Outrage of the Month: Mitigating the Damage From Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Assault on Federal Vaccine Policy
Health Letter, September 2025
By Robert Steinbrook, M.D.
Director, Public Citizen's Health Research Group
If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!
Read what Public Citizen has to say about the biggest blunders and outrageous offenses in the world of public health, published monthly in Health Letter.
In May 2025, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unilaterally removed the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and pregnant people from the immunization schedule of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Kennedy then fired the 17 voting members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the CDC on vaccine recommendations. He replaced them with eight handpicked appointees, one of whom subsequently declined to serve.
In early August 2025 the ACIP told eight major medical groups, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians, that they could no longer participate in ACIP work groups because they are considered “special interest groups and therefore are expected to have a ‘bias’ towards their constituency and/or population that they represent.” Later in the month, the New York Times reported that a task force to review the safety of COVID-19 vaccines “will be led by a panel member who has described the shots as ‘the most failing medical product in the history of medical products.’” And on August 27, the newly Senate-confirmed CDC director Susan Monarez was ousted, apparently because of disagreements over vaccine policy.
Together, these and other actions orchestrated by Kennedy and his political appointees have effectively destroyed the ACIP’s credibility as an authoritative and independent expert committee that provides the CDC with unbiased advice about federal vaccine policy.
What is to be done if HHS does not support a rigorous and robust ACIP? There are no easy answers beyond seeking to mitigate the harm as effectively as possible.
As the 17 voting members of the ACIP who Kennedy dismissed subsequently wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine: “No viable pathway exists to fully replace the prior trusted and unbiased ACIP structure and process. Instead, the alternatives must focus on limiting the damage to vaccination policy in the United States.”
One approach is for individual professional societies to provide vaccine recommendations and information. The American Academy of Pediatrics released an “evidence-based immunization schedule” which “recommends a COVID-19 vaccine for all children ages 6 through 23 months to help protect against severe illness.” In contrast, the CDC guidance dictated by Kennedy does not recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children of any age.
Similarly, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released updated guidance for immunization during pregnancy, which included the unchanged recommendation “that patients receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine or ‘booster’ at any point during pregnancy, when planning to become pregnant, in the postpartum period, or when lactating.” In contrast, the CDC guidance dictated by Kennedy removed this recommendation.
A second approach is for state and local health departments to issue their own recommendations. For example, Massachusetts and seven other states are discussing coordinating vaccine recommendations instead of relying on the CDC, and more broadly collaborating to maintain essential public health services, including disease tracking and emergency response.
A difficulty with both these approaches is that they are fragmented and likely to result in even more divergent vaccine recommendations that will confuse both the public and clinicians. Moreover, outside groups, no matter how well intentioned or well funded, will not have access to the expertise of CDC scientists and the nationally representative data collected by the CDC about disease outbreaks and vaccination coverage.
There are also practical issues related to insurance coverage, inequities in vaccine access, and liability protections for clinicians and health care institutions that would need to be sorted out.
The 17 members of the ACIP who Kennedy dismissed proposed a centralized system, including professional organizations working together to harmonize vaccine recommendations, an external audit of new ACIP recommendations, and a parallel evidence-based, expert approach that follows past ACIP practices to the extent possible. If enough organizations are willing to step up, there is a chance of mitigating the havoc that Kennedy continues to wreak.