Hacker News Reader

Comment by dacox | Hacker News Reader

Was this a new committee? there is a quote about this being a coup, but it is also noted that the previous administration selected the entire existing committee

View on HN

From the way it is written it feels more like "Under Biden enough openings occurred that he selected the entire existing committee," where as under Trump they are being pushed out "“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. “A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science. ”"

If one goes by the ACIP Membership Rooster this seem to be the case: https://www.cdc.gov/acip/membership/roster.html Likely, the compensation scientists receive for being a committee member is not great so the committee has to be constantly refilled. Appointees to such committees are de facto apolitical because there aren't enough world-class specialists available for the executive to choose between. So the Trump team will have to choose, actual experts in immunology or loyal MAGA goons...

As of 0643Z 2025-06-13 this page on the CDC no longer exists.

See https://web.archive.org/web/20250124095540/https://www.cdc.g...

A clean sweep of RFK and his ilk out of power and the media is the bare minimum of what is necessary to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.

That trust was undermined by habitual liars in an effort to score political points at the expense of public health. None of the batshit-insane things they claimed were just around the corner have actually materialized.

Unfortunately, this isn't even the top five most egregious thing these people are doing this week.

yeah, I see that.

Apparently ACIP is very much not new. I am curious to the specifics of the prevous mass appointment, however.

https://www.statnews.com/2025/01/31/vaccine-policy-acip-memb...

Essentially, an anticipatory filling of a committee that had a lot of unfilled spots in hoping of stopping something like what's just happened.

ACIP has been around since 1964. See https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6342a5.htm.

But the basic work of ACIP had been done for 25+ years before the committee was created. The American Academy of Pediatrics made recommendations, etc.

Perhaps they should bring the Academy of Pediatrics back to the task!

One story said the members were appointed for 4-year terms. That would work out that Biden would have appointed them all if there was no confirmation process.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com