This Just Happened: RFK Jr. Just Hired the Man Who Helped Build the Anti-Vax Movement...and What That Means for Public Health

An explosive, no-BS deep dive into who was hired, what they believe, and why installing them inside HHS/CDC is not just reckless ...it’s dangerous.

This Just Happened: RFK Jr. Just Hired the Man Who Helped Build the Anti-Vax Movement…and What That Means for Public Health

An explosive, no-BS deep dive into who was hired, what they believe, and why installing them inside HHS/CDC is not just reckless ...it’s dangerous.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #564: Friday, September 26th, 2025.

They did not hide it in the fine print. They did not whisper it into the halls. They imported a long-time activist…a man who helped build the modern anti-vaccine movement…and put him inside the very agencies Americans trust to keep their kids safe.

If you are tired of polite euphemisms and tentative analysis…settle in.

This is not academic. This is not idle hand-wringing. This is about a deliberate choice by a cabinet secretary to appoint people whose careers have been built on undermining mainstream vaccine science into roles where they will touch data… messaging…and policy.

That choice will be judged by history…and it will be judged by outcomes: outbreaks… lost lives…and communities betrayed.

Below, I give you who they hired. I give you what those hires have written and done. I give you why the science community is up in arms. I give you the legal and political tools available to stop this.

And I give you the plain…hard truth about the risks to public health and democratic institutions if these hires are allowed to reshape HHS and the CDC from the inside out.

Where I make claims about hires…access…or institutional consequences…I’ve linked to the reporting so you…and any editor…staffer…or staffer-in-waiting…can follow the paper trail.

The quick, ugly headline

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has staffed HHS and the CDC with longtime vaccine-critics and autism-advocacy activists…including figures who helped create and organize a network that loudly questioned whether vaccines are safe and whether vaccines might cause autism.

The hires are not neutral advisers.

They are activists with agendas…and they have long histories of public claims at odds with the scientific consensus.

Their placement inside federal public-health agencies signals a dramatic…deliberate attempt to reorder what counts as “expertise,” which datasets are re-analyzed…and which questions are elevated.

This is not theory. It is policy…and policy changes lives.

Who was hired: the names you must know

You’ve read the headlines. Now let’s put names to the stakes.

Mark Blaxill…

Reported to be added as a senior adviser connected to CDC autism data review…is not a dispassionate epidemiologist who stumbled into controversy.

Blaxill rose to prominence as an autism-advocacy organizer and writer who argued that environmental exposures…including components some activists tie to vaccines… contributed to rising autism prevalence.

He has been a central figure in networks…organizational…financial…and media…that pushed re-examinations of vaccine safety using unconventional methods and selective datasets. Multiple outlets reported his hiring or involvement in HHS/CDC advisory activity.

Lyn Redwood:

A registered nurse and longtime head of Children’s Health Defense (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s organization)…was reported to be placed into CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.

Redwood has publicly promoted concerns about vaccine ingredients and pushed aggressive critiques of mainstream vaccine-safety work. Her hire brought immediate bipartisan alarm.

Drew Downing and David Geier (and others):

Multiple reports show RFK Jr.’s team is tapping a roster of activists…lawyers…and figures with histories in vaccine-injury litigation and autism advocacy.

Some…like Downing…are actively discussing ways to expand the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program eligibility; others have professional histories that include controversial litigation and disciplinary actions. These are not neutral researchers. They are operators with a clear policy pitch.

If any of this sounds like a coordinated staffing strategy rather than an accidental romp through personnel files, that’s because it is. This is a pattern. And patterns mean intent.

Who is Mark Blaxill…and why his hiring matters

Let me be blunt: Blaxill was not merely an occasional critic. He is an architect and networker…an organizer who helped move anecdote and fear into campaigns…litigation…and media strategy.

He co-founded and led groups focused on environmental causes of autism…published polemical and investigative pieces about rising autism rates…and consistently sought data access and re-analysis of CDC datasets.

That pattern…demanding re-analysis of data on methods critics say are insufficiently explored…is a legitimate academic posture when conducted by disinterested researchers with peer review and methodological rigor.

But when it comes from activists with an advocacy axis and histories of selective analysis…it becomes weaponized.

