This week Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed all 17 members of a CDC committee that advises the agency on vaccine safety and schedules, quickly replacing them with a panel of eight new appointees.
New appointees include Dr. Robert Malone, a close Kennedy adviser who during the pandemic promoted unproven COVID-19 treatments and shared conspiracy theories about the origins of the virus.
And they include epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter that criticized the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns.
Scripps News spoke with Dr. Omer Awan, a physician and senior public health contributor for Forbes, about the implications of the change.
"I think there are definite conflicts of interest here. Some of these people on the panel are known vaccine skeptics," Awan said. "Some of them have outright talked against the mRNA technology for vaccines that the covid-19 vaccine states. Some of them have been outspoken against COVID mask mandates. So this means that there is going to be a lot of anti-vaccine rhetoric in this new group and what that also means is that vaccines will be harder to get for people and particularly those that can't afford a vaccine or vulnerable populations that don't have access to it."
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"I think all vaccines could be in jeopardy," Awan said. "Certainly the COVID vaccine will be in jeopardy because of what some of the new restrictions are particularly for pregnant females, but also childhood vaccines. The ACIP sets the schedule for childhood vaccinations, and that includes everything from diphtheria, pertussis measles as we were just stating. So it's unclear whether they're going to approve these vaccines, if they're going to change it. If they change the doses the timing — all of these things could the change. And quite frankly, it's uncertain what the future of these vaccination schedules are going to look like. An if that's the case, and if they do change these vaccines, then I'm afraid that we're going to continue to have much more vaccine hesitancy and much more childhood diseases that are entirely preventable."
Watch the full interview with Awan in the video above.
