The End of Expertise?

October 12, 2026

I: Introduction

The current Trump administration has had a running battle with science and with scientists. During the period when Elon Musk was in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), there was a wholesale purge of scientists from a number of government science agencies. This blood-letting resulted in the firing or resignation of nearly 118,000 federal science employees, which amounted to roughly 40% of the overall reductions in workforce across the entire federal government. In particular, the National Science Foundation saw a 33% reduction in its staff, as well as freezing nearly all new grants and terminating hundreds of approved grants. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) saw cuts that were so sweeping that at least temporarily the entire NOAA External Affairs team was eliminated. The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control were also targeted with mass firings of probationary researchers.

Some of the cutbacks resulted from claims that the scientific community had not aligned itself with the priorities of the Trump administration.  The document Project 2025 prepared by the Heritage Foundation had called for cutting any research that could be defined as “woke,” as well as any other efforts such as climate change that were considered to be “hoaxes” by Trump and Project 2025.  Indeed, the National Science Foundation has recently announced that it will be updating its grantmaking procedures to better align with Trump’s Executive Orders Science: A New Golden Age and Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking, which argued that “Discretionary awards must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities,” an alignment to be judged by political appointees. We have explained in a previous post why such political interference in scientific research is both dangerous and counterproductive. Furthermore, the NSF plans to align with a directive from the Office of Management and Budget which argues that “the pace of significant breakthroughs has slowed.” In another recent post, we have thoroughly debunked the claims about scientific research “stagnating.”

But there were other reasons why scientific projects, and scientists themselves, were in the line of fire from Trump and his supporters.  Key elements of MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) doctrine have involved assertions that “reality is what we say it is.”  Many of the claims made by Trump have had essentially zero hard evidence to back them up.  Examples of this are the claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 election (both the popular and Electoral College numbers), but that it was stolen from him.  In addition, claims were made that millions of non-citizens voted in federal elections, and that voting machines had been compromised so that they produced false election numbers.  A subsequent claim was made that undocumented immigrants to the U.S., in league with members of Central and South American gangs, had aligned in a coordinated invasion of the U.S. 

George Orwell novels such as 1984 and Animal Farm point out that manipulation of language in order to control a population is a defining feature of authoritarian regimes.  Thus, MAGA forces resist “expertise” as “fake news” generated by elites to suppress the conspiracy theories of right-wing loyalists.  And scientists are an important group of the elites, since they require that claims on scientific issues be supported by hard, reproducible evidence.  Although many of the dire cuts made by the administration in the early days of Trump’s second term have been reversed by lawsuits, nevertheless the government treats scientists largely as a group that is hostile to nativist ideology. 

One area of government where Trump’s populist biases have been most prominent is the biomedical sciences.  Installing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as the head of Health and Human Services (HHS) marked a milestone in the hostility of this administration towards science and scientists. RFK Jr.’s prejudices were well known from his work with the group Children’s Health Defense. His leadership of that organization was marked by numerous false claims regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines. We have detailed Kennedy’s unscientific assertions at length in earlier posts on this blog (see here, here and here).

Figure I.1 shows the results of clinical studies designed to search for possible connections between vaccines and autism. Since Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 claims that he had found a strong link between vaccination with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism (Wakefield’s paper is now known to be fraudulent, and that paper has been retracted), every robust clinical study since then has found zero connection between vaccines and autism. The last meta-investigation in 2012 scrutinized 27 clinical studies that involved a total of 14.7 million people. Like every robust study done since 1998, this one found absolutely no connection between vaccination and autism.

Figure I.1: A summary of tests of a possible connection between vaccination and autism, from 1998 to 2012.  The latest meta-study involved 14.7 million children.  Since Wakefield asserted a vaccine-autism connection in 1998, every robust clinical study done since that time has found no link between vaccination and autism. 

All of these studies should have convinced anyone who understands scientific inquiry to conclude that there is no connection between vaccination and autism.  However, RFK Jr. personally ordered the CDC to change the language on their website.  Previously, in agreement with all large clinical studies, the CDC website said there was no link between vaccination and autism.  However, the new language now reads: “The statement ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim.” This revised statement was not based on any of the clinical studies, nor was it approved by a panel of scientists. The statement was strongly criticized by many scientific organizations, including the Autism Science Foundation and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Kennedy continues to push the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund new research on connections of vaccines to autism. And he has just recently ordered HHS to open a new funding avenue for probes of vaccine injury.

