Earlier this year, the National Institutes of Health dismantled the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Advisors, which had 28 members. And now Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr fired the entire 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that provides recommendations on vaccines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This raises the question, who’s going to do the advising? With no replacement forthcoming, at NCI it would appear that the National Cancer Advisory Board will have to go it alone. At ACIP, it’s likely Kennedy will appoint people to the advisory committee without a vaccine industry pedigree, including like-minded vaccine skeptics.

The importance of having independent expert panels in the oncology and vaccine spaces is

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