Robert Malone Resigns From ACIP After Internal Squabble

from the bye-bye dept

Even at the best of times, the hallmark of RFK Jr.’s Health & Human Services is chaos. Whether it’s misinformation on vaccines and other public health matters, his unique ability to exit very smart people from public health agencies, or his desire to upend established government health protocols, it’s a constant frenzy when Kennedy is in charge.

But these aren’t the best of times for Kennedy. In fact, it appears that both legal and political mechanisms are starting to mete out consequences for all the nonsense going on at HHS. It was only days ago that a federal court issued an injunction on the CDC’s changes to vaccination schedules since Kennedy remade ACIP in his image, and in fact the new ACIP appointments themselves may be illegal. Almost simultaneously, reports came out that the White House is attempting to yank Kennedy and HHS out of the spotlight due to their becoming a political liability heading into the midterms.

And now, in what will both be a reaction to and furtherance of all of that chaos, Robert Malone has announced that he is leaving ACIP altogether. Malone is a proud anti-vaxxer and claims to have “invented” mRNA technology, a claim that is heavily disputed, to put it mildly. In the wake of the court’s injunction on ACIP and its recommendations for vaccine schedules, there was reporting that Kennedy was planning to disband ACIP once again and remake it with all new members as a quicker fix than appealing the court’s decision. As a result, Malone jumped straight to social media to claim that’s exactly what happened, before later retracting his statement.

On Thursday, Malone claimed on social media that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had disbanded ACIP and planned to completely reconstitute it (again), without appealing the judge’s ruling or defending Kennedy’s ACIP picks from the judge’s claims that they were unqualified. But soon after, Malone retracted his claim, saying it was a miscommunication and that disbanding ACIP was merely one of the “options being considered.”

In other words, he took half-baked information and made definitive claims to the masses, claims that turned out to be incorrect. So, you know, basically on par with all of the nonsense he’s spewed about vaccines. HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon then had to issue a statement to the press to clean all of this up, stating that anything that doesn’t come directly from him or HHS brass was “baseless speculation”.

And it was that, of all things, that caused Malone to quit.

Malone told Roll Call today that Nixon’s response was what led to his departure. “After Andrew trashing me with the press, I am done with the CDC and ACIP,” Malone said in a text message Tuesday morning. “That was the last straw.”

“Suffice to say I do not like drama, and have better things to do,” he added.

And then he went to the New York Times as well.

“Hundreds of hours of uncompensated labor, incredible hate from many quarters, hostile press, internal bickering, weaponized leaking, sabotage—I have better things to do,” he said.

On the one hand, I don’t think much of Malone’s qualifications for being a member of ACIP, so I’m not exactly sad to see him exit stage left. But it is interesting to see that the impression of chaos, infighting, bickering, and internal backstabbing that you get viewing HHS from the outside is mirrored by someone on the inside.

This would be funny if this weren’t a matter of public health. If there weren’t a measles outbreak that is still ongoing in this country (we’re already at 1,487 CDC confirmed cases this year). If some of the public and some doctors didn’t take what comes out of this very important government agency seriously.

But all those things are true. The chaos has to end. And for that to happen, RFK Jr. must go.

Filed Under: acip, anti-vaxxers, cdc, health & human services, rfk jr., robert malone, vaccines