Kennedy guts CDC’s independent vaccine panel

The 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent vaccine advisory committee are being removed from their posts, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday afternoon.

Kennedy announced the change in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, claiming that the “committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”

The Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, known more commonly as ACIP, consists of medical and public health experts who make recommendations to the CDC about who should get certain vaccines. The CDC then reviews the recommendations and can choose whether to adopt them.

Members of ACIP are required to disclose conflicts of interest. The CDC released a database in March of some members’ previous work on clinical trials or vaccine research funded by drug companies, but much of the information was already public.