Medical Quackery and RFK's Purge at the CDC

An escalating conflict over an influential vaccine committee was one of the final straws that led to the firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and the exodus of other highly regarded top officials.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had repeatedly undermined the agency’s independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, firing the committee’s members and appointing new members, including vaccine skeptics.

Early Wednesday, Monarez suggested to Dr. Richard Besser that she was going to be forced to sign off on new vaccine recommendations.

“She said there were two things she would never do in the job,” said Besser, a former acting CDC director and the CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “One, in terms of firing her leadership who are talented civil servants like herself, and the other was to rubber-stamp ACIP recommendations that flew in the face of science.”

Hours later, Monarez was out, according to a Health and Human Services post on X. Almost immediately, several top officials resigned in protest.

One of those officials, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who directed the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases — which oversees vaccines — wrote in his resignation letter that a particular document related to the vaccine committee “ignored all feedback from career staff at CDC.”

The document was guidance for a newly formed work group that will present Covid vaccine data and research at the upcoming ACIP meeting — scheduled for September 18 — and contained anti-vaccine talking points. The work group will be led by newly appointed ACIP member Retsef Levi, an MIT professor who has been vocally against the mRNA Covid vaccines.

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Reality Check: RFK Jr is a nut, promoting fringe conspiracy theories and medical quackery

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine crusader, is not qualified to have any power at the agency that’s supposed to protect the health of Americans, said research analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald, which was formerly headed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Cantor’s note came as Peter Marks, the head of the Food and Drug Administration’s biologics division, resigned in protest of Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccines. Kennedy has already taken steps that public health experts say could deter routine immunizations in the U.S.

“We call on the administration to re-evaluate RFK Jr’s role at HHS. Pushing out one of the most trusted leaders of the FDA to promote an anti-science agenda is a step too far for us,” analysts Josh Schimmer and Eric Schmidt wrote in an unusual note to clients Tuesday. “HHS cannot be led by an anti-vax, conspiracy theorist with inadequate training.”

Kennedy has downplayed the importance of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and promoted unproven treatments to counter a measles outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also carrying out a study into long-debunked links between vaccines and autism, led by a researcher with a history of spreading misinformation about shots.

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Florida (of course)

The decline of medical science and the rise of quackery in the sunshine state.

Instagram Bans Robert Kennedy Jr

The old lefty is a longtime anti-vaxxer and promoter of debunked pseudoscientific theories and dangerous medical quackery. 

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Worries are rising over COVID deniers and anti-vaxxers

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This could be a problem, but I think it's manageable. There are some people who subscribe to pseudoscientific beliefs and or conspiracy theories regarding vaccines and others who simply deny that Covid exists at all or if they concede its existence, they claim it is being overblown and that the reports of mass infections and deaths are false. Happily those subscribing to these delusional views are not huge in numbers. But there are enough that in some situations they could pose a serious health risk if you get a bunch of unvaccinated people in large groups.

On the one hand I dislike direct coercion in matters of conscience. So I would be opposed to laws mandating vaccination under pain of fine or jail. But on the other hand it is a well established principle of law that society does have the right to impose reasonable regulations to protect the public health. So my response would be to take steps to limit the ability of vaccine resisters to pose such a threat.

* Require all persons booking commercial airplane flights anywhere in the US, or overseas if bound for the US, to affirm under penalty of perjury that all those booking have been vaccinated. No vaccination... no plane trip.

* Ditto interstate bus and train tickets and all cruise ships/ocean liners.

* Require affirmation of vaccination as a condition for applying for or renewing a US passport.

* Hotels should be encouraged to require registering guests to affirm that they have been vaccinated.

* States should require students registering for schools and university to provide evidence of vaccination.

None of these measures are unreasonable as a public health response to a dangerous pandemic. People will still be able to refuse vaccination, but there will be consequences that for many will be inconvenient. They could still travel by private vehicle and children could be home schooled. Obviously, any such regulations should not be imposed until a vaccine has been available to the general public for a sufficient amount of time that anyone wanting one will have had the opportunity to get the jab.

Washington State Braces for Potentially Severe Measles Outbreak

VANCOUVER, Wash. — Amber Gorrow is afraid to leave her house with her infant son because she lives at the epicenter of Washington state’s worst measles outbreak in more than two decades. Born eight weeks ago, Leon is too young to get his first measles shot, putting him at risk for the highly contagious respiratory virus, which can be fatal in small children.

Gorrow also lives in a community where she said being anti-vaccine is as acceptable as being vegan or going gluten free. Almost a quarter of kids in Clark County, Wash., a suburb of Portland, Ore., go to school without measles, mumps and rubella immunizations, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) recently declared a state of emergency amid concern that things could rapidly spin out of control.

Measles outbreaks have sprung up in nine other states this winter, but officials are particularly alarmed about the one in Clark County because of its potential to go very big, very quickly.

The Pacific Northwest is home to some of the nation’s most vocal and organized anti-vaccination activists. That movement has helped drive down child immunizations in Washington, as well as in neighboring Oregon and Idaho, to some of the lowest rates in the country, with as many as 10.5 percent of kindergartners statewide in Idaho unvaccinated for measles. That is almost double the median rate nationally.

Libertarian-leaning lawmakers, meanwhile, have bowed to public pressure to relax state laws to exempt virtually any child from state vaccination requirements whose parents object. Three states allow only medical exemptions; most others also permit religious exemptions. And 17, including Washington, Oregon and Idaho, allow what they call “philosophical” exemptions, meaning virtually anyone can opt out of the requirements.

All those elements combine into a dangerous mix, spurring concern about the resurgence of a deadly disease that once sent tens of thousands of Americans to hospitals each year and killed an estimated 400 to 500 people, many of them young children.

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