Medical associations sue Kennedy, Trump administration health leaders for COVID-19 vaccine changes
Medical associations representing hundreds of thousands of doctors, medical professionals and scientists in the United States are suing the leaders of U.S. health agencies for limiting who can get COVID-19 vaccines and for undermining overall vaccine confidence.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, was brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, American Public Health Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America, Massachusetts Public Health Association D/B/A Massachusetts Public Health Alliance, Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and an unnamed doctor who is pregnant and was unable to get the COVID-19 vaccine booster.
The groups are suing U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Matthew Buzzelli, chief of staff at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who is serving as its acting director.
, Kennedy took the highly unusual step of announcing that the COVID-19 vaccine would no longer be recommended for pregnant people and healthy children on the CDC’s immunization schedule.
Experts immediately warned that these changes could create new barriers to vaccines for those who want them, including confusion around who is eligible and higher costs for patients if insurance no longer covers them.
Kennedy, who has a long history of anti-vaccine actions, also fired 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them with seven new members, including several who have raised questions about safety and efficacy of vaccines. Committee members serve as outside experts who help the CDC make informed decisions about vaccines. In the first meeting of the newly appointed committee in June, the chair said the committee would study well-established vaccines and guidelines, the childhood and adolescent immunization schedules and the vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox.
The lawsuit argues that Kennedy and the Trump administration acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when they changed the COVID-19 vaccine recommendations. The lawsuit asks for preliminary and permanent injunctions to enjoin, or legally prohibit, Kennedy’s COVID vaccine recommendation changes and a declaratory judgment pronouncing the change in recommendations as unlawful.
One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Dr. Susan J. Kressly, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that the immunization system has been a cornerstone of U.S. public health, but she is concerned that the Trump administration has taken actions that are “jeopardizing its success.”
“The American Academy of Pediatrics is alarmed by recent decisions by HHS to alter the routine childhood immunization schedule. These decisions are founded in fear and not evidence, and will make our children and communities more vulnerable to infectious disease like measles, whooping cough, and influenza,” Kressly said in a news release.