SHAME on the magat cultist gop / greed over people-republican senators for approving this lunatic, this vaccine conspiracist as Sec of Health and Human Services. It will be sweetly ironic if they and their families, relatives, and friends are struck with something made more contagious and with fewer or no treatments available or if available prohibitively expensive because they confirmed this ass. This from the Washington Post, the PBS News Hour and the New York Times.....
RFK Jr. purges every vaccine adviser on CDC panel, will pick replacements
Kennedy has long criticized the panel, which makes vaccine recommendations to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When the recommendations are approved by the director, they become official public health guidance and are required to be covered by insurance plans at no cost to consumers.
The ouster of ACIP members marks the latest move by Kennedy that raised alarms among proponents of vaccines. He also forced out the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine scientist, hired a vaccine skeptic to scrutinize CDC vaccine safety data and has offered mixed messages about measles vaccines amid one of the worst outbreaks in decades. In May, Kennedy bypassed ACIP to say federal health officials would no longer recommend coronavirus vaccines for healthy children and healthy pregnant women.
Kennedy, the founder of an anti-vaccine group, said his overhaul of ACIP would restore public trust in vaccines. But medical, public health and infectious-disease experts say his actions do the opposite.
Bruce A. Scott, the president of the American Medical Association, said the committee for generations has been a trusted source for vaccine guidance.
“Today’s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,” Scott said 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.”
Some of Kennedy’s longtime allies in anti-vaccine advocacy praised his move.
Mary Holland, the chief executive of Children’s Health Defense, the group founded by Kennedy, said on X the purge “opens the doors for honest science.”
Voting members of the panel are independent medical and public health experts who do not work for the CDC. They meet in public several times a year and disclose conflicts of interest at the start of every meeting. Kennedy’s op-ed referred to 97 percent of ACIP members having “omissions” in their disclosure forms, according to a 2009 HHS inspector general report, but an NPR investigation found that could include “people putting information in the wrong section of the form or incompletely filling out a section, or reviewers forgetting to initial and date amendments to the pages.”
The panel is still scheduled to meet June 25 to 27. ACIP members began receiving notices of “immediate termination” by email more than an hour after Kennedy’s announcement, according to members who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.
Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, a top CDC coronavirus vaccine adviser to ACIP, said Friday she resigned, citing concerns that she could no longer help vulnerable people after federal health officials rescinded long-standing coronavirus vaccine recommendations.
Before casting a pivotal vote to confirm Kennedy, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) said he received a commitment to “maintain” the vaccine committee “without changes.” But Cassidy did not say that promise was broken, telling reporters Monday that Kennedy pledged to not change the process rather than the committee itself.
Cassidy, a physician and chair of the Senate health committee, openly wrestled with whether to support Kennedy’s nomination out of concern about his views on vaccines.
“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,” Cassidy wrote on X on Monday.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), another member of the Senate health committee, said that the move to dismiss all the ACIP members “raises serious questions.”
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) condemned their ouster.
“Firing experts that have spent their entire lives protecting kids from deadly disease is not reform — it’s reckless, radical, and rooted in conspiracy, not science,” Schumer said. “Wiping out an entire panel of vaccine experts doesn’t build trust — it shatters it, and worse, it sends a chilling message: that ideology matters more than evidence, and politics more than public health.”
As health secretary, Kennedy has the authority over appointments to the advisory group.
While it is legal for Kennedy to dismiss members, doing so in this abrupt manner “suggests a political, non-substantive motive,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California College of the Law at San Francisco, whose research focuses on public health law and anti-vaccine groups.
“This will not restore trust in vaccines, and is not designed to do so,” she said.
Appointing new members so close to a meeting means they will not be properly vetted for conflicts of interest, Reiss said. The normal process of becoming an ACIP member often takes months, members have said.
Kennedy has a long history of disparaging vaccines, which has alarmed public health experts because he is now able to reshape the nation’s vaccination policy.
“You have to worry that he may be bringing in people who are like-minded to him,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a former member of the panel. “He just makes these decisions by himself, without any input from advisory committees or experts or professional societies. He is just running roughshod over public health.”
Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist who worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign, said it’s wrong to assume Kennedy would stack the panel with anti-vaccine scientists.
“You’re going to see choices that both liberals and Republicans say, ‘Hey, that looks like a good choice,’” Bigtree said. “They know they have to achieve that if they’re going to achieve their ultimate goal, which is to have science that everyone trusts.”
The public’s access to vaccines is threatened if Kennedy appoints anti-vaccine allies to the advisory committee, said Jeremy Faust, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School.
“We’re going to have a sicker society,” Faust said. “We’re going to have people missing school, being in the hospital instead of in school, being in the hospital instead of at work, being in the graveyard instead of at weddings and bar mitzvahs.”
Rachel Roubein contributed to this report.
The abrupt removal of all of the members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has sparked outrage and worry among many public health experts. That includes the American Medical Association, which called for a Senate investigation into Kennedy today. Geoff Bennett has reaction from Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the CDC.
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Geoff Bennett:
The abrupt removal of all of the members of the CDC's vaccine advisory panel by the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has sparked outrage and worry among many public health experts.
That includes the American Medical Association, which called for a Senate investigation into Kennedy today. Yesterday, Kennedy made his case in a column in The Wall Street Journal, saying he was — quote — "prioritizing the restoration of public trust" and argued the committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest.
