Popular Rationalism by James Lyons-Weiler
After 61 Years of Silence, The Media Suddenly Discovers Conflicts of Interest at ACIP—The Very Moment RFK Jr. Initiates Reform MovesAfter 61 Years of Silence and Complicity, Reuters and AP New Discover ACIP COIs. The hypocrisy is thick, and their hubris beyond comprehension. For thirty years, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) operated as one of the most powerful medical bodies in the United States—largely in the shadows, shielded from public scrutiny by a media that, astonishingly, never thought to ask even the most basic questions.
This was the committee that determined which vaccines would be added to the official U.S. immunization schedule. Their recommendations, once ratified, triggered cascading mandates: school requirements, insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and billions in automatic public funding via the Vaccines for Children program.
With that level of power came astonishing conflicts of interest.
Members of ACIP held patents on vaccines they later endorsed, received industry funding, and frequently pivoted between public health roles and private sector consultancies. Some went on to work in the very industry they had been regulating. Others, still on the committee, co-authored studies used to justify their policy positions.
This was never secret.
In 2000, the U.S. House Government Reform Committee held hearings on conflicts at ACIP. GAO audits confirmed the concerns. Critics in the academic and medical communities raised red flags, repeatedly, in public forums.
And yet not once—not one time—did Reuters, Associated Press, The New York Times, or any other legacy outlet publish a major feature scrutinizing ACIP’s conflicts of interest. No longform documentaries. No Pulitzer-hungry investigations. No editorial board inquiries into whether a vaccine committee—entrusted with shaping the future of children’s health—should be allowed to operate like a cartel of self-interested consultants.
They didn’t just ignore the story. They buried it.
Now—suddenly, grotesquely, transparently—the media has found its voice.
Why?
Because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all seventeen members of ACIP in one sweeping action.
Within 72 hours of that announcement, Reuters published a headline that would have been unimaginable in any prior decade:
“Kennedy’s new vaccine adviser was expert witness against Merck vaccine.”
The article breathlessly reports that Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a former Harvard Medical School professor and internationally respected biostatistician, had “billed about $33,000” as an expert witness in litigation involving Merck’s Gardasil vaccine. He had received a $4,000 retainer.
Reuters then ominously cites ACIP’s internal guidelines:
“Under ACIP’s rules, committee members cannot serve as a ‘paid litigation consultant or expert witness in litigation involving a vaccine manufacturer’ during their tenure.”
But Kulldorff’s work was before his appointment. No rule was broken. No deception occurred. Everything was disclosed. So what’s their point, really?
More:
https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/after-30-years-of-silence-the-media?isFreemail=true&post_id=165865183&publication_id=475124&r=cjt3t&triedRedirect=true
