Fired vaccine panel experts received thousands from Big Pharma

Several of the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired on Monday received tens of thousands of dollars from pharmaceutical companies in the past decade, according to HHS disclosure records.

Kennedy justified his decision to fire all 17 ACIP members and hire new ones by writing in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that the board “has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”