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Irish Examiner
3 hours ago
- Health
- Irish Examiner
US Health Secretary RFK is systematically undermining vaccine confidence globally
Vaccines are one of the greatest public health success stories of all time. Over the past 50 years, they've saved an estimated 154m lives. But in the US, both access to vaccines and public trust in them are being systematically undermined — not by conspiracy theorists online, but from within the highest levels of government. In February, Robert F Kennedy Jr — long associated with vaccine misinformation — was confirmed as US health secretary. Despite being pressed during his senate confirmation hearings, Kennedy insisted he was not anti-vaccine and pledged to maintain scientific standards. Seven months later, his actions tell a different story. Kennedy has launched a sweeping assault on the US vaccine infrastructure: Gutting oversight committees, sowing doubt about settled science, politicising ingredient safety, limiting access to vaccines, and halting funding for research. His strategy doesn't involve outright bans, but the cumulative effect may prove just as damaging. In the US, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) plays a central role in vaccine policy, offering evidence-based recommendations on schedules. Until recently, its members were respected experts in immunology, epidemiology, and infectious disease — all vetted, conflict-checked, and publicly accountable. In May 2025, Kennedy overrode ACIP's recommendation on covid vaccination for pregnant women and young children. The following month, he disbanded the 17-member committee, citing alleged conflicts of interest. In their place, Kennedy appointed a smaller panel that included people with well-documented anti-vaccine views. This broke decades of precedent. For the first time, ACIP's membership was handpicked by the health secretary without standard vetting, training, or safeguards to ensure independence. As US president Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr assured senators at his confirmation hearings that he was not anti-vaccine. Picture: Anna Moneymaker/Getty In July, the ousted ACIP members published a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine, warning the recommendation process was facing 'seismic disruption'. In August, Kennedy banned respected scientific societies from advising ACIP, claiming they were too biased. This removed yet another check on the panel's independence. Spurious link between MMR jab and autism Meanwhile, Kennedy has reopened long-closed debates. He has called for 'reassessment' of the childhood vaccine schedule, standard vaccine ingredients, and reportedly even the thoroughly debunked claim that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism. The latter has been refuted by multiple peer-reviewed studies, including a meta-analysis involving over 1.2m children. At ACIP's first meeting under new leadership, Kennedy's panel reviewed thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in some flu vaccines. CDC scientists were scheduled to present their evidence but were dropped from the agenda. Instead, the only evidence came from Lyn Redwood, a vaccine critic and co-founder of the World Mercury Project, an initiative that preceded Kennedy's own Children's Health Defense group. Her presentation appeared to include at least one non-existent study, yet ACIP went on to ban thimerosal from flu shots — a decision Kennedy later extended to all US vaccines. Though thimerosal was already used in very few vaccines, the way it was removed — based on flawed evidence and limited expert input — sets a dangerous precedent. Kennedy has also criticised aluminium hydroxide, used in many vaccines to boost the immune response. His review article contradicts a large body of peer-reviewed evidence that supports its safety. Aluminium salts are found in vaccines against hepatitis A and B, meningococcal disease and tetanus. The ripple effects of Kennedy's changes go beyond oversight. In July, ACIP announced it would review recommendations for childhood vaccines, hepatitis B at birth, and the MMRV combination vaccine — a single shot that protects against measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (chickenpox). A protester is removed as Robert F Kennedy Jr testifies during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing in January this year. His appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services was confirmed in February. Picture: Anna Moneymaker/Getty These guidelines help determine what vaccines are covered by public insurers like Medicaid. Weakening them could make vaccines unaffordable for low-income families. Kennedy has targeted the Vaccine Compensation Program, which provides payouts for rare adverse effects while protecting vaccine supply from litigation. He is considering expanding eligibility to include autism, despite consensus refuting any link, and may allow more lawsuits. These changes could deter pharmaceutical companies from offering vaccines in the US. Kennedy has insisted all new vaccines must undergo new placebo-controlled trials, ignoring the fact that new vaccines already follow this standard. Only modified versions of approved vaccines — like annual flu shots — are currently exempt, for ethical reasons. If Kennedy bans widely-used ingredients like aluminium salts, companies may be forced to reformulate vaccines, triggering unnecessary full clinical trials — the multi-phase process typically required for entirely new vaccines —and delaying access to boosters. Cuts to bird flu, HIV, and cancer funding In May, vaccine manufacturer Moderna withdrew its application for a combined covid-flu vaccine, citing regulatory