A member of an influential federal vaccine advisory panel made a dramatic claim Thursday afternoon that the panel had been disbanded following a temporary block by a federal judge and would be entirely reconstituted—again. But, just hours later, he retracted the claim, saying that it was merely a possibility.
The claim immediately caused a stir online. Public health experts began to cheer the news, given that most of the current members hold anti-vaccine views and have little to no qualifications for being on the panel—which is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Current members were hand-selected by anti-vaccine health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had summarily fired all 17 experts previously on ACIP. Kennedy’s new ACIP members have since held several chaotic meetings in which they voted to roll-back CDC’s evidence-based vaccine guidance.
On Monday, Federal Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary injunction blocking Kennedy’s ACIP members and their votes after finding that they were improperly appointed and vaccine recommendations were changed without procedural requirements. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other medical groups, who challenged Kennedy’s anti-vaccine efforts.
Then came the claim Thursday. Robert Malone, who is vice chair of Kennedy’s dubious ACIP line-up, wrote on social media that afternoon that “ACIP has been disbanded.”
“The government’s response to the AAP lawsuit and judge Murphey’s[sic] injunction is to disband and then recreate a new ACIP committee, as this will take less time than would be required to file and prosecute an appeal,” he wrote.
Malone also complained that the health department didn’t have any plans to defend ACIP members from Murphy’s alleged “defamatory characterization,” which was that most ACIP members, including Malone, largely didn’t appear to have any expertise in vaccines and/or immunizations.
Baseless speculation?
As quickly as the cheers that ACIP was disbanded came, there were also doubts about the claim’s accuracy. Decades ago, Malone was a researcher who worked on mRNA technology, but who has since been described as “unhinged” and “pretty wacky” by former colleagues. He embraces anti-vaccine views—and the label “anti-vaxxer”—and has suggested that vaccines cause “a form of AIDS,” among other things.
After Malone made his claim Thursday, Ars Technica reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees CDC, for confirmation and comment. Just before 10 pm ET, Malone posted on social media again, retracting the claim:
“I have now been told that this was a miscommunication, and in fact the decision about how to proceed has not been made, and dissolving and reforming remains one of [the] options being considered.”
After that, HHS responded to Ars Technica, pointing out Malone’s retraction and adding the statement from HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon: “Unless officially announced by us, any assertions about what we are doing next is baseless speculation.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Malone said that he and others were told the committee would be disbanded. The Journal also obtained a text message Malone sent to other ACIP members earlier on Thursday, saying, “I am so, so tired of the HHS incompetence,” and that HHS was trying to throw him “under the bus” over his earlier statements. Malone confirmed the text message to the Journal.
It remains unclear if Kennedy and HHS are considering recreating ACIP. In a statement, the advocacy group Defend Public Health emphasized that, whatever Kennedy does, HHS needs to follow federal regulations, as Judge Murphy’s ruling indicated. “It seems like the simplest way to do that is to reconstitute the committee that he wrongly fired, which had been put together following proper legal procedures. But if he wants to start from scratch, he still needs to follow the law.”
