Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has gutted a key government panel of vaccine advisors, saying he wants to “re-establish public confidence” in shots.
Some health policy experts say firing the committee members will do the opposite.
“Rather than restoring public trust, his actions are simply politicizing science and vaccine policy,” Lawrence Gostin, professor of public health law at Georgetown University, told CNBC. “I don’t know how it is possible to trust HHS anymore.”
Gostin and other experts said the move undermines science, disrupts a trusted regulatory process for shots and could increase public distrust in both vaccinations and federal health agencies. Some experts said the firings could threaten public health, eroding already falling U.S. immunization rates against once-common childhood diseases and making the nation less equipped to grapple with new or existing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.
The potential impact on vaccine manufacturers like Moderna