difficulties. Days later, Kennedy's department cancelled $700m (€600m) in funding for a Moderna bird flu vaccine, followed by cuts to HIV vaccine research and mRNA platforms for cancer prevention. Other countries may continue vaccine research, but the US' retreat leaves a major gap. Perhaps most troubling is the messaging. Kennedy has repeatedly questioned the need for childhood vaccines, spread misinformation, inflated the risks and downplayed the threat of measles. He has attacked medical journals as corrupt and threatened to bar government scientists from publishing in respected outlets such as The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine — two of the world's most prestigious peer-reviewed journals. Instead, he has proposed state-run alternatives. His own review on aluminium hydroxide was published in a non-peer-reviewed outlet. Infection and misinformation know no borders In just a few months as health secretary, Kennedy has reshaped vaccine policy and public trust in the US. He has repeatedly claimed that the scientific and medical establishment is corrupt and that consensus cannot be trusted. This rhetoric is especially dangerous at a time when vaccine uptake is already low and falling. But the consequences don't stop at national borders. When coverage drops in one country, the risk of disease outbreaks increases globally, as seen in the recent measles outbreak in Canada. Kennedy has shown both determination and ingenuity in undermining vaccine science, often through methods that are complex, obscure, or hard to explain publicly. Without issuing a single ban, he has weakened the foundations of vaccine availability and trust in the US. In the 19th century, the average life expectancy in the US was around 40 years . Many children died of infections that are now preventable. In an age when the deadly realities of diseases like measles have faded from memory, it's chilling to consider the possibility of returning to a pre-vaccine era. Christina Pagel is professor of operational research and director of the University College London Clinical Operational Research Unit. Sheena Cruickshank is professor in immunology at the University of Manchester.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Health
- San Francisco Chronicle
Ousted vaccine panel members say rigorous science is being abandoned
NEW YORK (AP) — The 17 experts who were ousted from a government vaccine committee last month say they have little faith in what the panel has become, and have outlined possible alternative ways to make U.S. vaccine policy. U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly fired the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, accusing them of being too closely aligned with manufacturers and of rubber-stamping vaccines. He handpicked replacements that include several vaccine skeptics. In a commentary published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the former panel members wrote that Kennedy — a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before becoming the U.S. government's top health official — and his new panel are abandoning rigorous scientific review and open deliberation. That was clear, they said, during the new panel's first meeting, in June. It featured a presentation by an anti-vaccine advocate that warned of dangers about a preservative used in a few flu vaccines, but the committee members didn't hear from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staffers about an analysis that concluded there was no link between the preservative and neurodevelopmental disorders. The new panel recommended that the preservative, thimerosal, be removed even as some members acknowledged there was no proof it was causing harm. 'That meeting was a travesty, honestly,' said former ACIP member Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatric infectious diseases expert at Stanford University. The 17 discharged experts last month published a shorter essay in the Journal of the American Medical Association that decried Kennedy's 'destabilizing decisions." The focus was largely on their termination and on Kennedy's decision in May to stop recommending COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women. 'An alternative to the Committee should be established quickly and — if necessary — independently from the federal government," they wrote. 'No viable pathway exists to fully replace the prior trusted and unbiased ACIP structure and process. Instead, the alternatives must focus on limiting the damage to vaccination policy in the United States.' Options included having professional organizations working together to harmonize vaccine recommendations or establishing an external auditor of ACIP recommendations. There are huge challenges to the ideas, including having access to the best data, the authors acknowledged. There's also the question of whether health insurers would pay for vaccinations that are recommended by alternative groups but not ACIP. They might pick and choose which vaccines to cover, said the University of North Carolina's Noel Brewer, another former ACIP member. For example, they might pay for vaccines that offer more immediate cost savings for health care, like the flu vaccine. 'But maybe not ones that have a longer-term benefit like HPV vaccine,' which is designed to prevent futures cancers, Brewer said. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services argued that Kennedy is restoring public trust in federal vaccine policy by replacing the ACIP roster. 'By replacing vaccine groupthink with a diversity of perspectives, Secretary Kennedy is strengthening the integrity of the advisory process guiding immunization policy in this country,' spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement.
