Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday removed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, a group that offers recommendations on the safety and efficacy of vaccines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” Kennedy said. “The public must know that unbiased science—evaluated through a transparent process and insulated from conflicts of interest—guides the recommendations of our health agencies.”
The Biden administration appointed all of the 17 sitting ACIP members. Thirteen of them were appointed in 2024. These appointments would have prevented the current administration from choosing a majority of the committee until 2028. The prior administration made a concerted 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. (HHS)
New members who are currently under consideration will replace the "retired" ACIP members.
Consistent with President Trump’s executive order on Restoring Gold Standard Science, the new group “will ensure that government scientific activities are informed by the most credible, reliable, and impartial scientific evidence available,” HHS said.
“A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy added. “ACIP's new members will prioritize public health and evidence-based medicine. The Committee will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas. The entire world once looked to American health regulators for guidance, inspiration, scientific impartiality, and unimpeachable integrity. Public trust has eroded. Only through radical transparency and gold standard science, will we earn it back.”
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Yesterday, I retired 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices or ACIP, the @CDCgov external panel that wields the grave responsibility of adding new vaccines to the recommended childhood schedule. Over the coming days, I will use this platform to announce…
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) June 10, 2025
🔥 RFK JR: “A compliant child must take between 69 and 92 vaccines to stay in school in some states, and not one of them has been safety tested in a pre-licensing placebo-controlled trial. And that is just malpractice. So the people who are in charge of that are now gone.” pic.twitter.com/Wp2poyRjpo
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) June 10, 2025
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