Helen Branswell covers issues broadly related to infectious diseases, including outbreaks, preparedness, research, and vaccine development. Follow her on Mastodon and Bluesky . You can reach Helen on Signal at hbranswell.01.

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken the extraordinary step of firing the expert panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying the action is needed to restore faith in vaccines.

“A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy said in an op-ed published Monday afternoon in the Wall Street Journal.

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Proponents of vaccines have feared Kennedy, who has been openly critical of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, might take such a step, but were still shocked.

“We have just demonstrated that politics will overrun science in this administration. It scares me to think of what’s ahead,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

One of the members of the committee, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, was floored by the move. The committee members were not informed in advance of the announcement, the individual said.

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The committee member predicted massive upheaval in vaccination policy going forward.

“Providers are no longer going to follow the CDC [vaccination] schedule,” the individual predicted. “The CDC has lost credibility in the vaccination space. … It adds a lot of uncertainty for care for children and adults.”

Paul Offit, a former member of the committee and one of the developers of a vaccine that protects against rotavirus infection, said the committee’s work over decades has markedly improved the health of children and adults in this country.

“They should be given an award, not fired,” said Offit, an infectious diseases pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Offit also called for a public response to the move from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the chair of the Senate health committee, who expressed grave concerns about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine positions during his confirmation hearing. Though he appeared at points to be reluctant to vote for Kennedy, Cassidy did in the end give him his vote — but only after extracting a number of promises, including that he would keep the ACIP in place.

Cassidy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The step followed reporting from STAT on Sunday that revealed that four members of the 19-person panel had received termination notices because their special government employee contracts had lapsed. HHS has not responded to requests about why those contracts were allowed to lapse.

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The ACIP meets three times a year — more often during emergencies like the Covid-19 pandemic — to review data on vaccines and recommend how they should be used. The group studies vaccines known to be in the regulatory pipeline and vaccines that have recently been licensed by the Food and Drug Administration, advising the CDC on who they should be offered to once they have been approved.

A short time after the publication of the Wall Street Journal op-ed, a statement on Kennedy’s decision was posted on the Health and Human Services Department website; there was no word about who the new members of the committee would be or how they would be chosen. But the statement suggested a meeting slated for June 25-27 would take place. In normal times, people who apply or are nominated to sit on the ACIP go through a vetting process that can take upwards of a year.

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Critics of Kennedy’s aggressive anti-vaccines stands have been readying themselves for something of this nature. Osterholm’s center, CIDRAP, recently launched what it has called the Vaccine Integrity Project, led by high-level figures including former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Margaret Hamburg, and Harvey Fineberg, a former president of the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine).

“We take up the Vaccine Integrity Project as a precautionary step,” the two wrote in an opinion piece published in STAT in April. “Should ACIP or FDA processes or scientific evaluation become compromised, America cannot afford to be left without any organized systems to ensure that evidence grounded in science continues to guide decisions about the use of vaccines.”