One of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s picks for a vaccine advisory panel stepped down before the panel held its first meeting Wednesday.
Dr. Michael Ross was one of eight people Kennedy chose for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, after he fired the previous 17 members of the panel.
Kennedy said Ross was a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at George Washington University and Virginia Commonwealth University. But News4 found Ross had not worked at either school in years.
In a statement, an HHS spokesperson said Ross withdrew from ACIP during a mandatory review of each member’s financial holdings, without providing further details. It is unclear what his financial holdings are.
An online search of Ross’ name showed his bio on the site for Havencrest, a private equity fund. He’s listed as an operating partner of the company.
“A Professor of Pediatrics at George Washington University and a Professor of OB-GYN at Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr. Ross serves on the boards of multiple private healthcare companies,” the bio states.
A spokesperson for GW University told News4 on June 13 that Ross hasn’t taught there in eight years, and VCU said Ross hasn’t taught at their school in four years.
Kennedy’s other selections for ACIP include some well-known vaccine critics. Martin Kulldorff was one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a pandemic strategy that decried lockdowns and advocated for letting people at minimal risk of dying get exposed to Covid.
Kulldorff — the new ACIP chair — struck a combative tone as the meeting began Wednesday.
“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,” Kulldorff said. “Such labels undermine critical scientific inquiry, and it further feeds the flames of vaccine hesitancy.”
Kulldorff also said that he opposed federal health agencies’ decision to temporarily pause the rollout of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine due to reports of rare blood clots in young women.
“There was a shortage of vaccines and people were dying, so I think that pause of the J&J vaccine was inappropriate,” Kulldorff said. “So in that case, I was, I guess, the most pro-vaccine person among vaccine scientists in this country. So it’s kind of a little bit ridiculous that then the media says that I am anti-vaccine.”
He also announced the creation of two new work groups, subdivisions of the independent panel that review vaccine data and develop recommendation options to present at ACIP meetings.
One will look at the cumulative effect of recommended childhood vaccines, including potential interaction effects between the shots. Another will re-evaluate vaccines that haven’t been reviewed in more than seven years, Kulldorff said, including hepatitis B vaccines and a combination vaccine that protects against measles, mumps, rubella and varicella.
“This was supposed to be a regular practice of the ACIP, but it has not been done in a thorough and systematic way,” he said at the meeting.
Kulldorff, Malone, Meissner and Pebsworth are included in the dedication of Kennedy’s 2021 book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” about the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The acknowledgments were first noted by STAT.
NBC News contributed to this report.
from Local – NBC4 Washington https://ift.tt/2qZCJo8
0 Comments