Apparently, Kennedy believes that the results of a fraudulent “study” of vaccines and autism, and personal testimony from parents who believe that their children’s autism was caused by vaccines, outweighs the overwhelming results of clinical studies that show absolutely no vaccine-autism connection.  This demonstrates that RFK Jr. has zero understanding of the power of data in science.  He maintains his prejudices even in the face of definitive evidence from scientific studies.  As we will show, under Kennedy’s leadership, vaccine recommendations that were once undergirded by the best scientific evidence are now being made by amateurs with little or no expertise.  We include brief bios of five people who have been appointed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. either to serve on crucial committees that determine vaccine policy, or who have been installed in Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies where they have the ability to change existing policies.  These people may have degrees in scientific fields, but they have been chosen not for their detailed knowledge of vaccine issues, but because their anti-vaccine prejudices align with those of Kennedy.  RFK Jr. clearly believes that the feelings of these advisors are more important than any demonstrated expertise regarding vaccines.  The net result of these changes will almost certainly be a rapid increase in childhood infectious diseases, and deaths from diseases that had been essentially eliminated in the U.S. by prior vaccination policies. We are already seeing that with multiple large measles outbreaks in the U.S. 

II. David Geier:  

We included a review of David Geier and the work of his father and collaborator, Dr. Mark Geier, in an earlier blog post on vaccination. Figure II.1 shows Dr. Mark Geier and his son David Geier. Mark Geier opened an OB/GYN practice, but soon most of his time was taken up with depositions in vaccine-injury cases. Between 1985 and 1989, Mark Geier testified in nearly 50 such cases. Vaccine courts were set up to accomplish two functions. First, they provided a means by which families with children who had apparently suffered injury from a vaccine shot could be compensated without going through long, expensive and contentious litigation. At the same time, vaccine courts limited the financial liability of manufacturers, which allowed them to avoid costly lawsuits with potentially exceptionally large damages, and hence continue to offer vaccines to the American public. In the 80s, Geier’s testimony was quite effective; however, he gained a reputation for playing fast and loose with facts in his testimony. As a result, Geier’s income from testimony as an expert witness dried up.

Figure II.1: Dr. Mark Geier (R), and his son David Geier.  The pair accessed vaccine data files and published several papers that falsely alleged a link between vaccines and autism.  Since 2025, David Geier has been a senior analyst at HHS and is repeating his efforts to claim links between vaccines and autism. 

However, Geier soon latched onto other supposed causes of vaccine injury. One of these was thimerosal, an ethylmercury compound that was used in microscopic amounts in multi-use vaccines. Thimerosal was not a part of MMR vaccines in the U.S. but was more commonly found in vaccines in developing countries, where storage issues made it more advantageous for multi-use vaccines. Thimerosal was added to multi-use vaccines in order to prevent contamination when multiple shots were obtained from a single vial. It was mainly used in flu vaccines. The thimerosal issue showed how far anti-vaxxers were willing to go to allege vaccine injury. Figure II.2 shows the book Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak, which was edited by RFK, Jr. The dangers of mercury were highly publicized at this time, with Japanese fishermen who ate tuna contaminated with mercury suffering greatly.

Figure II.2: The book Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury – a Known Neurotoxin – from Vaccines.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was the editor of this book.  Although there is no evidence that minute quantities of thimerosal have caused any injuries, this book falsely argues that this ethylmercury molecule presents grave dangers. 

However, the mercury in seafood was methylmercury, while thimerosal was an ethylmercury compound.  As Seth Mnookin wrote in his book The Panic Virus, “The difference between ethylmercury and methylmercury is that of ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, and methyl alcohol, or methanol: Two shots of the former give you a buzz; two shots of the latter are lethal.”  Anti-vaxxers lobbied hard to remove thimerosal from all vaccines, on the argument that the ethylmercury was causing great injury, including possibly causing autism.  In fact, the original name of RFK Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense organization was World Mercury Project.  Activists predicted that once thimerosal was removed from vaccines, the levels of autism would drop dramatically.  Countries like Japan removed all thimerosal from vaccines, but autism levels continued to rise. 

The Geiers decided to carry out “scientific” studies of vaccine injury.  They set up a project that would examine prior clinical studies of vaccines.  They got their hands on vast data sets studying vaccines and started publishing their own analyses of the relationship between vaccines and autism.  They published dozens of articles claiming that vaccines were associated with all kinds of other conditions, with a focus on autism.  However, there were several issues with their study.  First, they would compare cases and control groups from studies made at different times and from areas with wildly different rates of vaccination.  In addition, they failed to account for confounding variables such as age, gender and socioeconomic factors.  Groups such as the Institute of Medicine, the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics examined papers by the Geiers and identified critical failures in methodology.  Most of the papers by the Geiers were published either in journals with weak peer-review processes, or even journals where Mark Geier was on the editorial board. 

