What Next | Vaccine Skeptics Just Scored a Big Win

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, accusing members of serving industry interests and never recommending against a vaccine. Their role, however, was advising on usage for vaccines that the FDA already approved. As RFK Jr. restaffs the committee with his own “nonpartisan” members, where does that leave vaccines and the state of American health? Guest: Noel Brewer, Gillings Distinguished Professor in Public Health at the University of North Carolina. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	How much do you know about the scandal that got Bill Clinton impeached?
0:03.5	Monica Lewinsky is under the microscope.
0:05.7	Bill Clinton is under siege and the White House is trying to contain the damage.
0:10.3	Maybe you know the basics, that Clinton's presidency came to a screeching halt
0:13.9	amid a storm of accusations involving sex, power, and partisan warfare.
0:18.3	If it turns out to be true, it could be the end of Clinton's presidency.
0:21.5	Congress is rushing to overthrow the commander-in-chief. What determines who we believe and whose side
0:27.9	we take in a political fight? Tripped and secretly tape Monica Lewinsky. Go down the radio shack and buy a
0:33.4	tape recorder and plug it into your phone. What does it mean to abuse one's power?
0:41.8	I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
0:46.0	It is absolutely staggering that the fate of the most powerful man on the planet is in the hands of a completely unknown 23-year-old intern.
0:50.0	Subscribe to Slow Burn and Apple Podcasts.
1:09.6	I was able to get Dr. Noel Brewer on the line because he had a sudden opening in his schedule.
1:15.7	Usually at 3 p.m. on a Thursday, that's when we spoke, he'd be in a working group meeting for the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
1:20.8	Insiders call this group ASIP.
1:23.6	But last week, Dr. Brewer and all of his colleagues got fired.
1:32.6	I got an email from a journalist who said, look at this article in the Wall Street Journal.
1:37.7	It says something that might interest you when I read it and found out that I've been fired.
1:41.3	First time I've ever been.
1:41.9	Hold it, hold it, hold it.
1:43.1	They wrote to you and said, this might have something that interests you.
1:46.0	They didn't say what it said? No. And then I immediately shared it with the other people on the committee,
	...

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