Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday fired all 17 members of the advisory committee on immunization to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying that the move would restore the public’s trust in vaccines.

About two-thirds of the panel had been appointed in the last year of the Biden administration, Kennedy pointed out in announcing his decision in an opinion column for The Wall Street Journal.

The CDC’s vaccine advisers wield enormous influence. They carefully review data on vaccines, debate the evidence and vote on who should get the shots and when. Insurance companies and government programs such as Medicaid are required to cover the vaccines recommended by the panel.

The committee was supposed to meet June 25 to 27. It’s unclear when the new members will be announced, but the meeting will proceed as planned, according to a statement posted by the Department of Health and Human Services.

This is the latest in a series of moves that Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has made to dismantle decades of policy standards for immunizations. An advisory panel more closely aligned with Kennedy’s views has the potential to significantly alter — or even drop — the recommendations for immunizations to Americans, including childhood vaccinations.

Senator, community reacts

The decision directly contradicts a promise Kennedy made to Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., during his confirmation hearings, when he said he would not alter the panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Cassidy wrote on social platform X.

Public health experts reacted strongly to Kennedy’s announcement, calling it an extreme and reckless decision.

“I don’t think there’s any way to put this, other than saying that this is an unmitigated public health disaster,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the infectious disease committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Far from restoring trust, the move will exacerbate mistrust in vaccines, O’Leary said. “Both parents and pediatricians are really confused by the actions right now, and this is only going to make things worse.”

He said the pediatric academy would continue to provide advice and recommendations for an immunization schedule.

Dr. Richard Besser, who served as acting director of the CDC in 2009, said Kennedy’s decision was shocking and unsurprising at the same time.

“Secretary Kennedy has not hidden his anti-vaccine agenda,” Besser said. “He, more than anyone in our country, has worked to undermine people’s trust and confidence in vaccines.

“With a refigured committee of like-minded individuals to the secretary, doctors, nurses, pharmacists who provide advice are going to be in big trouble,” he added.

In the column, Kennedy said he was “retiring” the members and repeated his frequent criticism that the panel “has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest.”

“The public must know that unbiased science guides the recommendations from our health agencies,” he said. “This will ensure the American people receive the safest vaccines possible.”

He wrongly said that most members of the committee had received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies.

The idea that committee members’ decisions are based on financial conflicts is “factually incorrect, and you can look at the record to see that,” said O’Leary, who serves as a liaison to the committee from the pediatric academy.

In fact, ACIP members are screened for major conflicts of interest, and they cannot hold stocks or serve on advisory boards or bureaus affiliated with vaccine manufacturers.

“Secretary Kennedy’s allegations about the integrity of CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices are completely unfounded and will have a significant negative impact on Americans of all ages,” Dr. Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said in a statement.

“Unilaterally removing an entire panel of experts is reckless, shortsighted and severely harmful,” she said.

If ACIP members do have a conflict of interest — for example, if an institution at which they work receives money from a drug manufacturer — they disclose it and recuse themselves from related votes.

Other factual errors

In his column, Kennedy claimed that 97% of financial disclosure forms from ACIP members had omissions. But the statistic came from an inspector general’s report in 2009, which found that 97% of the forms had errors, such as missing dates or information in the wrong section, not significant financial conflicts.

“I think RFK Jr. is a conspiracy theorist, and that’s what this document is about,” said Dr. Paul Offit, who serves as an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration.

“It’s about the undue influence from Big Pharma,” Offit said. “This is a message that he has been putting out there for the last 20 years.”

Kennedy also claimed that the panel worked in secret. “To make matters worse, the groups that inform ACIP meet behind closed doors, violating the legal and ethical principle of transparency crucial to maintaining public trust,” he wrote in the Journal’s opinion article.

Although individual work groups may meet in private, the meetings of the committee, as well as materials presented to the members, are public.

Members meet over several days, reviewing safety and effectiveness data on vaccines, debating policy and listening to experts as well as members of the public.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., condemned the decision to fire experts whose mission protected all Americans from disease.

“Wiping out an entire panel of vaccine experts doesn’t build trust — it shatters it, and worse, it sends a chilling message: that ideology matters more than evidence and politics more than public health,” he said.