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.”

The votes in favor of Merck's shot are a sigh of relief after Kennedy gutted the panel and tapped replacements, some of whom are well-known vaccine critics.