RFK, Jr.’s overhauled autism advisory board cancels first public meeting

RFK, Jr.’s overhauled autism advisory board cancels first public meeting

By Allison Parshall edited by Tanya Lewis

The government’s advisory board on autism research has cancelled a public meeting scheduled for March 19. This would have been the first public meeting of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), a group that guides federally funded autism research, since health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., entirely overhauled the group’s membership in January. He appointed 21 new members, some of whom are vaccine skeptics.

The news of the cancellation broke on March 7, the same week that a group of autism experts formed an independent group to counter misinformation. This outside group, which calls itself the Independent Autism Coordinating Committee (I-ACC), scheduled a meeting on the same day as the federal IACC meeting. The rival group includes several former members of the federal advisory board.

The Department of Health and Human Services confirmed the cancellation in an e-mail to Scientific American. In a post shared on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday morning, the agency wrote: “The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee meeting originally scheduled for March 19 has been postponed. We recognize the importance of the committee’s work and the strong interest from the autism community in this meeting. We are actively working to reschedule and will share additional information as it becomes available.”

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The IACC historically meets four times a year to discuss directions for autism research and make recommendations to leaders of federal agencies that study autism or provide services to autistic people. It has not met since President Trump took office for his second term.

The formation of a competing committee of autism scientists is part of a broader push to fill in the gaps in public health left by agencies under the Trump administration. This includes states forming regional health alliances and medical organizations issuing vaccine schedule recommendations.

Helen Tager-Flusberg, an autism researcher who served on the federal advisory committee from 2019 to 2025, is now a member of the 12-person independent group. In a statement sent to Scientific American, she said that the new group “will become a vital tool to forcefully respond to the damage initiated by the Secretary of HHS to the future of autism science by appointing a committee that is filled with people who reject decades of evidence on the causes of autism.”

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