Future of CDC Vaccine Panel Uncertain as Members Say HHS May Replace Advisers

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may replace a panel of vaccine advisers, rather than appealing a recent ruling that stayed their appointments, members said.

Dr. Robert Malone, one of the individuals appointed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), said on March 19 that the panel “has been disbanded.”

“The government’s response to the AAP lawsuit and judge Murphey’s [sic] injunction is to disband and then recreate a new ACIP committee, as this will take less time than would be required to file and prosecute an appeal,” he wrote in a post on X.

Dr. Kirk Milhoan, the panel’s chairman and a senior fellow with the Independent Medical Alliance, said in a statement released by the alliance that ACIP has been disbanded.

“The Administration’s decision to reconstitute ACIP is the right move,” Dr. Ryan Cole, head of medical and scientific affairs at the alliance, said in a statement. “We look forward to the appointment of a new committee that restores scientific integrity and puts the health of American families first.”

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy recently ruled that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not follow proper procedure in 2025 when he appointed Malone, Milhoan, and other members to ACIP after removing the previous members.

Kennedy and other officials disregarded requirements laid out in ACIP’s charter and policies when reconstituting the committee, Murphy said. He stayed the appointments of all but two members, who were appointed after the plaintiffs filed for relief.

“A stay will prevent the irreparable injury Plaintiffs have shown is likely: while the appointments of the challenged members of ACIP are stayed, ACIP as currently constituted cannot meet, for how can a committee meet without nearly the entirety of its membership?” he said.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, told The Epoch Times in an email on March 17 that HHS “looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.”

No appeal has been filed as of yet.

Asked about the comments from Malone and Milhoan, Nixon said on March 20, “Unless officially announced by us, any assertions about what we are doing next is baseless speculation.”

HHS officials also pointed to a follow-up post from Malone, which stated that he had been told that the “decision about how to proceed has not been made, and dissolving and reforming remains one of [the] options being considered.”

Malone added later: “The ACIP is now officially Schrödinger’s FACA committee. Neither live nor dead.”