The trial alleys that RFK Jr. demands that members of the vaccination panel be republicans or independent
A trial submitted on Monday by a coalition of professional medical groups alleys that the Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. prevented the registered Democrats from sitting in the advisory panel of centen vaccines for Disease Control and Prevention.
The advisory committee for vaccination practices, or ACIP, has been operating for decades as an independent panel of experts who help guide federal government decisions on vaccinations. But in June, Kennedy – who for years has been picking an anti -vaccine disinformation – dismissed the 17 members of the panel.
Kennedy said that layoffs were necessary to “restore public confidence in vaccine science” and appointed eight new members in the panel, including several anti-vaccine activists.
The trial, submitted by a coalition which includes the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians, alleges the Kennedy May directive to remove the recommendations of COVVI-19 vaccination for healthy children and pregnant women of the CDC immunization calendar, which was made without the contribution of the APIP, violated the law on administrative procedure.
The complainants ask the court to declare the illegal directive and to order Kennedy to restore the vaccine recommendations coded for pregnant women and healthy children at the CDC vaccination calendars.
Buried in their 42 -page complaint, the complainants allege that the candidates for the new Aipic “should be a registered republican or independent” to qualify for membership. And these candidates “could not have previously been able to make public criticism” of Kennedy or President Donald Trump.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Social Services did not respond to the request for comments from NBC News on the trial.
Applicant candidates is unlikely according to their political affiliations or their criticisms of the Trump administration to help the accusations of bias in HHS since Kennedy began directing the department in February.
“I fear that there are human lives lost here because of this,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee of Infectious Diseases, in a press release according to Kennedy’s hiring of members of the ACIP.
“It is a particular irony that he says that he does this to restore confidence, since he is, as an individual, more responsible for the distrust of vaccines than almost anyone I can name,” he added.
