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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday that he has “retired” all 17 members of the key government panel of vaccine advisors. Kennedy has removed all members of the Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices, or ACIP. This advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is the latest move by Kennedy, which has changed vaccinations in the US since he took the helm at the HHS, and could potentially weaken it.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday that he has “retired” all 17 members of the key government panel of vaccine advisors.
“A clean sweep is needed to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy said in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Monday.
Kennedy has removed all members of the Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices, or ACIP. This advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The group will review vaccine data and develop recommendations to determine who is eligible for the shot and whether the insurance company should cover them.
ACIP members are independent medical and public experts who make recommendations based on rigorous scientific reviews and evidence. CDC Directors must approve these recommendations in order to become official policy.
It is unclear who Kennedy will appoint to the new group. In the release, HHS said ACIP will hold a planned meeting from June 25th to 27th to create recommendations. Those familiar with the issue have told CNBC that new members will be holding the meeting.
The advisor’s overhaul is that Kennedy’s latest move (a prominent vaccine skeptic) could potentially shift and potentially weaken vaccinations in the US since helmed at the HHS. Under Kennedy, HHS has suspended daily COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for healthy children and healthy pregnant women and cancelled a program aimed at discovering new vaccines to prevent future pandemics.
Kennedy said Monday that HHS will place a “recovery of public trusts that surpasses the professional or anti-Baksin agenda.”
Kennedy added that some of the committee members are last-minute appointees for the Biden administration, noting that the Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028, without banishing advisors from the current group.
Kennedy argued that the panel was “stricken by a sustained conflict of interest and is nothing more than a rubber stamp on the vaccine.”
However, all HHS agencies and their advisory panels have strict policies for conflicts of interest and have not had any related issues for many years. All members of the Federal Vaccine Advisory Committee are already required to comply with regulations relating to disclosing potential conflicts of interest.
The announcement comes days after pediatric disease expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotiotiopoulos resigned as ACIP co-leader, as it is believed to have been “unable to help the most vulnerable members of the US population.”
Health policy experts previously told CNBC that advisory committee reforms could produce political recommendations that emphasize the harm rather than the benefits of shots. These recommendations could lead to great distrust of the CDC and the Trump administration among scientists and public health experts.
ACIP has scrutinized vaccine products in the past, in contrast to what Kennedy and other Trump administration figures have claimed. In certain instances, the group recommends using more restricted vaccines than the Food and Drug Administration allows.
For example, the FDA has approved Merck’s HPV vaccine for use in women and men aged 9-45 years. However, CDC is recommended for use only in patients ages 9-26.
-CNBC’s Angelica Peebulls contributed to this report.
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