US makes sweeping changes to key vaccine group

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has dismissed all the members of a key advisory panel that has helped shape national vaccination policy for decades. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Monday that the move was necessary to reestablish public trust and address longstanding concerns over conflicts of interest.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was created within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the mid-1960s. In an op-ed published on Monday in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy claimed that the panel has “a history of conflicts of interest, persecution of dissidents, a lack of curiosity, and skewed science.”

The secretary cited reports from a House committee in 2000 and the HHS inspector general in 2009 that detailed financial connections between ACIP members and pharmaceutical companies. He said his decision to replace all 17 current members was driven by the need for a “clean slate.”

“The problem isn’t necessarily that ACIP members are corrupt. Most likely aim to serve the public interest as they understand it,” Kennedy wrote. “The problem is their immersion in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy.”

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ACIP members are appointed to four-year terms, and eight of the most recent appointments were made in the final days of the administration of Joe Biden.

”It was very intentional,” a former senior HHS official told STAT News. “It was our goal to fill every vacancy on every [federal advisory committee] the department has, with particular focus on ones like ACIP where maintenance of our scientific expertise was critical.”

Mandy Cohen, who served as the CDC director under Biden, told NBC News the move “spreads confusion and casts doubt on transparent public health processes that protect Americans.” Richard Besser, who was acting CDC director under Barack Obama, said it “should erase any remaining doubt that he intends to impose his personal anti-vaccine agenda on the American people.”

Kennedy has long criticized aspects of US vaccine programs, arguing they are too closely aligned with industry interests and fail to prioritize public health. His detractors frequently label him an “anti-vaxxer.”

During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy pledged that his decisions would be science-driven. In his WSJ piece, he warned against attributing the American public’s “crisis of trust” solely to “misinformation or anti-science attitudes.”