E&C Democrats: The Trump Administration is Restricting Access to Life-Saving Vaccines

Energy and Commerce Committee Democratic leaders wrote a series of oversight letters to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Martin Makary today expressing alarm over their clear efforts to restrict access and threaten availability of vaccines for millions of Americans.

The letters were signed by Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), Health Subcommittee Ranking Member Diana DeGette (D-CO), and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY).

In their letter to Secretary Kennedy, the Democrats expressed deep concern over the failure of HHS to provide information to Congress and the public regarding the newly appointed Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) members. The new members were hand selected by Secretary Kennedy after he fired all previous ACIP members. Democratic leaders voiced concern over the lack of transparency in the firing of previous members and selection of these new members and demanded answers from Kennedy. 

“Your careless and opaque process of firing all 17 previous ACIP members and appointing new ones who have clear biases against vaccines make clear your true intentions: to undermine the science-based process we have long relied on to provide vaccination recommendations,” the Democratic Committee leaders wrote to Kennedy. “We fear that your ideologically driven agenda is to make vaccines broadly less accessible to all Americans.”

In their letter to Commissioner Makary, the Democrats raised alarm over the agency undermining availability of safe and effective vaccines for millions of Americans. The Democrats raised specific concerns regarding agency actions limiting access to COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines ahead of the upcoming respiratory virus season and making significant changes to policies applied during the approval process for new vaccines.

“These actions are far from the promise of ‘radical transparency’ so frequently cited by the Trump Administration,” the Democrats wrote to Makary. “Congress and the public deserve more information about the rationale behind FDA’s decisions that will likely have harmful effects on the health and safety of the American people. It is a particularly critical time to prepare for the upcoming respiratory illness season, including COVID-19, influenza, and [RSV], and we are requesting further information on the status of those preparations as soon as possible.”

The Democratic Committee leaders sent a series of detailed questions and requests for documentation to both HHS and FDA as part of their ongoing oversight of the Trump Administration’s efforts to overturn decades of precedent and restrict access to lifesaving vaccines.

Read the letter to Secretary Kennedy HERE.

Read the letter to Commissioner Makary HERE.

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