A Vaccine Safety Committee Was Eliminated
It wasn't the first federal advisory committee disbanded. And it won't be the last.
When the Trump administration returned to power, it wasted no time reviving efforts to reshape the civil service, federal science, and the mechanisms by which the government makes evidence-based decisions. One strategy the administration is employing to achieve the above goals has been the dismantling of federal advisory committees (FACs)—the expert panels that have long served as a cornerstone of scientific input into federal policy.
I should know, I was on a federal advisory committee that was disbanded - read my story here.
To date, at least 77 federal advisory committees have been terminated, encompassing virtually every government agency. These are not obscure committees. They include the National Science Foundation’s advisory committees for biological sciences, cyberinfrastructure, and engineering; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s committees on climate services and marine fisheries; and the Department of Health and Human Services' advisory bodies on long COVID, health equity, and infant and maternal mortality. They are critical instruments for ensuring that policy decisions are rooted in the latest scientific knowledge and inclusive of diverse expertise.
This week, the nation watched as one of the most consequential science advisory bodies—the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—was formally disbanded. ACIP, which had guided vaccine recommendations in the United States for decades, was eliminated just as political leaders renewed their attacks on childhood vaccination requirements. While administration officials claimed the termination was part of a broader realignment of public health infrastructure, the timing and context suggest otherwise. The decision comes amid a flurry of policy changes backed by Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long advanced vaccine misinformation and distrust of federal health agencies.
But this is not a one-off event—it is part of a larger pattern. In fact, this isn’t even the first time the Trump administration has gone after science advisory bodies. As the Union of Concerned Scientists detailed in their 2018 report Abandoning Science Advice, the administration previously disbanded or hollowed out advisory committees across the government, removing scientific input from policymaking on climate change, public health, and chemical safety.
The consequences are already unfolding. The removal of scientific oversight has disrupted regulatory processes, stalled key initiatives, and severed long-standing relationships between agencies and the scientific community. It has also sent a chilling message: external advice, even when expert and bipartisan, is no longer welcome if it cannot be tightly controlled. The public will bear the costs in weaker protections, less informed policy, and diminished trust.
This is not just a bureaucratic reshuffling; it is a full-blown crisis of scientific integrity. By terminating legitimate science advisory bodies and leaving the door open for the insertion of politically aligned or pseudoscientific voices, the administration is actively eroding the foundations of evidence-based policymaking. Science-informed decisions will increasingly reflect ideological agendas rather than empirical truth. This setup was also recently clarified by the Trump administration’s “gold standard” executive order.
The structures that once filtered out bad science or prevented it from gaining traction in federal policy are being dismantled.
Scientific advice is not ornamental; it is often the difference between policy failure and effective intervention. The Harvard Six Cities Study, which links air pollution to mortality, and state-level COVID-19 responses shaped by scientific input, both demonstrate the life-or-death stakes of letting evidence guide decisions.
Now, those stakes are rising again.
Scientists who have served on disbanded FACs or worked alongside them understand the vital role these bodies play in good governance. They also understand that scientific legitimacy depends not only on technical rigor but on independence and transparency. What we are witnessing is not simply the loss of advisory infrastructure, but a reengineering of science itself to serve political ends.
This is not a fight for institutional turf. It is a fight for the role of science in society. If we allow the infrastructure of science advice to collapse, we concede that policymaking can proceed without expertise. However, if we rise to meet this moment, we demonstrate that science does not require permission to serve the public. It only needs people willing to stand up and speak out.
The federal government may not want to hear from scientists at this time. But the country still needs us.
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