Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged to appoint experts to a vaccine safety advisory panel seeking to apply “evidence-based decision-making with objectivity” in response to concerns he’ll fill the committee with anti-vaxxers. 

On Monday, Kennedy removed all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices due to accusations that the panel had become riddled with corruption and served as a “rubber stamp” for industry profit-taking agendas. 

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After receiving backlash over the action from establishment medical groups such as the American Medical Association, Kennedy attempted to reassure critics Tuesday evening that under his tenure, the ACIP would seek to craft vaccine recommendations based only on scientific data scrutinized by neutral professionals.

“Over the coming days, I will use this platform to announce new members to populate ACIP,” the HHS secretary said in a post to X. “None of these individuals will be ideological anti-vaxxers. They will be highly credentialed physicians and scientists who will make extremely consequential public health determinations by applying evidence-based decision-making with objectivity and common sense.”

Kennedy continued to fend off claims that he is attempting to craft the ACIP to pursue a personal agenda, arguing that the “clean sweep was necessary” due to the committee’s “historical corruption.”  

“The most outrageous example of ACIP’s malevolent malpractice has been its stubborn unwillingness to demand adequate safety trials before recommending new vaccines for our children. Today, a compliant American child receives between 69 and 92 routine vaccines (depending on brand/dictated dosage) from conception to 18 years of age,” he wrote. “This is up from 11 shots in 1986. ACIP has recommended each of these additional jabs without requiring placebo-controlled trials for any of them. This means that no one can scientifically ascertain whether these products are averting more problems than they are causing.”

Kennedy’s statement follows the passage of an emergency resolution by members of the AMA on Monday that urged Congress to investigate him for sacking Biden-era appointees at the ACIP. 

Yesterday, I retired 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices or ACIP, the @CDCgov external panel that wields the grave responsibility of adding new vaccines to the recommended childhood schedule. Over the coming days, I will use this platform to announce…

— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) June 10, 2025

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The ACIP is responsible for developing immunization schedules for children and adults, which is pivotal in determining how and when vaccines should be administered to people in the United States of different age groups and risk categories. 

New HHS disclosure records indicate that seven members of the panel received thousands of dollars in consulting fees from vaccine manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies over the past decades. The revelations come in the wake of Kennedy’s allegations that systemic conflicts of interest have plagued the vaccine safety committee.