Robert Malone, a key ally of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., resigned from the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee this week—because, as he put it, he doesn’t like drama.

The irony appears lost on him.

Malone quit Tuesday after an HHS spokesperson contradicted his claim that the agency wouldn’t appeal a federal court ruling that effectively invalidated the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Judge Brian Murphy found last week that Kennedy’s 13 appointees to the panel hadn’t gone through proper legal processes, putting their membership and all recent committee decisions on hold.

Malone posted on social media that no appeal was planned. HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon pushed back: “Unless officially announced by us, any assertions about what we are doing next is baseless speculation.”

“After Andrew trashing me with the press, I am done with the CDC and ACIP,” Malone texted Roll Call. He cited “hundreds of hours of uncompensated labor, hostile press, internal bickering, weaponized leaking, sabotage.” Then, remarkably: “I do not like drama.”

Even fellow Kennedy appointee Joseph Hibbeln noted that Malone’s wish to avoid drama “contrasts with his prior dramatic and confusing statements.”

The panel has been in turmoil since Kennedy fired all 17 independent experts last summer and replaced them with ideological allies, many vaccine skeptics. Before the court ruling, the committee had removed recommendations for several childhood vaccines. Those decisions are now frozen, and the committee cannot convene until the case resolves.

Martin Kulldorff, Kennedy’s chief science officer, defended Nixon and said he could “sympathize” with Malone’s decision. The broader chaos, as one former committee member told The Guardian, has been “starting from the top down.”

Sources