A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services refuted the claim, made Thursday on social media by ACIP Vice Chair Robert Malone, calling it “baseless speculation.”
Thursday afternoon, Committee Vice Chair Robert Malone tweeted that the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was being disbanded—a claim that was quickly disavowed by an official representative. Malone’s post followed a judge’s ruling earlier this week that ACIP’s reconstitution last June did not follow necessary procedures.
“Unless officially announced by us, any assertions about what we are doing next is baseless speculation,” Andrew Nixon, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told BioSpace in an email.
In a post on X, Robert Malone, currently the ACIP Vice Chair, wrote that the panel “has been disbanded.” The ACIP meets three times a year to discuss matters surrounding vaccination and develop recommendations for the CDC, helping the agency craft its immunization guidelines. Its scheduled meeting this week was postponed.
“The government’s response to the [American Academy of Pediatrics] lawsuit and judge Murphey’s [sic] injunction is to disband and then recreate a new ACIP committee, as this will take less time than would be required to file and prosecute an appeal,” Malone asserted in his X post.
On Monday, Judge Brian Murphy of the District Court for Massachusetts handed the HHS a legal loss when he moved to block Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attempts to overhaul U.S. vaccine policy. In a 45-page ruling, Murphy took aim at Kennedy’s June 2025 decision to empty the ACIP and reconstitute it, over the next couple of months, with new members, some of whom shared his skepticism of vaccines.
In response, the AAP sued the HHS in July last year, alleging that the overhaul not only violated the law, but also that Kennedy, in his official capacity as health secretary, had put Americans at risk and weakened trust in vaccine science.
Murphy on Monday sided with the professional organization. Kennedy picked the new ACIP members “without undertaking any of the rigorous screening that had been the hallmark of ACIP member selection for decades,” he wrote, calling the episode a “procedural failure” that “highlights the very reasons why procedures exist.”
In his X post, Malone appeared to criticize Murphy’s ruling.
“There will be no action from the government to respond to the defamatory characterization of the former ACIP members,” he wrote.
The recent brouhaha over the ACIP’s purported disbandment adds to the controversies swirling around the health department—something that higher-ups in the Trump administration seemingly want to tamp down ahead of the midterm elections later this year. Reporting from The Wall Street Journal last week revealed that White House officials want Kennedy to tone down his rhetoric, which they believe has made the secretary increasingly unpopular with the public.
The WSJ, speaking to sources familiar with the matter who requested anonymity, additionally flagged growing frustration with what officials have characterized as the many missteps and controversies at the HHS, including the department’s slow response to the measles outbreak last year, the first since 2015 to kill a child in the U.S.
Despite numerous controversies, however, Kennedy retains the confidence of President Donald Trump, according to the WSJ. “The White House continues to work hand in glove” with Kennedy, spokesperson Kush Desai told the newspaper.
