Ousted vaccine panel members say rigorous science is being abandoned

Source: Associated Press

Ousted vaccine panel members say rigorous science is being abandoned

By MIKE STOBBE
Updated 7:25 PM EDT, July 30, 2025

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U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly fired the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, accusing them of being too closely aligned with manufacturers and of rubber-stamping vaccines. He handpicked replacements that include several vaccine skeptics.

In a commentary published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the former panel members wrote that Kennedy — a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before becoming the U.S. government’s top health official — and his new panel are abandoning rigorous scientific review and open deliberation.

That was clear, they said, during the new panel’s first meeting, in June. It featured a presentation by an anti-vaccine advocate that warned of dangers about a preservative used in a few flu vaccines, but the committee members didn’t hear from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staffers about an analysis that concluded there was no link between the preservative and neurodevelopmental disorders.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/vaccine-committee-cdc-7a81bdbc08b3cca7db18e884e27df666