The AAP is “deeply troubled and alarmed” by the termination of all 17 voting members of a nonpartisan federal vaccine advisory committee and said their removal will “stoke distrust in lifesaving vaccines.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Monday it would replace the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) members just over two weeks before the group is scheduled to discuss COVID-19 and other vaccines.
“We are witnessing an escalating effort by the Administration to silence independent medical expertise and stoke distrust in lifesaving vaccines,” AAP President Susan J. Kressly, M.D., FAAP, said in a statement. “Creating confusion around proven vaccines endangers families' health and contributes to the spread of preventable diseases.”
The committee’s voting members are independent medical and public health experts who do not work for the CDC. They meet at least three times a year to develop recommendations on how best to use vaccines after they are licensed or authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a long history of anti-vaccine activism, accused the ACIP of being “a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas” in a press release Monday. He did not offer evidence and said replacing the members will “reestablish public confidence.”
HHS officials declined to provide the names of the new members. They are “currently under consideration,” according to the press release.
ACIP is scheduled to meet on June 25-27. The agenda includes votes on vaccines for COVID-19, HPV, flu, meningococcal disease and respiratory syncytial virus, all of which have been under discussion and review by current members for months.
ACIP’s discussion of COVID-19 vaccines already was preempted by federal health officials who rolled out conflicting and incomplete recommendations of their own in recent weeks.
On May 20, the FDA announced new randomized, controlled trials would be needed for COVID vaccines for healthy people under 65 years. A week later, Kennedy said the CDC would remove the routine recommendations for COVID vaccination for healthy children and people who are pregnant, with no mention of an option for families who want a vaccine. The guidance evolved again several days later when the CDC added the option of shared clinical decision-making for children. These moves circumvented the typical process by which ACIP recommends who should receive the vaccines.
The AAP said ousting the committee “will cause even more confusion and uncertainty for families.”
“Children and families must be able to access the immunizations they need to stay healthy,” Dr. Kressly said. “Our vaccine infrastructure must include this critical step of nonpartisan, expert review and discussion of the science and clinical recommendations for individual vaccines. Families and children will be the ones to pay the price for this decision.”
