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Tag: kakistocracy

Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines

RFK Jr. names new members of CDC’s vaccine advisory panel

Published June 11, 2025

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Published by: STAT
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By Chelsea Cirruzzo, Isabella Cueto, Andrew Joseph, Helen Branswell

WASHINGTON — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday unveiled the names of the eight new members who will sit on the panel of experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy, and said they would review the current vaccine schedule, as well as evaluate new shots.

The new members include several well-known critics of vaccines.

“The slate includes highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians,” Kennedy wrote in a post on X.

The appointment comes just days after Kennedy dismissed every member of the committee, calling for a “clean slate” with new members. The committee is scheduled to hold a meeting later this month.

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Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines

Kennedy dismisses entire US CDC vaccine panel, replacing all 17 members

Published June 9, 2025

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Published by: Reuters
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By Ahmed Aboulenein, Michael Erman, Julie Steenhuysen

WASHINGTON, June 9 (Reuters) – Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired all members sitting on a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel of vaccine experts and is reconstituting the committee, his department said on Monday.

Kennedy removed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement, and is in the process of considering new members to replace them.

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Topic: Bethesda DeclarationView all posts for the topic: Bethesda Declaration

NIH scientists publish declaration criticizing Trump’s deep cuts in public health research

Published June 9, 2025

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Published by: The Associated Press
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By Calvin Woodward, Nathan Ellgren

WASHINGTON (AP) — In his confirmation hearings to lead the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya pledged his openness to views that might conflict with his own. “Dissent,” he said, ”is the very essence of science.”

That commitment is being put to the test.

On Monday, scores of scientists at the agency sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the Bethesda Declaration, challenging “policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.”

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Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines

Exclusive: CDC expert resigns from COVID vaccines advisory role, sources say

Published June 3, 2025

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Published by: Reuters
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By Julie Steenhuysen, Michael Erman, Dan Levine

Pediatric infectious disease expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos of the U.S. CDC resigned on Tuesday as co-leader of a working group that advises outside experts on COVID-19 vaccines and is leaving the agency, two sources familiar with the move told Reuters.

Panagiotakopoulos said in an email to work group colleagues that her decision to step down was based on the belief she is “no longer able to help the most vulnerable members” of the U.S. population.

In her role at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s working group of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, she co-led the gathering of information on topics for presentation.

Her resignation comes one week after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic who oversees the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, said the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women had been removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule.

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Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines

RFK Jr.’s stance on Covid vaccines for pregnant women is profoundly unethical

Published June 3, 2025

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Published by: STAT
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By Ruth R. Faden

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy’s proposal to end the government’s existing Covid vaccine recommendation for healthy pregnant women, if enacted, will be a major setback to decades’ worth of efforts to advance the health of pregnant people and their babies.

It also profoundly unethical.

Pregnant people are consistently left behind in biomedical R&D in ways that are deeply harmful to the health of both mother and child. In the decade before the Covid pandemic, consensus reports emerged denouncing this pregnancy evidence gap and providing road maps for how to ethically generate evidence during pregnancy within the confines of existing research regulations. I co-led one of these efforts, the PREVENT project, initiated in response to the Zika epidemic and completed in fall 2019. PREVENT specifically focused on how to ethically include pregnant women in the development and deployment of new vaccines for emerging pandemic threats.

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Topic: avian fluView all posts for the topic: avian flu

Cancelling funding for mRNA vaccine is both risky and foolish

Published June 2, 2025

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Published by: The Ottawa Citizen
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By Raywat Deonandan

With Donald Trump’s second administration, disruptive news seems to arise on a daily basis. Most concerning for clinicians and health scientists in Canada and around the world was Trump’s appointment of anti-vaccination zealot Robert Kennedy Jr. to the enormously influential position of Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy’s ideological dismantling of the U.S.’s vaunted health research apparatus has been at speeds surprising even to his most ardent critics.

But his recent decision to cancel a nearly $600-million contract with vaccine manufacturer Moderna might be among his most shortsighted and destructive moves, with ripple effects globally.

The contract with the mRNA pioneer, signed under the Joe Biden administration, was meant to fund the development, testing and licensing of vaccines targeting particular flu strains, including the strain responsible for the dreaded avian flu, H5N1. Many scientists fear that H5N1 could become the next world-stopping infectious disease pandemic.

