RFK Jr. Stacks Key Federal Immunization Committee With Vaccine Skeptics

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. named multiple vaccine skeptics to the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices last week, after purging the original members of the panel. The move comes after HHS released a report on children’s health questioning the safety of vaccines, while also taking aim at processed food and environmental toxins. We’ll take stock of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda and its public health implications.

This partial transcript was computer-generated. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Leslie McClurg: Welcome to Forum. I’m Leslie McClurg. I’m in today for Mina Kim. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reshaping health policy fast, and he’s stirring some pretty deep controversy along the way. He’s raised questions about vaccine safety. He’s fired top federal advisers. He’s released this sweeping health report that some medical doctors are calling spot-on and others are calling misleading. So what is true? What is not true? And how should we navigate RFK’s public health agenda? We’re joined today by Katherine Wu. She’s a staff writer at The Atlantic. And Lauren Weber. She’s a health and science accountability reporter at The Washington Post. Welcome to you both.

Leslie McClurg: Katherine, I’d like to talk about the most recent news that came out last week. This is about the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. What exactly does this group do?

Katherine Wu: Yeah. So it is honestly right there in the name. They advise specifically the CDC on the national vaccine recommendations that effectively become kind of a bible for primary care physicians and professional medical and scientific organizations all across the country. This is what doctors look to when they’re administering vaccines to kids. This is what states look to when they’re deciding what vaccines should be required for school entry. And this is the expert committee of independent, non-government scientists that advises the CDC.

Leslie McClurg: And Lauren, RFK fired all seventeen of these independent vaccine experts. What was—what was his rationale?

Lauren Weber: You know, he said what he’s said for a long time, which is that he’s trying to return the council to gold-standard science. What he says, oftentimes while making public health decisions that really seem to upset the apple cart. And, you know, he replaced these eighteen independent members with eight folks who some medical experts had a lot of questions about. One of those people is a board member on an anti-vaccine group. Others have interesting pasts, and the amount of research that they’ve done in comparison to past ACIP committees is really quite different.

Leslie McClurg: And Lauren, this vaccine committee—he has—RFK, he said, quote, is plagued—you know, before he changed over the leadership here—is plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become a rubber stamp for vaccines. Is there any truth to that?

Lauren Weber: Conflicts of interest, you know, plague all forms of academic and scientific avenues in the United States. I will say that the numbers he often cites—he cited a, I believe it was a 2009 HHS report that implied that the vast majority of the members of ACIP had significant conflicts of interest. And that was a bit of a misrepresentation of what that report actually said, which is that there had been some omissions in their forms, which are rather lengthy and hard to submit. You know, there certainly are—you know, it’s important to be on the lookout for conflicts of interest for an independent body like this. They are required to declare, you know, what pharmaceutical groups they’ve ever consulted or worked for. So the extent to which he is claiming that, you know, some medical experts seem to believe, is not quite right.

Leslie McClurg: Well, we talked to Yvonne Maldonado. She—for many—and we talked to her lots during the COVID, you know, pandemic. She was one of the members who was purged from this committee. She’s a professor of global health and infectious disease at Stanford University. Let’s hear a clip from her.

Yvonne Maldonado: We’re in completely uncharted waters here. Completely. We have no knowledge of, number one, who—how these committee members were selected, when they were selected, what information they had to submit.

Leslie McClurg: Katherine, we kind of brushed over it, but what do we know about the members that RFK is now putting in place?

Katherine Wu: Yeah. I mean, I think that clip is pretty spot-on. Not much. What we do know so far has in part been dug up by journalists trying to figure out these people. Several of them, I’d say, are still big question marks. They don’t have extensive—I’d say across the board, this new group of eight people, which is expected to grow larger, hopefully, by the time ACIP meets next week—they largely don’t have the substantial background in vaccines, infectious disease, public health, epidemiology, immunology, pediatrics, that you would expect to see on a panel like this that is advising immunization practices and that the old committee very much did have. You have folks who are experts in, you know, nutrition, for instance—which is not to knock nutrition—but just seems a little out of place on a panel like this.

And, you know, you do see—you know, Lauren brought this up as well—people who have backgrounds that just raise other questions. You know? You have people who have claimed vaccine injuries for their own children or are on the board of anti-vaccine organizations. They’ve spoken out publicly against vaccine policies, especially ones involving COVID, and they have falsely attributed deaths to COVID vaccines or, you know, tied them to AIDS, which is just, you know, bizarre, misinformed statements that don’t have evidence behind them. And to have repeated instances of this on a panel that is expected to be objective experts who are tasked with following the evidence on vaccines—it’s understandable why a lot of experts have questions about this.

And, you know, just to piggyback off of what Lauren said earlier, the former ACIP members—like, sure, there may have been conflicts that were raised—but they would generally recuse themselves from votes in which there may have been conflicts. And those conflicts were vetted over the course of months, even years, before these people were put on the panel. So Dr. Maldonado’s quote about, you know, not really knowing the process by which these new individuals are put on the committee—that should raise a big red flag because it seems that this was almost instantaneous. These people seem to have appeared out of nowhere, and there’s been no transparency about how they were vetted, if at all.