Independent researchers who used the same data studies were unable to reproduce any of the Geiers’ results.  And when the Maryland State Board of Physicians examined the “Institutional Review Board” (IRB) that approved their study and gave them access to the vaccine study data, they found that the IRB was “a sham.”  That IRB included Mark, David and Anne Geier, a business partner of Mark and a lawyer whose practice involved vaccine litigation.  This IRB failed to meet state or federal requirements for a project that would involve access to patient records.  In April 2011, the Maryland State Board of Physicians suspended Mark Geier’s medical license on the grounds that he “endangers autistic children and exploits their parents by administering … a treatment protocol that has a known substantial risk of serious harm and which is neither consistent with evidence-based medicine nor generally accepted in the relevant scientific community.” Geier’s license to practice medicine in Maryland was formally revoked in August 2012. Subsequently, Geier’s licenses to practice medicine were also suspended in Washington, Virginia, California, Missouri, Illinois and Hawaii. In 2011, David Geier was charged by the Maryland State Board of Physicians with practicing medicine without a license, and he was fined $10,000. 

The Geiers opened clinics that were aimed at treating autistic children.  They administered the drug Lupron, which they claimed would remove “testosterone mercury,” and hence would “cure” autism. Lupron is a drug used in chemical castration, and its only other legitimate medical uses are to treat precocious puberty and for endometriosis. In “treating” an autistic child, the Geiers would order several dozen lab tests that cost a total of $1,200; and their Lupron injections would cost about $5,000 per month.  Some children with autism display rather violent temper tantrums.  And in some cases, children who were administered Lupron would become much quieter; this would lead some parents to state that this was a miracle substance, while other parents claimed that any benefits of Lupron were temporary.  Figure II.3 shows Mark Geier (L) in his clinic with a mother and her autistic child. 

Figure II.3: Dr. Mark Geier (L) in one of his clinics, treating a mother with her autistic child. 

Mark Geier died in March 2025.  Shortly afterward, RFK Jr. appointed David as a senior staff member at HHS and directed him to “advise other scientists on how to find the ‘lost’ data and reaggregate” a dataset of vaccine injuries, as Kennedy posted on X.  Donald Trump has been pressing  Kennedy to announce a link between vaccines and autism.  Paul Offit, arguably the most knowledgeable researcher on the role of vaccines, is worried that David Geier will announce a bogus “link” between vaccines and autism.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might then change the rules of vaccine court: “If he adds autism to the list of compensable injuries, that would be devastating to that program  —  you would quickly exhaust the money that’s currently in the system.”  Alternatively, Kennedy could disband the vaccine court, allowing vaccine manufacturers to “suffer the slings and arrows of civil litigation.” This would bankrupt vaccine-makers and drive them out of the U.S. market, which would herald a disastrous rise of epidemics of several childhood diseases that had been nearly eradicated by safe and effective vaccines. 

III. Robert Malone: 

Robert Malone is a biochemist and a physician.  He received an MS degree in biology from the University of California, San Diego in 1988 and his MD from Northwestern in 1991.  Recently, Malone, shown in Figure III.1, has become infamous for spreading misinformation regarding vaccines, particularly vaccines created with mRNA techniques, and for his term as a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). 

Figure III.1: Biochemist and physician Robert Malone.  Malone falsely claimed to be the inventor of the mRNA vaccines.  He also spread misinformation regarding vaccines.  He was appointed by RFK Jr. to the ACIP vaccine review committee.  However, he was removed after a judge ruled that the committee members were not legally appointed. 

Robert Malone participated in some early research that eventually led to the development of mRNA techniques for producing vaccines.  Based on this work, Malone describes himself as “the inventor of mRNA vaccines.”  He makes this claim whenever he issues  public statements, which is extremely common recently.  Malone’s wife actually attempted to change the Wikipedia entry on mRNA vaccines so that it credited Malone with their discovery!  In fact, the development of mRNA vaccines took place over a period of three decades and involved hundreds of researchers.  The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries that led to the eventual development of mRNA vaccines. 

Gyula Acsadi was a co-author with Robert Malone on the paper that forms the basis for Malone’s claim to be the inventor of mRNA vaccines.  She describes this as a “totally false claim;” she points out that Malone was not the lead author on this paper and said that Malone “did not make a significant contribution” to that research.  Dr. Acsadi further stated that none of the other authors of that paper would claim that they invented the vaccine.  So, Robert Malone is wildly exaggerating his own importance in the eventual production of mRNA-based vaccines.  This is designed to provide more gravitas behind Malone’s firehose of misinformation about vaccines in general, and mRNA-based vaccines in particular, that he has produced in recent years. 

Malone’s puffed-up claims regarding his importance, and his willingness to make shocking claims about vaccine safety, made him a noted public figure.  He became a sought-after guest on right-wing shows.  He made appearances on programs by Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Joseph Mercola.  These interviews were generally prefaced by statements like “The inventor of mRNA vaccines tells us how scary these new COVID vaccines are!”  Malone’s willingness to make outrageous claims about the dangers of mRNA vaccines added to his appeal.  However, on December 29, 2021 Twitter permanently suspended Malone from its platform.  After Malone shared a video about the harmful effects of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, Twitter cited “repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy.”   But one year later after Elon Musk had purchased Twitter and renamed it X, Malone was re-instated to that platform.  Figure III.2 lists four myths about mRNA vaccines and contrasts this with the facts.  Several of those myths were amplified by Robert Malone.  But Malone has been able to monetize his false claims.  As of October 2026, Malone’s Substack post had 430,000 paid subscribers.  It is estimated that this brings in about $500,000 per year.   

