A federal advisory panel on autism that was restructured by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly scrapped its initial public gathering mere days ahead of its planned date, while a competing organization of researchers convened their own meeting instead. The abrupt cancellation, declared on March 7 without any clarification from HHS, marked the most recent point of tension in an extended dispute regarding Kennedy’s effort to shift federal autism research focus toward the thoroughly discredited theory that vaccines trigger autism.
The Department of Health and Human Services revealed on Tuesday, January 28, 2026, that 21 fresh members received appointments to the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, a governmental body that provides guidance on distributing approximately $2 billion in yearly autism research and services spending. The comprehensive transformation removed every prior public participant who qualified for another term.
“These public servants will pursue rigorous science and deliver the answers Americans deserve,” Kennedy said of the new members.
The revised membership contains multiple individuals with backgrounds of advancing vaccine doubt, including the creator of the Autism Action Network and a researcher affiliated with the Brownstone Institute for Social and Economic Research.
Noticeably missing from the reorganized committee were delegates from well-known research and advocacy entities such as the Simons Foundation and Autism Speaks, institutions that have propelled substantial scientific advancement in comprehending autism throughout the last twenty years.
The removal of these entities triggered an immediate reaction. On March 3, 2026, an alliance of distinguished researchers — numerous among them previous federal committee participants removed by Kennedy — established the Independent Autism Coordinating Committee to formulate its own science-driven research plan. The organization set its opening meeting for March 19, the identical date the federal IACC was expected to conduct its initial public gathering under the revised composition. When the governmental committee suddenly called off that meeting on March 7, providing no justification, the independent organization moved forward regardless.
David Mandell, a professor of psychiatry and autism researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who has served on the committee, warned that the bulk of new appointees “appear to be people who adhere to untested, disproven, and sometimes dangerous ideas about what causes autism and the best ways to care for autistic people.”
The committee’s reorganization occurred as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signaled it intended to finance a study investigating the extensively refuted connection between vaccines and autism.
Kennedy’s initiative had advanced further in November 2025, when the CDC’s autism webpage underwent revision to state that the assertion that vaccines do not cause autism “is not an evidence-based claim.” Professional scientists were excluded from consultation. Disease specialists and children’s doctors broadly denounced the revision.
Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, who served three terms on the committee, called the new panel “a complete and unprecedented overhaul, with no continuity from prior committees and a striking absence of scientific expertise.” Joshua Gordon, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health who chaired the committee from 2016 to 2024, was equally blunt, telling The New York Times that not a single scientist he recognized as an expert in autism research made the list.
The selections also diminished participation for autistic self-advocates. The revised committee contains merely three self-advocates, the lowest number mandated by statute, reduced from seven on the preceding committee. Sam Crane, a self-advocate and disability law expert who served two terms on the committee, criticized the lack of transparency in how the selections were made. Kennedy’s selection to oversee the restructured committee nevertheless caught some detractors off guard.
Dr. Sylvia Fogel, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, was selected to chair the new committee. She acknowledged that large-scale studies have not demonstrated a causal link between vaccines and autism.
The dispute split Congressional Republicans. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chair Bill Cassidy, who cast a deciding vote to confirm Kennedy, warned that pursuing debunked theories “creates anxiety and a lot of self-recrimination.” Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, whose husband has a severely autistic son, said she did not think it was “helpful in any way to link it to vaccines, because the scientific evidence does not support such a link.”
A twelve-month evaluation in February 2026 revealed Kennedy had violated several confirmation commitments — reducing vaccine research spending, withdrawing NIH grants, and eliminating approximately $500 million in mRNA research, all actions he had pledged to avoid.
One in 31 children aged eight obtained an autism diagnosis in 2022, based on CDC statistics. Researchers credit much of the increasing prevalence to enhanced screening and expanded diagnostic standards.
The dispute intensified additionally in mid-March 2026, when a federal judge in Boston halted Kennedy’s wider vaccine policy modifications, determining that the administration had implemented arbitrary and capricious decisions that disregarded a well-established scientific procedure for creating vaccine guidelines. The administration indicated it intended to appeal. The federal IACC has not yet rescheduled its postponed meeting. Meanwhile, the independent organization established by removed researchers persists in its efforts, with participants cautioning that absent a policy reversal, federal autism research policy faces being directed away from extensive evidence and toward extensively refuted theories.
