Dr. @RobertWMalone resigned as vice chair of ACIP, stepping down from a committee he had helped reshape, citing a desire to avoid drama. Before he left, he was finally asking the kind of questions about vaccine safety, efficacy, and testing that the committee had gone years without asking.

His read on the judge's ruling that threw out @RobertFKennedyJr.'s realignment of the vaccine schedule is direct. The ruling asserts that any vaccine decisions made at the executive branch must consult ACIP, and Malone calls that contrived. By congressional statute, ACIP is meant to serve as a fully independent outside voice, free from industry capture, professional organizations, and bureaucratic influence, providing advice to the CDC director, who is the only person who actually makes decisions. ACIP does not create vaccine policy. Its output is recommendations, nothing more.

The argument that the schedule realignment was invalid because ACIP didn't weigh in on it, Malone says, is spurious logic that is not consistent with the facts. His conclusion is that a group of lawyers constructed another form of lawfare specifically to undermine Kennedy, using ACIP as the vehicle and a contrived legal argument as the weapon.

@delbigtree