Reporter Asks RFK Jr. About Future Of CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee After Mass Removals

Forbes Breaking News

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is asked about the future of the CDC vaccine advisory committee after removing all members.

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00:00What other, and this is for Secretary Kennedy as well,

00:03Secretary Kennedy, what other food categories specifically,

00:07you said ultra-processed foods, but what other foods do you want

00:09to expand the SNAP waiver to and make for the governors,

00:13would you be open to expanding that?

00:15And then fake news on the ACIP today at CDC,

00:19just wondering if you could expand on what your ultimate goal is there,

00:21if there's changes to that.

00:23And tell us who you're with again.

00:24With ABC News.

00:25That's right, thank you.

00:26ABC News.

00:26Yeah, I can't answer what other foods are going to be on.

00:31We're looking at the science now, and we're looking,

00:34and this is going to be the product of negotiations,

00:36deliberations by a lot of people in our agencies.

00:40In terms of the changes to ACIP, this has been a long time coming.

00:45More than two decades ago, Congress investigated ACIP.

00:50The Government Oversight Committee found that, for example,

00:55that year, which was 2003, they gave one example that four out of the five people

01:01who added the rotavirus vaccine to the schedule had direct financial interest in that vaccine.

01:06One of those individuals voted the rotavirus onto the vaccine

01:11and sold his rotavirus vaccine that he had in development for $186 million.

01:18He said he won the lottery.

01:21That year, Congress said that 97% of the people on ACIP had undisclosed conflicts.

01:28People have known about this for years.

01:30You know, probably the worst example of malevolent malpractice

01:37has been adding all of these new products to the schedule

01:41without doing pre-licensing safety studies.

01:45So, in 1986, there were 11 vaccines on the schedule.

01:50Today, a compliant child must take between 69 and 92 vaccines

01:57to stay in school in some states,

01:59and not one of them has been safety tested

02:02in a pre-licensing placebo-controlled trial,

02:05and that is just malpractice.

02:08So, the people who were in charge of that are now gone,

02:15and we're going to bring people onto the ACIP panel,

02:18not anti-vaxxers.

02:20We're bringing people on who are credentialed scientists,

02:24who are highly credentialed physicians,

02:26who are going to do evidence-based medicine,

02:30who are going to be objective,

02:32and who are going to follow the science

02:34and make critical public health determinations

02:38for our children based upon the best science.

02:42Yes, go ahead.

02:43Can you explain how you're going to measure

02:46if these new restrictions on how the SNAP waivers are working?

02:49And I just did want to follow up on ACIP.

02:51Will you get those new appointees in place

02:53before the June 25th meeting?

02:55Yes.

02:56We are working with all the states on the metrics.

02:59It's an amazing question,

03:01because often these changes are made at the government level

03:03without any real metrics in place.

03:05So, we're working state by state

03:07how we measure what this looks like.

03:09But listen, this is a long-term effort

03:11that is bipartisan, or even nonpartisan, I should say,

03:15that ultimately, at the end of the day,

03:17the real metric is in the health of our communities.

03:19But we will be looking step by step.

03:21And I'm sorry, tell me who you were with.

03:22AP, great.

03:25Great question.

03:26We'll be talking more about metrics moving forward,

03:28but we're already in discussions on what that looks like.

03:31Yes, in the back.

03:31Last question.

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