By Julie Steenhuysen and Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named new members to serve on a key panel of vaccine advisers after abruptly firing all 17 sitting members of the independent panel of experts, according to a post on X.
The eight new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices are: Joseph R. Hibbeln, Martin Kulldorff, Retsef Levi, Robert W. Malone, Cody Meissner, James Pagano, Vicky Pebsworth and Michael A. Ross.
“All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense,” Kennedy said in a post on X. The panel is part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Kennedy said the new members are committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has alleged that the prior panel members, many of whom were appointed by former President Joe Biden, had conflicts of interest, without providing evidence of specific members’ conflicts, and said the move was necessary “to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”
Numerous physician groups have expressed concern and suspicion over Kennedy’s unprecedented removal of all the panel’s prior members.
The American Medical Association, the nation’s largest physician group, has called for a Senate investigation into their dismissal, and sent Kennedy a letter calling for an immediate reversal of the changes.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Jasper Ward in Washington; editing by Rami Ayyub)
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