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1 week ago | 
blog.maryannedemasi.com | Maryanne Demasi
The debate over face masks hasn’t faded—it has calcified. Five years after the onset of Covid-19, the question of whether masks are an effective public health tool continues to divide experts and polarise the public. At the heart of this divide is a clash between competing standards of evidence. Earlier this year, the BMJ published a sweeping “state of the art” review led by Professor C. Raina MacIntyre.
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1 week ago | 
blog.maryannedemasi.com | Maryanne Demasi
This Substack was launched with a simple goal: to produce fearless, independent journalism on medicine, science, and public health—free from interference, censorship, or corporate funding. For almost two decades, I’ve published investigations that have broken news, challenged powerful institutions, and helped shape public debate. Some of you have already taken out a paid subscription—thank you.
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2 weeks ago | 
blog.maryannedemasi.com | Maryanne Demasi
In the hours after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a sweeping overhaul of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, I sat down with one of the incoming appointees—MIT professor Retsef Levi. Levi has extensive experience working with clinicians and analysing healthcare data, including in drug safety, signal detection, and biologics manufacturing. He specialises in data-driven tools for risk assessment and risk–benefit decision-making.
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2 weeks ago | 
blog.maryannedemasi.com | Maryanne Demasi
Today, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the names of eight new members who will join the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—a slate he describes as “highly credentialed physicians and scientists” committed to evidence-based decision-making, transparency, and common sense.
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2 weeks ago | 
blog.maryannedemasi.com | Maryanne Demasi
Yesterday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired every single member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—the influential group of experts that decides which vaccines are added to the childhood schedule. Today, he set fire to the media’s hysterical reaction. Within 24 hours, legacy outlets and public health institutions lost their collective minds.
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2 weeks ago | 
blog.maryannedemasi.com | Maryanne Demasi
The news keeps coming—and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is wasting no time. He promised a shake-up of America’s public health institutions, and now he’s delivering. All 17 members of the CDC’s influential vaccine advisory panel—the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—have been fired. Each received a formal termination notice from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), signed by Kennedy himself.
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2 weeks ago | 
blog.maryannedemasi.com | Maryanne Demasi
On June 9, 2025, federal employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a pointed public statement - the Bethesda Declaration - challenging the agency’s direction under its new director, Dr Jay Bhattacharya. Signed by 336 individuals—including 93 NIH staff who identified themselves and 243 others anonymously—the declaration accuses the agency’s leadership of undermining its scientific mission and compromising key partnerships with international collaborators.
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2 weeks ago | 
blog.maryannedemasi.com | Maryanne Demasi
“It’s shameful,” said attorney Aaron Siri of Siri & Glimstad LLP, criticising the FDA’s decision to expand use of the meningococcal vaccine MenQuadfi to infants as young as six weeks. Previously licensed for children over two, the vaccine is now approved for babies aged 6 weeks to 23 months, based on trials in which infants received up to four doses.
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3 weeks ago | 
blog.maryannedemasi.com | Maryanne Demasi
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved hundreds of drugs without proof they work—and in some cases, despite evidence they cause harm. That’s the finding of a blistering two-year investigation by medical journalists Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee, published by The Lever. Reviewing more than 400 drug approvals between 2013 and 2022, the authors found the agency repeatedly ignored its own scientific standards.
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3 weeks ago | 
blog.maryannedemasi.com | Maryanne Demasi
It didn’t come with a press conference or a media blitz. In fact, there was no announcement at all. But sometime around 2 May 2025, the Australian Department of Health quietly removed its recommendation for Covid-19 vaccination in healthy children and adolescents under 18. The change was tucked into an online update to the Australian Immunisation Handbook—no headline, no ministerial statement, no media campaign to inform the public.