U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate Committee on Appropriations hearing on the Department of Health and Human Services budget, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 20, 2025.
Ken Cedeno | Reuters
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday said he is “retiring” all 17 members of a crucial government panel of vaccine advisors.
“A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
Kennedy is removing all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and HHS more broadly. The group reviews vaccine data and makes recommendations that determine who is eligible for shots and whether insurers should cover them, among other efforts.
ACIP members are independent medical and public experts who make recommendations based on rigorous scientific review and evidence. The CDC director has to sign off on those recommendations for them to become official policy.
The advisor overhaul is the latest move by Kennedy – a prominent vaccine skeptic – to change and potentially undermine vaccinations in the U.S. since he took the helm at HHS.
He said Monday HHS will put “the restoration of public trust above any pro- or antivaccine agenda.”
Kennedy added some of the members on the committee were last-minute appointees of the Biden administration and noted that without ousting advisors from the current group, the Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028.
Kennedy claimed that the panel has been “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”
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