Health experts have expressed grave concern after a panel of RFK-appointed advisers voted to recommend against administering combination vaccines to young children.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, made up of officials appointed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., voted on Thursday to stop recommending the combined measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (MMRV) vaccine to children under the age of 4.
Instead, young children should be given the MMR vaccine separately from the varicella vaccine, which targets chickenpox.
The vote was part of a meeting on official vaccine recommendations that included a delay on another vote surrounding the use of hepatitis B vaccines on newborns. Within the meeting, “near chaos” ensued, The New York Times reports.
Non-voting committee liaison member and president of the American College of Physicians, Dr. Jason Goldman, explained the situation to CNN, claiming, “It is the beginning of the end, because they are eroding confidence in the process.”
“They are taking away the freedom of choice of individuals to decide with their physician what is best for their health care. It affects coverage of vaccines, and it is laying the groundwork for decisions to be made without good scientific discussion or evidence.”
Appearing on MSNBC’s The Weeknight, Dr. Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician, public health advocate and co-founder of the Children’s Health Fund, said that Kennedy was “intentionally creating chaos in the minds of the public.”
“This is what he’s been doing actually for many years before he was appointed secretary of HHS. He was the most prominent anti-vaxxer in the world, influencing people negatively all over the world and really in the United States. And now we’re left with the chaos caused resistance to getting vaccines and a couple hundred thousand children now vulnerable to measles,” he argued.
Kennedy has previously argued that natural immunity is the best defense against measles and has long worked to attempt to find a link between childhood vaccines and autism in the face of an overwhelming lack of both evidence and scientific consensus.
“We’re going through this public health arena that Bobby now controls, and he’s using a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel to make some fine-tuned changes. But right now, I don’t know where this is going. And his hand-picked many vaccine deniers or resisters on this committee is a very dangerous sign.”
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned from his position as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases last month in response to the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, decried the vote on X, writing, “NO TRUST IN ACIP!”
“Well, the absolutely incomprehensible vote at the end of the ACIP meeting has left everyone confused… Seems like the committee would benefit from a vaccine expert or two and someone who can run a meeting.”
NO TRUST IN ACIP! Well, the absolutely incomprehensible vote at the end of the ACIP meeting has left everyone confused. MMRV resolution passed, so it’s off the schedule for younger children and CMS won’t cover it. Private insurance doesn’t have to cover it, but AHIP…
— DrDemetre (@dr_demetre) September 18, 2025
The meeting “devolved into confusion and near chaos,” after a vote on whether newborns should receive the hepatitis B vaccine was postponed to Friday, The New York Times reports.
Panelists seemed unsure about the purpose of the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program that administers free vaccines to children around the country, The Times added. The panel members voted to have the VFC program continue to cover the MMRV vaccine for children under 4, though The Times notes that “it was unclear whether the members all understood what they were voting for,” with three members abstaining and one citing his confusion as the reason for doing so.
In a follow-up tweet, Dr. Daskalakis wrote, “Seems like a reasonable next step would be for the CDC director to see if these recommendations by the ACIP make sense and are good for public health. If they aren’t, he shouldn’t sign them. Right?”
A top aide to RFK Jr., Deputy Health Secretary Jim O’Neill, was appointed as acting director of the CDC following Dr. Monarez’s firing in August. He has no medical training or infectious disease expertise.
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