🌊 Packing The Vax Panel

The politicization of ACIP started well before RFK Jr.

June 17, 2025

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By Max Frost

Last Monday, headlines went viral about RFK Jr. replacing all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the council that guides national vaccine policy. 

“Kennedy guts CDC's vaccine panel of independent experts,” headlined MSNBC. 

“RFK Jr. ousts entire CDC vaccine advisory committee,” wrote the AP. 

“I don’t think there’s any way to put this, other than saying that this is an unmitigated public health disaster,” said a top official at the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

While critics piled on to accuse RFK Jr. of politicizing ACIP, though, another truth emerged: That Biden officials had already done so, packing the panel just days before leaving office. 

Today’s story looks at what happened then, what RFK Jr. has now done, and what the implications may be in the future. 

Until the pandemic, ACIP was a little-known bureaucratic panel within the CDC (and therefore the Department of Health and Human Services) tasked with overseeing vaccine policy, including when and how often Americans should receive immunizations. The panel consisted of a range of health experts, including pediatricians, epidemiologists, and geriatricians. 

In 2024, the Biden Administration modified ACIP’s charter to add four more voting members, taking it from 15 to 19 members. Administration officials then packed the panel. 

By law, the health secretary has the authority to appoint and dismiss ACIP members, who typically serve four-year terms. The term length means that around a quarter of ACIP experts are replaced each year. In the year before Biden’s term expired, though, his officials replaced 13 of the board’s members. This was done by replacing the members whose terms naturally expired, replacing other members, and expanding the board. The effect was to fill the panel with experts aligned with the administration’s view on vaccines; the intent was to obstruct any anti-vaccine efforts by the Trump Administration. 

Upon becoming health secretary, RFK Jr. thus found himself with an abnormally large ACIP where all 17 members were appointed by Biden officials. The late-term stacking meant that Biden’s influence would be entrenched on ACIP until 2028.

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Editor’s Note

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Thank you all for reading, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

–Max and Max