STAT HEALTH NEWS – Before leaving office, President Biden’s health secretary approved the appointments of eight new candidates to a critical committee that helps set U.S. vaccination policy — a burst of activity within a matter of a few months that could, in theory, make it more difficult for the Trump administration to shape the panel with its own appointees, several sources have told STAT.
The late-in-the day move to fill four new spots on the Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices, and approve replacements for four members whose terms expire at the end of June, was motivated by a desire to try to insulate the scientific integrity of the panel from the incoming administration, one source told STAT, stacking it with people who, unlike President Trump’s pick as health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have not expressed skepticism about vaccines.
“It was very intentional,” a former senior Health and Human Services Department official said. “It was our goal to fill every vacancy on every [federal advisory committee] the department has, with particular focus on ones like ACIP where maintenance of our scientific expertise was critical.”
The moves would seem to deprive Kennedy — should he be confirmed as HHS secretary — of a chance to name new members of the ACIP, which helps the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determine the appropriate use of vaccines, until 2027.
Experts in public health and vaccine law believe, however, that any attempt to protect the status quo at the ACIP will prove to have been futile. People who sit on this committee have at-will appointments, they noted.
“Kennedy — or whoever replaces him, should the Senate reject his nomination — could easily take away what Xavier Becerra, health secretary in the Biden administration, bestowed.”
Jason Schwartz, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health, said:.
“The latitude that CDC and by extension HHS and the secretary has to reshape, reconstitute, change the membership, change the mandate, change the scope of work, change how frequently ACIP meets, to decide whether or not the committee exists at all are absolutely within the purview of the new administration.”
“So their ability to shape this committee in whatever form they’d like it to take is effectively limitless.”
Asked by STAT to confirm the ACIP appointments, HHS did not respond …
