Attorney General Ken Paxton has opened an investigation into the American Academy of Pediatrics over concerns that the organization may be promoting childhood vaccines for financial gain, his office announced in an Aug. 5 news release.
The attorney general’s office said it has issued a civil investigative demand to the AAP, the largest professional association of pediatricians in the United States, to determine the basis of the group’s vaccine recommendations and how those recommendations affect the broader landscape of childhood vaccine guidance.
According to the release, the AAP has issued vaccine recommendations since the early 1930s and has participated since 1995 in developing the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule. The office said the investigation follows changes at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took office in 2025, including his reconstitution of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The AAP sued HHS in July 2025 over those changes, and in August 2025 published its own immunization schedule for the first time in its history, urging insurers to cover the vaccines it recommends, the release said.
The attorney general’s office asserted that the AAP’s top corporate donors are pharmaceutical companies that would suffer financially from a reduced number of vaccines on the CDC’s revised schedule, a connection the office said “simply cannot be overlooked.”
“Parents deserve vaccine recommendations that are driven by science and the best interests of their children, not by financial gains or bribes from Big Pharma,” Paxton said in the release. “If the American Academy of Pediatrics is giving medical guidance that is fueled by financial incentives, we will expose and put an end to this unlawful behavior.”
The inquiry builds on a broader investigation Paxton launched in January 2026 into pediatric medical providers, insurance companies, vaccine manufacturers and other entities over what his office characterizes as deceptive childhood vaccine recommendations, according to the release. The AAP has previously defended its recommendations as evidence-based; the civil investigative demand marks the start of a fact-finding process rather than a finding of wrongdoing.