A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
Tami Chappell | Reuters
A crucial government panel of vaccine advisors is holding its first meeting Wednesday since Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed several vaccine critics to the group.
Earlier this month, Kennedy in a stunning step removed and replaced all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 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. It is unclear how Kennedy’s new members, given some of their skepticism of immunizations, will affect vaccine policy and availability in the U.S.
“Vaccines are not all good or bad,” Dr. Martin Kulldorff, the new ACIP chair, said in opening remarks.
“If you think that all vaccines are safe and effective and want them all, or if you think that all vaccines are dangerous and don’t want any of them, then you don’t have much use for us. You already know what you want,” said Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist who questioned lockdowns and other public health measures early in the Covid-19 pandemic.
“But if you wish to know which vaccines are suitable for you and your children and at what ages, then we will provide you with evidence-based recommendations,” he added.
During a full-day meeting Wednesday in Atlanta, the panel will evaluate data on Covid-19 vaccines and RSV shots, with a vote on recommendations for the latter. The group will convene again on Thursday to review data on shots for the flu and other diseases.
The CDC director has to sign off on those recommendations for them to become official policy.
Kulldorff said ACIP will create new work groups, which are staff that review published and unpublished data and develop recommendation options to present to the committee. One new work group will review the childhood vaccine schedule, while another will examine shots that have not been subject to reviews in more than seven years, he said.
The latter group may examine the universally recommended hepatitis B vaccine and ask whether it is “wise” to administer the shot to every newborn before they leave the hospital, among other topics, Kulldorff added.
“This was supposed to be a regular practice of the ACIP, but it has not been done in a thorough and systematic way. We will change that,” Kulldorff said.
Ahead of the meeting, one of Kennedy’s new appointees stepped down from the panel.
In a statement, an HHS spokesperson said Dr. Michael Ross withdrew from ACIP during a mandatory review of each member’s financial holdings, without providing further details. It is unclear what his financial holdings are.
Ross is a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology and has served on another CDC advisory panel focused on breast and cervical cancer.
What new panel members have said about vaccines
Kennedy’s eight new members include some well-known vaccine critics, such as Dr. Robert Malone.
Malone bills himself as having played a key role in the creation of mRNA vaccines, but has gained a large following for making baseless and disproven claims about Covid-19 shots.
Another new member, Retsef Levi, has pushed to stop giving mRNA vaccines, falsely claiming in a post on X that they cause “serious harm including death, especially among young people.”
Another member, Vicky Pebsworth, is a nurse on the board of The National Vaccine Information Center. That organization has been widely criticized as a leading source of misinformation and fearmongering about immunization.
During the meeting on Wednesday, Pebsworth revealed that she owns stock and health-care sector funds that include vaccine manufacturers. But she said her holdings are under the amount the government considers to be a conflict of interest, allowing her to participate in the ACIP meeting.
Kennedy fired previous ACIP members for having what he called “persistent conflicts of interest.” But all HHS agencies and their advisory panels have had rigorous policies for conflicts of interest, and there have been no related issues for years.
