RFK Jr. vaccine panel rolls back recommendation on certain flu shots
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vaccine advisors voted on Thursday to no longer recommend that Americans get flu shots containing a preservative that anti-vaccine activists have suggested is linked to autism.
Why it matters: The decision endorsed the widely discredited belief that the mercury-containing compound, thimerosal, is harmful in the level at which it's included in vaccines.
The recommendation still has to be approved by the CDC, which lacks a full-time political leader. Kennedy has long promoted the belief that vaccines or other environmental factors have led to increased autism diagnoses in children.
Driving the news: The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, meeting for a second day in Atlanta, voted to advise that children, pregnant women and adults only get single dose seasonal flu vaccines that are thimerosal-free.
All of the recommendations were passed with 5-1 votes with one abstention.
The votes followed a presentation on thimerosal by Lyn Redwood, a retired nurse and former president of Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group with close ties to Kennedy.
The panel separately voted to continue recommending routine annual flu shots for anyone older than 6 months who would otherwise be at risk.
Six members voted in favor of the recommendation and one abstained.
Between the lines: Vaccines recommended for children under 6 in the U.S. have not contained thimerosal for more than two decades. Flu vaccines are available in single dose vials without thimerosal, and in multidose vials with the preservative.
Most Americans who get flu vaccines already receive products without thimerosal.
Panel member Cody Meissner, a pediatrician, voted no on all of the recommendations around thimerosol, saying they could limit access to safe and effective flu shots.
"Of all the issues that I think we ACIP needs to focus on, this is not a big issue," Meissner said.
"The risk from influenza is so much greater than the nonexistent, as far as we know, risk from thimerosal," he added later on. "I would hate for a person not to receive the influenza vaccine because the only available preparation contains thimerosal. I find that very hard to justify."
Committee member Vicki Pebsworth abstained from all the flu vaccine-related votes. She later said that she agrees thimerosal should not be used in vaccines but she objected to how the questions were worded.
Friction point: Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians, asked if CDC staff scientists would also present evidence on the safety and efficacy of thimerosal for the committee to review.
ACIP Chair Martin Kulldorff said the panel was open to a variety of views but added, "I think it's inappropriate to to dismiss a presentation just because the person does not have a Ph.D. or an M.D."
Catch up quick: The committee voted 5-2 earlier on Thursday in favor of recommending RSV antibodies for infants.
Kulldorff also gave a short presentation on the combination measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccine that ended with a proposed recommendation that children under 47 months old not get the MMRV vaccine, since a safer alternative exists.
He indicated that the committee will discuss and vote on the recommendation at a future meeting.
What they're saying: "Although the committee made some correct decisions today, health care providers and insurers should be wary of the decisions from this committee, so long as it's stacked with RFK Jr.'s puppets," Elizabeth Jacobs, professor emerita of epidemiology at the University of Arizona and a member of advocacy group Defend Public Health, said in a statement.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
17 minutes ago
Kennedy's vaccine committee to vote on flu vaccines and controversial preservative
ATLANTA -- U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s new vaccine advisory committee backed another option to protect infants against a dangerous virus — before turning to questions about fall flu vaccines and a preservative in a small fraction of them that some antivaccine groups have falsely tied to autism. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Thursday took up protections against RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, a common cause of cold-like symptoms that can dangerously inflame infants' tiny airways. In 2023, U.S. health officials began recommending two new measures to protect infants — a lab-made antibody for newborns and a vaccine for pregnant women — that experts say likely drove an improvement in infant mortality. That first antibody, called nirsevimab, proved to be 63% to 76% effective against emergency department visits for infants over the last year. On Thursday, the vaccine panel voted 5-2 that another newly approved antibody shot, Merck's clesrovimab, should be used similarly. The ACIP, created more than 60 years ago, helps the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determine who should be vaccinated against a long list of diseases, and when. Those recommendations have a big impact