By Maryanne Demasi PhD
The news keeps coming—and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is wasting no time. He promised a shake-up of America’s public health institutions, and now he’s delivering.
All 17 members of the CDC’s influential vaccine advisory panel—the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—have been fired.
Each received a formal termination notice from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), signed by Kennedy himself.
He announced that removing the current members was necessary to allow the administration to appoint new individuals aligned with its policies—something that wouldn’t have been possible until 2028 without this step.
ACIP is made up of external experts, tasked with providing independent advice to the CDC on vaccine use.
In theory, the panel is meant to offer objective, science-based advice. But in practice, says Kennedy, it has become “little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”
He noted that the panel has “never recommended against a vaccine—even those later withdrawn for safety reasons.”
In an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal, Kennedy argued that ACIP has been compromised by entrenched conflicts of interest.
“Most of ACIP’s members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines,” he wrote.
He cited a 2000 congressional investigation and a 2009 HHS inspector-general report, both of which found that conflict-of-interest rules were routinely violated and that waivers were issued en masse. “The CDC took no significant action to remedy the omissions.”
Kennedy said the issue is that members are “immersed in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy.”
The result, he argued, is a public health apparatus that suppresses dissent, lacks transparency, and routinely overlooks inconvenient evidence. “The groups that inform ACIP meet behind closed doors, violating the legal and ethical principle of transparency crucial to maintaining public trust.”
Among those terminated were high-profile figures such as Dr Paul Offit, who co-developed a rotavirus vaccine and once famously claimed that infants could safely receive up to 10,000 vaccines at once.
Also removed was Dr Eric Rubin, the editor in chief at New England Journal of Medicine. During the pandemic, he defended recommending Covid-19 vaccines for children despite limited safety data.
He stated, “We’re never going to learn about how safe the vaccine is unless we start giving it. And that’s just the way it goes. That’s how we found about rare complications of other vaccines like rotavirus vaccine.”
Criticism of the ACIP has been widespread.
Dr Marty Makary, now FDA commissioner, previously called the panel a “kangaroo court” for endorsing Covid-19 boosters in children based on flimsy antibody data.
He described a process driven more by marketing messages than critical medical judgement, where dissenting views were excluded and long-term risks downplayed.
Kennedy’s op-ed echoed that frustration.
He pushed back against the idea that vaccine hesitancy is purely a result of misinformation or antiscience sentiment, arguing that such claims overlook a deeper, systemic problem.
As he put it, the real issue is “a history of conflicts of interest, persecution of dissidents, a lack of curiosity, and skewed science that has plagued the vaccine regulatory apparatus for decades.”
For Kennedy, rebuilding trust requires more than a change in tone—it requires dismantling the system that enabled such failures.
He pledged that the new ACIP members “won’t directly work for the vaccine industry. They will exercise independent judgment, refuse to serve as a rubber stamp, and foster a culture of critical inquiry—unafraid to ask hard questions.”
The question now is: who will those new members be?
Will Kennedy elevate long-sidelined scientists who sounded the alarm over gaps in vaccine safety data? Or will he turn to lower-profile academics who share his reform agenda but have kept their powder dry?
“A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy wrote. “Public trust has…collapsed, but we will earn it back.”
For the first time in a long time, the US government is not just confronting it critics—it’s removing the gatekeepers.
