JAMA’s Collapse into Rhetoric: A Comprehensive Rebuttal to “A Failure of Process, Policy, and Science” by the Best Vaccine Spokespersons the Industry Can Find

Paul Offit and Dorit Reiss want to rewrite the history of COVID-19 vaccine regulation. It is not working.

In its June 13, 2025 Viewpoint, JAMA published a piece by Lawrence Gostin, Dorit Reiss, and Paul Offit entitled “Changed Recommendations for COVID-19 Vaccines for Children and Pregnant Women: A Failure of Process, Policy, and Science.” It was not an argument. It was a lamentation. Not a presentation of data, but a defense of bureaucracy. Not a defense of science, but of authority.

It is ironic that this article accuses the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of bypassing scientific rigor, while offering not a single coherent statistical analysis, risk-benefit framework, or new evidence. Instead, it relies on an arsenal of logical fallacies, rhetorical overreach, institutional self-congratulation, and outright omission.

Below is a full and layered rebuttal, combining their own words with the counterpoints they refuse to address.

No Data. Just Deference.

“The secretary disregarded decades-long processes and norms of good administration.”

This is not a scientific claim. It is an appeal to tradition fallacy. Longevity does not equate to validity. In science, processes are only as good as the data they produce—and in this case, the data on COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy in healthy children and pregnant women is thin, selectively reported, and increasingly contradicted by real-world outcomes.

“ACIP has been a trusted source... its members undergo rigorous conflict of interest review.”

That is categorically false. The Office of Inspector General’s 2011 report found over 90% of conflicts were unmitigated or undisclosed across CDC advisory panels. Paul Offit—himself an author here—held a patent on a vaccine (RotaTeq) he helped promote the vote to recommend for the childhood schedule. He failed to recuse himself from the discussion.

That is not trust. That is self-certification by the once-regulating class.

II. Science by Slogan

“COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective for young children.”

Where are the data? The authors cite Muñoz et al., NEJM 2023, a study powered for immunogenicity—not clinical effectiveness. They do not mention:

• The Number Needed to Vaccinate (NNV) to prevent one hospitalization in healthy children.

• Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR), which is negligible.

• The incidence of myocarditis, which exceeds benefit thresholds in young males in numerous cohort studies.

• That the vaccine does not prevent transmission, acknowledged by CDC and Pfizer executives.

“Pregnant women with COVID-19 are more likely to die.”

That may be true, but no randomized controlled trials were conducted in pregnant women. The reliance on observational registries, plagued by confounding and underpowered event rates, does not justify routine use—especially without stratified fetal outcome data.

The claim that COVID-19 vaccines are safe for pregnancy is a claim without sufficient evidence, not a conclusion.

Missing in Action: What They Didn’t Say

This article is most revealing not in what it asserts, but in what it omits:

• No mention of VAERS signal detection thresholds.

• No reference to Pfizer’s post-marketing surveillance, which revealed over 1,200 deaths and thousands of adverse events within months of rollout.

• No acknowledgment of natural immunity, waning effectiveness, immunological imprinting, or infection-enhanced risk post-vaccine.

• No discussion of international policy divergence: the UK, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark have restricted or withdrawn COVID vaccines for healthy children under 12.

Instead, the authors pretend the evidence landscape is static—and unanimously favorable. It is neither.

Process Fetishism as a Substitute for Evidence

“The decision short-circuited a planned ACIP meeting to review data.”

There is no statutory requirement to await ACIP’s rubber stamp. The Secretary of HHS holds final authority. Citing the absence of a meeting as disqualifying presumes that ACIP is the sole legitimate mechanism for policy—a false claim both legally and epistemologically.

The authors say:

“The process was haphazard.”

And yet, they ignore that the original mRNA recommendations were vacuous, rushed, based on early Phase II/III trials, with no long-term safety data, no pregnancy trials, and no sterilizing immunity. That was haphazard. Kennedy's decision was a correction—not a derailment.

Legal Fiction and Manufactured Crisis

“Congress has delegated authority to ACIP... under the Affordable Care Act.”

That is false. Congress delegated authority to HHS to define preventive services. ACIP is advisory. The Secretary is not bound to its recommendations. The authors cite Motor Vehicle Manufacturers v. State Farm (1983) to argue that a change in agency position requires justification—yet they ignore Kennedy’s published rationale in the Wall Street Journal, his formal directive, and numerous public comments detailing lack of benefit, absence of RCTs, and poor safety transparency.

Moral Panic Disguised as Equity

“The decision may restrict access for low-income children...”

No. It may restrict mandated purchase and subsidy—not access. Anyone who wants the vaccine can still get it. The removal from the recommended schedule merely signals that the risk-benefit ratio no longer supports routine administration for those groups.

To suggest this amounts to “denial of care” is manipulative. The vaccine is not being banned. It is being deprioritized—for sound reasons.

Rhetorical Collapse: Comparing Kennedy to Stalin

The accompanying commentaries devolve into hysterics, with one reader likening the dismissal of ACIP to “Lysenkoism,” invoking Stalin and Mao. This is laughable.

Lysenko banned dissent. Kennedy removed a committee—openly—and began a process to seat a new one with broader scientific diversity and fewer conflicts of interest.

The insinuation that Kennedy is enacting “Soviet science” is projection—by a class that has censored, silenced, and crushed dissent in the name of “consensus” for years.

Conclusion: What They Defend Is Not Science—It’s Cartel Protocol

Gostin, Reiss, and Offit are not defending data. They are defending their slipping monopoly on narrative authority. Their complaint is not that the science was violated—but that they weren’t asked first.

This Viewpoint is not an article—it’s a tantrum. A last, loud gasp from a failed establishment that mistook public trust for a permanent entitlement.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Dr. Paul Offit at his finest:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Dorit Reiss at her finest:

If JAMA wishes to remain relevant, it would do better to publish Viewpoints that engage the data by people who have more reasonable things to say—not simply elevate those whose power has been curtailed.

Science does not live in committee rooms. It lives in replicable outcomes, open data, and honest debate. On all three fronts, this article fails.

And Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stands for science, not rhetoric.