The latest actions by federal health authorities overseen by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine development and evaluation are raising alarms among public health experts about the nation’s ability to handle a major health crisis like bird flu.
The Trump administration Feb. 26 canceled an upcoming Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory committee meeting to evaluate the composition of next season’s flu vaccine. US health officials are also reconsidering a Biden-era $590 million contract with
“We have immediately, quite clearly, a series of decisions or lack of decisions, that are undermining US public health and comparatives when it comes to vaccines,” said Alexandra Phelan, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Taken together, the decisions fuel concerns about Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy’s skepticism to vaccines amid a bird-flu outbreak that health experts warn could prove catastrophic should the virus begin rapidly spreading human to human. The US is also grappling with a measles outbreak in Texas that has killed one school-age child. In a Feb. 26 Cabinet meeting, Kennedy said measles outbreaks were “not unusual” and that “we have measles outbreaks every year.”
“Based on RFK Jr.’s previous comments on how he feels about flu vaccines, this is not totally unexpected,” said Ana Santos Rutschman, a professor at the Charles Widger School of Law at Villanova University. “All this uncertainty is not going to help with trust in these vaccines.”
An HHS spokesperson told Bloomberg News regarding the Moderna contract that while it’s crucial for the agency to “support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production.”
The FDA said in a statement that it “will make public its recommendations to manufacturers in time for updated vaccines to be available for the 2025-2026 influenza season.”
On Friday, the FDA posted an update on its plans for the 2025-2026 flu season. “FDA continues to work with federal and international partners and U.S.-licensed influenza vaccine manufacturers to prepare for the upcoming season,” the posting said. “We do not anticipate any impact on vaccine supply or timing of availability.”
Advisory Committees
Kennedy in remarks to the HHS staff on his first day in office said he’ll work to remove “conflicts of interest” on advisory committees in order to re-establish the public’s trust.
Those comments echoed past complaints that some scientists and public health experts who work on panels that advise the HHS about drugs and vaccines have also accepted consulting fees and research funding from drugmakers. MAHA Action, a grassroots campaign group backing Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, said the health secretary will work to bring more transparency to vaccines.
“Robert Kennedy Jr. doesn’t need to eradicate any vaccine from the program,” Del Bigtree, CEO of MAHA Action, said at a press conference Feb. 13. “He just needs to show you how long the safety trial was.”
However, changing the advisory committees raises the possibility that Kennedy could dilute the influence of the scientific experts who advise the agencies.
“One of the huge reasons the advisory committee meeting happens is to determine what strains of flu will be used by manufacturers to be able to produce the next vaccines,” said Reshma Ramachandran, an assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine. “The fact that we’re going to delay consideration of a new flu vaccine for the upcoming flu season, which is not too far away in the fall, is pretty shocking.”
Additionally, “discussions can only be helpful as decisions are ultimately made about which strains to include in updated influenza vaccines for the coming year,” Anand Parekh, chief medical adviser of the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former HHS deputy assistant secretary of health, said in an email.
“We have an HHS secretary who’s so involved at the agency level,” Ramachandran said. “The level of interference is pretty disturbing to say the least, especially because he comes from this ideology around vaccines and vaccines skepticism in the first place.”
‘Completely Irrational’
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it has confirmed H5 bird flu in 70 people in the US but that the immediate public risk remains low.
Still, a bird flu vaccine is “a priority health need,” said Brook Baker, professor of law emeritus at Northeastern University. “We don’t know where that potential pandemic is headed.”
“The US has been doing a terrible job of surveillance of bird flu already. It’s not secured cooperation of either the poultry industry or the cattle industry, and it’s not really doing great surveillance and prevention,” Baker said. “If you don’t have containment, then you at least need vaccines as a second circle protection. And they’re dismantling the second line of defense, which is just completely irrational.”
The idea of withdrawing Moderna’s vaccine funds “fits within a broad pattern of undervaluing and undermining public health,” Phelan said.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump issued an executive action for the US to withdraw from the World Health Organization. Likewise, the administration tried capping “indirect funds” at the National Institutes of Health, which involve research money the government pays to universities and institutions to cover expenses of facilities, utilities, lab equipment, and project support staff.
Phelan said its “incredibly disappointing” that the first Trump administration’s support of Moderna in Operation Warp Speed for Covid-19 vaccines hasn’t been seen as a “precedent to be used to be copied” for current health threats.
“There are so many points of weakness and failure when it comes to a potential pandemic influenza, whether H5N1 or something in the future,” Phelan said. Not investing in Moderna would be “just one example of a series of very bad decisions.”
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