Figure III.2: A figure that lists four myths about mRNA vaccines, contrasted with the facts.  Robert Malone has actively promulgated several of these myths on social media and through public comments.  Figure from University of Waterloo. 

The misinformation spread by Robert Malone dove-tailed nicely with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s prejudices regarding vaccines.  In June 2025, Kennedy fired all of the 17 members of the ACIP vaccine committee, claiming that the committee members had numerous conflicts of interest.  RFK Jr. then named seven new ACIP members, a group that included several people with known anti-vaxxer leanings.  Robert Malone was one of that group.  At ACIP meetings, Malone continued to inject his anti-vaccine rhetoric, frequently interrupting other speakers.  With Malone as one of its members, the ACIP committee proceeded to upend prior vaccine practices, often (as in the case of thimerosal in multi-use vaccines or giving hepatitis-B vaccines to newborns) with no new scientific evidence that would drive these changes. 

Hilary Brueck and Andrew Dunn wrote an excellent article that critiqued a dozen of Robert Malone’s claims about vaccines.  We will summarize just a few of these here.

• Vaccines May be Damaging to Children:   At a 2022 “Defeat the Mandates” rally during the COVID pandemic, Malone told attendees that “Between one in 2,000 and one in 3,000 children that receive these vaccines will be hospitalized in the short term with vaccine-caused damage.”  Dr. Buddy Creech, president of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, pointed out that data existed on hospitalization after a COVID vaccine shot.  It was between one in 100,000 to one in a million.  The COVID shots were exceptionally safe, and Malone’s claim was rated as baseless. 
• It Will be Several Years Before We Can be Sure That Vaccines Are Safe: At the “Defeat the Mandates” rally, Malone said “Only the passage of time will determine  what long-term damage may occur to these children.  These vaccines can damage their brains, their hearts, their immune system, and their ability to have children.”  Dr. Creech stated that vaccine injuries nearly always happen in the first month after vaccination.  That is why federal compensation rules for vaccine injuries include only 42 days following vaccination.  The three most common reactions following a vaccine shot – an allergic response to a vaccine’s ingredients, an inflammatory reaction, and an abnormal response to the vaccine – nearly all happen within a month of the injection.  The FDA requires new vaccines to be tested for six months before certifying them; this reflects the fact that any vaccine injuries will have shown up by then.  Malone’s claim was rated baseless. 
• Ivermectin and Pepcid are Effective in Treating COVID; but the US government Prevents People From Using Them.  Malone claimed “Ivermectin must be initiated immediately for people in high-risk categories in the United States and worldwide … governmental obstructionism regarding life-saving treatments to patients must end now.”  Early on, some experiments with small numbers of patients seemed to indicate that these drugs might be effective.  However, robust clinical studies showed that the early claims were either false, or the apparent results were negated in large-scale clinical trials.   A review of multiple clinical studies found no evidence that famotidine (the active ingredient in Pepcid) helped COVID-19 patients.  And large-scale clinical trials showed that ivermectin was of no help in treating COVID patients.  Malone not only made false statements about the effectiveness of these substances, but he supplemented this with the conspiracy theory that the government and Big Pharma were preventing people from using these cheap and effective treatments.  Malone’s assertions were rated baseless. 
• European Data Shows Tens of Thousands of COVID Deaths and Nearly 2 Million Vaccine Injuries.  In a Washington Times op-ed in Sept. 2021, Robert Malone wrote “The FDA’s system to monitor COVID vaccine ‘adverse effects’ appears to undercount such events dramatically.  In contrast, the European Union’s far more accurate system yields alarming statistics.  As of July 31, 2021, the Eudravigilance 10 database has recorded 20,525 deaths and 1,960,607 injuries.”  Deborah Fuller, a microbiologist and vaccine researchers at the University of Washington, replied that “The European website reports deaths by any cause after a medicine or vaccine is taken regardless of whether there is a link.  That would be like counting the number of people who got in a car accident after eating a bowl of Wheaties for breakfast in the morning and then claiming eating Wheaties for breakfast causes car accidents.”  Malone’s claim was rated baseless. 
• There is a Rise in “Sudden Death” of Elite Athletes, Which is Partly Due to the COVID Vaccines: In November 2021, Robert Malone shared a video on Twitter that suggested the existence of a suspicious rise in sudden deaths of elite athletes.  The video mentioned the case of Jake West, a 17-year-old Indiana high school football player whose death was listed as sudden cardiac arrest.  But the video claimed that West had died from a vaccination for COVID-19.  As it turned out, West had died in 2013, some seven years before the start of the COVID pandemic, and he was found to have an undiagnosed heart condition.  In a December 2021 interview with Joe Rogan, Malone repeated this claim.  “Sudden deaths in high-performing athletes that are being observed all over the world, particularly in footballers where they’re just suddenly dropping.  Is it because they’ve been infected or because they’ve been jabbed?  And I think it’s a mixture of both.”  And in April 2022, Malone claimed with no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines were “damaging T-cell responses” which was “causing a form of AIDS.”  Dr. Ankit Shah, assistant professor of medicine at Georgetown University and a sports cardiologist, stated “I don’t know of any credibly reported case of an athlete having cardiac arrest either after a COVID illness or after vaccination for COVID — zero reports that I’m aware of.”  Malone’s claim was rated as baseless. 

