Robert Kennedy Jr. has a dead brain worm in his skull. He also loves to swim in creeks infested with bacteria, raw sewage and E. coli. In recent months, Kennedy has used his position as Secretary of Health and Human Services to spread lies about autism and people with autism. He’s spread misinformation about the MMR vaccine, and he’s overseen a significant spike in measles cases in the US. He’s also changing people’s access to the covid vaccine, and I’d be willing to bet that there won’t be a new flu shot this fall. Well, something new: Kennedy has now fired all seventeen members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday dismissed an expert panel of vaccine advisers that has historically guided the federal government’s vaccine recommendations, saying the group is “plagued with conflicts of interest.”
The entirety of the 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the vaccine schedule and required coverage of immunizations, will be retired and replaced with new members, Kennedy announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. The HHS secretary has authority to appoint and dismiss ACIP members, who typically serve four-year cycles. But removing the entire panel prematurely is unprecedented.
Kennedy said that a number of the panel’s members — traditionally pediatricians, epidemiologists, immunologists and other physicians — were “last-minute appointees” of the Biden administration. “Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” he wrote.
ACIP members are not political appointees. However Kennedy, a longtime critic of federal vaccine policy and vaccine safety, argued that the current group is rife with conflicts of interest. ACIP had recently published details on conflicts and disclosures for its members from 2000 through 2024. Kennedy also said ACIP not been transparent in its vaccine recommendations. The committee recently considered narrowing the recommendations for Covid-19 vaccinations among children. Kennedy announced last week that the vaccine schedule was updated — without ACIP’s input.
One just-dismissed ACIP member told CNN they did not receive a termination notice until after Kennedy’s op-ed published.
“I’ve never seen anything this damaging to public health happen in my lifetime,” the adviser said. “I’m shocked. It’s pretty brazen. This will fundamentally destabilize vaccination in America.”
The adviser also said that that ACIP “has the most rigorous conflict of interest policy of any organization that I know of. Kennedy knows better.”
In his confirmation hearing, Kennedy pledged (to the Republican committee chairman) that he would consult with the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee whenever he filled key roles on vaccine advisory boards, and that he would maintain the ACIP without changes. So, Kennedy lied to the chairman and the committee. He’s fired a bunch of actual immunization experts and he’s going to replace them all with whackjobs and wingnuts from the online Horse Dewormer Wars. American health policy will never be the same.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
