Anti-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."