Kennedy's new vaccine panel alarms pediatricians with inquiries into long-settled questions
ATLANTA (AP) — U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s new vaccine advisers alarmed pediatricians Wednesday by announcing inquiries into some long-settled questions about children's shots.
Opening the first meeting of Kennedy's handpicked seven-member panel, committee chairman Martin Kulldorff said he was appointing a work group to evaluate the 'cumulative effect' of the children's vaccine schedule — the list of immunizations given at different times throughout childhood.
Also to be evaluated, he said, is how two other shots are administered — one that guards against liver-destroying hepatitis B and another that combines chickenpox protection with MMR, the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.
It was an early sign of how the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is being reshaped by Kennedy, a leading antivaccine activist before becoming the nation's top health official. He fired the entire 17-member panel this month and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices.
'Vaccines are not all good or bad,' Kulldorff said. 'We are learning more about vaccines over time' and must 'keep up to date.'
His announcement reflected a common message of vaccine skeptics: that too many shots may overwhelm kids' immune systems or that the ingredients may build up to cause harm. Scientists say those claims have been repeatedly investigated with no signs of concern.
Kids today are exposed to fewer antigens — immune-revving components — than their grandparents despite getting more doses, because of improved vaccine technology, said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
The American Academy of Pediatrics announced Wednesday that it would continue publishing its own vaccine schedule for children but now will do so independently of the ACIP, calling it 'no longer a credible process.'
'The narrative that current vaccine policies are flawed and need 'fixing' is a distortion," said the AAP's Dr. Sean O'Leary. "These policies have saved trillions of dollars and millions of lives."
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, such as at pharmacies.
After Kennedy's abrupt dismissal of the existing expert panel, a number of the CDC's top vaccine scientists — including some who lead the reporting of data and the vetting of presentations at ACIP meetings — have resigned or been moved out of previous positions.
And shortly before Wednesday's meeting, a Virginia-based obstetrician and gynecologist appointed to the committee stepped down. According to the Trump administration, he withdrew during a customary review of members' financial holdings.
Scientists show data that COVID-19 vaccines protect pregnant women and kids
First on the committee's agenda Wednesday were COVID-19 vaccinations. Kennedy already sidestepped the panel and announced the vaccine will no longer be recommended for healthy children or pregnant women.
Yet CDC scientists told the panel that vaccination is 'the best protection' during pregnancy, and said most children hospitalized for COVID-19 over the past year were unvaccinated.
COVID-19 remains a public health threat, resulting in 32,000 to 51,000 U.S. deaths and more than 250,000 hospitalizations since last fall, according to the CDC. Most at risk for hospitalization are seniors and children under 2 — especially infants under 6 months who could have some protection if their mom got vaccinated during pregnancy, according to the CDC's presentation.
The new advisers weren't asked to vote on Kennedy's recommendations, which raise uncertainty about how easily people will be able to access COVID-19 vaccinations this fall.
After CDC staff outlined multiple overlapping systems that continue to track the vaccines' safety, several advisers questioned if the real-world data really is trustworthy.
Committee will vote on RSV protections
Next, the committee took up RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, a common cause of cold-like symptoms that can be dangerous for infants.
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.
The committee will discuss another company's newly approved antibody shot and vote on updated recommendations.
Flu shot recommendations to be debated
At its June meetings, the committee usually refreshes guidance for Americans 6 months and older to get a flu shot, and helps green light the annual fall vaccination campaign.
But a vote set for Thursday that also promises controversy.
The panel is set to consider a preservative in a subset of flu shots that Kennedy and some antivaccine groups have falsely contended is tied to autism. In preparation, the CDC posted a new report confirming that research shows no link between the preservative, thimerosal, and autism or any other neurodevelopmental disorders.
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Neergaard reported from Washington.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
RFK Jr's vaccine panel to review long-approved jabs for children
The new members of US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr's panel of vaccine advisers will review long-approved immunisation schedules for children and teens. The seven members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (Acip) met for the first time on Wednesday, weeks after Kennedy ousted all 17 of their predecessors. The Acip recommends who should be vaccinated and when to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Ahead of the meeting, public health experts and politicians raised concerns about the qualifications of the new members - several of whom are vaccine critics. The health secretary sparked uproar when he removed all 17 members of the ACIP on 9 June, and then hand-picked eight new members to serve on the panel - including one who dropped out hours before the first meeting. Wednesday's meeting began with the new chair Dr Martin Kulldorff telling the panel that he was fired from his job as a professor at Harvard University because he refused to get a Covid-19 vaccine. Dr Kulldorff also announced the panel would launch new working groups to examine child vaccination schedules and vaccines that were approved seven or more years ago. He said it would be reviewed whether it was "wise" to give the hepatitis B vaccines to newborns, a shot proven safe and effective at preventing the infection that causes liver cancer. Vaccine schedules for measles would also be reviewed, he said. Examining vaccines licensed seven or more years ago raises concerns, because it suggests the process to approve them was flawed, said Bill Hanage, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. "I cannot think of any rational reason you would look at that and think it to be the case," he said. The panel was initially meant to vote on recommendations for shots against RSV, a respiratory virus that can be dangerous for infants, but that has been postponed. On Thursday, the group is scheduled to hear a presentation on the use of thimerosal in vaccines given by Lyn Redwood, a former leader of Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group Kennedy used to run. Ms Redwood has been hired by the CDC to work in its vaccine safety office, according to the BBC's US partner CBS News. The decision for the panel to discuss thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that has not been used in most vaccines for decades, is perplexing, Dr Hanage said. In the past, he said, Acip's members had a wide range of vaccine expertise and would scrutinise vaccine recommendations for months. This time, Kennedy chose for the panel "people that are like him - people in the past who have shown an anti-vaccine bias", said Dr Paul Offit, a former Acip member and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. One of the new Acip members was Dr Michael Ross, however he withdrew this week ahead of a review of members' financial holdings, the Department of Health and Human Services said. Kennedy's panel choices have also sparked criticism from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician who was sceptical of voting to confirm Kennedy as health secretary because of his stances on vaccines. In a post on X, Cassidy said the panel should not proceed with their meeting because of the group's small size and the lack of a CDC director in place to approve their recommendations. "Although the appointees to ACIP have scientific credentials, many do not have significant experience studying microbiology, epidemiology or immunology," he wrote. "In particular, some lack experience studying new technologies such as mRNA vaccines, and may even have a preconceived bias against them." RFK Jr appoints new US vaccine advisers after sacking committee RFK Jr sacks entire US vaccine committee
