U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday removed every member of a scientific committee that advises the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on how to use vaccines and pledged to replace them with his own picks.
Major physicians and public health groups criticized the move to oust all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
Kennedy has not said who he would appoint to the panel, but said it would convene in just two weeks in Atlanta.
Although it’s typically not viewed as a partisan board, the entire current roster of committee members were appointees of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration.
“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. “A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”
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When reached by phone, the panel’s now-former chair — Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot of Vanderbilt University — declined to comment. But another panel member, Noel Brewer at the University of North Carolina, said he and other committee members received an email late Monday afternoon that said their services on the committee had been terminated but gave no reason.
“I’d assumed I’d continue serving on the committee for my full term,” said Brewer, who joined the panel last summer.
Brewer is a behavioural scientist whose research examines why people get vaccinated and ways to improve vaccination coverage. Whether people get vaccinated is largely influenced by what their doctors recommend, and doctors have been following ACIP guidance.
“Up until today, ACIP recommendations were the gold standard for what insurers should pay for, what providers should recommend, and what the public should look to,” he said.
Committee not consulted
But Kennedy already took the unusual step of changing COVID-19 recommendations without first consulting the committee — a move criticized by doctors’ groups and public health advocates.
“It’s unclear what the future holds,” Brewer said. “Certainly provider organizations have already started to turn away from ACIP.”
Kennedy said the committee members had too many conflicts of interest. Currently, committee members are required to declare any potential such conflicts, as well as business interests, that arise during their tenure. They also must disclose any possible conflicts at the start of each public meeting.
But Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the CDC, said Kennedy’s actions were based on false conflict-of-interest claims and set “a dangerous and unprecedented action that makes our families less safe” by potentially reducing vaccine access for millions of people.
“Make no mistake: Politicizing the ACIP as Secretary Kennedy is doing will undermine public trust under the guise of improving it,” he said in a statement. “We’ll look back at this as a grave mistake that sacrificed decades of scientific rigour, undermined public trust, and opened the door for fringe theories rather than facts.”
‘Not how democracies work’
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called Kennedy’s mass ouster “a coup.”
“It’s not how democracies work. It’s not good for the health of the nation,” he said.
Benjamin said the move raises real concerns about whether future committee members will be viewed as impartial. He added that Kennedy is going against what he told lawmakers and the public, and the public health association plans to watch Kennedy “like a hawk.”
“He is breaking a promise,” Benjamin said. “He said he wasn’t going to do this.”
Dr. Bruce A. Scott, president of the American Medical Association, called the committee a trusted source of science- and data-driven advice and said Kennedy’s move, coupled with declining vaccination rates across the country, will help drive an increase in vaccine-preventable diseases.
“Today’s action… undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,” Scott said in a statement.
The committee had been in a state of flux since Kennedy took over. Its first meeting this year had been delayed when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services abruptly postponed its February meeting.
During Kennedy’s confirmation, Cassidy had expressed concerns about preserving the committee, saying he had sought assurances that Kennedy would keep the panel’s current vaccine recommendations.
The webpage that featured the committee’s members was deleted Monday evening, shortly after Kennedy’s announcement.