In conclusion, Robert Malone falsely claims to be the inventor of mRNA vaccines.  He leverages this claim to lend credence to a significant number of false or misleading statements about the dangers of vaccines, and in particular about the dangers of mRNA-based vaccines.  He was a featured speaker at rallies against vaccines or vaccine mandates, including a January 2022 rally in Washington, D.C. and a March 2022 rally in Santa Barbara, CA.  He has been interviewed by anti-vaxxers or right-wing commentators such as Dr. Joseph Mercola, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Candace Owens and Joe Rogan.  Based on his anti-vaccination statements, Robert Malone was named by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices or ACIP.  But Malone was removed from the committee following a lawsuit where federal judge Brian Murphy ruled that the nominations to the panel violated federal law.  Malone took particular offense after the judge singled him out along with two other members who “appear to lack the qualifications and experience to constitute expertise in vaccines and immunization.”  Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, has described Robert Malone’s statements on vaccines as “extraordinarily dishonest and morally bankrupt.”

IV. Lyn Redwood:  

In June 2025, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) held a meeting of the CDC advisory panel.  In the past, that panel had constituted work groups that considered vaccine issues for months before meeting to make recommendations.  And at the ACIP meeting, a CDC expert on vaccines would address the group, review both positive and negative aspects of the issue under consideration, and answer questions.  However, this particular meeting (and subsequent ACIP meetings) was run totally differently.  First, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had recently fired the entire panel of 17 members.  Those members had been experts on vaccines whose credentials were carefully reviewed before their appointments.  But RFK Jr., claiming that the committee members suffered from “conflicts of interest,” replaced them with seven new members, many of whom were known anti-vaxxers (apparently, being an anti-vaxxer on a vaccination review committee is not considered a “conflict of interest” by Kennedy). 

The agenda for the June 2025 ACIP meeting was posted only days before the meeting.  And the presenter was not a vaccine expert, but Lyn Redwood, a nurse practitioner who had previously been the head of Children’s Health Defense.  Ms. Redwood is shown in Figure IV.1.  Ms. Redwood’s presentation claimed to focus on the dangers of thimerosal in multi-use vaccines.  Dr. William Shaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, stated that Ms. Redwood’s was a “highly opinionated, data-sparse, incomplete presentation … in recent years, it would not have been permitted in that form.”  Prior to the ACIP meeting, a CDC review on vaccines containing thimerosal was posted on the agency’s website for the ACIP meeting.  That review included references to many studies showing that thimerosal was safe and not known to cause injury.  However, the review was taken down before the meeting. 

Figure IV.1: Lyn Redwood, RN, a nurse practitioner who was the former head of the anti-vax organization Children’s Health Defense.  She gave a presentation to ACIP in June 2025 claiming that thimerosal in vaccines was dangerous.  However, she failed to cite any of the many studies showing that thimerosal was safe and was not known to cause any injuries in vaccines.

In 2004, the nonprofit Institute of Medicine (now known as the National Academy of Medicine), concluded that “The evidence favors rejection of a causal link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.”   Ms. Redwood did not cite this study, nor did she mention any of the numerous studies that showed no adverse health effects from thimerosal.  The World Health Organization’s vaccine safety committee has stated that “No additional studies of the safety of thimerosal in vaccines are warranted and that available evidence strongly supports the safety of the use of thimerosal as a preservative for inactivated vaccines … Thimerosal allows millions of people worldwide to have access to life-saving vaccines and, to date, no other safer and equally efficacious alternative has been identified for many vaccines.”  Once again, this review was not cited by Ms. Redwood.  Figure IV.2 shows an image pointing out that multiple studies have demonstrated no harm from thimerosal that is included in multi-dose vaccines. 

Figure IV.2: An image issued by the group 92Dragons.Health, pointing out that multiple studies have shown no ill effects of minute quantities of thimerosal that are present in multi-dose flu vaccines.  

