Establishment medical groups organize against RFK Jr.’s HHS to maintain status quo vaccine schedules
Large medical associations are organizing with pharmacists and vaccine manufacturers behind closed doors in an effort to maintain their influence over Americans’ health care as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s new vaccine advisory group meets to study and reevaluate individual vaccines, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
In an article titled, “The plan to vaccinate all Americans, despite RFK Jr.,” Lena Sun and Rachel Roubein report a coalition of groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), “are discussing ordering vaccines directly from manufacturers and giving greater weight to vaccine recommendations from medical associations. And they are asking insurance companies to continue covering shots based on professional societies’ guidance instead of the federal government’s.”
The defensive move comes as Kennedy “retired” all 17 members of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and appointed eight new panelists. The new panel is meeting for the first time Wednesday and Thursday of this week, with co-chairs Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D. and Robert Malone, M.D.
“Today's ACIP meeting is usually a time where experts come together to inform the future of vaccines,” AAP posted to X Wednesday. “That is not what today will be. That is not what we can stand behind. The AAP will continue to recommend its own childhood vaccine schedule -- just as we have since the 1930s.”
Last week, AAP was also among the medical associations that condemned the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld Tennessee’s law that protects children with gender dysphoria from being subjected to experimental drugs and surgeries.
The ACIP meeting took place despite a call for delay by U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) who was referred to as an “industry apologist” for Big Pharma by Health Freedom Louisiana.
The American College of Physicians also told the Post Kennedy’s changes to the vaccine advisory panel “puts at risk decades of progress in vaccine development, access, and public trust, and contributes to confusion and uncertainty.”
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the federal health agency and CDC “remain committed to ensuring that vaccine guidance is rigorous, independent, and truly in service to the health of the American people — not corporate interests.”
According to the Post, Nixon referred to one of the foremost organizers of the behind-the-scenes association as “a self-appointed echo chamber masquerading as oversight.”
“Led by establishment insiders, it’s less about integrity and more about salvaging the credibility of a public health bureaucracy that failed millions during the covid-19 pandemic,” he added. “ACIP will continue to be the statutory authority guiding immunization policy in this country.”
In his opening comments Wednesday, Kulldorff noted “the number of vaccines that our children and adolescents receive today exceeds what children in most other developed nations receive — and what most of us in this room received when we were children.”
“In addition to studying and evaluating individual vaccines, it is important to evaluate the cumulative effect of the recommended vaccine schedule,” he added. “This includes interaction effects between different vaccines, the total number of vaccines, cumulative amounts of vaccine ingredients, and relative timing of different vaccines.”