WASHINGTON – A key Republican senator on Thursday called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to postpone an upcoming meeting of its federal vaccine advisory panel, saying the agency’s leadership is in disarray and any recommendations by this panel won’t have credibility.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, says the CDC should indefinitely delay a Sept. 18 meeting of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel of experts that composes the national recommendations for vaccine uptake.
“If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership,” Cassidy, who is also a physician, said in a statement.
In his message, he referenced the sudden firing of CDC director Dr. Susan Monarez, apparently over disagreement about vaccines with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Her pushout was followed by the resignation of other top public health experts at the CDC, raising the alarm about the credibility of remaining leadership on public health.
“Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting,” Cassidy said in his statement. “These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted.”
Historically, the ACIP panel has been composed of nonpartisan public health experts. However, in June, Kennedy, a notorious peddler of conspiracy theories and disinformation about vaccines, removed all 17 experts from the committee and replaced them with his own picks, several of whom have records of being hostile to vaccines or have little to no experience in vaccine policy.
Cassidy previously called for delaying the panel’s meeting after Kennedy purged all of its members, saying his picks “lack experience.” Now the senator is calling for the postponement of the committee’s meeting in response to Kennedy blowing up CDC leadership.
On Wednesday, Kennedy announced that he is stripping millions of people’s access to COVID vaccines: the FDA approved new COVID shots for 2025-2026, but fewer people, particularly adults aged 18 to 64, will be able to get them without some proof of an underlying condition tied to severe risk of COVID. Children, particularly those under the age of 2, will also be disproportionately affected.
Monarez pushed back on Kennedy’s policy change. In a statement Wednesday evening, her lawyers said she had “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts,” to protect the public. “For that, she has been targeted.” Three other top CDC experts also swiftly resigned in protest of what one called policies that were “designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.” Monarez is now suing for being fired.
Issuing this statement is the least Cassidy could do to push back on Kennedy’s attacks on science and medicine. Back in February, he voted in favor of confirming Kennedy to his current post, despite knowing of his long history of spreading dangerous misinformation about vaccine safety and medicine. In the end, every Republican senator but one, Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), a polio survivor, voted to confirm Kennedy anyway.
Most of those GOP senators aren’t saying anything now about the HHS secretary’s actions. Besides Cassidy, the only other Republicans who have addressed Kennedy’s clash with medical experts at the CDC are Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Susan Collins (Maine).
Paul celebrated the shake-up in CDC leadership because, he claimed, there is no evidence that healthy children are better off getting the COVID vaccine, both in terms of their health outcomes or their role in transmitting it.
“Good riddance to these extremists at CDC,” Paul said Thursday on social media. “There is NO medical evidence that the COVID vaccine changes transmission or health outcome for healthy children.”
In fact, all children aged 6 months to 23 months are at high risk for severe COVID and hospitalization, and are recommended to get vaccinated. Children and teens, aged 2 through 18, are also recommended to get the vaccine for a variety of reasons, including having household contacts at risk for severe COVID.
Collins, meanwhile, responded to the situation with a familiar refrain: She is “extremely alarmed.”
Senators will have a chance to ask Kennedy about all of this next week: He is scheduled to appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, Sept. 4, to testify on President Donald Trump’s health care agenda.
Among those on this committee: Cassidy.