US judge rules Kennedy's vaccine changes 'unlawful'

A federal judge has pushed back against attempts by HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr to overhaul immunisation policy in the US, blocking changes to the recommended schedule as well as his controversial appointments to the CDC's vaccines committee.

US District Judge Brian Murphy came down on the side of the American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) and other ‌medical organisations, which argued in the lawsuit that the changes to vaccine policy will lead to reduced protection, particularly for children, and will be detrimental to public health.

The most immediate consequence of the ruling is Murphy's decision to stay most of Kennedy's appointments to the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP), with a two-day meeting scheduled to take place this week now postponed, according to a Bloomberg report.

Last year, Kennedy sacked all 17 members of the ACIP and replaced them with his own hand-picked selection of panellists, many of whom share his vaccine-sceptic stance and in some cases have links to organisations that have expressed anti-vaccine sentiments in the past.

AAP and its fellow plaintiffs had questioned the credentials of most, but not all, of the ACIP membership, and Murphy said his decision to grant their request for a stay on the disputed committee members meant that "ACIP as currently constituted cannot meet."

He also granted the request to block HHS from implementing a January proposal to cut the number of recommended childhood vaccinations, downgrading several from routine to "shared clinical decision-making," and stayed all votes taken by the ACIP since Kennedy changed the roster.

The suit has argued that this change in status will undermine public perceptions of the importance of these vaccines, without any scientific basis for the change, and result in a decline in uptake.

AAP president Andrew Racine called the decision "a historic and welcome outcome for children, communities, and paediatricians everywhere," adding that the organisation had been "mission-bound" to fight back against Kennedy's "unsupported and unscientific changes to paediatric immunisation recommendations."

AAP has already published its own update to the childhood immunisation schedule and urged doctors to use that over the recommendations emerging from the ACIP.

"This decision effectively means that a science-based process for developing immunisation recommendations is not to be trifled with and represents a critical step to restoring scientific decision-making to federal vaccine policy that has kept children healthy for years," continued Racine.

HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said: "We look forward to this judge's decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing."