Vaccine expert who is a frequent critic of RFK Jr. is blocked from participating in FDA advisory committee

Dr. Paul Offit, a frequent critic of US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been blocked from participating in a panel of independent experts who advise the US Food and Drug Administration on vaccines.

An HHS spokesperson told CNN that Offit was among multiple advisers to FDA committees whose terms have expired, meaning they can’t participate in advisory committee work. Offit, who is director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told CNN that a senior FDA official had previously asked him to extend his term on the FDA panel, but the paperwork appeared to have been held up at HHS.

Offit, who is also a professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at CHOP, a former member of the US Centers for Disease Control an