Lyn Redwood’s presentation was incredibly one-sided and misleading.  In fact, in the materials she initially posted to the CDC website, there were two references to animal studies that allegedly supported her claims of damage from thimerosal.  Unfortunately, neither of those references existed – they were apparently generated by AI!  It should be mentioned that Lyn Redwood claims her son’s autism was caused by thimerosal in vaccines.  After the totally prejudiced presentation by Ms. Redwood, the ACIP committee voted to recommend removing thimerosal from multi-dose seasonal flu vaccines. 

The only negative vote was cast by Dr. Cody Meissner from the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine.  He stated “I’m not quite sure how to respond to this presentation.  This is an old issue that has been addressed in the past.  There is no evidence that thimerosal has caused a problem.”  Dr. Meissner went on to note the difference between the dangerous poison methylmercury and ethylmercury.  Many anti-vaxxers make statements about the dangers of thimerosal while failing to note that ethylmercury is regularly released from the body, while methylmercury builds up in the body’s tissues over time. 

Currently, Lyn Redwood is working in the Vaccine Safety Office at the CDC.  She has also been named a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, where she will continue to issue claims about vaccine injury that are not supported by evidence. 

V. Tracy Beth Høeg :  

Tracy Beth Høeg was born on June 23, 1979.  She is shown in Figure V.1.  She graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a BA in French Language in 2001.  After moving to Denmark, she obtained a doctoral degree in public health and epidemiology from the University of Denmark.  Høeg then became a serious runner, competing for positions on national teams in both the U.S. and Denmark.  She became active in debates over COVID policies; she argued that schools should not be closed during the pandemic but left open, a policy that was followed in some European countries.  She later became an advisor for Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who is currently the surgeon general in Florida, and who has made some outrageous statements regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines. 

Figure V.1: Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, a former official in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 

Her association with Dr. Ladapo probably raised her profile among the COVID skeptics and anti-vaxxers in the current Trump administration.  In April 2025, she was appointed as a special assistant to Dr. Marty Makary, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.  She was influential in two controversial decisions regarding U.S. vaccine policy.  At an ACIP committee meeting to discuss vaccine policy, she argued that the hepatitis B vaccine should no longer be given to newborns.  She cited countries like Denmark who do not universally vaccinate infants against hepatitis B.  She also argued that the U.S. should recommend fewer than 17-18 childhood vaccines.  Høeg singled out Denmark, which vaccinates against only 11 conditions.  Immediately following her presentation, Donald Trump issued an executive order recommending that the U.S. vaccine schedule be amended so that it includes only 11 vaccines. This change to the childhood vaccine schedule, promulgated as CDC recommendations, is currently the subject of two ongoing lawsuits, one filed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the second by 16 state Attorneys General.

In December 2025, Tracy Beth Høeg was named the acting director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.  However, in May 2026 Høeg was removed from that position.  She was fired after she refused to resign, very soon after Dr. Marty Makary resigned as FDA commissioner.  We do not know the reasons for her termination, but we are relieved that someone with these very extreme prejudices against childhood vaccines, and her attachment to the results of research studies that have been strongly criticized, is no longer serving in this important government position. 

The Guinea-Bissau Hepatitis B Controversy:  In Dec. 2025, it was revealed that the CDC had awarded a $1.6 million grant to two Danish researchers for a study of the transmission of Hepatitis B from mothers to babies.  The grant was unusual in that it was unsolicited; furthermore, the grant recipients Dr. Peter Aaby and his wife Christine Stabell Benn, had produced prior controversial results about the dangers of diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT) vaccines that contradicted findings from more than 400 studies over a 40-year period.  A Danish group had investigated the results from Dr. Aaby; in a Nov. 2025 paper in the journal Vaccine, they concluded that the group “have systematically over-interpreted the findings from their randomized trials” over a period of 25 years.  The review stated that Dr. Aaby and his collaborators “systematically selected and highlighted results that support their theories, while downplaying the fact that they did not confirm the primary hypothesis the trials were actually designed to test.”  The fact that the group received a $1.6 million grant from the CDC, despite having never submitted a proposal, was highly unusual, particularly during a period when billions of dollars in peer-reviewed grants were being cancelled. 

Dr. Aaby and his wife were faculty members at the University of Southern Denmark.  And Tracy Beth Høeg had previously been an adjunct faculty member at that university, before she was appointed to an FDA position.  At the Sept. 2025 meeting of the newly-formed ACIP committee appointed by RFK Jr. after he fired all 17 prior ACIP members, briefing materials presented to that committee included several references to the Danish research in Guinea-Bissau.   The new ACIP committee voted to abandon the practice of vaccinating all newborns for hepatitis B, a practice that had been in force for 34 years and had reduced infections in children by 99%. 

