— Paul Offit’s latest term on VRBPAC ends abruptly … in paperwork
Pediatric vaccine expert Paul Offit, MD, a longtime critic of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been removed from the FDA’s influential vaccine panel.
Offit had already served two 4-year terms on the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), from 2017 to January 2025. He agreed to another 2-year term that was slated to end Jan. 31, 2027. But the paperwork to keep him on the FDA panel wasn’t approved by HHS, and he was notified last week that it meant he was off the committee.
“I will miss it — I really loved the conversations I had with very smart people,” Offit told MedPage Today. But “in no way does it lessen this committee that I’m not on it. These are brilliant people, and in no way is our country getting less advice because I’m not on that committee.”
The FDA told MedPage Today in an e-mail that it had “issued notifications to certain advisory committee members whose Special Government Employee (SGE) terms have expired and therefore can no longer participate in Advisory Committee work.”
VRBPAC is made up of a group of independent experts who evaluate the safety and effectiveness data on vaccines and related biological products and make recommendations to the FDA commissioner. The panel was instrumental in helping adviseopens in a new tab or window the agency on vaccinesopens in a new tab or window duringopens in a new tab or window the COVID-19 pandemicopens in a new tab or window and typically recommends new strains to target for annual fluopens in a new tab or window and COVID shotsopens in a new tab or window.
As of Aug. 28, the now-16-member rosteropens in a new tab or window no longer includes Offit’s name, though the site currently lists the number of vacancies as zero. No other VRBPAC members appear to have been removed at this time.
Offit is director of the Vaccine Education Center and professor of pediatrics in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s division of infectious diseases. He’s also been a consistent, outspoken criticopens in a new tab or window of Kennedy’s approach to science and vaccine policies.
As HHS secretary, Kennedy has razed and reshaped federal vaccine operations. In June, he fired all 17 membersopens in a new tab or window of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), accusing them of conflicts despite evidence to the contraryopens in a new tab or window, and then replaced themopens in a new tab or window with members more amenable to his views on vaccines.
He later shut out major medical groupsopens in a new tab or window that had long helped form vaccine recommendations — such as the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and Infectious Diseases Society of America — accusing them of potential bias.
Most recently, the CDC selected new ACIP member Retsef Levi, PhDopens in a new tab or window — a COVID vaccine critic who has said the shots have caused “unprecedented levels of harm” — to lead the work group that helps steer recommendations on those vaccines.
