Top medical groups join forces to review vaccine science as CDC faces criticism
The American Medical Association is launching an effort to evaluate vaccine safety and effectiveness independently of U.S. government health agencies
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The U.S.’s largest organization of physicians is joining forces with a vaccine research group to independently review vaccine science, effectively paralleling one of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key public health roles.
Officials at the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Vaccine Integrity Project, run by the University of Minnesota, said the effort is designed “to ensure a deliberative, evidence-driven approach to produce the data necessary to understand the risks and benefits of vaccine policy decisions for all populations,” according to a joint statement issued on Tuesday.
The groups will not make vaccine recommendations in the same way that the CDC now does and will aim to provide doctors and families with science-backed guidance. Since the Trump administration returned to the White House last year, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, has overseen a broad rollback of the country’s recommended childhood vaccines. In December 2025 the CDC cut the number of routine recommended vaccines for kids to protect against 11 diseases instead of 17—a move experts decried as undermining public health and endangering children.
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The CDC has traditionally relied on an independent panel of experts called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to help inform its vaccine recommendations. In June 2025 Kennedy overhauled ACIP and installed known vaccine critics in the panel. Last December the panel voted to stop recommending that the hepatitis B vaccine be given to all newborns. The CDC then sidelined the group, sympathetic as it was, in making the decision to reduce the vaccine schedule to protect against 11 illnesses instead of 17.
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