Hero scientist Martin Kulldorff takes over CDC vaccine committee chair, gives epic intro speech saying health agencies must rebuild the public's trust
Vaccines are not all good or all bad, no questions are off limits and the CDC wants to hear the concerns of the public, says new ACIP chairman
Martin Kulldorff, of Great Barrington Declaration fame, chaired his first meeting of the CDC’s vaccine committee (called ACIP) this week after being named to the position by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
He opened with an epic statement on Wednesday morning, telling scientists, doctors, and the general public that things were going to be very different going forward with vaccine policy in America.
“ACIP recommendations have an impact on the health and lives of Americans from infancy to old age,” Kulldorff began. “Nothing is more precious to those of us on this panel than our children and grandchildren. And likewise, we know there is nothing more important to parents than the health of their children. Our recommendations cover the lives of over 70 million mostly healthy children. Secretary Kennedy has given this panel a clear mandate to use evidence-based medicine when making vaccine recommendations, and that is what we will do.”
“Vaccines are not all good or bad,” he continued, addressing the six members of the committee, all of them newly appointed. “If you think that all vaccines are safe and effective and want them all, or if you think that all vaccines are dangerous and don’t want any of them, then you don’t have much use for us. You already know what you want. But, if you with to know which vaccines are suitable for you and your children, and at what ages, then we will provide you with evidence-based recommendations.”
Martin Kulldorff is a Swede who worked as a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School until 2021 when he was fired for not getting the Covid vaccine. He, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford (now the head of the NIH) were the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration.
“I’m very glad that there’s so much interest in the work of this committee, and I want to especially welcome members of the public with us today remotely,” Kulldorff said. “It is wonderful that you take an interest in vaccines, medicine and science. If you have questions or concerns about the safety or efficacy of vaccines, we want to hear them. That is the scientific method, and it is natural to ask questions. That is what the CDC subject matter experts do; it’s what the public does, and it is what we will do. No questions should be off limits.”
He then turned to address the media coverage of the new committee members, who Kennedy appointed immediately after dismissing all of the former committee members earlier this month.
“Some media outlets have been very harsh on the new members of this committee, issuing false accusations and making concerted efforts to put scientists in either a pro- or anti-vaccine box,” he said. “Such labels undermine critical scientific inquiry and it further feeds the flames of vaccine hesitancy. As Secretary Kennedy has eloquently stated, opposing mercury in fish does not make you anti-fish, and opposing mercury in vaccines does not make you anti-vaccine. In fact, to thoroughly scrutinize and ensure the safety and efficacy of vaccines is a pro-vaccine position. Just like the promotion of aviation safety is a pro-airline position. Millions of Americans board an airplane each day. While airlines fiercely compete when it comes to schedules, ticket pricing and service, there’s one thing they collaborate very closely on, and that is safety. If one airline ignores safety concerns and the plane crashes, that affects the public trust and our willingness to travel with all other airlines. The same is true for vaccines. When there are unexpected adverse reactions, or when corners are cut concerning the safety of one vaccine, that affects all other vaccines, reducing vaccine uptake and coverage. Rebuilding public trust through sound science is very important. For example, the inflated promises about the coronavirus vaccines preventing transmission and disease and Covid vaccine mandates have decreased overall public trust in vaccines. Messages stemming from evidence-based science on the safety and efficacy of vaccines is in the best interests of the public, industry and public health institutions.”
He ended with this:
“Lastly, I wish to address my fellow scientists in the audience. It is no secret to anyone in this room that confidence in public health institutions, including CDC, FDA, NIH and university leadership fell during the pandemic and that it is at an all-time low. Most scientists are honestly seeking the truth in their research, and that includes scientists here at CDC. We must work to rebuild integrity and trust and we do that by honestly recognizing past mistakes, adhering to evidence-based medicine and encouraging open scientific discourse, as uncomfortable as that may be. I hope you join me in this quest.”
Kulldorff is a biostatistician and epidemiologist who has worked on vaccine safety for more than 20 years. He’s been closely associated with the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink, a vaccine safety surveillance system, and previously served on two ACIP working groups, one of them for the Covid vaccine. He said on Wednesday, in introducing himself to the committee, that he was removed from that working group for objecting to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine being paused by the CDC, saying he believed it should have been paused only for young women, who had shown increased risk of stroke, but not for older Americans. He added that he thought more lives would have been saved if the CDC’s recommendation for the J&J vaccine had not been withdrawn.
In October of 2020, Martin Kulldorff got two other scientists to meet him in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to record a video objecting to total lockdowns, saying children and the working class were being hurt the most and the health of all Americans was suffering due to isolation and limited health screenings. The three scientists ended up writing a declaration on the fly and releasing it to the world on October 5, 2020 calling for an end to mass lockdowns and instead urging “focused protection” — quarantining the elderly while allowing most others to continue their normal lives.
Kulldorff was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School at the time. He was fired in 2021 for refusing to get the Covid vaccine.
“I did not take the Covid vaccine because I already had immunity, superior immunity, from having had Covid,” he said to this fellow committee members on Wednesday. “I was astonished that universities threw away two and a half thousand years of knowledge about infection-acquired immunity when they unscientifically and unethically fired people for not having the Covid vaccine.”
The meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) took place over two days, June 25 and 26, in Atlanta. It was the first time the committee has met since Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. (The CDC is a sub-agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.)
Over the two days, and following presentations from CDC staff, the committee voted:
To approve, by a vote of 5-2, one dose of clesrovimab, a monoclonal antibody, for infants whose mothers are not protected by maternal respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccination. Clesrovimab is one of two RSV monoconal antibody products available.
To approve, by a vote of 7-0, the updated Vaccines for Children Program resolution for prevention of RSV.
To reaffirm recommendation, by a vote of 6-0, for routine annual influenza vaccination of all persons aged over six months who do not have contraindications.
To recommend, by a vote of 5-1, for children 18 years and younger to receive seasonal influenzas vaccines only in single-dose formulations that are free of thimerosal as a preservative.
To recommend, by a vote of 5-1, that pregnant women receive seasonal influenza vaccines only in single-dose formulations that are free of thimerosal as a preservative.
To recommend, by a vote of 5-1, that all adults receive seasonal influenza vaccines only in single-dose formulations that are free of thimerosal as a preservative.
Recommendations made by ACIP are reviewed by the director of the CDC and can be either adopted or rejected.
Susan Monarez is the nominee to head the CDC.
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So.
These new guys unanimously greenlit flu jabz.
A largely useless jab.
They also greenlit RSV jabz for newborns.
Known to be lethal for some.
This new panel is just as jab-happy as their Big Pharma backed predecessors.
Great speech. The best part is the analogy to airline safety. Perhap an even better analogy is to meat inspection. After the novel The Jungle came out around 1900, readers were so disgusted by what they learned about meatpacking that the meat industry realized they needed goverment inspections to regain public trust.