RFK Jr scraps vaccine committee members in effort to restore "public trust"

The Department of Health and Human Services dismissed all the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on Monday.

The committee’s job was to decide and "make recommendations" related to the necessity and use of vaccines, according to an HHS news release.

All the current members of the committee were brought in under the Biden administration, and 13 of them were put on the committee last year. HHS said it would take until 2028 for most of the members to be replaced if they served their full term...

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy said in a statement on Monday. "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."

The HHS release noted that the next meeting for the committee will be June 25-27 in Atlanta, and the committee will have new people that are "currently under consideration."...

"A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science," Kennedy continued. "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."

HHS cited an executive order from President Donald Trump saying that changes were needed in how the federal government plays a role in science and health.

"Unfortunately, the Federal Government has contributed to this loss of trust. In several notable cases, executive departments and agencies (agencies) have used or promoted scientific information in a highly misleading manner," the order stated.