Overview
- Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee’s public membership with 21 appointees, several of whom have promoted claims linking vaccines to autism.
- At least eight of the new members have affiliations with anti-vaccine organizations or have questioned vaccine safety, according to the most recent reporting.
- The panel advises on priorities for approximately $2 billion in congressional funding for autism research and services over the next five years.
- New chair Dr. Sylvia Fogel acknowledges large population studies show no causal vaccine–autism link and says her focus is on research into potential biological vulnerability in subgroups rather than vaccine recommendations.
- Advocacy leaders and scientists, including Alison Singer of the Autism Science Foundation, criticize the appointments as lacking mainstream expertise, noting prior vaccine-policy shifts such as a CDC webpage revision that softened language rejecting a vaccine–autism link.