Imagine firing every inspector at a nuclear plant, replacing them with individuals who profit from cutting corners and then telling the public the plant is safer than ever. That is essentially what has happened to American public health policy over the past 13 months. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has dismantled the government’s scientific advisory committees and replaced them with allies, with the Trump White House helping him do so, rewriting the rules whenever courts or scientists intervened. The clearest, most self-serving example: the FDA panel now filled with people who personally sell the unproven peptide drugs they have been asked to evaluate.
Let’s start with the purge that set the pattern. On June 9, 2025, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — the body that has shaped U.S. vaccine policy since 1964 — in one stroke. He didn’t inform the committee. He didn’t notify Congress. Instead, he announced it in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. His justification was rampant conflicts of interest, but it was false. A University of Southern California analysis found ACIP conflicts were at historic lows, and the fired scientists were already required to disclose and recuse themselves from conflicted votes. The real reason was arithmetic: leave the panel alone, and President Donald Trump’s team couldn’t control a majority of it until 2028.
So, Kennedy formed a new panel in his own image. Within two days, he appointed eight replacements — several with histories of vaccine skepticism, ties to lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers or links to anti-vaccine advocacy groups. By September, five more members joined, including a cardiologist who testified at a hearing held by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that COVID vaccination increases myocarditis risk, and a pharmacist affiliated with a Catholic health system. Call it what it is: not rebalancing, but an ideological takeover.
Here’s what should alarm anyone who cares about process, not just outcomes. Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s former chief medical officer, resigned in protest and later told CBS News she’d been assured the new ACIP members were “cleared by White House ethics” — only to discover they had never filled out the conflict-of-interest and ethics forms required before any nominee is even considered. The vetting pipeline wasn’t overlooked. It was bypassed, with a White House assurance standing in for actual compliance.
A federal judge confirmed this wasn’t paranoia. In March 2026, Judge Brian Murphy blocked most new ACIP members from being appointed, invalidated their votes and declared the panel improperly formed — finding that, out of 15 members, only six had real vaccine expertise, even though the committee’s own charter required it. The administration’s response wasn’t to fix the panel. It was to remove the requirement. In May 2026, HHS rewrote the ACIP charter to eliminate the specific-expertise language — a change Reuters reports was influenced by “senior White House and HHS officials” to make it easier to survive future lawsuits. When rules lead to an inconvenient ruling, they change the rules.
And this extends well beyond a single vaccine panel. Public Citizen’s audit revealed that HHS disbanded about 75 of its 375 advisory committees in 2025 alone — 49 at NIH, nine at CDC and four at FDA — often without any scientific justification. The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee was reassembled in January with 21 new members, at least eight of whom support the disproven claim that vaccines cause autism, which led a former member to warn that “the American people are going to be lied to.” Reports indicated that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force was outright dismissed simply for being too “woke” — apparently a code for opposing health-inequity protections for LGBTQ+ and racial-minority patients.
Now observe how the same playbook is applied in reverse to peptides — and see how the hypocrisy grows. Kennedy describes himself as a “big fan” of unregulated compounds such as BPC-157 and TB-500, claims he’s personally used them and vows to end the FDA’s “aggressive suppression” of these substances. The problem is that the FDA’s own scientists reached the opposite conclusion twice — in 2023 and again in June — finding insufficient evidence that these peptides are safe or effective. Instead of listening to the scientists, HHS replaced the scientific jury. In June, the FDA added nine members to its Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee, bringing the total to 13 — almost all of whom either promote peptide products or profit from wellness clinics that sell them. That panel voted last week in favor of removing restrictions on six peptides marketed for everything from wound healing to opioid withdrawal — exactly the outcome Kennedy desires, provided by people with a direct financial stake in delivering it.
Face the irony. Kennedy fired an entire vaccine panel over conflicts of interest that were barely there. Then he formed a drug-approval panel made up of people whose conflicts are clear and undisclosed. This isn’t distrust of industry influence. It’s industry influence disguised with better branding.
Federal science advisory committees exist for one reason: to prevent the public from being misled by politically convenient conclusions. Congress and the courts shouldn’t wait for a measles outbreak or a peptide-related ER visit to question why the individuals advising HHS were chosen for loyalty instead of expertise. The time to ask is now — before the next vote, not after the next tragedy.
A.J. Russo (dr.a.j.russo@gmail.com) is a retired biology professor at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg and the research director at the Mensah Medical Research Institute in Illinois.
