The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has joined with five other governing medical bodies to sue the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Secretary Robert Kennedy for “acting arbitrarily and capriciously” in its unilateral change to Covid-19 vaccine recommendations for pediatric and pregnant patients. Kennedy and HHS, they say, not only ignored scientific evidence but also flouted federal protocols in his shake-up of the Center of Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) key vaccine committee.
The suit — which seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions against Kennedy’s rescissions of Covid vaccine recommendations — alleges that actions taken by Kennedy and his department were calculated and enacted specifically to mislead the public and “gradually desensitize” the country to anti-science rhetoric. It also cites the secretary’s dismissal of all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), whom plaintiffs allege Kennedy replaced with “anti-vaccine” practitioners who went on to undermine the science behind vaccine recommendations.
In a statement announcing the lawsuit (which was posted to YouTube) AAP president Susan J. Kressly said,
“This wasn’t just sidelining science. It’s an attack on the very foundation of how we protect families and children’s health. … The American Academy of Pediatrics isn’t standing by. We’re stepping up. We’re taking legal action because we believe children deserve better.”
AAP is joined by American College of Physicians (ACP), American Public Health Association (APHA), Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), Massachusetts Public Health Alliance (MPHA), the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM), and an anonymous pregnant physician, who worries this change will impede her access to the Covid vaccine.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Massachusetts, also names Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Marty Makary; National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Jay Bhattacharya; and CDC acting director Matthew Buzzelli along with their associated agencies.
“This administration is an existential threat to vaccination in America, and those in charge are only just getting started,” said lead counsel Richard H. Hughes IV. “If left unchecked, Secretary Kennedy will accomplish his goal of ridding the United States of vaccines, which would unleash a wave of preventable harm on our nation’s children. The professional associations for pediatricians, internal medicine physicians, infectious disease physicians, high-risk pregnancy physicians, and public health professionals will not stand idly by as our system of prevention is dismantled. This ends now.”
The FDA announced its change to Covid vaccine recommendations in May. Director Martin Makary and the agency’s top vaccines regulator Vinay Prasad wrote a paper published inThe New England Journal of Medicine that future recommendations for routine annual vaccination will be limited to adults over the age of 65 and for younger Americans with at least one condition that puts them at risk for severe Covid (e.g. people with asthma, diabetes, obesity, among other conditions). The manner of this announcement was in and of itself unorthodox, as it was issued prior to the meeting of ACIP in June. (As previously mentioned, however, those who were on ACIP at the time of the announcement were ultimately let go weeks later).
The move prompted “serious concerns” from the AAP at the time. Normally the Academy attends meetings of ACIP — the latest of which was held in June — but they declined to attend in light of personnel changes, which they saw as politically motivated. AAP did, however, issue its own statements regarding the proceedings of ACIP.
Sean T. O’Leary, chair of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases, categorized discussions during the meeting as attempting to “distract from the facts and instill fear about vaccines,” in a press conference.
“The strategy relies on cherry-picked data and junk science to confuse the public and to erode trust in immunizations. Many of the studies that we’ve seen cited in these last couple of days have no relevance to vaccine safety,” he said. “They’re simply being used to frighten parents and mislead the public. … We stand by our decision to not formally participate in this meeting. Based on what we saw on the agenda and the composition of the committee, we feared this meeting was going to be a venue for sowing distrust in vaccines, and our fears were absolutely confirmed.”
The AAP has long published its own vaccine schedule, which has generally been in step with CDC recommendations. As ideological differences continue to cause a rift between the two organizations, however, those differences may become more pronounced.
