U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this month fired the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, some of whom were barely into their appointed terms. The new panel, appointed two weeks ago, includes a number of people known to be vaccine skeptics or “anti-vaccination.”

Health experts were shocked to see that thimerosal, a preservative that has largely been phased out of U.S. vaccines, was on the ACIP agenda.