Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. approved new rules Thursday for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, posting a revised charter online as the panel remains at the center of a court fight over federal vaccine policy. The updated charter keeps language saying members should have expertise in vaccines and related fields, but it also opens the door to knowledge about recovery from serious vaccine injuries and adds four outside liaison groups that have been skeptical of vaccines.
The change lands after a Massachusetts federal judge halted Kennedy’s remade ACIP in a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics and several other medical organizations. Last week, the previous charter expired. The judge said the committee’s members appeared to be distinctly unqualified to serve on the panel, and later reversed many of the vaccine policy changes the panel had made over the last year. The Department of Health and Human Services has not yet appealed and has 60 days to do so.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, and its charter must be reviewed and renewed every two years. The revised version matters because it changes both who can sit in the room and what kind of expertise the panel is now written to value while the legal challenge continues. That has left vaccine policy in the United States under unusual strain, with the new charter effectively trying to move the committee forward even as a judge has frozen much of what Kennedy built.
Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert, said the new charter “postures itself as a sincere attempt to identify vaccine adverse events, but it manipulates the advisory committee into intensely focusing on vaccine harms.” Dorit Reiss, a law professor who studies vaccine policy, said the language changes suggest the administration may have some of the older members in mind, and likely wants to bring in new people who are anti-vaccine and not in the old group. The additions include the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Physicians for Informed Consent, the Independent Medical Alliance and the Medical Academy of Pediatrics and Special Needs as liaison groups.
Supporters of the move welcomed the broader language. Dr. Joseph Varon applauded its inclusion in the committee, while attorney Aaron Siri called it a good step toward a committee that considers vaccine safety as well as efficacy. For Kennedy, the new charter is a clear attempt to keep his reworked panel alive under a fresh set of rules. Whether it survives the court challenge will decide how much of that rewrite can actually stand.
