Speaking at a Sept. 9 media briefing on the newly released Make America Healthy Again Strategy, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy confirmed what could be the worst fears of many vaccine experts.
Sparks flew both ways Sept. 4 as Democratic senators pushed for Robert Kennedy to resign as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during a Senate Finance Committee hearing ostensibly held to discuss the Trump administration’s 2026 health care agenda. But with Kennedy the only witness, the hearing focused on Kennedy’s perceived failings as HHS secretary. “The United States is in the midst of a health care calamity,” Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in his opening comments, which were laden with personal attacks.
The vaccine dominoes continue to fall in the U.S. This time one fell on the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, as one of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy’s most outspoken critics was removed from the panel nearly a year and a half before his term was to expire.
For more than 30 years, the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) worked together to harmonize their evidence-based vaccine schedules. Not anymore.
The other shoe dropped on the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) when at least nine liaison organizations were informed by email late July 31 that they would no longer be involved in ACIP’s process of reviewing scientific evidence and informing vaccine recommendations.
The news that Vinay Prasad has stepped down as CBER director at the U.S. FDA had some biotech stocks literally jumping in joy as the market opened July 30. Meanwhile, Prasad’s decisions regarding vaccine development, as well as actions by Makary and HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, are coming under fire.
It’s not surprising that, of all the recommendations the U.S. CDC’s vaccine advisory board made at its June meeting, the first one Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy signed off on would essentially remove thimerosal from influenza vaccines in the U.S. What is surprising is the time it took for him to do so, given his long-held position on the preservative used in multidose vials and his insistence that a thimerosal presentation and vote be added to the agenda.
With no U.S. CDC director in place yet, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy recently adopted two vaccine recommendations from the April meeting of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), making them official CDC recommendations and ensuring coverage of the vaccines for the specified populations.
Despite the controversies swirling around the June meeting of the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), the reconstituted committee delivered good news to Merck & Co. Inc. when it voted 5-2 June 26 to recommend that infants younger than 8 months who are not protected by maternal vaccination get one dose of a monoclonal as they head into their first respiratory syncytial virus season.
Although the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) was scheduled to vote June 25 on recommendations for maternal and pediatric respiratory syncytial virus vaccines, it adjourned by pushing that vote to the second day of the meeting. But before leaving for the day, it got an earful of comments from pediatricians, nurses and even a retired FDA scientist urging the CDC to reinstate the 17 committee members Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy dismissed two weeks earlier and replaced with eight new members.
