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Statement

Shame on RFK

June 12, 2025
Health Care

Lisa Lederer, 202/371-1996

Statement of Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director and CEO of MomsRising, the online and on-the-ground organization of more than one million mothers and their families on Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. firing the entire Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory committee and appointing vaccine deniers in their place:

“Replacing leading, qualified vaccine experts with unqualified skeptics and deniers on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices threatens to put millions of our children at risk. America’s moms are alarmed and disgusted that U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of this important Committee, which advises the CDC – and that some of the replacements he is appointing are dangerous conspiracy theorists who are unfit to shape public health. 

“America’s moms count on this Committee, and our federal government, for trustworthy guidance based on the best scientific evidence about how to keep our children safe and healthy. Because of how the Secretary is reshaping this key Committee, that resource is now gone.

“We are already seeing the harm Secretary Kennedy and other vaccine skeptics are causing in the devastating measles outbreak that is sickening so many children and has claimed three lives. Secretary Kennedy has no medical or scientific degree. Replacing scientific experts with fringe conspiracy theorists like him, who traffic in dangerous misinformation, will put our children in grave and unnecessary peril. Shame on Secretary Kennedy for prioritizing politics over our children’s health.”

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MomsRising.org is an on-the-ground and online grassroots organization of more than a million people who are working to increase family economic security, stop discrimination against women and moms, and build a nation where businesses and families can thrive. Established in 2006, MomsRising and its members are organizing and speaking out to improve public policy and to change the national dialogue on issues that are critically important to America’s families, including criminal justice reform, immigration policy reform, and gun safety. MomsRising is working for paid family and medical leave, affordable, high quality childcare and early learning, and for an end to the wage and hiring discrimination which penalizes women — particularly moms and women of color — and so many others. MomsRising advocates for access to healthy food for all kids, health care for all, earned sick days, and breastfeeding rights so that all children can have a healthy start. MomsRising maintains a Spanish language website: www.MamásConPoder.org. Sign up online at www.MomsRising.org — and follow us on our blog, and on Twitter and Facebook.