RFK Jr. Readies CDC for changes in vaccine policy

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Minister of Health and Human Services, seems to be committed to potentially substantial changes in vaccine policy, in particular with regard to reports from the federal government and the composition of the advice panel responsible for making recommendations on vaccination schedules.

Kennedy is planning to remove various members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices because of what he views such as conflicts of interest. ACIP advises the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on which vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration must be used; For example, recommend which groups of people should be vaccinated, at which doses and when. ACIP’s guidance is not binding, although CDC almost always follows and gives recommendations to the public about what should be included in the adult and childhood in the United States Immunization schedules.

The HHS secretary can hire or replace members of ACIP committee, which can lead to new sets of CDC recommendations. Acip’s first planned meeting since Trump was inaugurated was postponed This week it is not clear at the moment what this delay indicates, although it can be a feeling within HHS in the light of other changes within HHS.

For example, the CDC is ordered To suspend promotions that it developed for multiple vaccines, including a “wild to mild” advertising campaign that encourages people to be vaccinated against flu. Secretary of HHS Kennedy says he wants advertisements that contain a more robust version of ‘informed permission’. Informed permission is the principle that people must be informed of all risks, as well as benefits, of any medical intervention they receive or any therapeutic that they are prescribed. De Wilde to mild advertisements emphasizes the damage-reducing functions of vaccines, in particular for vulnerable populations such as pregnant women, young children and the immunocromized. It is clear that Kennedy wants messages that are more focused on possible side effects related to vaccines.

And this week the FDA canceled a meeting of its flu vaccine advisers. The panel was set to discuss the composition of the flu vaccine 2025-2026.

Kennedy has said before That he is concerned about the close relationship of the pharmaceutical industry with government agencies and the entities such as ACIP that advise them. But it is unclear what Kennedy means when the current ACIP members include different academici, a chief medical officer of a community center, a higher health of public health and the owner of a household medicine practice. (We have contacted the Kennedy office for comment, but have not received an answer)

The changes on HHS take place against the background of a large outbreak of measles that started in West -Texas and so far has the life of a child and hospitaled 19 others. Almost all people who have contracted measles have not been vaccinated. Yet Kennedy seems to be trivialization The situation in Texas and New Mexico, which suggests that such outbreaks are not unusual.

Kennedy’s vaccines-skeptic views are known. And while he told The Podcaster Lex Fridman in 2023 in 2023 that some vaccines “probably turn more problems than they cause,” he also claimed that “there is no vaccine that, you know, is safe and effective.” Kennedy recently announced employees within his department that he vows to investigate the schedule for vaccine in children This prevents measles, polio and other infectious diseases.

All this does not come as a surprise. Kennedy is always pronounced about vaccines and what he sees as ‘oppression’ of controversial treatments of public health. Just before the November elections, Kennedy posted On X, the FDA warns that its’ aggressive oppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelical connections, ivermectin, [and] Hydroxychloroquine ”was about to end.

The drugs Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine were engaged in a breeding war during the COVID-19 Pandemie that displaced unproven treatments against proven measures, such as vaccines. Kennedy defends itself as purely placebo-controlled tests before license and no vaccine mandates. However, the vaccines that he encounters are usually subject to such clinical tests. Moreover, the mandates that Kennedy, which have been in force since the 1960s, have contributed to a dramatic decrease in infectious diseases in children.

From pokkeninoculations that Die started and ended in the late 18th century when the disease was eradicated in the 1970s, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, polio and measles immunisations, vaccinations have saved and expired millions of lives and life-threatening diseases of action.

For illustration, mass -vaccination programs with a single or combination – assembly, mumps and rubella – started in the sixties and quickly suppressed the spread of measles in most developed countries. The measles vaccine is “sterilization‘Which means that it not only occurs, but also transfer.

Neither the secretary of HHS nor the CDC director can vaccines prohibit unilateral vaccines. But they can hire and dismiss the messages from the CDC, the members of the ACIP committee and change vaccine planning. The fact that the HHS secretary and the likely CDC director, Dave Weldon nominated, have the views, can facilitate the process of transforming the vaccine policy.

A account Which Weldon sponsored tried to undo what he saw as a conflict of interest that CDC entailed, both a promoter of vaccines and an evaluator of their safety. This reflects Kennedy’s opinion on the subject.

If Weldon is confirmed, he will make decisions about whether a vaccine should be recommended to the public. Negative guidelines of the CDC director can influence the insurance coverage, because insurers are only obliged to cover vaccines recommended by the agency.

* At the same time, the CDC joined a flu vaccine video conference led by the World Health Organization last month, despite a planned American withdrawal of the WHO.