GoKawiilAnti-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.