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From NBC News: The 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent vaccine advisory committee are being removed from their posts, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday afternoon.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, known more commonly as ACIP, consists of medical and public health experts — including pediatricians, epidemiologists and geriatricians — who make recommendations to the CDC about who should get certain vaccines, including the schedule for childhood vaccinations. Several times a year the committee holds public meetings where data is presented and reviewed.
Kennedy announced the change in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, claiming that the “committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”
The HHS released the following statement:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today took a bold step in restoring public trust, links to an external website, opens in a new tab by totally reconstituting the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), an advisory committee that makes recommendations on the safety, efficacy, and clinical need of vaccines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Under the leadership of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the agency removed the 17 sitting members of the ACIP committee and will replace them with new members currently under consideration.
“Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” Secretary Kennedy said. “The public must know that unbiased science—evaluated through a transparent process and insulated from conflicts of interest—guides the recommendations of our health agencies.”
As directed by President Trump’s Restoring Gold Standard Science executive order, links to an external website, the new ACIP members will ensure that government scientific activities are informed by the most credible, reliable, and impartial scientific evidence available.
The Biden administration appointed all of the 17 sitting ACIP members. Thirteen of them were appointed in 2024. These appointments would have prevented the current administration from choosing a majority of the committee until 2028. The prior administration made a concerted effort to lock in public health ideology and limit the incoming administration’s ability to take the proper actions to restore public trust in vaccines.
“A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy concluded. “ACIP’s new members will prioritize public health and evidence-based medicine. The Committee will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas. The entire world once looked to American health regulators for guidance, inspiration, scientific impartiality, and unimpeachable integrity. Public trust has eroded. Only through radical transparency and gold standard science, will we earn it back.”
Dr. Sean O’Leary, an infectious disease expert with the American Academy of Pediatrics, called the claim “deeply insulting to the many scientists who contribute countless hours to the process.”
“We are, in fact, a model for the rest of the world,” O’Leary said. “This is manufactured chaos.”
Today, we are taking a bold step in restoring public trust by totally reconstituting the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP). A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.
The entire world once looked to American health… pic.twitter.com/hTo7xV4Pke
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) June 9, 2025
The information listed is from NBCNews.com.
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