The Secretary of Health and Human Services of the US government, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fired the 17 experts from the vaccine commission of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Monday due to “conflict of interest”.
Kennedy Jr. has been an anti-vaccine activist in the past, and even right-wing media in the United States, fervent supporters of Donald Trump, questioned his nomination as Secretary of Health.
The members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) are pediatricians, epidemiologists, immunologists, and other healthcare professionals with no political affiliation who advise the CDC on vaccination schedules and recommended immunization coverage, typically serving four-year terms, so their collective removal is unprecedented.
Why did Kennedy fire the vaccine specialists?
Kennedy announced in a column published in The Wall Street Journal that the Committee members were “last-minute appointments” by President Joe Biden’s Administration. “The Trump Administration would not have a majority until 2028 if the current members are not removed,” argued Kennedy.
The opinion column starts with a statement that is only true in the far-right of the United States: “Vaccines have become a divisive issue in American politics”. Outside of the MAGA world, vaccines are highly validated and seen as fundamental in having mitigated the COVID-19 pandemic.
The next Committee meeting is scheduled for June 25th and the agenda includes the use of the COVID-19 vaccine, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, human papillomavirus, and meningococcus.
Under the Kennedy administration, there was a measles outbreak in the United States, especially in the state of Texas, and in May, the Secretary of Health announced that the COVID vaccine would no longer be recommended for pregnant women and healthy children.
The professor at the School of Law at the University of San Francisco, Dorit Reiss, said in statements to CNN that “appointing people hastily implies that they cannot be properly examined and that it cannot be verified if they have conflicts of interest... This does not restore confidence in vaccines and is not the intended goal either,” she argued.
The controversies of RFK Jr.
Kennedy has been against various vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine, which he referred to as the “most lethal ever made.”
He has also linked vaccines to the increase in autism cases in children and wants to eliminate the fluoride added to drinking water in the United States since 1945.
Robert Kennedy Jr. is the son of Robert Kennedy, former Attorney General of the United States and a candidate for the Democratic nomination who was assassinated in June 1968. He is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and therefore, a member of one of the most important families in the Democratic Party in the United States.
RFK Jr. was a Democrat until 2023, and after an independent presidential candidacy that never gained momentum, he chose to support Trump, earning the enmity of a good part of his family.
According to his own account, in his adolescence and youth Robert Kennedy Jr. was addicted to heroin for 14 years (he started after his father’s assassination) and began his rehabilitation in 1983.