The proposed Guinea-Bissau study on transmission of hepatitis B to newborns caused international outrage.  It was noted that the study proposed to divide mothers into two groups.  Newborns in one group would be vaccinated while those in the second group would not receive a vaccine.  The World Health Organization noted that it was unethical to withhold the vaccine from half the participants, in a country where nearly 20% of the population is infected with the hepatitis B virus. WHO suggested that this project might cause “irreversible harm” to newborns in Guinea-Bissau.  In Feb. 2026, officials in Guinea-Bissau announced that they had stopped the controversial Trump-funded vaccine trial.  A New York Times headline about this announcement is shown in Figure V.2. The country’s health minister revealed that the local ethics committee never properly convened nor reviewed the protocol before it was initially approved.  However, this did not prevent the ACIP from recommending removing the requirement for all newborns to receive a hepatitis B vaccine.  Nor did it prevent President Trump from issuing an executive order, the “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations,” on August 10, 2026, reducing the recommended routine childhood immunization schedule from 17 or 18 diseases down to 11 universal vaccinations. 

Figure V.2: A headline from the New York Times reporting that the country of Guinea-Bissau has blocked the controversial study of hepatitis B transmission by Dr. Aaby and his colleagues. 

Trump’s executive order was criticized by many major groups of scientists and physicians.  The American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization noted that the order was unscientific and that it ignored decades of research demonstrating that the pre-existing vaccine schedules were safe and effective.  They were particularly critical of Trump’s recommendation to split the MMR vaccine shot into three separate shots; Trump had claimed that giving young children all three vaccines at once was potentially “quite lethal.”  After millions of doses of the MMR vaccine had been administered safely over a 50-year period, and with no scientific evidence to back up this claim, Politifact rated Trump’s claims a “pants on fire” falsehood.  Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy who chairs the Senate Health Committee, said that “Vaccines are extraordinarily safe.  Vaccines are effective.  Vaccines do not cause autism.  This is so wrong.” 

But RFK Jr. has been impressed with the Danish group’s African studies.  In June 2025, he cited a single study from that group as justification for cancelling more than $1 billion in funding for childhood vaccines in developing countries.  Dr. Aaby and collaborators had claimed that children in Guinea-Bissau who had received the DPT vaccine were significantly more likely to die from other complications than children who were not vaccinated.  However, in 2002 the Global Committee on Vaccine Safety examined data on DPT vaccination in several developing countries.  They concluded that there was “no negative effect of DTP vaccination”  (the global committee refers to the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussin vaccine as “DTP,” while the common American term is “DPT”). Nevertheless, RFK Jr. used the results of the single study to renege on $1 billion that the U.S. had promised to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance which has vaccinated over half the world’s children in developing countries.  Gavi, claimed Kennedy, had “neglected the key issue of vaccine safety.”  Withholding these funds will guarantee that in developing countries, infant deaths from diseases that could have been eliminated by vaccination will rise appreciably. 

VI.  Vicky Pebsworth, PhD, RN:  

Dr. Vicky Pebsworth is currently a member of ACIP.  She is shown in Figure VI.1.  She earned her doctorate in public health and nursing from the University of Michigan.  Dr. Pebsworth has served on the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.  She is currently the Pacific Region Director for the National Association of Catholic Nurses.  She is also the Research Director for the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC).  David Gorski is the head of the group Science-Based Medicine, and he authors a blog called Respectful Insolence.  He is one of the leading proponents of data-driven science.  According to Gorski, Dr. Pebsworth has “probably been anti-vax longer than RFK Jr. has.” 

Figure VI.1: Dr. Vicky Pebsworth.  She is currently a member of RFK Jr.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.  She has worked for several years as an officer in the anti-vaccine organization National Vaccine Information Center. 

Dr. Pebsworth’s activism stems from her insistence that her son’s autism was caused by his receiving an MMR vaccine at age 15 months.  It is understandable that people might assume that their child’s autism was caused by a reaction to a childhood vaccine.  The MMR vaccine is typically administered at about 1 year of age, while autism is often diagnosed in the range 18 months to 5 years.  In the absence of any scientific evidence to the contrary, it would seem credible to assume that vaccines might be a causative agent in developing autism.  However, we now have irrefutable evidence that vaccines do not cause autism – see the summary of tests of this hypothesis in Figure I.1.  There is no reason to doubt that Dr. Pebsworth is sincere in her belief that vaccines caused her son’s autism; on the other hand, the many clinical studies make it abundantly clear that she is wrong in this matter. 

Dr. Gorski mentioned that in the U.S. there were initially two separate groups claiming that autism was caused by vaccine injury.  The first stemmed from Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 paper claiming a direct relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism – a claim that has been totally debunked, as it is now known that Wakefield’s results were not only wrong but fraudulent.  A second group was concerned with claims that minute quantities of substances such as thimerosal (an ethylmercury compound used in a few vaccines, particularly those where vaccines are administered in multi-use doses) or aluminum (an adjuvant used to boost the efficacy of some vaccines) are at fault.  Extensive testing has shown that neither thimerosal nor aluminum has been linked to any adverse outcomes, and in particular no link to autism. 

