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Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken the extraordinary step of firing the expert panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying the action is needed to restore faith in vaccines.

“A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy said in an op-ed published Monday afternoon in the Wall Street Journal.

Proponents of vaccines have feared Kennedy, who has been openly critical of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, might take such a step, but were still shocked.

“We have just demonstrated that politics will overrun science in this administration. It scares me to think of what’s ahead,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Cente

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