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Topic: disinformationView all posts for the topic: disinformation

‘Make America Healthy Again’ report updated to remove nonexistent studies

Published May 29, 2025

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Published by: Agence France-Presse / Vermont Community Newspaper Group
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By Marisha Goldhamer, Bill McCarthy

The White House downplayed questions about its flagship report on children’s health, but edited the document Thursday after authors listed in the paper confirmed it cited studies that do not exist.

The highly anticipated “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) report was released on May 22 by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the presidential commission tasked with assessing drivers of childhood chronic disease.

But authors and publishers of at least four studies listed in the original document told AFP they or their organizations were credited with papers they did not write — or that never existed.

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Topic: kakistocracyView all posts for the topic: kakistocracy

Loss Of MRNA, Bird Flu Vaccines Threatens Our Biosecurity

Published May 29, 2025

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Published by: Forbes
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By Judy Stone

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it’s canceling a $760 million contract with Moderna for a bird flu vaccine, saying that further development “was not scientifically or ethically justifiable.” The cancellation comes after Moderna received positive interim data from a trial testing the safety and immunogenicity of its H5N1 bird flu vaccine candidate. The fact that the Biden administration had approved the contract with Moderna did not help.

This administration’s distrust of mRNA vaccines has been apparent. In February, Rep. Adam Schiff stated that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “promoted the lie that mRNA vaccines alter human DNA.” Kennedy has previously called mRNA COVID-19 vaccinations dangerous. Further, at least seven states have proposed GOP-sponsored legislation banning or limiting mRNA vaccines and fueling mistrust in vaccines.

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Topic: kakistocracyView all posts for the topic: kakistocracy

Doctors fear ‘devastating consequences’ for pregnant people after RFK Jr order on Covid-19 boosters

Published May 28, 2025

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Published by: The Guardian
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By Jessica Glenza

Kennedy’s unilateral decision to change the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule for Covid-19 vaccines demonstrates once again why he is completely unqualified to be the HHS secretary.

In Congressional testimony on May 14, Kennedy said, ‘I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.’ Yet two weeks later he is making arbitrary public health decisions, defying norms, and with no accountability.

— Dr Robert Steinbrook, research director at consumer rights group Public Citizen
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Topic: kakistocracyView all posts for the topic: kakistocracy

RFK Jr says no COVID vaccines for healthy children, pregnant women

Published May 27, 2025

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Published by: CIDRAP
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By Stephanie Soucheray

Today Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made another sweeping change to the US vaccine landscape, saying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has removed its recommendation of the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women.

“I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that, as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant woman has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule,” Kennedy said in a video message, flanked by Martin Makary, MD, MPH, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, director of the National Institutes of Health.

The move comes just 1 week after the FDA announced—via an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine—that the vaccine would now be offered only to adults 65 years and older or those with underlying conditions that made them vulnerable to severe COVID-19.

Today’s video message is short and direct but is already causing confusion, as pregnancy itself is considered a risk factor for severe COVID-19.

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Topic: kakistocracyView all posts for the topic: kakistocracy

The FDA’s misguided new Covid vaccine policy repeats past mistakes

Published May 21, 2025

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Published by: MSNBC
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By Dr. Kavita Patel

The Food and Drug Administration is rewriting America’s Covid vaccine playbook — and not for the better. Its new guidance would trade the clarity and reach of our current vaccination strategy for a confusing age-based and risk-based framework that simply doesn’t fit the realities of Americans’ health. As a primary care physician who has spent years on the front lines of pandemic response, I see this as a step backward that ignores both the lessons of our past and the needs of our most vulnerable patients.

The FDA’s proposed framework eerily mirrors the segmentation we attempted in fall 2021 with Covid boosters. When boosters initially rolled out in September 2021, the FDA authorized them only for specific groups: adults 65 and older, those 18-64 with high-risk conditions, and those with occupational exposure risks.

The approach failed. As someone who had to explain these complex eligibility requirements to confused patients, I can attest to the chaos it created. This limited approach created tremendous confusion among health care providers and patients alike. Pharmacies and clinics struggled to verify eligibility, people misunderstood their risk category and, ultimately, many high-risk individuals who genuinely needed boosters never received them.

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Topic: pro-virus policiesView all posts for the topic: pro-virus policies

RFK Jr. eyes reversing CDC’s Covid-19 vaccine recommendation for children

Published April 22, 2025

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Published by: Politico
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By Adam Cancryn

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is weighing pulling the Covid-19 vaccine from the government’s list of recommended immunizations for children, two people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO.

The directive under consideration would remove the Covid shot from the childhood vaccine schedule maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and widely used by physicians to guide vaccine distribution, marking Kennedy’s most significant move yet to shake up the nation’s vaccination practices.

