Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday he's firing all 17 members of a committee that reviews vaccine data and makes crucial recommendations. Doctors and experts fear the move will undermine science and erode the public's trust in vaccines.
Kennedy announced in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal he was "retiring" the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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WATCH HERE"The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine," Kennedy said.
That claim is "deeply insulting to the many scientists who contribute countless hours to the process," Dr. Sean O’Leary, an infectious disease expert with the American Academy of Pediatrics, told NBC News. "We are, in fact, a model for the rest of the world."
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SIGN UP It's unclear who will replace the panel tasked with recommending who is eligible for shots and whether insurers should cover certain vaccines.
"Depending on who those replacements are, that could change the vaccine coverage by insurance," Dr. Kavita Patel, a family physician at Mary’s Center in D.C., told News4.
Much of the current panel of independent medical and public health experts are leaders in their fields. Combined, they have 460 years of medical experience.
Health policy experts said firing them will do the opposite of Kennedy's goal to "re-establish public confidence in vaccine science."
"Rather than restoring public trust, his actions are simply politicizing science and vaccine policy," Lawrence Gostin, professor of public health law at Georgetown University, told CNBC. "I don't know how it is possible to trust HHS anymore."
Gostin and other experts said the move undermines science, disrupts a trusted regulatory process for shots and could increase public distrust in both vaccinations and federal health agencies. Some experts said the firings could threaten public health, eroding already falling U.S. immunization rates against once-common childhood diseases and making the nation less equipped to grapple with new or existing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.
Patel said more of her patients have become hesitant about vaccines in the past few months as Kennedy has publicly questioned their safety, despite decades of research and approvals from the Food and Drug Administration.
"I see more families saying, 'Well, maybe we don't need that shot," Patel said. "What I tell them is 'This will help prevent you being absent from work or your children being absent from school, and it can help prevent sickness.'"
"Prevention works. We know that vaccines have saved lives," Patel said.
Dr. Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general during President Donald Trump's first term, also denounced Kennedy’s move. “Our children and communities deserve policies grounded in science, not politics and populism,” he said.
Back in February, before the Senate confirmed Kennedy to lead the HHS, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Lousiana said he was unsure if he could trust Kennedy to run the nation's health department.
He changed his mind and voted for Kennedy after he was assured Kennedy would protect the "public health benefit of vaccination."
"If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ recommendations without changes," Cassidy said on the Senate floor.
In light of Kennedy's changes to the committee, Cassidy posted this statement Monday on social media:
“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."
HHS didn't say when it will appoint new members to the panel. But the agency in a release said ACIP will still hold a planned meeting from June 25 to 27. A source familiar with the matter told CNBC on Monday that entirely new members will run that meeting.
CNBC and NBC News contributed to this report.
