MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
A federal judge has blocked a series of controversial changes the Trump administration has made to government vaccine policies. NPR health correspondent Rob Stein has been covering those vaccine policies and this ruling, and he's with us now to tell us more. Good morning, Rob.
ROB STEIN, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: OK. So would you just, first of all, remind us of the changes the administration wanted to make that might now be undone?
STEIN: Yeah, the administration has been on quite a roll on vaccines since President Trump returned to office and named Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic, as his health secretary. Kennedy has made it harder for people to get access to the COVID-19 vaccines, dropped a long-standing recommendation that all babies routinely get vaccinated against hepatitis B at birth, and perhaps most controversially, slashed the number of vaccines that the federal government recommends children routinely receive. But that's all now in limbo because District Court Judge Brian Murphy in Boston ruled that the changes Kennedy has been making violated federal law about how this sort of thing should be done. And so these changes are all moot, at least for now.
MARTIN: What did the judge say Kennedy did wrong?
STEIN: Well, first of all, the judge took issue with one of the first things Kennedy did. And that was sacking and then replacing the entire membership of an influential CDC committee. It's known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. That committee plays a key role in setting federal vaccine policy, including, you know, who should get what shots when and which shots are required to be covered by insurance. The judge ruled that Kennedy failed to follow the federal law that governs this sort of thing when he hand-picked the slate of new members who shared his views about vaccines.
That committee was supposed to meet this week, but now that's been postponed. And the judge also took issue with the process that this newly reconstituted committee has been using to come up with new recommendations. Judge Murphy says the committee failed to follow a long-standing process for making these very complex decisions based on the best available science. So in a pretty scathing, 45-page ruling, the judge voided all the decisions the committee has made, as well as what Kennedy did when he ripped up the childhood vaccine schedule without even going through the committee, which the judge said was, quote, "arbitrary and capricious."
MARTIN: This whole vaccine issue, Rob, has created so much sort of turmoil and anxiety among parents. So what's been the reaction to all this?
STEIN: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, the major medical groups that filed this lawsuit, led by the American Academy of Pediatrics, they're just thrilled. Here's Richard Hughes, the lawyer who led the case for the plaintiffs at a briefing for reporters.
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RICHARD HUGHES: This is just a great victory, not just for vaccines and public health in the United States, but for science. And so we're just absolutely elated with it.
STEIN: But, Michel, as you might expect, the decision has been condemned by anti-vaccine activists. I talked about this with Mary Holland. She's the president of the Children's Health Defense, a group that Kennedy helped start.
MARY HOLLAND: We should be caring about the babies and the young children. And instead of the judge looking at what is actually happening to young children, he is looking at the financial harms to pediatricians. That is not what the immunization schedule is about or should be about.
MARTIN: Rob, is this the last word in this case?
STEIN: No. This is just a temporary stay pending further legal action. And Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department, told me in an email that the government plans to appeal. And, you know, Michel, this comes at a tricky moment. The White House has been kind of muzzling Kennedy on vaccines lately because of how unpopular his vaccine policies might affect the Republicans in the midterms. So it's unclear how aggressive the administration is going to be on vaccines going forward.
MARTIN: That is NPR health correspondent Rob Stein. Rob, thank you.
STEIN: You bet. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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