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Federal cuts threaten to close Pennsylvania lab that certifies N95s and other respirators in JuneIllustration of a white N95 respirator torn into two pieces, with violet background. Based on image by Rossie C S from Pixabay.
Topic: N95 respiratorsView all posts for the topic: N95 respirators

Federal cuts threaten to close Pennsylvania lab that certifies N95s and other respirators in June

Published April 17, 2025

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Published by: Pennsylvania Capital-Star
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By Ian Karbal

The Pennsylvania laboratory that certifies all of the country’s NIOSH-approved respirators is on the chopping block. HHS is stonewalling employees who raise questions.

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Topic: war on scienceView all posts for the topic: war on science

Internal budget document reveals extent of Trump’s proposed health cuts

Published April 16, 2025

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Published by: The Washington Post
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By Lena H. Sun, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Rachel Roubein, Joel Achenbach, Lauren Weber

The Trump administration is seeking to deeply slash budgets for federal health programs, a roughly one-third cut in discretionary spending by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a preliminary budget document obtained by The Washington Post.

The HHS budget draft, known as a “passback,” offers the first full look at the health and social service priorities of President Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget as it prepares to send his 2026 fiscal year budget request to Congress. It shows how the Trump administration plans to reshape the federal health agencies that oversee food and drug safety, manage the nation’s response to infectious-disease threats and drive biomedical research.

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Topic: anti-vaxxersView all posts for the topic: anti-vaxxers

Health secretary RFK Jr. declares certain vaccines have ‘never worked,’ flummoxing scientists

Published April 10, 2025

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Published by: STAT
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By Helen Branswell

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed another unorthodox view on vaccines, with the long-time vaccine critic declaring that vaccines for respiratory bugs that target a sole part of the pathogen they are meant to protect against do not work.

The claim was dismissed as erroneous by vaccine experts, who were befuddled by the secretary’s theory, espoused during an interview with CBS News.

Kennedy made the claim in explaining a controversial recent decision by political appointees at the Food and Drug Administration to delay granting a full license to Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine, which is still given under an emergency use authorization or EUA.

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Topic: war on scienceView all posts for the topic: war on science

How Trump 2.0 is slashing NIH-backed research — in charts

Published April 10, 2025

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Published by: Nature
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By Max Kozlov, Chris Ryan

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has terminated nearly 800 research projects at a breakneck pace, wiping out significant chunks of funding to entire scientific fields, finds a Nature analysis of the unprecedented cuts.

The administration of US President Donald Trump began purging NIH-funded studies on topics that it deems problematic less than 50 days ago, continuously expanding its list to include research on topics ranging from COVID-19 to misinformation. Hundreds of the 30,000-plus scientists funded by the NIH yearly have been forced to halt their work after receiving notices that their research “no longer effectuates agency priorities”, and some have had to fire personnel or even shut down their laboratories.

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Topic: war on scienceView all posts for the topic: war on science

Top scientists pen letter calling for end to ‘assault on U.S. science’

Published April 1, 2025

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Published by: CBC Radio
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By Catherine Zhu

Nearly 2,000 doctors, researchers, and scientists have signed an open letter calling for an end to what they describe as the Trump administration’s “wholesale assault on U.S. science.”

The letter, written by 13 scientists from disciplines including medicine, climate science and economics, urges Americans to demand their Congress protect scientific funding and integrity.

The signatories, all members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, wrote that the Trump administration is “destabilizing this enterprise by gutting funding for research, firing thousands of scientists, removing public access to scientific data, and pressuring researchers to alter or abandon their work on ideological grounds.”

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Topic: war on scienceView all posts for the topic: war on science

Rollout of ‘miracle’ HIV prevention drug is threatened by Trump cuts to global AIDS relief program

Published April 1, 2025

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Published by: STAT
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By Ed Silverman, Jason Mast

The Trump administration’s enormous cuts to a global AIDS relief program threaten to upend the planned rollout of a groundbreaking HIV prevention drug that was expected to save countless lives.

The medicine, lenacapavir, made by Gilead Sciences, has caused a stir because clinical trial data showed a single set of injections every six months could provide virtually complete protection against infection, a form of prevention known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or (PrEP). The drug, which is under regulatory review, has raised hopes that the deadly infectious disease can be mitigated around the globe. Early data for an even newer formulation suggest it might need to be given only once a year. “This is magical,” UNAIDS chief Winnie Byanyima declared last year.

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