R.I.P. vaccines. And R.I.P. our children too.

This week marks two fundamental turning points in the history of vaccines from which I suspect the world will take decades to recover.

What happened?

First, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) “met” to “discuss” the science behind childhood vaccines.

I say “met” because the meeting took place without any of the 17 experts who were members of this committee as recently as May 2025. Instead, the group was 7 new appointees, rushed through the typically months-long vetting process in barely a week. And even with that rush vetting job, one of the original 8 nominees dropped out during the evaluation of financial conflicts of interest. For “reasons”.

And I say “discuss” because pretty much all 7 of these new committee members arrived with pre-conceived anti-vaccine beliefs and never had any intention to discuss the science, despite the admirable attempts of the CDC scientists presenting it to them.

The end result of this disastrous meeting was that the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement saying the ACIP could no longer be trusted and that they would be issuing their own childhood vaccine guidance. And that might sound okay at first glance, but what it really does is further undermine trust in the government’s vaccine approval process.

How does the ACIP ever recover from this? I don’t think it does.

The second thing that happened this week is that GAVI, the Global Vaccine Alliance, held it’s semi-decadal (that’s every 5 years) fundraising convention. And RFK Jr announced that the US would no longer be funding this organization. Worse, he claimed GAVI is “ignoring the science” on issues of “vaccine safety”.

If you don’t know about GAVI you should. They procure and distribute vaccines to the world’s poorest children. They do it at low cost and often at great personal risk. RFK Jr’s statements yesterday will fuel anti-vaccine sentiment globally. According to GAVI’s latest progress report, they vaccinated over 1.1 BILLION children between 2000 and 2023. This prevented over 1.8 MILLION childhood deaths. And now the US is withdrawing funding and undermining public trust in them.

Children will die because of this decision.

I didn’t want to write about the politics of public health today. I wanted to write about the science of public health. But right now, politics is dictating the future of public health, regardless of the science.

E is for Epi is written by Dr. Ellie Murray. She has a masters in biostatistics and a doctorate in epidemiology from Harvard, has published 100+ scientific articles, and is the co-author of the textbook Epidemiology: An Introduction. Dr Murray works full-time on E is for Epi to bring you the highest-quality, up-to-date information on public health news.

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