Krumholz, the CDC, and Vaccines
Another anti-vax preprint, and an associate of React19 comes up in testimony
I missed one.
I thought for sure Harlan Krumholz was done co-authoring preprints about a possibly illegitimate study of survey-induced vaccine side-effects on the server he oversees (medRxiv) while an officer of the for-profit-controlled openRxiv Corp. which effectively owns medRxiv and while serving as Editor for a journal with a special relationship with medRxiv letting him see papers earlier than other editors.
I mean, the number of conflicts in there alone is mind-boggling enough.
It gets weirder, as the preprints posit something the authors call “post-vaccination syndrome” while including co-authors with known ties to RFK, Jr., and his anti-vax crowd.
In addition to his roles with openRxiv Corp. and medRxiv, Krumholz is also Editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. This presents a philosophical, financial, and editorial conflict I’ve discussed elsewhere.
- The JACC journals participate in the direct transfer program from medRxiv, meaning that Krumholz can get a leg up on other cardiology journals with sneak peeks at preprint submissions while potentially biasing his views of these papers in the process
Why is this coming up now? Because a member of RFK Jr.’s anti-vax crowd with ties to these preprint authors, and therefore Krumholz, was cited yesterday in the Senate testimony of Susan Monarez, the recently fired head of the CDC.
As I said, I thought Krumholz was done with these preprints and these people. After all, his reactions to being called out over them have been anything but gracious or clarifying, and he certainly has enough to do and doesn’t need to hang out with the anti-science hooligans.
Yet, another “post-vaccine syndrome” preprint appeared around the middle of last month.
I stumbled across it accidentally, spurred on after catching a certain name during Monarez’s testimony. More on that below.
In the meantime, here’s a refresher:
- A preprint lacking proper disclosures and generating media coverage was posted on medRxiv in February.
- Subsequent media coverage was described as a “a political and scientific storm” and “a parable for the ways in which the internet is being used to weaponize basic vaccine research.”
- Reminiscent of Wakefield, Yale issued a press release about it, despite it not being peer-reviewed or offering strong evidence.
- Disclosures were updated a week later on v2, after most media coverage had subsided.
- Co-authors and vaccine-injury proponents from REACT19 (Brianne Dressen and Danice Hertz) only later disclosed their interests.
- Subsequent media coverage was described as a “a political and scientific storm” and “a parable for the ways in which the internet is being used to weaponize basic vaccine research.”
- The head of medRxiv, Harlan Krumholz, was also a co-author.
- Krumholz later clarified that he has no commercial interests in the area, but refused to answer questions about when and how he found out some co-authors did have commercial interests.
- Krumholz was also the co-lead author on a 2023 medRxiv preprint where Dressen and Hertz, both of REACT19, were co-authors. Their commercial interests were not disclosed on this preprint. There are no acknowledgements, meaning there’s no disclosure of what each listed author attests they contributed to the research and preprint.
On the latest preprint, disclosures are more fulsome, with both Dressen and Hertz disclosing their ties to React19.
But it goes deeper in ways not disclosed. Dressen and RFK Jr. share the same book publisher, for example. More importantly, React19 folks also refer vaccine injury claimants to RFK Jr.’s law firm, Siri|Glimstad, which they also use.