RFK Jr.’s ACIP Appointees Are So Terrible, At Least One GOP Senator Prefers They Not Meet At All

Failures

from the shut-it-all-down dept

It’s a bit jarring to be reminded that it was only on June 10th that RFK Jr. decided to fire every member of ACIP, the CDC’s immunization advisory panel. Those 14 experts had a variety of backgrounds all related to and demonstrating industry experience specifically dealing with vaccination science and policy. They were replaced by an 8 member panel, handpicked by Kennedy and chockablock with vaccine deniers/skeptics and folks whose credentials don’t exactly match Kennedy’s description when he announced the new panel.

Now, it’s one thing when someone like me, who has been quite out in the open about my distaste for this administration and for Kennedy specifically, to talk about how bad this all is. And it is! ACIP recommendations effect everything from the availability and recommendations of vaccine schedules among doctors to whether and what coverage insurance companies are mandated to provide for them.

But when a staunch GOP Senator who voted to confirm Kennedy’s appointment as Secretary of HHS says that Kennedy’s choices for ACIP were so bad that he’d rather they not meet at all? Well, that should be indicative of just how absurd Kennedy’s behavior has become.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) called for the delay of this week’s meeting of a federal vaccine advisory panel handpicked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, citing concerns about members’ lack of experience and potential bias towards vaccines.

“Wednesday’s meeting should not proceed with a relatively small panel, and no CDC Director in place to approve the panel’s recommendations,” Cassidy wrote in a post on X late Monday evening.

He noted that members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices “do not have significant experience studying microbiology, epidemiology or immunology,” and some may even have a “preconceived bias against” mRNA vaccines.

The Hill, which I generally like, has presented this quote in such a way that I don’t think it really provides the full impact of Cassidy’s statement. It almost sounds like just your run of the mill reaction from a politician on social media.

It’s not. This is Cassidy saying that Kennedy’s ACIP advisors are so ill-equipped to perform the role they’ve been assigned by RFK Jr. that they simply shouldn’t perform their jobs at all. Cassidy further couched his statements by saying that failing to at least delay the meeting, given how the panel is currently viewed, would create distrust of its recommendations. But that’s just saying the same thing again: the public would distrust ACIP’s recommendations because the ACIP panel members are largely completely unqualified for the role and some are actively hostile towards good public health policy.

ACIP is set to meet today and tomorrow. I somehow doubt that Kennedy’s arrogance, nevermind that of his boss, will allow him to delay the meeting as Cassidy requests. And, when that ends up being the case, the only remaining question is the one that we’ve been asking for some time: when is Congress going to put an end to RFK Jr.’s tenure at HHS?

Filed Under: acip, bill cassidy, cdc, health and human services, immunization, rfk jr., vaccines