Washington county passes anti-vaccination resolutionWashington county passes anti-vaccination resolution

The effects of a Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.-led Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are already being felt in Franklin County, Washington. County officials Stephen Bauman, Rocky Mullen, and Clint Didier – all Republicans – heard testimony from a group of anti-vaccination campaigners who, it appears, have won a victory in the region.

“What’s been done to the citizens of our country, it’s unacceptable,” Mullen said as the hearing ended. “It’s horrendous.”

“We’re making a statement of our belief in freedom,” Bauman declared. “This resolution in front of us today is very long and has information with words and descriptions that are over my head.” He and the other commissioners voted unanimously in favor of the resolution, which advises against the administration of “gene therapy vaccines” to children and adults in any context.

The resolution doesn’t stop at mRNA vaccines, either – it also contains a provision referencing “corporate liability for harm due to products that use mRNA, DNA, or any genetic technology in any product, plant, or animal.”

mRNA vaccines have repeatedly been found to be safe and effective in countless studies (see here, here, and here, for example). Researchers have also not shied away from the links between vaccines and known “safety signals,” as published in Vaccine in 2024. Healthcare experts agree that the benefit of these vaccines in combatting deadly illness vastly outweigh rare adverse conditions. In Europe alone, COVID-19 vaccination programs saved an estimated 1.6 million lives; another study estimates 3 million saved in the United States.

Moreover, as described by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in our recent coverage, mRNA vaccines are only categorized under gene therapies because there is no more appropriate classification for them at the moment. Despite this, the regulatory body made clear that mRNA vaccines do not integrate into the genome, making them distinct from actual gene therapy.

The group pushing for this resolution has been traveling around the country trying to convince local governments to buy into their project. The conspiracy theory-peddling vaccine “skeptics” have dubious credentials at best. One of these, Ryan Cole, had his medical license restricted by the state of Washington for promoting COVID-19 “treatments.” The Department of Health restrictions, from January 4, 2024, prohibit Cole from “engaging in the practice of primary care medicine and from prescribing medications for patients.”

It’s a similar story for Peter McCullough, a physician who lost his board certification in 2022 over his unsubstantiated COVID-19 claims – including that COVID-19 was a “negligible” mortality risk.

McCullough and another group member, Nicolas Hulscher, co-authored a paper on the use of ivermectin in treating COVID-19 in December 2024. This month, that paper was retracted by the editors because “the results and conclusions as stated in this article […] do not appear to be sufficiently supported by the data” and because “the authors failed to disclose relevant competing interests.”

Another article by Hulscher and McCullough allegedly linking COVID-19 vaccination to death was withdrawn “at the request of the Editors-in-Chief” at Forensic Science International due to “inappropriate design of methodology”; “errors, misrepresentation, and lack of factual support for the conclusions”; and “failure to recognize and cite disconfirming evidence.”

McCullough and other lobbyists in this group are linked to Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccination organization chaired by RFK, Jr. from 2015–2023. The group – and RFK, Jr. himself – is well-known for spreading misinformation about vaccines.

The Franklin County resolution relies in part on a “review” by Hulscher, Mary Bowden, and McCullough, published in the official sounding “Science, Public Health Policy and the Law.” However, this publication is not a recognized peer-reviewed journal by any reputable scientific body. It is instead a WordPress blog managed by James Lyons-Weiler, who has “little credibility among health experts” and who has been trafficking in misinformation about COVID-19 for years.

Despite this, the review is listed as a credible source in the resolution.

The resolution does cite actual peer-reviewed papers, including a Current Issues in Molecular Biology report by Markus Aldén about reverse transcription of mRNA from the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine in liver cells. However, the citation fails to mention a comment from Hamid Merchant published in the same journal, which states, “The experimental model employed by Aldén et al. is scientifically incompetent to evaluate the genotoxicity of mRNA therapeutics, including BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccines.”

The commission also extensively cites comments from David Wiseman, another figure who has long lobbied against mRNA vaccines (which he calls “modRNA”) and who promotes discredited treatments like ivermectin. These comments – which are not peer reviewed – come from sources like Twitter (X) and Trial Site News, a website that indulges conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and where Wiseman is both an advisor and contributor.

In one case, the resolution cites a scientist named Phillip Buckhaults from the University of South Carolina. Bukhaults is a regular hobby horse for anti-vaccination campaigners due to testimony he delivered to the US Senate about vaccine contamination. However, he has categorically disavowed vaccine skeptics’ interpretation of his words. He has also publicly and specifically refuted claims that COVID vaccines “cause cancer” due to the presence of an SV40 promoter in the Pfizer vaccine.

Nevertheless, the resolution spuriously cites his Senate testimony to claim that: “Plasmids in the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine contain an undisclosed presence of the mammalian SV40 promoter/enhancer sequences, which have potential cancer mechanisms.”

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a government-run database with no vetting process in which anyone can make a report. It requires no causal link between a vaccine and the reported adverse event to log an entry. Therefore, its numbers are not reflective of the actual number of adverse events resulting from vaccines. Despite this, the resolution relies heavily on VAERS to make unverified connections between vaccines and miscarriages, deaths, disabilities, and other conditions.

For now, the resolution affects around 100,000 people living in southern Washington, although it remains unclear what the actual impact will be on residents. It also remains to be seen whether this is a harbinger of other local and state governments contravening state law on the basis of misinformation.

RFK, Jr.’s HHS is unlikely to stymie the spread of antivaccination and medical conspiracy sentiment. On the day RFK, Jr. was sworn into office, Louisiana’s Surgeon General announced intentions to stop promoting vaccines amid a wave of flu cases across the state.

This story was originally published on our sister publication Tides Global. 

Søren Hough is the editor of Tides Global, which covers emerging peptide, mRNA, oligo, and genome editing therapeutics.