The news: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of an advisory panel that makes vaccine recommendations to the CDC.
More on the advisory panel: The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) advises the CDC on which vaccines should be administered to which age groups, while also recommending the number of vaccine doses and timing between shots. Insurance companies are mandated by law to cover vaccines recommended by the ACIP as long as the CDC director signs off on them, per KFF. ACIP members are independent medical experts with knowledge of vaccines and are appointed to terms that last up to four years.
Behind Kennedy’s decision: Most of the fired ACIP members were recently appointed by the Biden administration, meaning Kennedy couldn’t get his majority in until 2028 without removing the entire panel, he wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal.
Kennedy believes the committee doesn’t closely scrutinize some vaccines that are given to babies and pregnant women, and that it has never advised against a single immunization. Kennedy also alleged that most ACIP members have received “substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines.”
However, ACIP members aren’t allowed to hold stocks or be on advisory boards of vaccine makers, and have to recuse themselves from vaccine-related votes if there is any conflict of interest, per The New York Times.
The big takeaway: It’s unclear whether the new panel will change its vaccine recommendations for the CDC. But if committee members come in with preconceived vaccine suspicions that align with Kennedy’s views—such as linking childhood immunizations to autism—accessibility to certain shots could worsen due to more limited insurance coverage.
Changing vaccine recommendations would create confusion among both the medical community and consumers. Most patients rely on their doctors’ advice for which immunizations to get and when, but physicians themselves could be unsure if the guidelines they previously followed have changed.