Gerard Gallagher; Caitlyn Stulpin; Stephen I. Feller; Sara Kellner , 2025-06-24 19:14:00
Key takeaways:
- The CDC’s new vaccine advisors will meet for the first time this week with a revamped agenda.
- The new makeup of the ACIP includes several prominent vaccine critics.
On Wednesday, the eight new members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will begin a 2-day meeting in Atlanta that could have an impact on the availability of some vaccines.
In addition to the new members, the meeting has an updated roster of presenters and a revamped agenda, which now includes some surprise discussions and votes.
The CDC’s vaccine advisors will meet over the course of 2 days this week. Image: Adobe Stock
Here is what you can expect to happen — and not happen — during and after the meeting:
Background
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. named the eight new members after firing all 17 sitting members 2 weeks ago in a move that was widely criticized by experts.
The new members — and one scheduled presenter at the meeting — include prominent vaccine critics whose views are in harmony with Kennedy’s longtime public support of scientifically disproven claims about the safety of vaccines.
Kennedy called the new members “highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians.” The American Academy of Pediatrics said the selections “represent a radical departure from ACIP’s core mission.”
In an op-ed published last week in JAMA, the 17 ousted committee members criticized the mass firing and subsequent hiring of new members as being unprecedented, “destabilizing” and against the ACIP charter, which mandates a higher level of expertise for members, they argued. The charter also says members should serve overlapping terms “to ensure continuity and avoid precisely the disruption that will now ensue,” they wrote.
The former members noted recent changes to the COVID-19 vaccine schedule that Kennedy announced without input from the ACIP, which historically has been responsible for making vaccine recommendations to the CDC director, who usually — but not always — signs off on them without changes, making them official federal recommendations and mandating that they be covered by U.S. insurers.
“Such actions reflect a troubling disregard for the scientific integrity that has historically guided U.S. immunization strategy,” the former members wrote.
The CDC is still without a permanent director, but that could change soon. Nearly 3 months after she was selected by President Trump to replace his previous nominee, Susan Monarez, PhD, is scheduled to appear in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) on Wednesday in a hearing that is slated for the same time as the start of the ACIP meeting.
The Senate has confirmation power over the CDC director for the first time ever, and HELP is the committee in charge of reviewing the nomination and deciding whether to send it to the full Senate for a vote.
The chair of the HELP committee, Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy, MD, cast the deciding vote to send Kennedy’s nomination for HHS secretary to the full Senate. A physician and vocal supporter of vaccines, Cassidy said he ultimately decided to support Kennedy’s nomination based on assurances from Kennedy and the Trump administration that they would protect vaccines and maintain existing recommendations made by the ACIP “without changes.”
But in a post this week on X, Cassidy said many of the newly named ACIP members “do not have significant experience” in the subject they will be discussing and argued that this week’s meeting “should not proceed with a relatively small panel, and no CDC director in place to approve the panel’s recommendations.”
“The meeting should be delayed until the panel is fully staffed with more robust and balanced representation — as required by law — including those with more direct relevant expertise,” Cassidy wrote. “Otherwise, ACIP’s recommendations could be viewed with skepticism, which will work against the success of this Administration’s efforts.”
We reached out to Cassidy’s office for a comment on the upcoming ACIP discussions and were directed to contact the HELP committee, which did not respond.
Scheduled discussions and votes
Several scheduled votes that appeared on the Federal Register notice for this week’s meeting have been removed from the docket. According to the updated schedule, the meeting will no longer include votes on vaccines against COVID-19, HPV or meningococcal disease.
An HHS spokesperson told Healio that those discussions “will be continued at a later date” but offered no more details. In their place, the committee will hear presentations about — and vote on recommendations for — existing thimerosal-containing influenza vaccines and a quadrivalent vaccine for children that protects against measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (MMRV).
Lyn Redwood, RN, MSN, who is president emerita of Children’s Health Defense, a prominent anti-vaccine group aligned with Kennedy, was added Tuesday as a presenter for the conversation regarding influenza vaccines that contain thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that has long been a focus of Kennedy and the wider anti-vaccine movement over debunked claims that it is harmful or associated with an increased risk for autism.
Slides posted online ahead of the meeting show that Redwood will make the argument that the ACIP should recommend only thimerosal-free influenza vaccines for children and pregnant women.
According to the CDC, thimerosal is used in multi-dose vials of medicines and vaccines — including influenza vaccines — to prevent contamination with pathogens, including bacteria and fungi. It is not harmful beyond minor and common vaccine reactions such as redness or swelling and is not linked to autism, the rates of which have continued to rise after thimerosal was removed from all non-influenza vaccines recommended in the U.S. for young children starting in 2001, the agency noted.
The meeting will also include discussions and votes on pediatric and maternal RSV vaccines and the monoclonal antibody clesrovimab, which was recently approved to protect newborns against RSV.
Diagnosis
One of the ACIP members fired by Kennedy earlier this month said she hopes the committee’s usual process of discussing and making recommendations remains transparent, and that representatives from professional medical associations that have traditionally contributed expertise to the discussions — such as American Academy of Pediatrics — are allowed to continue to do that.
“It is unclear how vaccine data and policies will be discussed and managed given the unprecedented and rapid changes to ACIP membership and … other vaccine staff leadership,” Yvonne “Bonnie” A. Maldonado, MD, a Stanford pediatric infectious diseases specialist, told Healio.
Paul A. Offit, MD, who serves on a similar advisory committee for the FDA, was more blunt in his preview of this week’s meeting.
“I think the ACIP has taken a giant step backwards,” Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and attending physician in the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told Healio. “You wonder why certain things are on the agenda.”
Offit specifically mentioned the addition of discussions and votes on thimerosal-containing influenza vaccines and the MMRV shot as peculiar additions. The MMRV vaccine is given to children aged 12 months to 12 years and is an alternative to receiving separate shots for MMR and varicella.
“I think that, frankly, public health is about to come to a standstill,” Offit said. “I think we are now in the grips of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is an anti-vaccine activist and science denialist and conspiracy theorist who believes that vaccines are doing more harm than good, and he will do everything he can to make vaccines less available, less affordable and more feared.”
Added Offit, “I think that we are just going to have to hold on until he’s not there anymore.”
References:
- ACIP meeting materials: June 25-26, 2025 meeting. https://www.cdc.gov/acip/meetings/presentation-slides-june-25-26-2025.html. Published June 24, 2025. Accessed June 24, 2025.
- Asturias EJ, et al. JAMA. 2025;doi:10.1001/jama.2025.10776.
- Children’s Health Defense. Lyn Redwood, RN, MSN. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/authors/lyn-redwood-rn-msn. Accessed June 24, 2025.
- CDC. MMRV vaccine VIS. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/current-vis/mmrv.html. Updated Feb. 28, 2025. Accessed June 24, 2025.
- CDC. Thimerosal and vaccines. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safety/about/thimerosal.html. Updated Dec. 19, 2024. Accessed June 24, 2025.
- Federal Register. Meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/06/09/2025-10432/meeting-of-the-advisory-committee-on-immunization-practices. Published June 9, 2025. Accessed June 24, 2025.
- U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, MD. (@SenBillCassidy). June 23, 2025. X.
- United States Senate. Hearings & meetings. https://www.senate.gov/committees/hearings_meetings.htm. Accessed June 24, 2025.
For more information:
Yvonne “Bonnie” A. Maldonado, MD, can be reached at infectiousdisease@healio.com.
Paul A. Offit, MD, can be reached at offit@email.chop.edu.