Leslie McClurg: It’s kind of obvious, but let’s just lay it out. Lauren, what does this signal then? What does this move from RFK signal about where we expect vaccination policy to go, going forward?

Lauren Weber: Well, a lot of public health officials are very concerned that this would seem to signal that RFK could be moving to change vaccine policy in the country. And I think it’s important here to take a step back and take a look at RFK Jr.’s past. I mean, he is an anti-vaccine activist. He, for years, led an organization—Children’s Health Defense—that currently still advocates against vaccines. He has disparaged vaccines in multiple ways and falsely linked them to autism repeatedly over many, many years. You know, it’s also important to note—and, you know, Katherine nodded to this as well—that some of the folks that have been picked have said that vaccines can be deadly. I mean, RFK Jr. has called the COVID vaccine—the quote—he’s falsely called it the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” So, you know, a lot of public health experts take his past combined with his current actions and are concerned about what it means for the future of access to vaccines, which are important public health tools going forward.

Leslie McClurg: Katherine, doesn’t this go against what he promised in the Senate confirmation hearings?

Katherine Wu: It would seem to. You know, certainly, Senator Cassidy said during his confirmation hearing, I believe, that he had basically extracted a promise from Kennedy that he would not mess with ACIP. And he’s since sort of seemed to muddy the waters on that, saying that, oh, you know, what’s happening now is fine. It’s not, you know, messing with the process of ACIP. ACIP still exists. But I think a lot of people still feel betrayed by this makeover because they were hoping that it would mean that the integrity of the process and the integrity of the evidence-backed decision-making would remain intact. And that does not seem to have been the case. You know? No one I’ve spoken to has been able to think of a case where the entirety of the committee was dismissed in this manner. There was no institutional knowledge left. I mean, realize that this means that the votes coming up are going to be made by a completely fresh committee who generally does not have experience with these matters and haven’t worked together in this way before. And they have a lot that’s at stake here. They’re going to be making some very big decisions, and it’s kind of like having a bunch of interns make decisions that you would expect the CEO to make.

Leslie McClurg: And Lauren, is this a done deal? Or, I mean, is there anything that the public can do or that legislators can do to reverse this?

Lauren Weber: That’s a great question. I mean, as of right now, I believe that this power—it is within his power as HHS Secretary to do this. And since we do not currently have a new CDC director—one has not yet been confirmed—the power rests with him on this front. You know, it remains to be seen who else he may appoint to this panel. But like Katherine said, these meetings start next week. That’s not that long from now. And there are a lot of big decisions that will have to be made. And how will that go?

Leslie McClurg: Well—okay. Go ahead, Katherine. Please.

Katherine Wu: I’m sorry. I was just going to say, I think to have all of these committee members so far having been apparently handpicked by the Health Secretary himself—I think that does also raise questions about, you know, have there been conversations in the background here? Will they hew especially to his worldviews? Normally, you do have a range of opinions on this panel, a range of backgrounds, people coming at this from slightly different angles. The discussions at these ACIP meetings can get somewhat contentious because people do interpret the evidence a little bit differently sometimes. But for everyone to have sort of come from the same source—I think it does make you wonder: is this basically just going to be a committee that is ironically becoming what RFK claimed to have guarded against? Are they just going to rubber-stamp things, but in his name?

Leslie McClurg: Well, he also made some waves. On May 27, he released a video on social media that was going to change the recommendations for the COVID vaccine. Let’s hear that.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule. Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children.

Leslie McClurg: Let’s just—Katherine, let’s talk about that last sentence there. Is that true? Is there medical consensus that healthy children do not need the COVID vaccine?

Katherine Wu: I would not say there is medical consensus, and I would say there’s at the very least medical consensus that very young kids who have never been vaccinated before likely should be able to get a vaccine. At the very least, they should have the option to. And, you know, I think it’s important to distinguish here between having a strategy where you are recommending that everyone six months and above gets a yearly booster in perpetuity—you know, I think a lot of experts do disagree on that. But to not be able to offer a six-month-old baby who has, you know, no protection left from mom, and is totally vulnerable and is young enough that their airways are small and that this virus can be deadly to them—to not give them the option to have this vaccine, I think a lot of pediatricians have pushed back against that idea. And, you know, this relates to the question about pregnancy as well. Those vaccines given in pregnancy—they absolutely protect the mom who’s carrying a baby, but they also are expected to pass protection to a newborn who wouldn’t get protection otherwise.

Leslie McClurg: We’re talking about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, agenda. We are joined by Katherine Wu. She’s a staff writer for The Atlantic. And Lauren Weber, she’s a health and science accountability reporter for The Washington Post. We would love to hear from you. How do you feel about RFK’s actions as HHS Secretary? Give us a call now at 866-733-6786. Again, that’s 866-733-6786. We’ll be right back after this break. Stay with us.