General Discussion

In early February, when there was still some question as to whether or not the Senate would confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Sen. Bill Cassidy delivered a closely watched speech on the Senate floor. The Louisiana Republican, a physician by trade, not only endorsed the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist during his remarks, he offered assurances about the future.

“If confirmed, [Kennedy] will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — without changes,” Cassidy declared with confidence, pointing to assurances he’d received directly from RFK Jr.

Four months later, as NBC News reported, Cassidy has been proven wrong.

The 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent vaccine advisory committee are being removed from their posts, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday afternoon.

.....Complicating matters is the degree to which these new developments add to a radical and dangerous pattern. Indeed, Kennedy’s announcement came just days after pediatric infectious disease expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos resigned from her position as the co-leader of a CDC working group that advises outside experts on Covid vaccines.

In an email to colleagues, Panagiotakopoulos said, “My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role.”

Around the same time, The Associated Press reported that there’s some ambiguity as to who, exactly, is currently leading the CDC.

A New York Times report added:

Under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership, the F.D.A. has narrowed availability of Covid vaccines to adults 65 and older and Americans with certain underlying conditions. Mr. Kennedy later announced that the C.D.C. would no longer recommend the vaccines for healthy children or pregnant women, a decision that normally would have come from the agency’s A.C.I.P. ... He also oversees the National Institutes of Health, which halted funding for researchers who study vaccine hesitancy and canceled programs intended to discover new vaccines to prevent future pandemics. The department has also ended work crucial to developing an H.I.V. vaccine and a contract for a vaccine against bird flu.

As unsettling as the news has been, none of it is surprising. RFK Jr.’s anti-science reputation was well established long before Trump nominated him. That an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is behaving like an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is painfully predictable.