Decisions about re-analyzing federal datasets have consequences:

They create public narratives…they feed litigation…and they shape policy.

Here’s the essential danger:

If Blaxill or allied advisers are given access to CDC vaccine safety data with an explicit or implicit mandate to find links between vaccines and autism…the result will not necessarily be new science…it will be new narratives.

Those narratives will be used in the public square…in litigation…and in political fights to justify policy shifts that weaken the nation’s immunization infrastructure. That is not hypothetical. We’ve seen the mechanism before.

The toxic pattern: capture by affinity…not by expertise

This is classic capture: appoint people who share a political or advocacy identity with the secretary…give them titles or access…thereby shifting institutional priorities.

Three critical points:

Affinity over expertise:

Appointments favor activists from the Children’s Health Defense ecosystem…not mainstream vaccinologists who run randomized trials…large cohort studies…and peer-reviewed meta-analyses. That creates a tilt.

Access to sensitive data:

The CDC controls datasets like the Vaccine Safety Datalink that are enormously powerful and complex.

Past disputes show how easy it is for analyses to be framed as “re-examination” while selectively choosing definitions…subgroups…or timeframes that produce misleading findings.

When activists gain privileged access to those datasets…the temptation to spin rather than to scrutinize scientifically increases.

Institutional legitimacy:

HHS and CDC speak with authority. An activist in a CDC seat lends institutional gravitas to claims the activist has made publicly for years.

That makes the public health consequences immediate: eroded trust…vaccine hesitancy…and fewer children protected against measles…whooping cough…and other vaccine-preventable diseases.

That last point isn’t speculative. Public-health leaders and senators blasted these hires for precisely that reason…they feared the damage to public confidence and to the immunization safety net.

The scientific consensus is not an opinion column

Let’s be clear and unapologetic:

the global scientific consensus…built on multiple…well-designed epidemiological studies in multiple countries…holds that routine childhood vaccines are not a cause of autism.

That finding has stood up to tens of billions of dollars of research and thousands of peer-reviewed studies. The conclusion is not a “vested interest.” It’s the product of decades of inquiry and scrutiny.

When activists insist on revisiting these settled questions using methodologies that cherry-pick or substitute nonstandard definitions…the risk is not discovery…it is confusion and harm.

So when you hear a federal agency start playing with that settled ground…understand two things:

first…the effect will be undermining of trust…second…the motive…whether curiosity or agenda…matters. And the pattern here suggests agenda.

What the hires have already tried to do…and what they may try next

Reporters have already documented instances where the new advisers have sought access to datasets…staff have canceled meetings…and the agency has changed which entities it consults.

Consider two concrete moves reported by multiple outlets:

Efforts to widen the scope of who can claim vaccine injury by revisiting definitions…a move that could channel large numbers of autism claims into the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and strain its finite resources.

Advocates have publicly floated expanding definitions in ways that public-health experts warn could overwhelm the program without producing meaningful scientific clarity.

Attempts to insert activists into the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office and related units…placements that would afford influence over messaging…safety reviews…and which research programs get prioritized. These are not symbolic seats; they are operational levers.

If you are a parent…a pediatrician…or a state health official…those are not academic debates. They’re operational threats with real downstream consequences for vaccination rates and disease prevention.

The public-health harms of “re-opening” settled questions

History is concrete. When vaccine confidence falls…disease returns.

Measles…eliminated in the U.S. for years…staged resurgences when vaccination rates dipped. The public pays in hospital bills…shattered trust…and…worst of all…children’s lives.

If federal agencies begin amplifying messages that sound like “we need to re-examine vaccines and autism”…even if couched as asking questions…the practical effect will be the same as undermining vaccine confidence.

Parents hear uncertainty…and when parental trust falls…so do vaccination rates. That’s not theory. That’s been documented repeatedly in outbreak investigations.

Politics as method: why this is also a democratic problem

We’re not just watching a public-health experiment.

We’re watching institutional capture that mirrors authoritarian methods: install loyalists…shift the epistemic guardrails…then use administrative levers to make dissent costly.

This is how policy becomes propaganda.

This is how overlaying activism on a regulatory agency turns public service into partisan machinery.

You want proof?

