June 11 (UPI) -- Two days after disbanding the entire 17-member independent vaccine advisory committee, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday appointed eight new members, including prominent vaccine skeptics and pandemic response critics.
CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, is scheduled to meet next on June 25. The new panel included seven men and one woman.
"The slate includes highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America's most accomplished physicians," Kennedy said in a post on X. "All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense. They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations. The committee will review safety and efficacy data for the current schedule as well."
On Monday, Kennedy said the former members had conflicts of interest on a panel that "wields the grave responsibility of adding new vaccines to the recommended childhood schedule." He pointed ties to Big Pharma.
Kennedy, a long-time vaccine critic, said the "most outrageous example of ACIP's malevolent malpractice has been its stubborn unwillingness to demand adequate safety trials before recommending new vaccines for our children. ... ACIP has recommended each of these additional jabs without requiring placebo-controlled trials for any of them. This means that no one can scientifically ascertain whether these products are averting more problems than they are causing."
