Kennedy allows US Senator Cassidy a pick in revamped CDC vaccine panel

By Ahmed Aboulenein

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Reuters) - U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Thursday he promised to allow U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy to pick a candidate for a key panel of vaccine advisers.

Kennedy, who has a long history of questioning the safety of vaccines contrary to scientific evidence, named eight members on Wednesday to serve on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, including some who have advocated against vaccines. Kennedy earlier abruptly fired all 17 members who had been serving on the independent expert panel.

"You had posted the criticism of my choice by Senator Cassidy and a claim that I had promised Senator Cassidy not to change the vaccine panels. That's not true," Kennedy said during an interview on Fox News' "The Story with Martha MacCallum."

"What I told Senator Cassidy is that I would allow him to put one of his candidates on, which we're going to do," he said of the ACIP panel.

Cassidy, a Republican doctor from Louisiana who had expressed wariness about Kennedy's anti-vaccine views before clearing the path for him to become the nation's top health official, serves as chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Cassidy explained his reversal at the time by saying he had received assurances Kennedy would protect existing vaccination programs.

"If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes," Cassidy said in a Senate floor speech after receiving assurances from Kennedy.

The senator expressed concern on Monday following the ACIP firings that the outgoing members would be replaced by vaccine skeptics and said he would speak to Kennedy to ensure that does not happen. At least half of the replacements Kennedy announced on Wednesday have a history of anti-vaccine advocacy.

The senator does not see the move as a violation of Kennedy's promise, a spokesman said. "As Senator Cassidy has said publicly, the commitment was about the ACIP process, not staffing," the Cassidy spokesman told Reuters on Friday.

The American Medical Association called on Cassidy's committee to investigate Kennedy for the firings earlier this week, and on Thursday urged a reversal of the changes to the committee, which advises the CDC on who should get vaccines after they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Kennedy justified the firings by claiming the panel was rife with conflicts of interest, though he did not provide examples of any such conflicts for any individual adviser or say how that may have influenced specific recommendations.