Welp.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Wednesday eight new members to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent vaccine advisory committee, some of whom have been critics of shots — especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It comes just two days after Kennedy removed all 17 sitting members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), claiming the panel was plagued by conflicts of interest and was a “rubber stamp” for all vaccines.
The ACIP makes recommendations on the safety, efficacy and clinical need of vaccines, and the CDC has the final say on whether or not to accept the recommendations.
Kennedy said in a post on X that the new members include “highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians. All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense.”
The new members will be at an upcoming ACIP meeting scheduled to be held between June 25 and June 27, according to Kennedy. The meeting is to discuss new recommendations for several vaccines, including the HPV vaccine and the COVID-19 vaccine.
“The committee will review safety and efficacy data for the current schedule as well,” Kennedy wrote in the post on X.
The new eight members appear to have strong credentials related to medicine, public health, epidemiology and statistics, but with less of an emphasis on credentials related to immunology, virology and vaccinology in comparison with previous committees.
Kennedy told ABC News on Tuesday that the replacements for ACIP would not be “anti-vaxxers.” However, some of the new members have previously espoused anti-vaccine sentiments, especially around COVID-19 vaccines and mRNA technology.
One of them, Dr. Robert Malone — who made some early contributors to mRNA vaccine technology — spread misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming people were “hypnotized” into believing mainstream ideas about COVID-19, such as vaccination.
It goes from there, and Your Local Epidemiologist tried to make sense of it.
For 64 years, ACIP has been the backbone of vaccine policy in the U.S., guided by scientific processes, transparency, and collaboration. Its members are independent experts in pediatrics, immunology, vaccinology, and epidemiology who review the evidence to recommend who should receive which vaccines and when. It’s a critical step in ensuring vaccines are safe and effective.
ACIP appointments have always been somewhat opaque, but each member is rigorously vetted for conflicts of interest. Once appointed, members participate in a remarkably open process. Meetings are live-streamed, presentations and data are posted online, conflicts of interest are disclosed, and public comment isn’t just accepted, it’s required by law.
Historically, this process has been grounded in the nonpartisan belief that vaccine policy should be shaped by science, experience, and diverse perspectives—not ideology.
This has changed.
The Secretary of Health (a man named one of the Disinformation Dozen by the Center for Countering Digital Hate) now controls the levers of federal vaccine policy and is pulling them fast based on his decades of false beliefs about vaccines.
It doesn’t take much to counter his talking points yesterday:
- No, ACIP doesn’t have undisclosed conflicts of interest. RFK Jr. reaffirmed this process himself after he called for a full review of the current committee’s disclosures. Nothing was found.
- No, ACIP isn’t paid by big pharma. An investigation in March 2025 found no systemic evidence of undue pharmaceutical company influence on the members.
- Yes, ACIP has voted against a vaccine. Some examples include RotaShield (1999), nasal influenza vaccines (2016-2017), Johnson and Johnson Covid-19 vaccine (2021).
This move is the latest in a broader arc of undermining the long-standing process for assessing and approving vaccines in the United States: rolling back Covid-19 vaccine eligibility, bypassing FDA processes, imposing impossible standards, and pushing cherry-picked, incomplete, AI-generated policy statements. These moves have already prompted the resignations of senior vaccine officials at the CDC and FDA, citing misinformation and the abandonment of science.
She discussed this on a video chat with a colleague, if you’d rather hear people talking about it instead of reading their writing.
Other doctors are equally concerned.
“I hate to say this, but we are heading in the direction of U.S. vaccine policy becoming the laughing stock of the globe,” Dr. Jonathan Temte, former chair of the panel, told NPR. Temte told the outlet that the panel has historically been seen as “the paragon of solid, well thought out, evidence-based vaccine policy.”
The American Medical Association also criticized Kennedy’s action.
“Today’s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,” said Dr. Bruce Scott, president of the association in a statement. “With an ongoing measles outbreak and routine child vaccination rates declining, this move will further fuel the spread of vaccine-preventable illnesses.”
Dr. Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said in a statement, “Unilaterally removing an entire panel of experts is reckless, shortsighted and severely harmful.”
[…]
Ian Morgan, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow who signed the letter, told the outlet Important Context, “this is an extinction level event for biomedical research and for the health and well being of the American people and global public health more generally.”
The crazy and the malevolence goes a lot deeper than all that. You should click and read, the subject matter is nasty enough that I don’t want to quote from it here.
This is normally where I would put the measles case count update, based on the biweekly updates from the Department of State Health Services. Apparently, they’re now only doing those on Tuesday, when there were two new cases to report. Since then, there has been a case confirmed in Dallas County, which means another big population center needs to take care to make sure this doesn’t spread around. We’ll see soon enough if they are successful at that.
Hey, we aren’t going to cull ourselves are we?