All eyes on ACIP: new vaccine panel dials up pressure on the CDC
For the first time in years, ACIP is asking some hard questions. But decades of institutional inertia—and industry influence—won’t be easy to overcome.
By all historical measures, meetings of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) are uneventful affairs. They come and go with little media attention, typically marked by technical presentations, low attendance, and unanimous votes.
But that changed this week.
The two-day session—held Wednesday and Thursday—was the most closely scrutinised ACIP meeting in years. It was the first since Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced the panel in full.
Livestreamed, clipped, and dissected online in real time, it marked a dramatic departure from the committee’s usual obscurity. For once, the public was watching.
Even before the meeting began, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a public rebuke.
“We won’t lend our name or our expertise to a system that is being politicised at the expense of children’s health,” said AAP President Dr Susan Kressly, announcing the group would not send its usual liaison.
The AAP went further, calling the restructured ACIP “no longer a credible process.” The boycott—its first in decades—set the tone for what was to come.