Former surgeon general fears precedent from vaccine board purge
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President Trump's first-term surgeon general thinks people shouldn't be focused as much on who Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy appointed to the expert panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy as the way he purged all 17 of the sitting members.
What they are saying: "Everyone jumped so quickly from 'they fired everybody' to 'let's talk about these new people' that we stopped talking about the fact that they fired everybody," said Jerome Adams, an anesthesiologist who's now a professor at Purdue University.
- If a new administration doesn't like the panel members or their recommendations, "they can just throw them all out and start over again," he said.
Between the lines: Since the 1960s, the ACIP has served as a highly vetted advisory board that's informed the government through public debate on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, Adams said.
- The system operated for decades largely free from outside interference, he said, allowing doctors to safely rely on it to make recommendations to patients. ACIP recommendations also heavily influenced which shots insurers would cover.
What to watch: Adams said some in Washington policy circles have questioned whether Kennedy perjured himself when he pledged during his confirmation hearing not to cut funding for vaccine programs or take away people's vaccines.
- "RFK and Dr. Makary and Dr. Bhattacharya and others have said, under oath, 'We will not take vaccines away from people,'" Adams said, referring to the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health leaders.
- "I'd argue that they literally did with the recent FDA guidance saying that certain people no longer could get a booster. I mean, I don't know how much more definitive you can be in terms of taking away vaccines from folks."
- "If ACIP begins dropping recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines and other shots, it would disrupt the process by which vaccines are paid for. Then you're indirectly taking away vaccine access from people," he said.
The bottom line: "No government body is flawless or universally embraced, but ACIP remains truly a cornerstone, at least up until this week, of America's public health framework, and it saved countless lives over the decades," Adams said.
- While it's possible the new ACIP could have great conversations and recommendations, "the process that they went through to get to where we are right now — the lack of transparency, the unprecedented nature — are going to absolutely create doubt in people's minds," he said.
