This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

Earlier this week, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the panel that advises the CDC on who should get certain vaccines.

And yesterday, he appointed eight new members. So who's new on the panel and how are the medical experts reacting?

Here to tell us more about this and other top science stories of the week is Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist in New York.

Welcome back, Sophie.

Thanks, Ira.

Good to talk to you.

All right, so tell me a bit more about how this panel operated and what happened.

Right.

So this panel, it's called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and they really

advise on things like the childhood vaccine schedule, on whether a new vaccine should be

recommended for everybody or for just

certain groups or that kind of thing. They look at, you know, the research that's been published

and the studies that have been done with them and they determine recommendations for how the

public should view those vaccines for whether those should be recommended or not, that kind of

thing. And so it's very

influential for things like determining if an insurance company is going to cover certain

vaccines or if the people who want them are going to have to pay out of pocket. It's set this

guidance that also professional medical organizations then follow in terms of when they're

advising the doctors who are members of those groups.

So this is a very important panel. It's traditionally been staffed with experts in vaccines.

So researchers who study this field in particular and all 17 members were fired.

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