on whether insurance covers vaccinations and where they're available. Kennedy was a leading voice in the antivaccine movement before becoming the nation's top health official. He fired the previous 17-member panel this month and replaced it with a seven-member group that includes several vaccine skeptics. At its June meetings, the committee usually refreshes guidance for Americans 6 months and older to get a flu shot, and helps propel the annual fall vaccination campaign. Presentations prepared for Thursday's meeting suggest that the panel may do much the same this year. But there's also a flu-related vote that promises controversy. It concerns thimerosal, a form of mercury that's been added to vaccines since the early 20th century to preventing bacterial contamination in multi-dose vials. Kennedy has long held there was a tie between thimerosal and autism, and also accused the government of hiding the danger. Study after study has found no evidence that thimerosal causes autism. But since 2001, vaccines manufactured for the U.S. market and routinely recommended for children 6 years or younger have contained no thimerosal or only trace amounts, with limited exceptions. Thimerosal was placed on the meeting agenda shortly after Kennedy's new vaccine advisory was named last week. Before the vote, the committee will hear from Lyn Redwood, the former president of what is now known as Children's Health Defense — an antivaccine group founded by Kennedy. Some public health experts contend the thimerosal discussion will unnecessarily raise doubt in vaccines while possibly also making them more expensive and harder to get this fall. At the panel's meeting Wednesday, Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition, lamented the ouster of the former ACIP panel and the agenda of the new one. Her organization, which represents large city health departments, 'is deeply concerned that many routine vaccines may soon become inaccessible or unaffordable for millions of Americans if ACIP makes changes based on ideology rather than science," she said. "The stakes are simply too high to let that happen.' ___ Neergaard reported from Washington. ___
Yahoo
20 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘This is not a luxury': Families in Trump states agonize over GOP's proposed Medicaid cuts
Courtney Leader has been closely following the contentious tax-and-spending debate in Washington – not that she cares much for politics, but because she believes the proposed Medicaid cuts are a matter of life or death for her daughter. 'This is not a luxury. I do not have my daughter enrolled on Medicaid so we can have fancy things,' Leader said. 'I have my daughter enrolled in Medicaid so we can keep her alive and keep her at home, which I think is the best option for her.' As the Senate grinds closer to a vote on a Republican bill containing President Donald Trump's domestic agenda, the real-world implications are playing out across the country at kitchen tables of parents like Leader, whose 9-year-old daughter with brain damage and cerebral palsy relies on Medicaid benefits for daily care and weekly therapy. She wrote to Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, hoping to put a face on the Medicaid debate. She explained that her husband works as a carpenter, whose private insurance provides health coverage for the couple and their four other children. She said costly medical bills for their daughter, Cyrina, were too much for any household to bear. 'Without Medicaid,' Leader told her senator, 'we would lose everything – our home, our vehicles and, eventually, our daughter.' Hawley did not identify Leader by name, but he shared her family's story in a New York Times essay last month as he first emerged as a rare Republican warning his party against cutting Medicaid for some of the 70 million low-income and disabled Americans who rely on the program. He called such a move 'morally wrong and politically suicidal,' and has pushed for proposed changes to the bill to avoid what he believes would be a devastating blow to rural hospitals. It's a pivotal moment in the tug-of-war over Trump's priorities, the centerpiece of which is a sweeping package to extend tax cuts to some of the wealthiest Americans, while reducing social safety-net programs for health care, food assistance and rural hospitals. The president has pledged not to cut Medicaid, even though the current version of the measure would do just that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and add more than $2 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. A visit to Missouri, where at least one in five residents depend on Medicaid for health coverage, offered a snapshot of the potential fallout from the sprawling legislation the president and Republicans have branded as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 'I know that they're saying they're not planning to cut Medicaid, right?' said Leader, 36. 