RFK Jr. names new vaccine advisers after firing previous advisory committee

Thomson Reuters

· Posted: Jun 11, 2025 8:10 PM EDT | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. connected Wednesday named 8 members to service connected a cardinal sheet of vaccine advisers aft abruptly firing each 17 sitting members of the autarkic sheet of experts.

They volition beryllium connected the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP). Eight is the minimum fig allowed by law.

Four of the caller members person antecedently worked connected committees associated with either the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, oregon both.

Kennedy named Joseph R. Hibbeln, Martin Kulldorff, Retsef Levi, Robert W. Malone, Cody Meissner, James Pagano, Vicky Pebsworth and Michael A. Ross.

Meissner and Pebsworth person sat connected the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, and Meissner besides antecedently served connected ACIP.

Kulldorff is an designer of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for a lighter nationalist wellness effect to COVID-19 successful October 2020, and antecedently served connected an ACIP vaccine information subgroup.

"All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science and communal sense," Kennedy said successful a station connected X.

Kennedy said the caller members are committed to demanding definitive information and efficacy information earlier making immoderate caller vaccine recommendations.

Kennedy, who has agelong questioned the information of vaccines contrary to technological evidence, alleged that the anterior sheet members, galore of whom were appointed by President Joe Biden, had conflicts of interest, without providing grounds of circumstantial members' conflicts. He said the determination was indispensable "to re-establish nationalist assurance successful vaccine science."

WATCH | Expert speaks connected Kennedy firing vaccine panel:

Committee members said their ACIP enactment follows rigorous vetting of their fiscal ties and that they indispensable abstain from votes connected immoderate vaccine for which they person a conflict.

Numerous doc groups person expressed interest and suspicion implicit Kennedy's unprecedented removal of each the panel's anterior members.

The American Medical Association, the nation's largest doc group, has called for a Senate probe into their dismissal, and sent Kennedy a missive calling for an contiguous reversal of the changes.