In a move that has ignited a firestorm of controversy, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced the revival of a long-dormant federal task force on childhood vaccine safety, a body that was disbanded more than two decades ago. The decision, which Kennedy’s department said is aimed at “improving the safety, quality, and oversight” of pediatric vaccines, has been met with both praise from vaccine skeptics and alarm from the mainstream medical community, which warns of a dangerous politicization of public health.
The Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines was established by Congress in 1986 but was dissolved in 1998 after years of inactivity. Kennedy’s decision to bring it back follows a lawsuit against his own department, funded by the Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an anti-vaccine advocacy group that Kennedy founded and formerly led. The CHD had sued HHS for failing to reinstate the task force, arguing the department was in violation of U.S. law.
The newly revived panel will be led by National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya and will include senior officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Its mandate is to deliver a report to Congress within two years with recommendations for “vaccines that have fewer serious side effects than those already on the market.”
For Kennedy, the move is a key step in his long-held mission to increase scrutiny of the nation’s vaccine schedule. Since taking office, the HHS Secretary has made a series of dramatic changes, including removing all members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replacing them with members who are more critical of vaccines. His administration has also cut federal funding for mRNA vaccine research and recommended removing COVID-19 shots from routine immunization schedules for healthy children and pregnant women.
The decision has been met with a chorus of condemnation from public health experts. Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine scientist and member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, told CNN that Kennedy “is an anti-vaccine activist who has these fixed, immutable, science-resistant beliefs that vaccines are dangerous.” He added that Kennedy is now in a position “to set up task forces like this one, who will find some way to support his notion that vaccines are doing more harm than good.”
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has also expressed concern, emphasizing that any changes to the vaccine system should be made transparently and with input from professional societies and patient advocacy groups.
The controversy is a stark reflection of the deep-seated distrust in public health institutions that has grown in recent years. While Kennedy and his supporters argue that a new task force is necessary to restore public confidence, critics fear that it is merely a political tool designed to legitimize debunked claims about vaccine safety. For now, the future of the nation’s vaccine policies and the public’s trust in them hangs in the balance, with the new task force at the very center of the storm.