By Mark Palmer
U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. is hosting a meeting of top advisors in Atlanta. It is the first one since he fired all of the 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which meets to help develop federal vaccine policies, procedures, and recommendations for the Center for Disease Control (CDC). He has since replaced the former members with a smaller number of his own handpicked selection of advisors.
The committee usually meets around three times each year, in public, to discuss and decide on how various vaccines which have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should be used to protect and advance public health concerns.
The current concern however, is about the possible political agenda of the ACIP specifically, and the CDC in general. The allegation is that Secretary Kennedy’s hand-picked advisors are very short on expertise in current vaccines. Yet, their decisions affect which vaccines insurers will cover, as well as which ones the government may pay for. The abruptness in the change of how those decisions were made in prior administrations adds to the key concern that Kennedy is not trying to build consensus. Opponents believe he is being rather autocratic in the decisions of the committee that he heads.
Yet, Kennedy has a growing list of supporters in his new, more pragmatic, way of conducting the Health Departments affairs, including:
- Significantly reductions in the number and amount of food coloring in our food supply.
- Retractions of some CDC proclamations that Americans found very strange, like when the CDC that one does not have to wash chicken off before cooking it.
- Exposing the financial relationships that some food companies have with various members of the FDA.
- Challenging the belief in the effectiveness and need for Covid vaccines.
The two-day event, which begins 6/25/25 is sure to excite passions and revelations on both sides of the political spectrum as well as ignite heated debate within the scientific and healthcare communities.
