When the US Government sacked every member of a vaccine advisory committee, the justification was, in part, that most had received major payments from drug companies.

US Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr dismissed 17 committee members via a Wall Street Journal editorial in June and replaced them with eight new members, including Dr Robert Malone, who has claimed COVID-19 vaccines cause a form of AIDS.

Mr Kennedy said these members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) were not “necessarily” corrupt but most had “received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines”.

“The problem is their immersion in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy,” he said.