The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced on Monday that he is eliminating the 17 members of the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention Vaccines Advisory Committee and replace them with new members.

The Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) makes recommendations on safety, efficacy and clinical need for vaccines.

“Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public confidence over any specific or anti -vaccine agenda,” Kennedy said in a statement. “The public must know that impartial science, evaluated through a transparent and isolated process of conflicts of interest, guides the recommendations of our health agencies.”

In Press releaseHHS said the Biden Administration appointed the 17 members of ACIP sitting, with 13 of those appointments in 2024.

The appointments meant that the Trump administration would have had to wait until 2028 before choosing most of the committee members, according to Kennedy.

Kennedy said replacing the members of the committee in the session would help restore public trust.

“A clean sweep is needed to restore public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy’s statement continued. “The new members of ACIP will prioritize public health and evidence -based medicine. The committee will no longer work as a rubber stamp for industry -gain obtaining agendas.”

In a separate opinion article written in The Wall Street Journal On Monday, announcing Acip’s restructuring, Kennedy said the committee was plagued by conflicts of interest.

The CDC has published a list of conflict statements of interest revealed by voting members during public meetings since 2000.

Kennedy also wrote that Acip had never recommended against a vaccine “even those later retired for security reasons.”

In fact, ACIP members have sometimes recommended a closer use of a vaccine than technically allowed the authorization of the Food and Medicines Administration (FDA).

Kennedy had previously stated that he would not touch Acip. In February, Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, who said he had initially fought with Kennedy’s nomination for HHS secretary before voting to confirm him, said Kennedy had promised him that no changes in ACIP would be made.

“He also committed that he would work within the current vaccine approval system and safety monitoring and not establish parallel systems,” Cassidy said at that time in a Speech on the Senate floor. “If confirmed, the advisory committee for the control and prevention of diseases on immunization practices without changes.”

In A publication in X After the changes were announced on Monday, Cassidy said there is fear that the ACIP “be filled with people who know nothing about vaccines, except suspicions. I just talked to Secretary Kennedy, and I will continue talking to him to make sure that this is not the case.”

Dr. Paul offit, a pediatrician specialized in infectious diseases at the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital and a member of the FDA Vaccine Advisors Independent Panel, told ABC News that he thought the decision on Monday was extremely dangerous.

Kennedy “does not have a single example to show where a vote of one of these committees has harmed children,” said Offit. “In fact, the opposite is true: the votes of this committee in the last 25 years have caused children to suffer less and die less. ACIP should receive prizes, not fired.”

Many important health defense organizations also retreated in motion.

“For generations, the Immunization Practices Advisory Committee (ATAP) has been a reliable national source of advice and guidance of sciences and data on the use of vaccines to prevent and control diseases … Today’s action to eliminate the 17 members of ACIP Socava that trusts and changes a transparent process that has saved against lives,” said Dr. Bruce A. Scott, president of the American Medical Association, statement. “With a continuous measles outbreak and the decrease in vaccination rates of routine children, this movement will further feed the spread of preventable diseases with vaccines.”

The former director of the CDC, Dr. Mandy Cohen, told ABC News that she was “deeply concerned with the families who tried to navigate how to keep their loved ones healthy and safe,” after the measure to finish and replace the members of the committee. “The unprecedented action of Secretary Kennedy propagates confusion and throws doubts about transparent public health processes that protect Americans,” said Cohen, who served as head of the CDC during the Biden administration.

Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former interim director of the CDCs in the Obama administration, said that Kennedy’s measure “should erase any remaining questions that he intends to impose his personal agenda antivacamous personal agenda to the US people.”

Kennedy’s announcement about ACIP is the last of a series of unprecedented movements and a rejection of traditional roads to make ads related to vaccines.

Two weeks ago, Kennedy announced in a video published in X that the COVID-19 vaccine would be eliminated from the CDC immunization schedule for “healthy children and pregnant women.”

Last week, a CDC official, who directed a part of ACIP, announced that he resigned after Kennedy’s announcement about changing the covid-19 vaccines recommendations.

Cheyenne Haslett of Abc News, Youri Benadjaoud and Dr. Mark Abdelmalek contributed to this report.