Richard H. Hughes, IV, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in STAT News, in “Health Secretary RFK Jr. Abruptly Fires CDC Vaccine Advisory Panel,” by Helen Branswell, Chelsea Cirruzzo, and Daniel Payne. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken the extraordinary step of firing the expert panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on immunizations, saying the action is needed to restore faith in vaccines. …
The ACIP meets three times a year — more often during emergencies like the Covid-19 pandemic — to review data on vaccines and recommend how they should be used. Their recommendations must be approved by the CDC director — the position is currently unfilled — or the HHS secretary to go into practice. Kennedy has not signed on to three recommendations the ACIP made at its last meeting in April.
Richard Hughes, a lawyer with the firm Epstein Becker Green, warned that vaccination policy that is science-based appears to be on the verge of becoming a thing of the past.
“This upends 61 years of thoughtful, evidence-based decision-making,” Hughes, who once worked at the vaccine manufacturer Moderna, told STAT in an email. “At a minimum, it means the involvement of new members will introduce misinformation into what has been a science-based forum.”
Related reading:
- June 9, 2025: Huffpost, “RFK Jr. Drops All Members of U.S. Vaccine Advisory Panel in Unprecedented Move,” by Li Zhou, Jennifer Bendery, and Igor Bobic.
Kennedy’s actions inevitably mean that, going forward, HHS’s guidance on vaccine safety will be rooted in misinformation and views from outside the scientific community, said Richard Hughes, a vaccine law and policy expert and a partner at Epstein Becker & Green.
“If the committee fails to make science-based decisions, that poses its own risk to the safety and well-being of the American people,” Hughes told HuffPost. “And that will come in the form of disease outbreaks and actual deaths from diseases we have the tools to prevent.”
- June 10, 2025: Biopharma Dive, “Vaccine Makers Face Fresh Uncertainty After Firing of CDC Panel,” by Delilah Alvarado.
“This marks the end of a distinguished 61-year period in which the committee guided vaccine policy decisions for the federal government,” wrote Richard Hughes, a lawyer with the firm Epstein Becker Green, in an email to clients, Monday.
- June 11, 2025: Bloomberg, “RFK Jr.’s Policies Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone,” by Lisa Jarvis. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
The panel’s dismissal “will upend everything that is normal and science-based around vaccine policy making in the United States,” says Richard H. Hughes IV, a lawyer with Epstein Becker & Green PC and a former executive with the vaccine manufacturer Moderna.
Public health experts had been worried about this possibility since Kennedy’s nomination was announced. It’s a discretionary committee, so he has full control of its membership — even its existence, Hughes explains.
