Secretary Kennedy Removes All Members of ACIP, Vaccine Recommendation Committee

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Monday that all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) will be “reconstituted,” including 13 members who were appointed by the Biden administration last year. The ACIP is responsible for making vaccine recommendations to the CDC, including the childhood vaccination schedule.

“The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine,” Kennedy wrote. “It has never recommended against a vaccine—even those later withdrawn for safety reasons. It has failed to scrutinize vaccine products given to babies and pregnant women. 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.”

This news comes just weeks after the FDA announced it would no longer routinely approve COVID-19 vaccines for healthy individuals under the age of 65. The CDC announced days later that it would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccination for healthy children and pregnant women.

Secretary Kennedy announced in March that the CDC was launching a database to disclose financial conflicts of interest among the ACIP members. Dr. Yvonne (Bonnie) Maldonado is the only current member who has a conflict of interest listed on the database. For the June 2024 meeting, the disclosure states,  “Is the Stanford Principal Investigator (PI) for the Pfizer RSV and COVID-19 vaccine trials and adult varicella vaccine trials. Abstained from voting on the following vaccines: COVID-19, pneumococcal, influenza (not present for RSV vaccine votes).”

The current conflict of interest database does not preemptively include conflicts of interest. This means the disclosures are filed when a vote occurs relating to a vaccine that is financially connected to one of the committee members.

Kennedy pointed to the results of a House investigation into ACIP in the year 2000. “It found that enforcement of its conflict-of-interest rules was weak to nonexistent,” Kennedy wrote. “Committee members regularly participated in deliberations and advocated products in which they had a financial stake. The CDC issued conflict-of-interest waivers to every committee member. Four out of eight ACIP members who voted in 1997 on guidelines for the Rotashield vaccine, subsequently withdrawn because of severe adverse events, had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies developing other rotavirus vaccines.”

Dr. Paul Offit served on ACIP from 1998-2003 and has been very critical of Kennedy’s role inside of HHS. There are eight conflict disclosures from Dr. Offit during this time period stating that he is a “co-holder of a patent on a bovine-reassortant rotavirus vaccine and consults on its development with Merck and Company.”

Kennedy also referenced a 2009 HHS Inspector General report that found 97% of special government employees at the CDC in 2007 had at least one type of omission in their conflict of interest disclosures. 64% of special government employees had potential conflicts of interest that the CDC did not identify and/or resolve before the forms were certified.

Kennedy continued by explaining that the conflicts of interest identified in these reports from over 15 years ago persist, but he doesn’t believe the individual members are inherently corrupt. “​​The problem is their immersion in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy,” Kennedy wrote. “The new members won’t directly work for the vaccine industry. They will exercise independent judgment, refuse to serve as a rubber stamp, and foster a culture of critical inquiry—unafraid to ask hard questions.”

Calley Means shared a clip on X from an ACIP meeting in 2018 that reflects Secretary Kennedy’s concerns with rubber-stamping and not basing recommendations on scientific data. One person asked in the meeting, “Is there any comment on using this vaccine at the same time with other adjuvanted vaccines?” The response was, “We have no data to make a recommendation one way or the other.”

ACIP Executive Director (at the time) Amanda Cohn said, “While pre-clinical trials were not done using these vaccines simultaneously, our general approach to immunizations is that they should be given – they can be given at the same time in different limbs.”

Dr. Hunter asked, “Are multiple adjuvanted vaccines used in Europe or other markets?” The committee called on Dr. Ward to provide an answer, to which he said, “Not to my knowledge.” After this exchange, the committee moves to conduct a vote on the recommendation for the Hepatitis B vaccine. One hundred percent of the ACIP members voted in favor of the recommendation, with no abstentions.

The HighWire has reported on the stark difference between recommendations from United States health agencies and those from European countries, making the U.S. a global outlier in COVID-19 vaccination policy. For example, the latest update to remove recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women puts the U.S. in line with the U.K. and other countries. 

Attorney Aaron Siri praised Secretary Kennedy for the move to reclassify COVID-19 vaccines from routine recommendations to shared clinical decision-making. Siri called upon Kennedy to go further with adjustments to the vaccine schedule, including the removal of routine recommendations for other vaccines that do not prevent transmission, including DTaP, Tdap, and IPV.

Senator Bill Cassidy was a known holdout for supporting Secretary Kennedy in the nomination process, but ultimately, he voted in favor of Kennedy leading the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Cassidy wrote on X, “Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion. I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

In Kennedy’s op-ed, he wrote, “Under my direction, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is putting the restoration of public trust above any pro- or antivaccine agenda.”