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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.
Public debate about vaccines, especially whether government or workplaces should mandate them, escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the criticism and skepticism fell on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which ACIP advises.
“Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” 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.
“For example, under the prior Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued COVID-19 guidance on reopening schools that incorporated edits by the American Federation of Teachers and was understood to discourage in-person learning,” the order, signed on May 23, continued.
“This guidance’s restrictive and burdensome reopening conditions led many schools to remain at least partially closed, resulting in substantial negative effects on educational outcomes — even though the best available scientific evidence showed that children were unlikely to transmit or suffer serious illness or death from the virus, and that opening schools with reasonable mitigation measures would have only minor effects on transmission,” it added.
Kennedy was confirmed by the Senate to lead the department in February after Trump nominated him.
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