'But I reached out, concerned that if any changes are made, there will be this trickle-down effect that will impact families like mine.' As she stood in her kitchen, getting ready to drive Cyrina to a morning therapy session about 30 minutes away, Leader ticked through the costs to sustain her daughter, who was shaken by a caregiver when she was four months old, leading to her condition. She has a complex web of medical and developmental challenges, but can stay in their home because of a nurse and weekly therapy appointments, the co-pays of which are paid by Medicaid, along with a feeding tube, formula and a litany of other supplies. 'The formula that is delivered through a tube in her stomach costs more than my mortgage,' Leader said. 'It costs more than my entire food budget for our family and in that alone, there is no way that we could come up with that $1,500 to be able to feed her.' While the legislation does not directly call for cutting benefits for medically complex cases, Leader believes that some existing services are still at risk, particularly in-home care that keeps her daughter out of a nursing home. She must recertify for coverage every year – on Cyrina's birthday in May – and believes any significant changes to programs administered by the state will add another layer of bureaucracy that she and other parents routinely endure. 'Who's going to protect us when they can't get paperwork done in time and we lose coverage for a month or two?' Leader said, her voice rising with emotion as she raised concerns about state-level backlogs. 'I'm worried that the red tape is going to affect our Medicaid because of just the oversight burdens and that as a result, I'm going to lose my daughter because she's lost coverage before.' The Senate version of the bill had been poised to make even deeper cuts to Medicaid than the measure the House narrowly passed last month. Hawley and other senators have threatened to withhold support for the legislation unless Republican leaders make significant changes, particularly to funding rural hospitals, which has complicated Trump's plea to sign the bill into law before July 4. Republicans were dealt a major setback on Thursday when a key Medicaid change they were counting on to pay for the legislation was ruled in violation of Senate rules. But party leaders have vowed to push forward with new workarounds, with Trump rallying support for the megabill during an afternoon White House event. 'Senate leadership needs to fix this,' Hawley told reporters this week. 'It's going to close rural hospitals.' More than 1,000 miles away from Washington, inside the bright hallways of Golden Valley Memorial Healthcare in Clinton, Missouri, a sense of anxiety over the Medicaid debate was evident on a recent afternoon. The 50-bed hospital is not only a critical piece of the economy as the largest employer in Henry County, but also the only maternity ward and emergency room for about an hour's drive in each direction across this stretch of western Missouri. 'We are paying very close attention because we want to make sure that those Medicaid benefits are preserved so our patients can continue to access care that they need,' said Craig Thompson, CEO of Golden Valley Memorial. 'For rural hospitals like ours, it's ranchers, it's farmers, it's small business owners and it's a whole lot of kids.' About four out of five patients admitted to the hospital, he said, depend on Medicaid, the health care program for lower-income Americans, or Medicare, the program for seniors. Severe cuts to Medicaid, he said, would unnecessarily send more people to the emergency room and have devastating effects on his and other rural hospitals across the state. Last fall, Trump carried this rural county with 76% of the vote, which was 17 points higher than his Missouri victory. Yet the politics of health care is complicated, even here in Trump country, where voters also approved a statewide Medicaid expansion measure four years earlier. Before that vote, Medicaid in the state was largely restricted to the elderly, disabled or pregnant. The expansion vote allowed about 340,000 Missourians to enroll in the program, according to the Missouri Foundation for Health, the funding of which is now uncertain, amid new work requirements and a long list of provisions. 'I think there's a perception that Medicaid beneficiaries are respondent or even lazy, for lack of a better term,' Thompson said. 'That's simply not what we see on a daily basis.' Dr. Jennifer Blair, who grew up about 45 miles away in the small Missouri town of Peculiar, said she fears maternity wards at hospitals like Golden Valley are at risk if some of the deep Medicaid cuts are realized. 'We are surrounded by several maternity care deserts, which is defined as a county that has no or very limited access to obstetric services for their patients,' Blair said. 'If we were to lose that access to the birthing center here at Golden Valley, our patients would have to travel more than 60 miles.' Long before the House passed nearly $300 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, once known as food stamps, signs of increasing need have been clear at Ozarks Food Harvest, a 100,000-square-foot warehouse on the edge of Springfield. It serves about 30 million meals every year across one-third of Missouri. 