A federal judge on Monday blocked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s effort to overhaul U.S. vaccine policy, including reducing the number of shots recommended for children.
U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy granted the request of the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups to stop the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from changing long-standing vaccine policy.
The blocked changes include: decreasing the number of vaccines on the childhood immunization schedule, firing the entirety of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee and changing COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.
Kennedy last year replaced the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices with allies and anti-vaccine members, who quickly set about making several controversial changes to U.S. vaccine policy — including altered recommendations on shots for influenza, hepatitis A and B and rotavirus.
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The group was scheduled to meet this week, but a lawyer for the American Academy of Pediatrics said the judge’s ruling cancels the meeting, NBC News reported.
The plaintiffs allege that the U.S. government abandoned both procedural norms and scientific standards in carrying out changes championed by Kennedy and his “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
“This is all to say that there is a method to how these decisions historically have been made—a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements,” Murphy wrote in his ruling. “Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.”
Reducing and even eliminating some vaccines has long been a central goal of Kennedy’s. Throughout his career, he has promoted unfounded links between vaccines and autism and led an anti-vaccine nonprofit called Children’s Health Defense.
But the MAHA movement’s vaccine skepticism carries political risk. A memo by President Donald Trump’s main pollster said there could be “electoral downsides” for politicians who support changes to the country’s long-standing vaccine recommendations.
The White House is currently trying to rein in Kennedy’s vaccine messaging ahead of the midterms, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.
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