RFK Jr. Stacks Federal Autism Committee With Anti-Vaccine Allies, Sparking Alarm Over Dangerous Pseudoscience
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has filled the federal government’s top autism advisory panel with close friends, ideological allies, and former colleagues who endorse the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. Autism advocates and public health experts now warn the overhauled group could clear a path for dangerous, pseudoscientific autism treatments to enter the medical mainstream.
Last week, Kennedy announced a completely new membership slate for the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), the federal body that sets recommendations for government-funded autism research and guidance on public services for the autism community. Historically, the committee has been composed of leading autism researchers, policy experts, and autistic self-advocates representing their community’s needs. None of the IACC’s previous sitting members were retained for the new panel.
In his official statement announcing the reconfigured committee, Kennedy claimed he had appointed “the most qualified experts—leaders with decades of experience studying, researching, and treating autism.” But public health and autism community leaders reject that claim entirely. A review of the new membership confirms the vast majority of appointees are tied to the anti-vaccine movement, which has pushed the unproven vaccine-autism link for decades despite overwhelming scientific consensus rejecting the connection.
Among the high-profile appointments is Daniel Rossignol, a physician who was sued for alleged fraud after prescribing a discredited, dangerous treatment to a 7-year-old autistic child. Another pick is Tracy Slepcevic, whom Kennedy calls a “dear friend.” Slepcevic hosts an annual Autism Health Summit that promotes a wide range of fraudulent autism cures, including a risky procedure that involves injecting children with animal-derived stem cells.
Third appointee Toby Rogers has publicly claimed that “no thinking person vaccinates” and accuses vaccine manufacturers of “poisoning children.” A fellow at the anti-public-health Brownstone Institute for Social and Economic Research, Rogers has called vaccines “one of the greatest crimes in human history.” He also writes for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the anti-vaccine organization founded by Kennedy that has spent decades pushing the false vaccine-autism link.
Other new members follow the same pattern:
John Gilmore, founder of the Autism Action Network, has said his own autistic son was “vaccine injured.” He also leads the New York chapter of Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense.
Ginger Taylor, former director of the anti-vaccine group Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice, has publicly claimed most autism cases stem from “vaccine causation.”
Elizabeth Mumper, who has contributed writing to CHD, is a senior fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance—formerly the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, the group that pushed the unproven claim that ivermectin could treat COVID-19.
Mumper defended her appointment to WIRED, arguing her decades of work as a pediatrician and in autism care made her a qualified candidate. She also denied being anti-vaccine, noting she “has given thousands of vaccinations in my career.” None of the other new IACC members responded to WIRED’s requests for comment.
Just a few years ago, this slate of appointees would have read like a guest list for a fringe conspiracy conference. Today, the picks are just the latest step in Kennedy’s broader effort to reshape the U.S. public health system to align with his anti-vaccine, anti-science views.
Public health experts and autism advocates warn the overhaul will carry two devastating consequences: it will redirect much-needed resources away from autistic people and their families, and it will embolden actors pushing dangerous pseudoscientific treatments that put autistic lives at risk.
“Once again, [Kennedy] proves that he is one of the world’s most extreme and dangerous conspiracy theorists who loves stacking his committees with anti-science, anti-public-health kooks,” Gavin Yamey, professor of global health and public policy at Duke University, told WIRED. “The research evidence is clear that vaccines do not cause autism. It looks like RFK Jr.’s new committee has been tasked to muddy the waters and cast doubt on that evidence. RFK Jr. has spent the past year doing all he can to dismantle public health and roll back vaccination, and this new committee is more of the same.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) dismissed claims that members were selected to advance a pre-determined anti-science agenda, calling the allegation “unfounded and misleading.” “After more than two decades of rising autism rates, families deserve more than reports and meetings, they deserve measurable progress, and this diverse committee was appointed to help deliver it,” HHS communications director Andrew Nixon told WIRED.
Multiple appointees have a long track record of promoting both false vaccine claims and dangerous unproven “cures” that put lives at risk. Rossignol, a family physician who runs autism clinics across Florida, Arizona, and California, was sued in 2010 by the father of a 7-year-old autistic child. The suit alleged Rossignol and a second doctor subjected the child to 37 rounds of chelation therapy, a treatment marketed to remove heavy metals from the body that has been thoroughly debunked by mainstream science. The U.S. National Institutes of Health explicitly warns on its website: “There’s no scientific evidence that … chelation therapies … help people with ASD, and they may be dangerous.” The plaintiff’s attorney voluntarily dismissed the case in 2014. Rossignol is also a former president of the Medical Academy of Pediatric Special Needs, a group that has promoted the false claim that vaccines cause autism.
Slepcevic, a former U.S. Air Force veteran, organizes the annual Autism Health Summit, a flagship gathering for leading anti-vaccine figures where pseudoscientific autism “cures” are regularly promoted. Kennedy recorded a welcome video for the 2025 event. This year’s summit, scheduled for April in San Diego, will feature Mike Chan, a physician who claims he can cure autism and Down syndrome by injecting children with stem cells harvested from sheep and rabbits.
It remains unclear what specific criteria Kennedy used to assemble the 21-member panel, and even some appointees say they do not know how they landed their roles. “I don’t know how I was selected to be chair, to be perfectly honest,” Sylvia Fogel, a Boston-based psychiatrist, told The New York Times. Fogel recently appeared on a podcast to discuss the “dramatic surge in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the U.S.”
After WIRED first published this report, Fogel sent a response letter pushing back on how the outlet framed the new committee. “WIRED’s article reduces current IACC members to labels while overlooking their extraordinary depth of experience,” she wrote. “Many have founded national advocacy organizations, advanced autism legislation, built service systems, provided medical care, and live daily with the realities of severe disability. For them, autism is not an abstract policy debate but a lived, urgent responsibility.”
Leading autism advocacy organizations have widely and strongly condemned Kennedy’s appointments.
“The new IACC is overwhelmingly made up of anti-vaccine advocates and peddlers of dangerous quack autism ‘treatments,’” the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, a leading rights group run by and for autistic people, wrote in a public statement. “At a time when the autistic community desperately needs quality research that could genuinely improve our lives, we fear that this IACC will direct research funding towards known dead ends and influence federal activities away from policies that would best serve the autistic community.”
This overhaul of the IACC is not an isolated move: Kennedy has already remade the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the normally independent panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy, stacking it with vaccine skeptics who share his views. Public health experts warn the combined changes could lead to catastrophic public health outcomes.
“Secretary Kennedy is essentially creating an ideological echo chamber,” Kayla Hancock, program director at public health advocacy group Protect Our Care, said in a public statement.
For many autistic advocates, the appointments have sparked deep fear about what comes next if discredited treatments like chelation therapy and unregulated animal stem cell injections are legitimized as legitimate medical science by the federal government.
“We’ve fought so hard to protect our community, but they want to experiment on us,” Fiona O’Leary, an autism activist who has spent years pushing back against the spread of baseless autism treatments, told WIRED. “We are guinea pigs. When you are autistic, like me, and a mother to autistic children, I see this as a way to end us. That's what it is.”
Update: 2/10/2026, 1 PM EDT: This article has been updated to include comment from Sylvia Fogel.
