No Changes Planned for FDA’s Vaccine Advisory Committee ‘At This Time’: Spokesperson

Earlier in June, Kennedy removed every member from the CDC's Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices.

Published: 6/21/2025, 10:31:28 AM EDT

No Changes Planned for FDA’s Vaccine Advisory Committee ‘At This Time’: Spokesperson — Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary in Washington in a file photograph. (Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images)

There are no plans to remove any members of the panel that advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccines, a spokesperson said on June 20.

“At this time, no decisions have been made regarding changes to the membership of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC),” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

The spokesperson also said that the Department of Health and Human Services, headed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the parent agency of the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “will continue to review all advisory bodies to ensure they uphold the highest standards of transparency, public accountability, and gold-standard science.”

Kennedy, earlier in June, removed every member from the CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, citing issues such as conflicts of interest. An Epoch Times review found that multiple members of that panel had participated in votes about vaccine that impacted companies from which they had recently received money.

The health secretary chooses members for the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, while the commissioner of the FDA, currently Dr. Marty Makary, chooses members of VRBPAC.

All of the people presently serving on VRBPAC were chosen by previous FDA commissioners. They typically serve four-year terms. The terms of seven members are set to expire on Jan. 31, 2026, with other terms lasting longer.

Conflicts of Interest

Candidates for VRBPAC are told to “provide detailed information concerning such matters as financial holdings, employment, and research grants and/or contracts in order to permit evaluation of possible sources of conflict of interest.”

The FDA refers candidates to a presentation that describes conflicts of interest as occurring “when an individual selected to serve on an advisory committee has financial interests that may be impacted by the individual’s work on the advisory committee.” Financial interests were said to include consulting arrangements.

If a particular matter will have a “direct and predictable effect” on an adviser’s financial interests, the adviser cannot serve on the committee for that matter, according to the presentation.

FDA officials review potential conflicts of interest and decide whether a member’s participation in each advisory committee meeting is appropriate, according to the FDA presentation.

Waivers can be granted if officials determine that the need for an adviser’s participation outweighs any potential conflict of interest.

Recusal

Dr. Hana El Sahly, with the Baylor College of Medicine, a VRBPAC member, worked on a trial for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. She did not participate in meetings related to COVID-19.

“I never had a financial relationship with Moderna,” El Sahly told The Epoch Times in an email. “To perform the vaccine studies that used a Moderna product I was 100 percent federally funded. I recused from VRBPAC on COVID related meetings however, for appearance of conflict, which is as important as a real conflict.”

El Sahly said that it is her understanding that the period of time for recusal is over. She was not able to say for how long conflicts remain relevant, describing reviews of possible conflicts as happening for each meeting.

Dr. Hayley Gans, a Stanford Medicine Children’s Health pediatrics professor and another member, voted in June 2022 to advise the FDA to expand authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

Pfizer paid Gans $27,187 in September 2022 for consulting, according to a government database that hosts information about financial relationships between companies and providers. The database says Gans did not contest the information.

Gans did not declare any conflicts during the 2022 meeting and did not receive a waiver, according to FDA staffers. One waiver was announced at the meeting, for Dr. James Hildreth, a temporary voting member whose institution was a site for an ongoing trial of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

Gans, who has been on VRBPAC since mid-2019 and also voted to authorize the Pfizer vaccine for most of the population in 2020, did not return requests for comment.

From The Epoch Times