US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr testifying before the Senate in May
US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has appointed eight new people to the committee that issues official government recommendations on immunisations, days after removing all 17 previous members.
In an announcement on X, Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic, said reconstituting the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP) was a “major step towards restoring public trust in vaccines”.
Kennedy said the new members “have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.”
Health experts have criticised his questioning of the safety and efficacy of vaccines, although he previously told the Senate he is “not going to take them away”.
Kennedy named the new members as Joseph R Hibbeln, Martin Kulldorff, Retsef Levi, Robert W Malone, Cody Meissner, James Pagano, Vicky Pebsworth and Michael A Ross to the committee.
Some of new members are close allies of Kennedy and have histories of vaccine scepticism.
Dr Malone was accused of spreading misinformation about the mRNA vaccines during the pandemic, while Dr Kulldorf claimed he was fired from his position at Harvard university for criticising the university’s Covid-19 requirements.
Kennedy praised the new members in his announcement, saying this slate includes “highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians”, he said in his post.
“All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense,” the health secretary added.
Dr Jason Goldman, the president of the American College of Physicians, criticised the new committee.
“The speed with which these members were selected, and the lack of transparency in the process, does not help to restore public confidence and trust, and contributes to confusion and uncertainty,” he said in a statement to CBS, the BBC’s American news partner.
On Monday, Kennedy announced in a Wall Street Journal editorial that he was “retiring” all 17 members of the Acip over conflicts of interest.
Eight of them were appointed in January 2025, in the last days of President Biden’s term.
He noted that if he did not remove the committee members, President Trump would not have been able to appoint a majority on the panel until 2028.
“The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine,” Kennedy wrote.
However, critics and former members said the board adhered to rigorous conflict of interest and ethical standards.
Kennedy claimed that health authorities and drug companies were responsible for a “crisis of public trust” that some try to explain “by blaming misinformation or antiscience attitudes.”
After the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves vaccines based on whether the benefits of the shot outweigh the risks, Acip recommends which groups should be given the shots and when, which also determines insurance coverage of the shots.
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