So much for RFK Jr.'s pledge of 'choice' on vaccines
By Lisa Jarvis / Bloomberg Opinion
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to oust the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s entire panel of outside vaccine advisers is at once utterly shocking and entirely predictable. Every new action by the secretary of Health and Human Services seems more impudent than the last; all in service of undermining confidence in some of our most reliable public health tools.
The magnitude of his dismissal of all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — an independent panel of experts that makes recommendations on vaccine deployment in the U.S. — is unlikely to register with the public. After all, this is a wonky committee that only fleetingly entered the public consciousness during the covid-19 pandemic, when everyone anxiously awaited its verdicts on the first vaccines. But Americans will feel the effects of Kennedy’s decision in their everyday lives; and it will happen sooner rather than later.
Kennedy’s maneuver had been signaled for months. He showed his hand during his confirmation hearings when he refused to say that vaccines do not cause autism. He showed it again during his first weeks in office when he refused to strongly advocate for measles vaccination amid an outbreak in Texas. He revealed it when he ousted the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official. He also did it when he launched an investigation into the cause of autism, appointing a notorious anti-vaccine activist to comb through government data. And he did so yet again when he unilaterally announced new restrictions on covid vaccines.
However, all that was just the warm-up for this week’s showstopper. Kennedy justified the move in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, where he said the committee “has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.” Kennedy based that claim on old, flawed reports. In fact, committee members are thoroughly vetted and routinely recuse themselves from decisions that might present a conflict.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-so-much-for-rfk-jr-s-pledge-of-choice-on-vaccines/
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