CNN
4 hours ago
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What to know about thimerosal, a target of RFK Jr.'s new CDC vaccine advisers
Vaccines Disability issues Federal agencies Children's healthFacebookTweetLink Follow In the 1930s, vaccine makers began using a preservative called thimerosal to stave off microbial growth in their products. For the next six decades, it didn't receive much notice; ill effects appeared limited to minor local injection-site reactions, according to the US Food and Drug Administration. That changed in 1999, when US health officials asked pharmaceutical companies to remove thimerosal from vaccines. There was no evidence that it caused harm in the quantities used, but thimerosal contains a form of mercury, and questions had emerged about whether it could cause neurotoxicity when given in childhood vaccinations. Vaccine makers have removed it from all but a few shots, such as multidose vials of flu vaccine. In the meantime, subsequent studies have confirmed no link between thimerosal in vaccines and neurodevelopmental issues, including autism, and autism rates have continued to rise. So public health experts were puzzled when the preservative appeared on the agenda for this week's meeting of outside vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 'I actually don't know any pediatric practices that even use that multidose influenza vaccine,' said Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital Colorado and former liaison to the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, for the American Academy of Pediatrics. The group is meeting on Wednesday and Thursday for the first time since US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed the committee's previous 17 members, claiming they had conflicts of interest, and days later installed eight new advisers. Public health experts and lawmakers have called into question the credentials and backgrounds of some of the new panelists, and just before the meeting began, one member withdrew during the financial holdings review, an HHS spokesman said, bringing the panel down to seven. A presentation 'regarding thimerosal in vaccines' is scheduled for Thursday morning, followed by 'proposed recommendations' specifically about thimerosal in flu vaccines, according to an agenda posted Monday. The meeting is scheduled to conclude with a vote on the latter, a move that could lead to official CDC policy if adopted by agency leadership – or, without a confirmed director in place, by Kennedy. The last-minute addition of thimerosal to the agenda was a red flag for vaccine experts, who consider the science settled and fear that Kennedy – who led an anti-vaccine group called Children's Health Defense – is seeking to sow doubt about vaccine safety. Another former Children's Health Defense leader, Lyn Redwood, is slated to make a presentation on the topic at the meeting. Here's how thimerosal became such a hot-button issue. In 1997, Rep. Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat concerned about mercury pollution in his community's lakes and rivers, attached an amendment to a US Food and Drug Administration reauthorization bill that would require the agency to catalogue intentionally introduced mercury compounds in drugs and food. That led to a possibly startling discovery: 'As people looked in vaccines, there was the potential that, by six months of age, infants could have received more thimerosal than was listed in several sources of what was considered safe levels of mercury,' said Dr. Walter Orenstein, who was director of the National Immunization Program at the CDC at the time. But those limits were set for methylmercury, the kind found in some fish, which is known to be toxic. Thimerosal contains ethylmercury, a different compound that's 'intrinsically less stable, and more readily metabolized, than methylmercury,' said Dr. Matthew Rand, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at the University of Rochester who studies mercury toxicity. That means it's cleared from the body more quickly than methylmercury, according to the CDC, 'and is therefore less likely to cause any harm.' The FDA notes that there were no existing guidelines for ethylmercury. Still, the finding led to a number of emergency meetings among federal health officials and outside groups to determine what should be done, Orenstein recalled. 'While there was no evidence of harm from thimerosal, the general feeling was, 'let's get rid of it, because we don't need it,' ' he said. Moving to single-dose containers alleviated the need for a preservative, although it came at a higher expense for manufacturers. 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'That was a real answer for me,' Redwood said in a video posted by Children's Health Defense this month, 'because my son at this time was almost 5 years old, and he had regressed developmentally after his first year of life and was diagnosed with autism.' Redwood, a nurse practioner, decided to become an advocate, speaking at events and publishing papers about thimerosal and autism. The uproar over a potential link between thimerosal and autism came as a surprise to Orenstein and colleagues. 'Mercury itself had never been implicated as a major cause of autism,' Orenstein said. 'But this was a major, major concern.' It led to a number of studies of the issue, including a 2004 assessment by the Institute of Medicine (now known as the National Academy of Medicine) that concluded 'the body of epidemiological evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.' It made the same conclusion for MMR vaccines and autism. 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At the same time the FDA made its request to vaccine makers, US health authorities advised that babies born to mothers known to be negative for hepatitis B not receive a shot for that virus at birth, but at two months to 6 months of age, as thimerosal was phased out. But about 10% of hospitals 'suspended use of the hepatitis B vaccine for all newborns, regardless of their level of risk,' wrote Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine scientist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA's outside advisory committee on vaccines, in a 2007 perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine. 'One three-month-old child born to a Michigan mother infected with hepatitis B virus died of overwhelming infection.' Orenstein looks back on the decision to remove thimerosal as a hard one. 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USA Today
4 hours ago
- USA Today
Inside the unusual, RFK-appointed panel that's deciding on childhood vaccines
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