For some reaction, we're joined now by Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of the global health organization Resolve to Save Lives and a former director of the CDC.
Dr. Frieden, thank you for being with us.
So this Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, I imagine most Americans didn't know it existed until RFK Jr. fired all of its members. What does this committee do? How does it work?
Dr. Tomas Frieden, Former Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: It's a really important committee and it's been a model for the world in transparent, fact-based, effective decision-making.
Every presentation is livestreamed. Everything is available on the Internet. When I was CDC director, we had people coming from all over the world to watch it. And the claim that it is — has conflicts of interest is simply wrong. What the Department of Health and Human Services and CDC did was to post all reported possible conflicts of interest over the last 20 or so years on the Internet.
Of the current 17 members, one has a potential conflict of interest. That individual is a distinguished professor of pediatric infectious diseases. And, as is the policy, she recused herself from all issues which she may have had a conflict of interest from. Her conflict of interest was that she's a researcher who studied vaccines.
What's really important about this committee is that it gives guidance for doctors to know what to recommend to parents, what to recommend to seniors for what vaccines to get, and it determines whether insurance companies and what's called the Vaccines for Children Program will pay for vaccines.
So this decision means that potentially we will have recommendations that aren't based in fact that result in more spread of disease, and people will have to pay hundreds of dollars that today they don't have to pay a penny for.
Geoff Bennett:
When Secretary Kennedy talks of conflicts of interest, he seems to suggest that the committee members, the former committee members, have a pro-industry orthodoxy that effectively acts as a rubber stamp, to which you would say what?
Dr. Tomas Frieden:
There are many instances where the committee has decided not to recommend a vaccine. Just last year, a new vaccine, the RSV, which is for older people, new vaccine, important vaccine, bad illness, but, as more people get vaccination, you can see some possible what are called safety signals.
So there was a possibility, not proven, but a possibility that there may be a rare adverse effect. There's really no way to know this until millions of people get the vaccination. And, therefore, the committee restricted or limited the groups that are recommended to get the vaccine. So this is simply untrue.
Geoff Bennett:
How might this affect routine immunizations and the ability of insurance to cover them?
Dr. Tomas Frieden:
We're already seeing a decreased immunization rate.And when Secretary Kennedy says he wants to restore trust, the fact is that his activities over many years have been one of the main reasons there are questions about vaccines.
The reality is that, if there are lower vaccination rates, we will have more trouble controlling measles, which was eliminated in this country in the year 2000. And we're now having more cases and more deaths than we have had in many years, and whooping cough, which is increasing.
The real concern here is that we're undermining, Secretary Kennedy is undermining and stopping a process that has been transparent, effective, and fact-based, and replacing it with we don't know what, but based on untrue statements, misinformation, and, frankly, fringe beliefs.
Geoff Bennett:
Well, put this move into the wider context of other actions Secretary Kennedy has taken.
Dr. Tomas Frieden:
Well, we see on the one hand some of the things he's saying make a lot of sense initially, but then the next step is very unclear.
So he says, for example, that he wants to address chronic diseases, but then he eliminates the program at the CDC and cuts the program at the FDA that addressed tobacco control, which is the number one cause of chronic disease in the U.S. He says that he wants to restore trust, and then he destroys or dismisses one of the most effective and trusted entities that has rigorously reviewed the facts and the science on vaccines.
It's clear that Secretary Kennedy has longstanding concerns about and beliefs about vaccines. Those beliefs often are at odds with the facts. And I'm afraid that that may well be what soon sets federal policy and determines who can get vaccinated and who can get reimbursed for getting vaccinated and who has to pay for their vaccines.
Geoff Bennett:
Yes.
On this larger issue of Americans who might be hesitant to trust public health information coming from the Trump administration moving forward, what credible alternative sources can Americans turn to?
Dr. Tomas Frieden:
The American Academy of Pediatrics is a very strong organization. They're pediatricians. In fact, they were part of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that just got disbanded.
I think one of the things that we do have to address is, there are concerns. Some of those concerns are always with vaccines. Ever since vaccines were discovered, there have been concerns about them because you're giving something that's an injection usually to people who are healthy. And so you want to make sure that it's really safe and really effective.
One of the things that does undermine trust is the very high price and the very large profits that the pharmaceutical companies are making from vaccines. And, ironically, a lot of those vaccines were created with taxpayer dollars, with research that taxpayers funded, and then the companies are making really profiteering level profits, billions or tens of billions of dollars, from that.
And I think that does cause justifiable concern, outrage, and questions about whether decisions are being made effectively. But this is the wrong place to try to fix them. The ACIP was a bulwark against the inappropriate influence of some pharmaceutical industry.
And, instead, we have very idiosyncratic beliefs, inaccurate statements being made. And I really worry about what advice doctors will be able to get from the federal government and be able to give to their patients so we can all protect ourselves and our families.
Geoff Bennett:
Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, thanks again for being with us this evening.
Dr. Tomas Frieden:
Thank you.
The Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the nation’s health department. The vote was mostly along party lines, with just one Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, voting “no.”
Thursday’s vote
| Total | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Yes | 52 | 0 | 52 | 0 | |
No | 48 | 45 | 1 | 2 |
Note: Confirmation requires a simple majority of voting senators.
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