Well, in an abrupt move this week, Health and human services secretary Robert f Kennedy Jr.

Fired all 17 members of the CDC's vaccine advisory panel, replacing them with new members, saying it will restore public trust in the shots.

Some public health experts, though, say the move will do just the opposite.

The advisory committee is made up of medical experts who make recommendations on the safety, efficacy and clinical needs of vaccines.

Experts instead argue the change will politicize science and vaccine policy.

For more on that, I'm joined by Dr. Perry Halkitis dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health.

Perry, good to talk to you.

I'm thinking about the role that this panel plays and how dismissing 17 members at once might affect that and its ability to function.

Yeah.

So the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is a long standing committee at the CDC that has existed since 1964, the year after I was born.

And this committee has advised the United States on immunization practices throughout my entire life.

Now what they have done is consider vaccinations as they emerge, consider their safety, consider their usefulness, and have been given, has been had been giving information to those who have the ultimate policy power to make decisions about what immunization should look like.

So when you dismiss a group of people that consists of experts who are scientists, medical providers, community members, you're basically leaving the authority for decision making, as we saw a few weeks to go in the hands of one or two people.

And as we know, good science happens when we have debate and discussion and we consider all the viewpoints.

So the problem here is that right now we're leaving all decision making about vaccines in this moment today in the hands of one or two or three people, which is never a good idea, whether we're talking about political governments in the form of autocracy or scientific advising.

How does that then affect the CDC ability to plan ahead for what vaccines it needs to order or how much it needs at what point, and also any ongoing evaluations of efficacy and safety?

Would they be put on hold at this point?

So everything comes pretty much to a stop.

I understand that RFK is planning to appoint people to this committee, but the fact of the matter is we're pretty clear that he is going to appoint people to the committee who are going to just do his bidding and Donald Trump's bidding, which is basically to do anti-vaccination movements.

It puts everything on a halt.

The the government has already stopped research on an HIV vaccine we've been waiting for for over four decades on an H1 and five bird flu vaccine, which we need and has is going to interfere with the needs for our annual flu vaccine.

The recommendation is for COVID as COBRA continues to emerge and all of the other infectious diseases that are bound to emerge and which are bound to grow in our country if people continue not to know how to get vaccinated.

And importantly, if people cannot get vaccinated because there are no recommendations for vaccination, potentially if there are no recommendations for vaccination.

Health care agencies don't have to cover the cost.

So who is going to be left behind?

People who are most at risk.

Often the poor, often the those experiencing multiple health morbidities.

Among the reasons, Perry is, you know, that the secretary gave for making this move was that these folks were appointed under the Biden administration and that he felt doing this would restore our public trust coming out of, of course, the COVID era.

What's your response to that?

And does this restore public trust?

Where do we stand there?

Yeah, well, it would restore public trust if perhaps RFK had thought about the excellent scientists who Biden appointed, kept some of them.

I'm not saying that he had to keep all 17 of them, kept some of them who had very legitimate, very deep understandings of vaccine and edit other people.

That would have been a better way to approach this.

This is a knee jerk reaction.

It's basically saying, I'm not going to be I'm not going to listen to the people Biden appointed because somehow they must be tainted because Biden appointed them.

When you look at that list of 17 people, these are people that anybody who has half a brain would appoint to an advisory committee, he could have and he should have if he wanted to appoint people who are perhaps more skeptical about vaccines.

And then we would have had a balanced perspective.

But instead we're going potentially to a whole other direction where we will have an advisory panel that consists of people who do not support vaccination.

Dr. Perry Halkitis we have to leave it there.

Thank you so much for your time.

My pleasure, Briana.