All members of the committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines are being replaced, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on June 9.
The 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) have been removed under the direction of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., HHS, the CDC’s parent agency, said in a statement.
All of the members were appointed during the Biden administration, and 11 of them were set to serve on the committee until 2027 or 2028. HHS alleged that the appointments were made in an effort to “lock in public health ideology and limit the incoming administration’s ability to take the proper actions to restore public trust in vaccines.”
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“A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy said in a statement.
A copy of a termination notice viewed by The Epoch Times read, “This email serves as formal notice of your immediate termination as a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.”
“We appreciate your prior service and commitment,” it read.
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Kennedy said the new members, who have not been identified, “will prioritize public health and evidence-based medicine” and that the panel “will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas.”
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, listed as a member on the committee’s website and the interim chair of the Stanford University School of Medicine, told The Epoch Times in an email earlier on June 9 that she was still a member. She did not respond when asked about the HHS announcement.
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Other members whose contact information could be found either did not respond to requests for comment on June 9 or declined to comment.
The panel’s members included Dr. Edwin Jose Asturias, a professor of pediatrics and infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine; Dr. Oliver Brooks, the CEO of Watts Healthcare Corporation in Los Angeles; and Dr. Jamie Loehr, the owner of Cayuga Family Medicine in New York state.
The surgeon general established the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices in 1964. It advises the CDC on the use of vaccines, including the “effective control of vaccine-preventable diseases in the civilian population of the United States,” according to its charter.
The panel provides non-binding advice on vaccines to the CDC, including on the agency’s immunization schedules. The head of the CDC typically adopts the recommendations from the committee.
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Kennedy said in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that the committee “has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine,” adding that it “has never recommended against a vaccine, even those later withdrawn for safety reasons.”
Some criticized the move, including Dr. Bruce Scott, president of the American Medical Association. He said in a statement that the ACIP has for generations been a trusted source of guidance for doctors, parents, and officials.
“Today’s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,” he said.
The CDC and its advisers are scheduled to meet June 25–27 on COVID-19 vaccines and other topics, the government recently announced.
In an April meeting, the committee said that a subset of advisers who examined recent science on COVID-19 vaccines thought that the CDC’s universal recommendation, or the recommendation that virtually all people aged 6 months or older receive a currently available vaccine regardless of the number of prior doses or previous infections, should be changed into a non-universal recommendation, such as a recommendation for only certain age groups.
Under a directive from Kennedy, the CDC in May updated its immunization schedules to remove the recommendation that pregnant women receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The updated childhood schedule states that children aged 6 months to 17 years who do not have moderately or severely compromised immune systems should consult with their parents and doctors when deciding whether to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
