Anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has amended the charter of a federal vaccine advisory panel to seemingly grant himself more power to hand-pick members and loosen membership requirements, according to a notice published today in the Federal Register.
The changes come after a federal judge last month temporarily blocked advisors Kennedy had hand-selected, following his firing of all 17 experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). The judge, US District Judge Brian Murphy, ruled that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine-leaning picks largely lacked expertise in relevant fields as required under the current charter. They also failed to meet broader federal regulations that advisory committees be “fairly balanced” in representing the views within relevant fields.
“A committee of non-experts cannot be said to embody ‘fairly balanced… points of view’ within the relevant scientific community,” Murphy wrote. “It is more accurate to say that they do not represent points of view within the relevant expert community.”
The ruling has suspended all activity of the ACIP panel. It also temporarily reverses all the changes Kennedy’s ACIP had made to federal vaccine policy, including dropping recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines and a birth dose of the Hepatitis B vaccine. Both were widely decried by medical and public health organizations.
The updated charter published today may be Kennedy’s next move to restore his vision for ACIP, which he had largely stocked with allies that share his anti-vaccine views.
Broad authority
ACIP’s charter is renewed every two years, and the last renewal period ended April 1, 2026. For at least the last two decades, renewal notices in the Federal Register have been brief and unremarkable. But this year’s renewal laid out a significant amount of new language, some of which addressed the criteria for selecting members.
Most notably, the current charter includes a lengthy sentence on membership terms that begins by stating that ACIP members “shall be selected by the Secretary …” But the renewal notice today includes a nearly identical sentence, with the change that ACIP members “shall be selected and appointed by the HHS Secretary.” The edit appears to enshrine Kennedy’s ability to unilaterally install ACIP members.
The membership criteria are also dramatically different between the current charter and today’s renewal. Currently, ACIP members “shall be selected from authorities who are knowledgeable in the fields of immunization practices and public health, have expertise in the use of vaccines and other immunobiologic agents in clinical practice or preventive medicine, have expertise with clinical or laboratory vaccine research, or have expertise in assessment of vaccine efficacy and safety.” These specific core requirements of expertise in immunization practices and vaccine science were central to Murphy’s findings that Kennedy’s appointees were unfit to be on the committee.
The renewal notice did not mention these criteria, but instead discussed members having a “geographic balance” (representing different parts of the country) and a “balance of specialty areas.” It provided a lengthy list of specialty areas that span a much larger swath of medical and scientific fields and potentially beyond. They include: “biostatistics, toxicology, immunology, epidemiology, pediatrics, internal medicine, family medicine, nursing, consumer issues, state and local health department perspective, academic perspective, public health perspective, etc.”
Suggested changes
Some of the changes in the renewal may stem from a push made by an anti-vaccine group close to Kennedy. The group is Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), headed by Kennedy’s anti-vaccine ally Del Bigtree, who is working with Aaron Siri, a lawyer who worked on Kennedy’s failed presidential campaign and has filed numerous lawsuits seeking compensation for alleged vaccine injuries. Siri is also notable for petitioning the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the polio vaccine.
Last month, ICAN urged Kennedy to revise ACIP’s charter and Siri’s law firm provided a draft, complete with track-changed text, of what they want for the new charter. The draft states that ACIP members should have expertise in any area “deemed relevant by the Secretary.” But, it specifically states that “At least two members shall have direct and substantial experience advocating for and/or treating those injured by vaccines.”
The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions from Ars Technica about changes to the renewal notice or potential updates to the CDC’s full charter language. Spokesperson Andrew Nixon only said in an emailed statement that the renewal is part of “routine statutory requirements and do not signal any broader policy shift.”
