Outraged American physicians have called on HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to immediately reverse his decision to fire all 17 sitting members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP), and demanded a Senate investigation into his actions.
Less than 24 hours after Kennedy announced he had removed all of the CDC’s vaccine advisors, American Medical Association (AMA) delegates passed an emergency resolution urging him to reverse this move during their annual meeting.
They also directed AMA leadership to send a letter to the Senate Health, Education, Labour, and Pensions (HELP) Committee requesting an investigation into the firings, reports Medpage Today.
John Corker, MD, a delegate from Ohio speaking on behalf of his State's medical society, voiced support for the policy statement but said a call to investigate the secretary’s actions would be a “poison pill”.
“We’ll be asking for an investigation that’s unlikely to reveal any information that’s not publicly available,” he added.
Jason Goldman, MD, president of the American College of Physicians (ACP), said: “The country is burning down… Whether the outcome of this investigation is preordained should not determine our ability and desire to … take a stand, fight for what we believe in, and ask the government to do their job.”
Priya Desai, a delegate who spoke on behalf of the medical student section, rejected the idea of a “poison pill” that might hurt the AMA’s relationship with government.
“We did not speak up back in November with the nomination of RFK [Jr.] … We did not speak up back in January … when he was officially endorsed.
“It is time for us to act now.”
In addition to the ACP, authors of the resolution included members of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Paediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and dozens of other groups.
Kennedy had announced the firings in a Wall Street Journal opinion he wrote on Monday, in which he also said he would be reconstituting the committee.
He said the committee members had too many conflicts of interest and that “without removing them, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028”.
Dr Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called Kennedy’s mass ouster “a coup”.
“It’s not how democracies work. It’s not good for the health of the nation,” Benjamin told AP.
The decision raises real concerns about whether future committee members will be viewed as impartial, he warned, saying Kennedy was going against what he had previously told lawmakers and the public, and that the public health association plans to watch Kennedy “like a hawk”.
The Guardian reports that Dr Bruce Scott, President of the American Medical Association, called the committee a trusted source of science- and data-driven advice and said Kennedy’s move, coupled with declining vaccination rates across the country, would help drive an increase in vaccine-preventable diseases.
Kennedy recently changed Covid-19 recommendations without first consulting the panel.
The webpage that featured the committee’s members was deleted on Monday evening, shortly after his announcement.
Medpage Today article – AMA Calls for Senate Investigation of RFK Jr. (Open access)
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
US reverses Covid vaccine guidelines, calls for new scientific evidence
Kennedy, the Manto Tshabalala-Msimang of the United States