RFK Jr. Removes All CDC Vaccine Panel Experts

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary, on Monday fired all 17 members of the advisory committee on immunization to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying that the move would restore the public’s trust in vaccines.

About two-thirds of the panel had been appointed in the last year of the Biden administration, Mr. Kennedy pointed out in announcing his decision in an opinion column for The Wall Street Journal.

The C.D.C.’s vaccine advisers wield enormous influence. They carefully review data on vaccines, debate the evidence and vote on who should get the shots and when. Insurance companies and government programs like Medicaid are required to cover the vaccines recommended by the panel.

The committee was supposed to meet June 25 to 27. It’s unclear when the new members will be announced, but the meeting will proceed as planned, according to a statement posted by the Department of Health and Human Services.

This is the latest in a series of moves that Mr. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has made to dismantle decades of policy standards for immunizations. An advisory panel more closely aligned with Mr. Kennedy’s views has the potential to significantly alter — or even drop — the recommendations for immunizations to Americans, including childhood vaccinations.

The decision directly contradicts a promise Mr. Kennedy made to Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, during his confirmation hearings, when he said he would not alter the panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Senator Cassidy wrote on X.

Public health experts reacted strongly to Mr. Kennedy’s announcement, calling it an extreme and reckless decision.

“I don’t think there’s any way to put this, other than saying that this is an unmitigated public health disaster,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the infectious disease committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Far from restoring trust, the move will exacerbate mistrust in vaccines, Dr. O’Leary said. “Both parents and pediatricians are really confused by the actions right now, and this is only going to make things worse.”

He said the pediatric academy would continue to provide advice and recommendations for an immunization schedule.

Dr. Richard Besser, who served as acting director of the C.D.C. in 2009, said Mr. Kennedy’s decision was shocking and unsurprising at the same time.

“Secretary Kennedy has not hidden his anti-vaccine agenda,” Dr. Besser said. “He, more than anyone in our country, has worked to undermine people’s trust and confidence in vaccines.”

“With a refigured committee of like-minded individuals to the secretary, doctors, nurses, pharmacists who provide advice are going to be in big trouble,” he added.

In the column, Mr. Kennedy said he was “retiring” the members, and repeated his frequent criticism that the panel “has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest.”

“The public must know that unbiased science guides the recommendations from our health agencies,” he said. “This will ensure the American people receive the safest vaccines possible.”

He wrongly said that most members of the committee had received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies.

The idea that committee members’ decisions are based on financial conflicts is “factually incorrect, and you can look at the record to see that,” said Dr. O’Leary, who serves as a liaison to the committee from the pediatric academy.

In fact, A.C.I.P. members are screened for major conflicts of interest, and they cannot hold stocks or serve on advisory boards or bureaus affiliated with vaccine manufacturers.

“Secretary Kennedy’s allegations about the integrity of C.D.C.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices are completely unfounded and will have a significant negative impact on Americans of all ages,” Dr. Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said in a statement.

“Unilaterally removing an entire panel of experts is reckless, shortsighted and severely harmful,” she said.

If A.C.I.P. members do have a conflict of interest — for example, if an institution at which they work receives money from a drug manufacturer — they disclose it and recuse themselves from related votes.

In his column, Mr. Kennedy claimed that 97 percent of financial disclosure forms from A.C.I.P. members had omissions. But the statistic came from an inspector general’s report in 2009, which found that 97 percent of the forms had errors, such as missing dates or information in the wrong section, not significant financial conflicts.

“I think R.F.K. Jr. is a conspiracy theorist, and that’s what this document is about,” said Dr. Paul Offit, who serves as an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration.

“It’s about the undue influence from Big Pharma,” Dr. Offit said. “This is a message that he has been putting out there for the last 20 years.”

Mr. Kennedy also claimed that the panel worked in secret. “To make matters worse, the groups that inform A.C.I.P. meet behind closed doors, violating the legal and ethical principle of transparency crucial to maintaining public trust,” he wrote in The Journal’s opinion article.

While individual work groups may meet in private, the meetings of the committee, as well as materials presented to the members, are public. Members meet over several days, reviewing safety and effectiveness data on vaccines, debating policy and listening to experts as well as members of the public.

Under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership, the F.D.A. has narrowed availability of Covid vaccines to adults 65 and older and Americans with certain underlying conditions.

Mr. Kennedy later announced that the C.D.C. would no longer recommend the vaccines for healthy children or pregnant women, a decision that normally would have come from the agency’s A.C.I.P. (The C.D.C. then changed its recommendation for healthy children, requiring consultations with providers, but dropped it for pregnant women.)

These changes have thrown future insurance coverage for the shots into confusion, with scattered reports of pregnant women being turned away from pharmacies. Some experts were hoping that the A.C.I.P. meeting scheduled for late this month would clarify eligibility.

“If this leads to vaccines not being recommended, millions of people could lose access, pay more for vaccines and for preventable illnesses, and children will be at greater risk of diseases we haven’t faced in decades,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who was the C.D.C. director under President Barack Obama, said in a statement.

As head of the Health and Human Services Department, Mr. Kennedy has cut billions of dollars to state health agencies, including funds needed to modernize state programs for childhood immunization.

He also oversees the National Institutes of Health, which halted funding for researchers who study vaccine hesitancy and canceled programs intended to discover new vaccines to prevent future pandemics.

The department has also ended work crucial to developing an H.I.V. vaccine and a contract for a vaccine against bird flu.

The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year eliminates funding for programs that provide lifesaving vaccines around the world, including immunizations for polio.

Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader from New York, condemned the decision to fire experts whose mission protected all Americans from disease.

“Wiping out an entire panel of vaccine experts doesn’t build trust — it shatters it, and worse, it sends a chilling message: that ideology matters more than evidence, and politics more than public health,” he said.

Mr. Kennedy does have the authority to add or remove members of the C.D.C. panel. Now, the Trump administration does not have to wait until 2028 to appoint a majority of new members, Mr. Kennedy wrote.

A.C.I.P. members typically serve four-year overlapping terms. The members include epidemiologists, infectious disease physicians, pediatricians and vaccine experts. The Biden administration appointed all of the 17 current members, including the 13 named last year, according to a statement from the health department.