When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took over as Health Secretary, he didn’t just shake things up. He methodically dismantled the infrastructure that keeps American biomedical science honest. In the span of just a few months, he’s wiped out 75 federal advisory committees, fired independent experts, and replaced them with people who share his anti-vaccine ideology. It’s institutional destruction dressed up as reform.
The most visible casualty has been the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). In June, Kennedy fired all 17 independent experts on the panel and restocked it with mostly unqualified loyalists who align with his well-documented anti-vaccine views. ACIP isn’t some obscure backroom operation. This committee literally sets federal vaccination guidance that influences insurance coverage and state school requirements. Chaos followed. The new members voted to change vaccine policies without scientific backing. A federal judge stepped in this week to block Kennedy’s appointees and their decisions, but the damage ripples far beyond ACIP.
The Scale of Destruction
Public Citizen released a report showing just how widespread the purge has been. Out of 273 advisory committees under the Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy terminated 75. That’s 27 percent of the entire expert advisory infrastructure gone. The National Institutes of Health got hit hardest with 49 committee terminations, mostly boards responsible for evaluating scientific grant applications.
The impact is already measurable. According to Johns Hopkins researchers, the NIH has awarded 74 percent fewer competitive or new research grants as of March compared to the same period in previous fiscal years. One particularly telling casualty was the NIH Center for Scientific Review Advisory Council, established in 1988. This council didn’t review grants itself but advised NIH leadership on how to allocate research funding. Its elimination signals a fundamental shift away from expert-guided decision making.
Beyond the NIH, nine CDC committees were terminated or undermined, four at the FDA. These weren’t random picks. Committees focused on childhood vaccines, Alzheimer’s research, health equity, long COVID, novel technology development, and more all got the axe.
Manufacturing Consensus Around Debunked Science
What’s particularly alarming is how Kennedy has weaponized the advisory system to legitimize fringe beliefs. In January, HHS appointed 21 new members to the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. At least eight of them believe vaccines cause autism, a claim that’s been thoroughly debunked by decades of research. This isn’t debate among legitimate scientists. This is deliberate appointment of people who hold positions contradicted by evidence.
The scientific community noticed. Autism researchers and advocates got so concerned about the anticipated misinformation coming from a federal advisory committee that they literally created a competing nongovernmental advisory panel just to counter it. Think about that for a second. Scientists felt compelled to establish an alternative expert committee because they couldn’t trust the official federal one.
The Cascading Consequences
You can’t just gut advisory systems without consequences. These committees evaluate grant applications, recommend policies, oversee emerging research areas, and provide institutional memory that prevents bad science from entering the system. When you remove independent experts and replace them with ideological loyalists, you don’t get better governance. You get stagnation, corruption, and vulnerability to exactly the kind of misinformation Kennedy has spent his career promoting.
Michael Abrams from Public Citizen put it bluntly: Kennedy’s actions are undermining biomedical research, the drug approval process, and federal vaccine policy all at once. The silencing and biasing of external experts doesn’t make HHS stronger. It makes the entire health enterprise weaker and more susceptible to exactly the kind of political manipulation that erodes public trust.
What Happens Next
The federal judge’s temporary block of ACIP changes offers some hope, but it’s a Band-Aid on a much larger wound. Rebuilding these advisory systems, restoring institutional credibility, and recruiting independent experts willing to work in this environment again will take years. Some of that damage might be permanent.
The real question isn’t whether Kennedy had the authority to do this. The question is whether a scientific agency that’s been deliberately stuffed with ideological appointees can still function as anything other than a tool for pushing a predetermined agenda. When you’ve destroyed the institutional guardrails meant to keep politics out of science, what’s left?