Look at the pattern: wholesale staff churn…advisory panels reconstituted…and hires from a narrow advocacy network. That is how you change what “expertise” looks like… and…crucially…how you change whom the public can trust.

What Congress…reporters…and scientists must do next…a checklist

If you care about public health and institutional integrity… here is the action plan:

Demand transparency on job descriptions and contracts.

Are these advisers contractors? Federal employees? What are their mandates? FOIA and committee demands should pry this loose now.

Get the emails, memos, and data-access requests.

Who requested access to CDC datasets? On what basis? Were standard data-use protocols followed? If meetings were canceled between internal scientists and outside activists…get the paper trail.

Press for independent peer review.

Any re-analysis of federal data must go through established peer review…pre-registration of analysis plans…and method transparency. No back-door re-analysis.

Force hearings if necessary.

Congressional oversight…public hearings…and subpoenas are available. If these hires are moving policy without review…the Hill must act.

Amplify mainstream public-health voices.

State health officers…pediatric associations…and independent epidemiologists must be given air time and platform to explain the stakes and the evidence.

Do not let the conversation be framed as a “debate” where unbalanced voices are given equal weight simply because they demand re-examination. Scientific consensus is not a popularity contest. It is the outcome of method. Protect the method.

Legal levers and the role of the press

Legal levers exist:

FOIA…subpoenas…inspector general investigations…and appropriations riders that can limit authority or funding for specific programs.

The press has a duty to trace money…appointments…and the chain of emails that show intent. Good investigative journalism will follow the dollars and the data access memos…and what they reveal will matter in the court of public and congressional opinion.

The story inside the story: why this hires look different than ordinary political turnovers

Cabinet turnover and political appointments are normal.

What is not normal is installing activists with long track records of public anti-vaccine advocacy into the nerve centers of vaccine safety without clear walls or guardrails.

Imagine a finance secretary hiring a longtime mortgage-fraud advocate to oversee bank stress tests.

Imagine the EPA hiring a lobbyist whose career is opposing environmental regulation to run climate science reviews.

The instinctive reactions would not be “let’s see what they find.” They would be panic… oversight…and emergency hearings.

Why is public health any different? Because the outcomes…human lives…are far more immediate.

If you’re a parent…clinician…or state health officer …here’s what to watch for now

• Sharp changes in CDC guidance that are worded as “we’re reopening the question.”

• Requests to reclassify autism or neurological conditions so they fit broader vaccine-injury categories.

• New data analyses released without pre-registered protocols or peer review.

• Shifts in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program rules or criteria…especially moves that would open the floodgates without scientific justification.

• Messaging that emphasizes uncertainty over well-established safety profiles.

If you see these…raise your hand…call your representative…and demand hearings. This is not the time for quiet professionalism alone. It’s time for public pressure.

The only honest…practical closing

This is a fight over truth and method. It’s not abstract.

It will decide whether public trust in vaccines is protected, or peeled away. It will decide whether the CDC is a public-health sentinel or a political instrument.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made his bed.

He staffed his agency with people who echo his life’s project. If you are angry… worried…or mobilized…do something real: call your senator…demand FOIA…support independent epidemiologists…amplify state public-health officers…and…crucially… fund journalism that will follow the paper trail.

We are at a hinge point.

Appointments like Blaxill’s and Redwood’s are not merely personnel choices. They are attempts to change the terms of public inquiry from within. And when you change the terms…you change the outcome.

History remembers the moments when institutions were repurposed. It remembers the people who let it happen and it remembers the people who raised the alarm and pulled the levers of oversight.

Raise the alarm. Pull the levers. Do not let this be normalized.

I’ll be back soon. If you want to never miss another issue of the JHN Newsletter…and have help me get this in front of more and more people, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

With fire and grit,

-Jack

Sources & Further Reading (read these; bookmark them):

• CBS News reporting on Lyn Redwood and CDC hires. CBS News

• Politico reporting on RFK Jr. advisers and proposals around vaccine-injury program expansion. Politico+1

• CardiologyAdvisor / news on Mark Blaxill’s role in autism data review. The Cardiology Advisor

• Senator Patty Murray’s public statement calling for reversal of reported hires. Senator Patty Murray

• STAT and Scientific American context pieces on RFK Jr.’s track record and public critique of his influence on vaccine science. STAT+1