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# Vaccine Regulation Now ‘a Political Process’: Gottlieb
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/vaccine-regulation-now-a-political-process-gottlieb/
- Published: 2025-07-07T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T15:15:43.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Biologics, #legacy-id-D5159440

Former FDA commissioner **Scott Gottlieb** says that under HHS secretary **Robert F. Kennedy**, Jr., the change to the membership of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) “does look like a political process right now.” Gottlieb commented on the 6/29 CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

“I think a lot of people on my side of the political aisle (Gottlieb is a Republican who was commissioner in the first Trump administration) feel that a lot of these policies that Secretary Kennedy is championing are going to be constrained to vaccines and not bleed into a broader public health doctrine,” Gottlieb [said](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/scott-gottlieb-face-the-nation-transcript-06-29-2025/?ref=fdaweb.com).”I think that’s not right. I think there’s a lot of people now who don’t think these things are particularly political, or shouldn’t be, and don’t think these decisions should be politically decided, who are going to find when they go to the doctor’s office that vaccines that they may want to protect their lives or the lives of their families aren’t going to be available. This does look like a political process right now.”

Gottlieb said that Kennedy is going after issues “that have long been bugaboos of him and his anti-vax group, Children’s Health Defense. I don’t think that’s mistakeable at this point. I think that he would probably acknowledge that.”

He said the list of affected vaccines is growing, and it will become obvious that it is going well beyond the Covid-19 vaccine, which many people thought would be the administration’s focus in terms of restricting vaccines.

Asked about the ACIP recommendation that people avoid flu vaccines with thimerosal, Gottlieb reviewed the ingredient’s history and safety studies and noted that only a very small percentage of flu vaccine vials still contain that preservative. He said thimerosal has “long been a bugaboo of the secretary and the Children’s Health Defense Fund.”

The only presentation to the ACIP meeting was from the head of that group, he said, and a countering analysis from CDC officials asserting there is no link between thimerosal and autism was removed from the agency’s Web site after Kennedy said that the CDC statement hadn’t gone through proper review.

Asked by host **Margaret Brennan** more generally about the ACIP members and their varied backgrounds, Gottlieb said, “A lot of the people who have been appointed don’t have deep experience, or any experience, quite frankly, in vaccine science. They are people who have been ideologically aligned with Secretary Kennedy in the past and worked with him, many of them, not all of them. And I think that that isn’t something that even the secretary would dispute at this time, and it did lead to some awkward moments at that meeting.”

He noted that one ACIP member had to have explained to him the difference between an antibody prophylaxis and a vaccine. He said some of the CDC staff present “had to provide some, quite frankly, remedial assistance to help brief these members on the basis of vaccine science.” With that, however, Gottlieb expressed the hope that when additional members are appointed to the committee, “you’re going to get more balance on it. I think some people are skeptical. I remain hopeful that there will be some good members that get seated eventually.”

Asked about the ability of FDA to continue to support medical innovation, Gottlieb said there are many innovations in therapeutics, but what he is worried about is innovation in vaccine science.

“I work on the venture capital side,” he explained, “where we make investments in new companies, and there has been a pullback of biotech startups that have been looking to develop new vaccines…. So I think we’re going to see less innovation in vaccine science as a result of the environment we’re in.”