Paul Offit, longtime member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee and an outspoken critic of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was recently informed by the Department of Health and Human Services that his services are no longer required.
This summer, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. completely overhauled the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee. Until now, the FDA’s sister committee had largely been left unchanged. But on Tuesday, news broke that one of the panel’s most outspoken members was no longer a member.
Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, had served for eight years on the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and had agreed to serve for two more. Then, he was informed by Health and Human Services that his services will no longer be required.
“They didn’t say why. They just said that I’m not on the committee anymore,” Offit told BioSpace on Tuesday. “Somebody at HHS, I guess, didn’t want me to be on the committee. I can’t understand why. I mean, could I be more laudatory to RFK, Jr.?”
All joking aside, Offit has made no secret of this fact that he is not Kennedy’s biggest fan. Of new FDA requirements announced in May that will require all new vaccines to be tested in placebo-controlled trials before they are approved, Offit told BioSpace, “It’s just anti-vaccine activism come to the policy side.”
Also in May, Offit wrote an open letter to Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, recommending that Kennedy step down as HHS Secretary. He reiterated that call on Tuesday.
The “watershed moment” for Offit, he said, was when the measles epidemic broke out and “[Kennedy] goes on national television and says, ‘Measles vaccine kills people every year’—falsely. ‘Measles vaccine causes blindness. Measles vaccine causes deafness.’ Right there, he should have been fired.”
In an X post following Monarez’s firing last week—after just 28 days in the position and following her reported refusal to support rescinding certain approvals for COVID-19 vaccines—Cassidy said the move “will require oversight by the HELP Committee.”
But, according to Offit, the senior Republican senator from Louisiana is not doing enough. “He’s a United States Senator. He’s in a position of some power,” he said. Offit said that while he “appreciated” Cassidy standing up for the hepatitis B vaccine and recommending that the last Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting in June be postponed after Kennedy purged all 17 members and replaced them with new members, some with anti-vaccine leanings, the nature of the senator’s efforts is insufficient. “He posts these things on X, and I can do that. He’s in a position of power. He should march into President [Donald] Trump’s office and say, ‘This is not the guy.’”
Offit is not alone in his staunch criticism of and calls for Kennedy’s departure. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) recently implored the Secretary to resign. “It is absurd to have to say this in 2025, but vaccines are safe and effective. That, of course, is not just my view,” the Vermont senator added. “Far more important, it is the overwhelming consensus of the medical and scientific communities,” Sanders wrote in an op-ed published in the New York Times on Saturday.
And on Monday, nine former CDC directors or acting directors—including Rochelle Walensky, who served under President Joe Biden and William Roper, who served under President George H. W. Bush—published an editorial, also in the Times, laying out their case for why Kennedy “is endangering every American’s health.”
“What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced,” the group wrote.
Kennedy will face the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, Sept. 4 for a hearing that was already being planned prior to the most recent events at the CDC. BioSpace will have live coverage of the hearing.
