RFK Jr. Drops All Members Of U.S. Vaccine Advisory Panel In Unprecedented Move

The shocking decision marked the Health and Human Services Secretary's latest effort to dismantle existing U.S. vaccine policies.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a White House official known for peddling anti-vaccine misinformation, announced on Monday that he’s removing all members of a committee tasked with advising the U.S. government on vaccines.

Kennedy dropped the news in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, disclosing plans to retire all 17 current members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, which provides counsel to HHS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how vaccines can be used to combat the spread of illnesses in the country.

According to a press release from HHS, the agency intends to replace the panel with “new members currently under consideration” by the Trump administration, citing concerns about conflicts of interest as the rationale for doing so.

Kennedy’s move inevitably means that, going forward, HHS’s guidance on vaccine safety will be rooted in misinformation and views from outside the scientific community, said Richard Hughes, a vaccine law and policy expert and a partner at Epstein Becker & Green.

“If the committee fails to make science-based decisions, that poses its own risk to the safety and wellbeing of the American people,” Hughes told HuffPost. “And that will come in the form of disease outbreaks and actual deaths from diseases we have the tools to prevent.”