Vaccine expert who is a frequent critic of RFK Jr. is blocked from participating in FDA advisory committee

By Katherine Dillinger, Meg Tirrell, CNN

(CNN) — Dr. Paul Offit, a frequent critic of US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been blocked from participating in a panel of independent experts who advise the US Food and Drug Administration on vaccines.

An HHS spokesperson told CNN that Offit was among multiple advisers to FDA committees whose terms have expired, meaning they can’t participate in advisory committee work. Offit, who is director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told CNN that a senior FDA official had previously asked him to extend his term on the FDA panel, but the paperwork appeared to have been held up at HHS.

Offit, who is also a professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at CHOP, a former member of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisers and an inventor of the rotavirus vaccine RotaTeq, has clashed with Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine advocate, for years.

“I’ve been critical of RFK Jr. — I think for good reason,” Offit told CNN on Tuesday. But he noted that he hadn’t been given a reason for the holdup on the paperwork and pointed out, “I’ve been a vocal critic of him for many years,” including during Kennedy’s time helming the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, “which was almost 10 years ago.”

A Trump administration hiring freeze applies to Special Government Employees, a category that includes advisers such as Offit, and renewals must go through the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office, a person familiar with the situation told CNN.

Nonetheless, Offit’s inability to participate in the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel makes him just the latest in a slew of experts to depart or be ousted from the FDA and CDC under Kennedy. Most recent was the forcing out last week of CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez, an appointee of President Donald Trump who’d been confirmed only weeks earlier, prompting the departure of multiple other key CDC leaders.

Offit joined the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee in 2017, and he was a prominent voice helping interpret vaccine science throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

His latest term was set to end in January 2025, he said, before a senior FDA official asked him to remain for another four years.

Offit agreed to stay until 2027, he said, and filled out renewed Special Government Employee forms, which include financial disclosures. But he says a senior official told him that those forms were “held up” for months within HHS, and he finally received an email last week that said he was no longer a member of the FDA committee because his forms were never approved.

Kennedy has accused Offit of having conflicts of interest, a common theme in his targeting of government vaccine advisers; in June, Kennedy cited such conflicts when dismissing the 17 members of the CDC’s advisory panel. Offit noted at the time that candidates for that committee were typically subjected to months of review, including for potential conflicts of interest.

The HHS secretary also singled out Offit in an interview with Fox News in June, saying he had voted to add the rotavirus vaccine to the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule and then sold his stake for $186 million. But Offit noted in a video he posted on social media that the vaccine hadn’t come up for a vote until three years after he served as a voting member of the CDC advisory panel and that CHOP had owned the vaccine patent, not him.

“I worked for 26 years on that vaccine,” he told CNN on Tuesday. “Both the motivation for doing it and the reward from doing it were never financial, obviously. What upsets me the most about that is that people believe it. You know, they believe that I would actually knowingly lie about vaccine safety or vaccine efficacy to line my own pocket.”

Offit said he’s received hate mail, been physically assaulted and received death threats. “They hate you because they think that you’re putting their children in harm’s way for money. And it’s not true.”

Offit emphasized that if the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, remains in its current form, just without him, he’d still trust its advice.

“I love talking to my fellow committee members, because they’re really smart, and I learned a lot. That’s what I’ll miss,” he told CNN. “But the VRBPAC is in no sense weaker by my not being there. There are a lot of really good people on that committee, so I don’t think anybody should feel they’re getting lesser advice because I’m not there.”

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