'The demand for food is quite a bit higher than it was even at the height of the Covid crisis,' said Bart Brown, president and CEO of the non-profit food program. 'We are seeing lots of new families that we've never seen before.' The SNAP program has always been solely funded by the federal government. The House measure called for passing along considerable costs to state governments, which are already facing difficult choices and balanced-budget requirements. The move would have saved the federal government more than $128 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which House Republicans hoped to use to help cover the costs of extending the tax cuts. The Senate parliamentarian removed the provision on procedural grounds, making it one of the key differences the Senate and House must reconcile before passing the legislation. June Owens isn't closely following the back-and-forth of the debate in Washington. She arrived in a strip mall parking lot in nearby Marshfield shortly after 6 a.m. on a recent rainy morning, so she could get a spot near the front of a long and winding line of cars and trucks. She rolled down the window of her green Mercury to talk for a moment, waiting for the outdoor pantry to open at 9 a.m. 'Life wasn't always this way with us. My husband got hurt a few years ago and it changed our whole life,' said Owens, 77, a retired bookkeeper. 'We were in the process of getting all of our ducks in a row for retirement and it just upside-downed everything, so food pantries have helped us through the situation.' At Ozarks Food Harvest, seniors are the fastest growing segment of people who ask for food assistance, Brown said, citing their 'fixed incomes and inflation.' He is carefully watching the tax-and-spending debate in Congress, mindful that whatever the president ultimately signs into law will impact the lives of people in Springfield and across the southern Missouri region his organization serves with a mission statement of 'transforming hunger into hope.' 'Anytime that there's a change in federal benefits that results in a net loss, people have to meet that gap somewhere,' Brown said, walking through his cavernous warehouse. 'They're going to turn to food pantries and we're stretched thin anyway.' CNN's Jeff Simon and Leonel Mendez contributed to this report.
Yahoo
20 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Thursday's Mini-Report, 6.26.25
Today's edition of quick hits. * SCOTUS news: 'The Supreme Court's Republican-appointed majority rejected a lawsuit from Planned Parenthood and one of its patients on Thursday, over dissent from the court's Democratic appointees who said the ruling portends 'tangible harm to real people.'' * Tehran's perspective: 'Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei broke his weeklong silence Thursday, claiming in a televised speech that his country had secured a victory over Israel and delivered a 'slap in the face' to Washington.' * On Capitol Hill: 'Republicans suffered a blow Thursday after the Senate referee ruled that a series of health care cuts and savings in their sweeping domestic policy bill are ineligible for the party-line path they're using to get around the chamber's 60-vote threshold.' * The new Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, is not improved: 'An advisory panel recently appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted on Thursday to walk back longstanding recommendations for flu vaccines containing an ingredient that the anti-vaccine movement has falsely linked to autism.' * In related news: 'The U.S. health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has moved to undermine public immunization programs in the United States, took his efforts global on Wednesday, accusing the leading international vaccine organization of having 'ignored the science' in immunizing children around the world.' * It sure would be nice if we were led by officials who realize the climate emergency is real: 'Summer started barely a week ago, and already the United States has been smothered in a record-breaking 'heat dome.' Alaska saw its first-ever heat advisory this month. And all of this comes on the heels of 2024, the hottest calendar year in recorded history. The world is getting hotter, faster. A report published last week found that human-caused global warming is now increasing by 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade. That rate was recorded at 0.2 degrees in the 1970s, and has been growing since.' * A case worth watching: 'A group of Dallas-area families and faith leaders have filed a lawsuit seeking to block a new Texas law that requires copies of the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom. The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims the measure is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state.' * I'm relieved the vote was unanimous: 'The House passed a bipartisan resolution today condemning the shootings in Minnesota this month that killed Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband and injured Democratic state Hoffman and his wife. The vote was 424-0.' See you tomorrow. This article was originally published on
