Anti-vax lawyer to ACIP: 'Mandates make vaccines political'

The United States should end vaccine mandates while bolstering research on the safety and side effects of the shots, said an attorney who stated his case to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

However, one ACIP member countered that the claims about vaccine dangers and inefficacy were “absolutely outrageous.”

Attorney Aaron Siri, JD, who has worked as legal counsel for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., spent two hours talking about vaccine history, policy and health effects during the ACIP meeting on Dec. 5. He proffered three items to consider:

• Revisit prior recommendations made without robust data.
• Require robust trial and, when possible, post-licensure safety data.
• Liaison members should respect the right of informed consent.

ACIP needs to de-politicize vaccines by taking them out of politics, Siri said.

“And the way you do that is you have to end mandates. Mandates make vaccines political,” Siri said. “When you take away somebody's right, you have made it not long no longer just a medical question, you've made it a legal one. You've made it a political one. When you argue vaccines should be mandated and somebody's rights should be taken away on the basis that a vaccine is safe and effective, you've now made the safety and vaccine efficacy no longer just a medical question, you've made it a legal question, you've made it a political question. That's probably in part why you find me here today as a lawyer, speaking about this topic.”

ACIP advises the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but the panel and its medical organization liaisons make recommendations that filter down to become mandates, Siri said. The medical community, to avoid vaccine hesitancy, acts as if people who suffered injuries from vaccines don’t exist, he said.

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Removing mandates

ACIP member Retsef Levi, PhD, asked what ACIP and CDC could do to make mandates less possible.

“I share the sentiment that they're ethically wrong, but they're also fundamentally wrong from the perspective of a good public health policy,” Levi said. “And I think I agree that the evidence from different countries suggests that policies that are based on teaching, educating, giving people, empowering people to have choices based on good information, are much more successful.”

Siri said statute, regulation and policy at all levels would be needed to end mandates for vaccines. He said the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has called for elimination of all nonmedical exemptions from immunization as a condition for children to attend childcare and school. Siri argued that violates First Amendment rights to freedom of religion and the government should not provide funding to any entity that violates citizens’ civil rights. AAP liaisons were not present at the meeting.

‘Terrible, terrible distortion of facts’

ACIP member H. Cody Meissner, MD, acknowledged Siri, as an American, has First Amendment rights that everyone has.

“But what you have said is a terrible, terrible distortion of all the facts,” Meissner said.

Siri presented slides showing the increase in the number of vaccines given to American children. “What was your point? I mean, that is a phenomenal accomplishment,” Meissner said.

“That’s why we have the lowest rates of infectious disease in the United States, because we have the highest uptake of vaccines, and if vaccine uptake goes down, we're going to see an increase of these diseases, such as with hepatitis B, which I think is going to happen,” Meissner said, referring to the main disease and vaccine under consideration during the Dec. 4 and 5 meeting.

Siri’s presentation clearly confused association, Meissner said.

“There is a temporal association and a causal association,” he said. “Remember, there are 10s of 1000s of vaccines that are administered every day and just because there's an adverse event that occurs around the time of vaccine administration, it doesn't mean there was any causal association, and you're jumping to the conclusion that yes, there is and that is not fair.”

Siri’s presentation cited a July 2024 perspective article with co-authors including Walter A. Orenstein, MD, and Stanley A. Plotkin, MD, two giants of American vaccine research.

Meissner called it disingenuous because those doctors have done more than almost anyone to support vaccines and health of children. Attempting to imply they are vaccine skeptics “is a gross distortion” of the facts, he said.

Siri’s presentation included information about vaccines against polio and acellular pertussis and their safety and prevention of transmission. The United States stopped using vaccines against polio and acellular pertussis with risk of side effects in favor of safer vaccines against those diseases, Meissner said.

Siri noted some vaccines have quick turnaround times, sometimes days, between Food and Drug Administration approval of vaccines and ACIP recommendations for the shots.

“That’s a good thing, right? We’re preventing disease,” Meissner said. “All you’re focusing on are these very rare, ill-defined side effects, and completely ignoring the extraordinary benefit and promise that these vaccines apply to us.”

Meissner said the “absolutely outrageous statements about safety” were a big disappointment, and Siri should not have been invited.

Presenter rebuttal

Siri said the slide showing the number of vaccines was relevant to the discussion. He said he would welcome debate and has debated Offit online. The United States has the worst outcomes for overall health among developed countries, which is worth considering, he said.

While it was good to change from using the oral polio vaccine to the inactivated version, due to risk of paralysis, Siri said, other vaccines currently used also cause paralysis in children.

“I don't think that those folks are considered ill-defined or rare, and that's exactly the point I was trying to make earlier: Treating those folks like they don't exist, Dr. Meissner, is what is going to breed vaccine hesitancy,” Siri said. “They are there, they exist, just like they were for OPV. It just took a long time

‘ACIP is totally discredited’

Disclosing potential conflicts of interest, Siri acknowledged he has sued HHS and related government agencies numerous times, and has 492 claims currently pending against HHS through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

His record as an attorney prompted a comment from Sen. Bill Cassidy, MD (R-Louisiana), who posted on social media website X, formerly Twitter.

“Aaron Siri is a trial attorney who makes his living suing vaccine manufacturers,” Cassidy posted. “He is presenting as if an expert on childhood vaccines. The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children.”

‘This is a mistake’

After the vote to change the recommendation for universal neonate vaccination against hepatitis B, Cassidy commented again.

“As a liver doctor who has treated patients with hepatitis B for decades, this change to the vaccine schedule is a mistake,” he posted on X. “The hepatitis B vaccine is safe and effective. The birth dose is a recommendation, NOT a mandate.

“Before the birth dose was recommended, 20,000 newborns a year were infected with hepatitis B. Now, it’s fewer than 20. Ending the recommendation for newborns makes it more likely the number of cases will begin to increase again. This makes America sicker.”

Cassidy called on CDC Acting Director Jim O’Neill to retain the recommendation for universal newborn vaccination.

Legal immunity

Siri referred to Cassidy’ comment and said it is not accurate because vaccine manufacturers have legal immunity granted by the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Vaccines are the only product in the nation that people cannot sue the companies that make them or claim their children were injured or killed by a shot, he said.

“Why do we need the 1986 act, if vaccines are so safe too?” Siri said. “Why does a product need immunity if it doesn't cause harm? Why do products have been the market for decades, like the hepatitis B vaccine, still need that immunity? Do we still not know they're safe enough to lift the immunity on those products?”

Siri was invited to speak to ACIP to give a broad perspective on the U.S. vaccine schedule, said Minah Zadeh, PhD, MPH, who serves as ACIP executive secretary. Vaccine specialists and pediatricians Paul Offit, MD, and Peter Jay Hotez, MD, PhD, also were invited to speak. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told NBC News he could not recall receiving an invitation, but would not have attended. Hotez, director of the Center for Vaccine Development of Texas Children’s Hospital, told that outlet he declined the invitation because “ACIP appears to have shifted its mission away from science and evidence-based medicine.”