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The American Medical Association (AMA) is teaming up with the Vaccine Integrity Project to conduct its own review of vaccine safety and efficacy, claiming that advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are no longer doing a good enough job.
The groups said Wednesday in a press release that “for decades,” the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) had “served as the engine of evidence-based vaccine policy” for the U.S. “That system has now effectively collapsed.”
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Press Secretary Emily G. Hilliard told The Defender the claim that ACIP’s evidence-based process has collapsed is “categorically false.” She said:
“ACIP continues to remain the nation’s advisory body for vaccine use recommendations driven by gold standard science. While outside organizations continue to conduct their own analyses and confuse the American people, those efforts do not replace or supersede the federal process that continues to guide vaccine policy in the United States.”
The Vaccine Integrity Project, based at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), says it is dedicated to “safeguarding vaccine use in the U.S.”
The AMA will work with the project to review vaccines for the 2026-2027 respiratory virus season. These include immunizations against COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), according to the press release.
CIDRAP Director Michael Osterholm said in a statement that the goal is “to restore peace of mind for clinicians and patients by ensuring that experts are continuously evaluating vaccine safety and effectiveness using transparent, evidence-based methods.”
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg said it’s unlikely that the groups will restore people’s peace of mind about vaccines. She said:
“Unfortunately, the AMA and the Vaccine Integrity Project support a narrative about vaccines that is being exposed more and more as problematic and contradicted by what people are seeing with their own eyes.
“The system is broken and efforts to prop it up from the inside are being exposed for conflicts of interest and flawed analyses.”
The groups’ review process looks similar to how the ACIP traditionally worked, but they won’t issue recommendations. Instead, they will share their review results with medical societies, which can write recommendations for their patient demographic.
The AMA and the Vaccine Integrity Project said they will also involve medical societies and public health and healthcare organizations to craft policy questions.
Review members will disclose “relevant” conflicts of interest, according to the press release. However, “relevant” was left undefined.
The AMA and Vaccine Integrity Project said in a statement:
“The goal of this work is to ensure a deliberative, evidence-driven approach to produce the data necessary to understand the risks and benefits of vaccine policy decisions for all populations — the approach traditionally used by the federal government.”
The effort may generate more confusion among Americans who are torn between looking to the federal government or medical societies for vaccine guidance, according to Trial Site News.
“The country is no longer operating with a single, uncontested center of vaccine-policy gravity,” Trial Site News wrote.
‘Like asking the fox to guard the henhouse’
The Vaccine Integrity Project, launched in April 2025, is funded by an unrestricted gift from iAlumbra, a nonprofit founded by Walmart heiress and philanthropist Christy Walton.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation and Lasker Foundation are also listed among the project’s funders.
The Vaccine Integrity Project declined The Defender’s request for a list of donation amounts and names of any individual donors.
Former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky serves as the Vaccine Integrity Project’s adviser of medical affairs. In 2022, Walensky admitted the CDC gave false information about COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring.
Already, the Vaccine Integrity Project released a review of the hepatitis B vaccine that supported vaccinating all newborns at birth, rather than delaying when the mother has tested negative for hepatitis B. The project is currently reviewing the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.
“Trusting the AMA and the Vaccine Integrity Project to objectively review vaccine safety feels a lot like asking the fox to guard the henhouse,” said Nebraska chiropractor Ben Tapper.
Mack Rosenberg said the repeated failures of such organizations to “truly and comprehensively” analyze vaccine safety data have led to “increasing distrust among the public — and with good reason.”
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AMA ‘a political force,’ not a ‘neutral medical association’
In 2025, the AMA spent nearly $24 million on lobbying, making it one of the top 10 groups trying to influence government policy, according to OpenSecrets.
“This is not the behavior of a neutral medical association. It is the strategy of a political force,” wrote Jason Altmire in an op-ed for RealClearHealth.
Altmire, a former hospital and health insurance executive who served in the U.S. House of Representatives, is an adjunct professor of healthcare management at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.
Tapper questioned whether the AMA and the Vaccine Integrity Project would sufficiently assess the safety of vaccines.
For many people, the concern isn’t that vaccines can have benefits, he said. “The concern is whether safety data is fully transparent, whether adverse event reporting is thoroughly investigated, whether conflicts of interest are disclosed and whether risk-benefit analyses are stratified appropriately by age and health status.”
The AMA, which touted 2024 revenues of $546 million, was criticized during the COVID-19 pandemic for deferring to political ideology rather than medical facts.
Its “AMA COVID-19 Guide: Background/Messaging on Vaccines, Vaccine Clinical Trials & Combatting Vaccine Misinformation” encouraged doctors to use certain words and avoid others. For instance, “stay-at-home order” replaced “lockdown,” and “deaths” replaced “hospitalization rates.”
The AMA in August 2025 was disinvited from the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee’s workgroups.
Related articles in The Defender- Pharma-Friendly Public Health Officials Launch New Project to ‘Shore Up U.S. Vaccination Policy’
- AAP, AMA Booted From CDC Vaccine Advisory Working Groups
- Breaking: RFK Jr. Removes All Members of CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee
- American Medical Association Defers to Political Ideology Rather Than Medical Facts in COVID Messaging Guide
