinical experience”, and a “strong advocate for evidence-based medicine”, according to Kennedy. More