Our entire public health system is full of conflicts of interests and hubris.

On Monday he said he was “retiring” all of the Acip panel members. Eight of the 17 panellists were appointed in January 2025, in the last days of President Biden’s term.

 

Most of the members are practicing doctors and experts attached to major university medical centres.

 

Kennedy noted that if he did not remove the committee members, President Trump would not have been able to appoint a majority on the panel until 2028.

 

“The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine,” Kennedy wrote.

 

He claimed that health authorities and drug companies were responsible for a “crisis of public trust” that some try to explain “by blaming misinformation or antiscience attitudes.”

 

In the editorial, Kennedy cited examples from the 1990s and 2000s and alleged that conflicts of interest persist.

 

“Most of ACIP’s members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.