Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is continuing to stack the chips in favor of his agenda. He’s now restocked a government advisory panel on autism with entirely new members, some of whom have echoed RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccination beliefs in the past.
On Wednesday, RFK Jr. announced the new iteration of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), a panel within the HHS that guides federal policy on autism research. The IACC now includes several people who have endorsed unsupported claims about the dangers of vaccination, including the supposed link between vaccines and autism. Unsurprisingly, many outside experts and groups aren’t too happy about the change.
“Consistent with other federal advisory committees under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, like the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), committee members have been cherry-picked to reach a predetermined conclusion, not to seek broad, good-faith input from qualified experts and stakeholders,” said Alison Singer, a former IACC member and president of the Autism Science Foundation, in a statement released by the organization.
A sign of things to come
Formed as an advisory panel in 2006, the IACC offers non-binding recommendations on how the government should allocate its resources toward autism research and other related priorities. The panel last met in January 2025, shortly before Trump’s second inauguration.
While the IACC and other advisory committees often see some turnover during a new administration, some members are usually maintained. As Kennedy did with the ACIP last year, however, he completely wiped the slate clean with the IACC this time around.
Some of the new 21 members include people with autism as well as parents of autistic children—a longstanding tradition. But the reformulated IACC appears to have no representatives from leading autism organizations and a “striking absence of scientific expertise,” according to Singer. What it does have is plenty of worrying inclusions.
One member is John Gilmore, for instance, executive director of the Autism Action Network. The AAN has advocated against vaccine-related policies, including mandates, and has supported other anti-vaccination groups such as Children’s Health Defense, the organization once founded and led by RFK Jr. (Gilmore also founded the NY chapter of Children’s Health Defense).
Another member is Toby Rogers, a fellow at the Texas-based Brownstone Institute. Rogers has also written for Children’s Health Defense, and last fall, he testified at a House congressional hearing that “autism and chronic disease epidemics are primarily caused by toxicants—mostly from vaccines.” Just this month on social media, Rogers called the childhood vaccine schedule “genocidal.”
There’s also Daniel Rossignol, a family physician who has advocated for scientifically unproven autism treatments such as chelation therapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy (therapies that the FDA, until recently, explicitly warned people to stay away from). Over a decade ago, Rossignol and another doctor, Anjum Usman, were sued by James Coman, the father of an autistic child, over the care they provided his son. The lawsuit was later voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff’s lawyers, but a related civil complaint filed against Usman by the Illinois medical board on Coman’s behalf led to Usman being disciplined in 2014.
Antivaxxers in charge
Kennedy has made no secret of his plans to radically resculpt the government’s stances on autism and vaccines.
His rejiggered ACIP has pushed to restrict or remove certain vaccines. He’s directed the CDC to deceptively edit its webpages on vaccination, and earlier this month, the government officially cut down the CDC’s recommended childhood vaccine schedule.
With a new IACC on board, RFK Jr. will likely continue to boost the long-since debunked idea that vaccines cause autism.
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