WASHINGTON – U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has appointed a Baton Rouge physician to the committee that recommends vaccination policies to the federal government — and she has repeatedly questioned COVID vaccines and other inoculations for children.
“I am very, very skeptical,” Dr. Evelyn Griffin said in 2024 while speaking to the congregation of Rev. Tony Spell’s Life Tabernacle Church near Central City. “For a lot of us, the COVID experience has really opened our eyes. You know that I have a lot of concerns. One of those concerns, I would say, is about the COVID vaccine.”
Spell became a face of resistance to then-Gov. John Bel Edward’s pandemic restrictions, defying orders to stop holding services and successfully winning a court challenge against Edwards.
Griffin told the congregation concerns about the COVID vaccine prompted her to study other vaccines: what they’re made of, how they’re doing, and how those vaccines got on the childhood vaccination schedule.
“Many physicians, like myself, are seriously questioning the vaccine schedule,” she said.
Griffin did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment.
Kennedy tapped Griffin Monday night to join the civilian Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which recommends vaccines and vaccination policies to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. The panel is slated to meet next on Thursday.
Kennedy in June forced all 17 members of the panel to resign. He promised to pick replacements with strong scientific credentials and without preconceived notions.
A prominent anti-vaxxer, Kennedy was criticized after choosing for the panel several health care professionals who made a name for themselves on conservative media talking against vaccines.
Kennedy also laid off thousands of agency employees, proposed cutting the agency’s budget, pulled funding for further vaccination research using one of its most promising platforms, and fired the director of the CDC less than a month after she was confirmed.
U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Baton Rouge Republican who chairs the Senate Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee, was among those raising questions about Kennedy’s promises not to undermine the nation’s vaccination protocols. A longtime promoter of vaccinations, Cassidy particularly was concerned that Kennedy’s replacements for the advisory panel didn’t have much experience in the sciences connected to vaccines.
But, after voting to confirm Kennedy to the job, he said the new secretary would consult with him.
Cassidy did not respond Tuesday to requests for comments. His committee is meeting Wednesday to take testimony from the CDC director who Kennedy recently fired.
Griffin is an obstetrician and gynecologist who has practiced in Baton Rouge for about 20 years. Griffin praised Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who has been critical of Cassidy.
A native of Poland when it was controlled by communists, Griffin grew up in Canada where her family immigrated. She moved to Baton Rouge with her husband after college.
Questioning vaccines
Griffin said she initially didn’t question vaccines because, like all medical students, she was overwhelmed with information – “like drinking from fire hose,” she said – that basically spread a message of vaccines are good and as a doctor she should just memorize the schedule.
During testimony in 2022 before the Louisiana House Committee on Health and Welfare, Griffin said that she observed in her patients “bizarre and rare conditions” that she couldn’t pinpoint as being caused by the vaccine or by the disease itself.
“The average doctor is not asking questions, such as, could this be an aftereffect of the vaccine? And not asking these questions is scary as well as not scientific,” Griffin said when she testified in favor of an anti-COVID vaccine bill.
Kennedy himself testified before the same committee in 2021, before he was health secretary.
In testifying in favor of another measure, Griffin said the hospitals with which she was associated had refused her requests to dig down on the data about the efficacy of vaccinations in general and the COVID medicine in particular.
“I was told repeatedly no and that was is because they felt that would create vaccine hesitancy if someone should possibly present a counter narrative,” Griffin said. “I can tell you that there is something wrong that is going on.”