However, that has not stopped Vicky Pebsworth. Seth Mnookin is a professor of science journalism who interviewed Dr. Pebsworth at one time.  He remarked, “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.”   Testifying in a court trial, Pebsworth claimed that “Increases in the number of vaccines in the CDC schedule may be causally related to increases in the rates of chronic illness.”  Figure VI.2 shows a figure that is used by anti-vaxxers to create the false implication that there is probably a link between vaccines and autism. 

Figure VI.2: A graph used by anti-vaxxers to imply that there is a link between vaccines and chronic disease rates.  The assumption is that both the number of CDC recommended childhood vaccines and rates of chronic disease are increasing at roughly the same rate. As we have shown in our post on America’s partisan mortality gap, chronic disease prevalence in the U.S. is highest in rural areas of the South and Appalachia, where vaccine rates are no higher than elsewhere in the country.

VII.  Conclusions

The fact that well-meaning but misinformed individuals are being named to prominent positions in Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control will have dire implications for public health in the U.S.  At the moment, RFK Jr. has sowed considerable confusion regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines.  His ACIP committee, packed with anti-vaxxers and contrarians, has made determinations about the vaccine schedule and the suitability of vaccines for infants that will insure the emergence of epidemics of childhood diseases that vaccines had essentially eradicated.  The five individuals listed above are now leveraging their mistaken beliefs that will lead to deaths from diseases such as measles, pertussis and diphtheria.  Already, the number of measles cases in 2025 and 2026 is far higher than in the previous few decades; and the U.S. will likely lose its status as “measles-free” since measles cases have exploded in states such as Texas, Utah, South Carolina and Pennsylvania.  Figure VII.1 shows measles cases in the U.S. from 1944 to 2007.  After the measles vaccine was issued in 1964, the number of U.S. measles cases plummeted and remained low.  After a measles epidemic erupted in 1989, a second dose of vaccine was recommended.  After that, the number of measles cases and deaths dropped to zero.  Although anti-vaxxers insist that other factors like better sanitation and nutrition contributed to the drop in measles cases, none of these measures other than vaccines would cause the number of measles cases to drop to zero. 

Figure VII.1: Number of measles cases in the U.S. from 1944 to 2007.  After the measles vaccine was released in 1964, the number of measles cases dropped precipitously.  The cases remained low until a measles epidemic in 1989; at this time, a second dose of measles vaccine was recommended; the number of measles cases then dropped essentially to zero. 

But Figure VII.2 shows the recent rise in measles cases in the past two years.  The vaccination rate in the U.S. had been dropping in recent years, due in part to unfounded claims by anti-vaxxers that vaccine injury was widespread, and also assertions that measles was not a dangerous illness.  As a result there have been several recent outbreaks of measles, all of them in areas with groups of citizens with very low immunization rates.  There were 2,289 recorded cases of measles in the U.S. in 2025, and as of October 1, there have been 3,887 confirmed cases of measles in 2026.  These are the highest levels of measles cases that the U.S. has experienced in the past 30 years.  Figure VII.2 shows weekly rates of measles in 2025 and through January of 2026. 

Figure VII.2: Weekly U.S. measles cases over a one-year period from Jan. 2025 to Jan. 2026.  In January 2025 a measles epidemic originating in West Texas spiked a large increase in measles cases.  Other outbreaks in areas such as Utah continued through 2025.  At the start of 2026, a measles outbreak occurred in South Carolina, and currently a measles outbreak is taking place in Pennsylvania and New York. 

A dominant factor in these measles outbreaks is declining rates of vaccination.  The anti-vaccination movement has contributed greatly to these increasing numbers.  They spread unfounded claims of widespread vaccine injuries.  In addition, they insist that all individuals should be able to refuse vaccines. A major reason that U.S. measles cases and deaths went to zero by the year 2000 was state rules that required children in public schools to undergo a schedule of vaccines against childhood illnesses.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been a central figure in spreading vaccine misinformation.  He participated in an anti-vaccination campaign in Samoa, which experienced a major measles outbreak that infected at least 5,707 people and caused 83 deaths.  In the West Texas outbreak, RFK Jr. initially played down the importance of vaccination.  Most recently, he has refused to acknowledge at least 2 measles-related deaths in the Pennsylvania outbreak. 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. should be held personally accountable for all measles deaths in the U.S.  He repeatedly encourages people to refuse getting vaccinated, he downplays the seriousness of measles (10% of people who get measles are hospitalized, and about 1 person in 1,000 who contracts measles dies from it), and he has stocked the ACIP committee with anti-vaxxers.  Kennedy’s combination of arrogance and stupidity is breathtaking.  Together with his hand-picked science deniers, he is leading the U.S. backwards, giving new life to childhood disease and death that had been previously obliterated.  And all of this under the slogan “Make America Healthy Again.”

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