Two high-profile meetings in Washington this week will shed light on Robert Kennedy Jr.’s controversial stewardship of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Today, Sept. 17, Dr. Susan Monarez is appearing before the Senate HELP Committee to discuss her abrupt firing by Kennedy from her role as CDC Director last month. The hearing will be led by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a medical doctor and proponent of vaccines, who has begun to push back on Kennedy’s anti-vaccine actions at HHS. Then on Thursday and Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will meet to discuss vaccine policy. This is the second meeting of ACIP since RFK Jr. fired all 17 members in June and replaced them with his handpicked appointees.
The thread connecting these two events is Secretary Kennedy’s crusade against vaccines, which is fueled more by conspiracy theories than science. His preference for quack medicine has gone far to discredit Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda in the eyes of public health professionals, if not President Trump.
That’s too bad, because MAHA contains some good ideas, such as working with companies to encourage healthier food and a comprehensive all-of-government approach to address the chronic disease epidemic, which has bipartisan support from Americans. Kennedy is aware of the popularity of these initiatives, which is why he is using MAHA as a Trojan horse to infiltrate his anti-vaccine, anti-science views into every federal health agency within HHS.
Despite his efforts, polls show that nearly 80% of Americans support requiring childhood vaccines. Moreover, Kennedy’s anti-vaccine theories clash with what is arguably the greatest achievement of Trump’s first term — Operation Warp Speed (i.e., the public-private partnership to accelerate the development of COVID-19 vaccines). A tightrope Kennedy has struggled to walk as Secretary of HHS.
Kennedy initially praised Dr. Monarez, who was appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Republican Senate. However, she is expected to testify that Kennedy demanded she rubber-stamp any recommendations put through by his obliging new allies at ACIP. In an op-ed, Monarez predicted Kennedy would “discredit research, weaken advisory committees, and use manipulated outcomes to unravel protections” and generally seek to undermine the federal health review process.
Her testimony could put ACIP on the spot the next day. Historically, ACIP follows an evidence-to-recommendation framework, a targeted and transparent process of reviewing evidence to direct recommendations. However, observers expect the committee to abandon this framework when they review and update recommendations on previously well-vetted vaccines without receiving new evidence. If ACIP updates its guidance to better align with Kennedy’s inaccurate vaccine beliefs, as Dr. Monarez has predicted, it will make vaccines less accessible across the U.S., resulting in everyone being less healthy and safe.
The two events will illuminate Kennedy’s pernicious attempts to substitute crackpot theories for scientific rigor in determining the efficacy of vaccines. If Kennedy — and President Trump — get their way, it will likely prove injurious to the health of millions of Americans.
