Robert Malone has a history of arguing against the data. He has called for an end to the use of mRNA vaccines for COVID despite the well-established fact that they reduce mortality and severe illness. He has promoted discredited COVID treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, dismissing studies that show they are ineffective against the coronavirus. Recently, he called reports about two girls in West Texas dying from the measles “misinformation,” even though the doctors who treated the girls were unequivocal in their conclusion.
Now Malone will have a leading role in shaping America’s vaccine policy. He is one of eight new members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing the 17 former members whom Robert F. Kennedy Jr. relieved of their duties on Monday. The re-formed committee will be responsible for guiding the CDC’s vaccine policy, recommending when and by whom vaccines should be used. The doctors and researchers who make up the new ACIP are all, to some degree, ideological allies of Kennedy, who has spent decades undermining public confidence in vaccines. And Malone arguably has the most extreme views of the group.
Malone, a physician and an infectious-disease researcher, readily acknowledges that he defies mainstream scientific consensus. Just this week, he wrote in his popular Substack newsletter that readers should embrace the anti-vax label, as he has done, and oppose “the madness of the vaccine mania that has swept public health and government.” (This was only a day before Kennedy pledged that the new ACIP members would not be “ideological anti-vaxxers.”)
He is also openly conspiratorial. In his best-selling book, Lies My Gov’t Told Me: And the Better Future Coming, Malone alleges that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s grants to news publications (including The Atlantic) were payments “to smear” vaccine critics, and accuses Anthony Fauci of fearmongering to amass power. Last fall, Malone and his wife, Jill, released a follow-up, PsyWar, making the case that the U.S. government is engaged in a vague but diabolical program of psychological warfare against its own citizens. According to the Malones, the CIA, FBI, and Defense Department, along with a “censorship-industrial complex,” have granted the U.S. government “reality-bending information control capabilities.” (They also claim that “sexual favors are routinely exchanged to seal short-term alliances, both within agencies and between contractors and ‘Govies.’”) They envision this corruption spawning a postapocalyptic future in which guns, ammo, horses, and “a well-developed network of like-minded friends” might be necessary for survival. Malone, who lives on a horse farm in Virginia, appears to be already well prepared.
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Malone’s rise to contrarian glory began in the summer of 2021, when public-health officials were urging hesitant Americans to roll up their sleeves for the new, mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. Back in the 1980s, Malone had conducted research on delivering RNA and DNA into cells, which, he and his co-authors suggested in a 1990 paper, “may provide alternative approaches to vaccine development.” That early work lent credibility to his dire warnings that the COVID shots hadn’t been adequately tested, as perhaps did his grandfatherly beard and professorial demeanor. His popularity grew with appearances on Tucker Carlson’s and Glenn Beck’s shows, where he questioned the safety and effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines while touting—and, critics said, overstating—his own role in the development of the underlying technology. It was Malone’s conspiratorial musings on The Joe Rogan Experience that prompted several famous musicians, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, to pull their music from Spotify in protest of the platform’s contract with Rogan. Today, Malone’s newsletter, where he shares his anti-vaccine claims and often praises Kennedy, has more than 350,000 subscribers.
Kennedy and Malone have long been intertwined. Kennedy wrote the foreword to Lies My Gov’t Told Me and wrote an endorsement for PsyWar, alleging that the same techniques that the Malones described shaped public reaction to the assassinations of his father and uncle. Kennedy’s 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci—which alleges that the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases spread corruption and fraud—is dedicated to Malone, among others. Since Kennedy was appointed as Health and Human Services secretary, many of his allies in the anti-vaccine world have accused him of moderating his views to be more palatable to lawmakers. But among anti-vaccine activists, Malone’s appointment to the advisory board was taken as evidence that Kennedy remains on their side.
Public-health experts, by contrast, are horrified. “I think that the scientific and medical community won’t trust this committee, and for good reason,” Paul Offit, a pediatrician and former member of the advisory group, told me. He’s heard from fellow public-health experts who are considering forming their own committees to weigh the evidence, “because they won’t trust the conclusions of these people.” Sean O’Leary, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ liaison to ACIP, told me he was “deeply concerned” with RFK’s decision to entirely remake the committee. “This maneuver really endangers public health. It endangers children,” he said. He worries that it will lead to disease, suffering, and death among adults and children alike. (Neither Malone nor HHS responded to requests for comment. On X, Malone promised to “do my best to serve with unbiased objectivity and rigor.”)
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Malone’s appointment is perhaps the strongest sign yet of Kennedy’s willingness to appoint ideological crusaders into powerful government roles. ACIP’s recommendations are nonbinding, but historically, the CDC has almost always hewn to them. The committee’s verdicts will help determine which vaccines insurance companies and the federal government pay for, decisions that will inevitably shape countless Americans’ immunization habits. Malone’s new role requires in-depth, good-faith examinations of scientific evidence. But he has already earned a reputation for rejecting it.