Former White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha, who served under President Biden, criticized the decision by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to fire all 17 experts on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine panel.
Kennedy announced the decision in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal Monday, saying, “A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”
But in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Jha pushed back against Kennedy’s reasoning.
“Look what he said in his op-ed was a series of nonsense about a group of individuals, experts…who shape what vaccines, if any, are going to be available to the American people,” Jha said in the interview.
“So obviously this is very concerning,” he continued. “We’ll have to see who he appoints next. But this is a step in the wrong direction.”
Jha said he is concerned about what the move foretells about the secretary’s agenda on vaccines. Jha pointed to what he characterized as a lackluster response from the secretary to “the worst measles outbreak of the last 25 years.” He also expressed concern about Kennedy raising questions about vaccines causing autism, which Jha dismissed and said was “settled science.”
“Then you put this in the middle of all of that,” Jha said, referring to the vaccine panel sweep, “and what you have is a pretty clear picture that what Secretary Kennedy is trying to do is make sure that vaccines are not readily available to Americans, not just for kids, for the elderly.”
“He could go pretty far with this move, and I really am worried about where we’re headed,” Jha continued.
He said he’s particularly concerned about the effect Kennedy’s move will have on kids and whether they will continue having access to certain vaccines in the future.
“Kids rely on vaccines. I’m worried about whether the next generation of kids are going to have access to polio vaccines and measles vaccines. That’s where we’re heading. That’s what we have to push back against.”
Kennedy said in his op-ed that he was removing every member of the panel to give the Trump administration an opportunity to appoint its own members. Kennedy has long accused ACIP members of having conflicts of interest, sparking concern among vaccine advocates that he would seek to install members who are far more skeptical of approving new vaccines.
But Jha pushed back against criticism that the panel was all Biden-appointed experts, saying, “When the Biden administration came in, almost all of the appointees had come from the first Trump administration.”
“That was fine because they were good people,” he said. “They were experts. Right now, it’s the same thing. The people he is firing are experts — like a nurse in Illinois who spent her entire career getting kids vaccinated, cancer doctors from Memorial Sloan Kettering — like these are really good people.”
“And generally, CDC has not worried about when were they appointed. The question is, are they good and are they conflict free.”
