There are countless think tanks in the U.S.\u00a0seeking\u00a0to influence local, state, and national policy. A\u00a0relatively new\u00a0one is making its mark in President Donald Trump\u2019s Washington: the Texas-based Brownstone Institute.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Libertarian author Jeffrey Tucker created the institute in 2021, fueled by\u00a0backlash against covid lockdowns<\/a>\u00a0and other pandemic-era policies. His institute\u2019s covid contrarians\u00a0seek\u00a0to limit the government\u2019s role in protecting people from disease. In recent months, people with ties to the group have catapulted to the highest levels of the U.S. government.\u00a0<\/p>\n At least eight people with ties to the Brownstone Institute hold or recently held senior positions at federal health agencies or key roles\u00a0advising\u00a0the government, including at the National Institutes of Health, at the\u00a0FDA, and on a key vaccine panel that\u00a0advises\u00a0the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those people are already changing the direction of U.S. public health policy. For example, people with ties to the institute have sown doubt about covid vaccines and routine childhood immunizations, dismissing widespread evidence that they are safe and that the benefits outweigh the risks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve successfully placed their ideology inside the mechanism that determines U.S. vaccine policy,\u201d said Jake Scott, a physician at Stanford Medicine who specializes in infectious diseases. \u201cIt\u2019s very, very troubling.\u201d<\/p>\n The Brownstone Institute\u2019s website\u00a0says\u00a0it works<\/a>\u00a0\u201cto support writers, lawyers, scientists, economists, and other people of courage who have been professionally purged and displaced during the upheaval of our times.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a danger associated with\u00a0a state-imposed orthodoxy,\u201d Tucker\u00a0told\u00a0KFF Health News. \u201cI think Brownstone has a moral obligation to care for dissidents and create settings in which they\u2019re able to test their ideas against people with whom they disagree.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Brownstone\u2019s critics say its associates make extreme claims about vaccines and promote anti-vaccine messages.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve been willing to publish articles of some very extreme anti-vaccine people,\u201d said Dorit Reiss, a professor at\u00a0the\u00a0University of California Law-San Francisco focused on vaccine-related legal and policy issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n The nonprofit reported\u00a0nearly $7.4 million\u00a0in contributions, grants, and other payments\u00a0from\u00a02021\u00a0to\u00a02024.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite the ascendance of those with ties to his group, Tucker said that \u201canybody who thinks that somehow Brownstone is some big plot, it\u2019s crazy.\u201d He said he is not in regular contact with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose department oversees the CDC, FDA, and NIH.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have any influence,\u201d Tucker said.<\/p>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\nUSE OUR CONTENT<\/h3>\n