CNN
5 days ago
- Health
- CNN
HHS further constrains certain vaccine advisers to the CDC, limiting their input in evidence reviews
In a further jolt to the process of reviewing and recommending vaccines at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another group of outside advisers to the agency was abruptly sidelined this week. In an email sent late Thursday evening, which was obtained by CNN, members of roughly 30 medical and public health organizations who serve as liaison members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, were told they could no longer participate in the committee's crucial workgroups. Liaison members don't vote at ACIP's public meetings on vaccine recommendations, but they can participate by asking questions and commenting on presentations. Behind the scenes, they have also historically done important work undertaking detailed evidence reviews of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines that helps to inform the group's votes. Those reviews happen in subcommittees called workgroups. As of late last year, ACIP had 11 active workgroups. In addition to studying scientific research, workgroups consider issues of public health importance like what age groups might get the most benefit from a vaccine, what an immunization costs and whether it will be accessible to people who should get it. Workgroups also help craft the language of the recommendations that are voted on by the full committee. Votes are typically held during ACIP's three public meetings each year. If ACIP approves a recommendation, it's forwarded to the CDC director for consideration. The director isn't bound by the committee's recommendation but usually follows it. Liaisons include groups like the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Pharmacists Association. Members also represent nurses and public health officials, typically groups that play a significant role in delivering vaccinations. The latest move comes more than a month after US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed all 17 voting members of ACIP, replacing them days later with eight of his own picks, many of whom have cast doubt on the safety of vaccines and public policy around vaccination. One member later dropped out during the required financial review. The email sent Thursday called the liaison members 'special interest groups' that are 'expected to have a 'bias' based on their constituency and/or population they represent.' 'It is important that the ACIP workgroup activities remain free of any influence from any special interest groups so ACIP workgroups will no longer include Liaison organizations,' the email said. Andrew Nixon, director of communications for HHS, said in a statement Friday that 'Under the old ACIP, outside pressure to align with vaccine orthodoxy limited asking the hard questions. The old ACIP members were plagued by conflicts of interest, influence and bias. We are fulfilling our promise to the American people to never again allow those conflicts to taint vaccine recommendations.' Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University who has been participating in ACIP for 40 years as both a voting member and a liaison member, said the move to exclude professional organizations from the process of making vaccine recommendations was shortsighted. 'The organizations have a certain ownership in the recommendations because they participate,' Schaffner said. That participation increases buy-in from different stakeholder groups, which helps ACIP recommendations become the accepted standards of medical practice. Without that participation, Schaffner said, there's a risk that groups will make their own vaccine recommendations, which could lead to conflicting and confusing advice. In fact, some outside organizations, including the Vaccine Integrity Project, have already started the process of making independent vaccination recommendations. Shaffner said he also takes issue with the idea that liaison representatives are biased, which he says implies a conflict of interest. 'Every work group member, no matter who they are, is vetted for a conflict of interest,' he said, and that vetting process has only become more stringent over time as society has become more attuned to the problem. 'I have to turn down opportunities because they would interfere with my being on a work group, and that's something I do, or did,' he said. ACIP's charter spells out that some 30 specific groups should hold non-voting seats on the committee. It also allows the HHS secretary to appoint other liaison members as necessary to carry out the functions of the committee. On Friday, eight organizations that are liaisons to the committee said in a joint statement that they were 'deeply disappointed' and 'alarmed' to be barred from reviewing scientific data and informing the development of vaccine recommendations. 'To remove our deep medical expertise from this vital and once transparent process is irresponsible, dangerous to our nation's health, and will further undermine public and clinician trust in vaccines,' said the statement, which was sent by the American Medical Association. New outside experts may be invited to participate in the workgroups as needed based on their expertise, according to an HHS official who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they had not been authorized to share the information, but such inclusion will no longer be based on organizational affiliation. 'Many of these groups don't like us,' the official said. 'They've publicly attacked us.'
The Hill
5 days ago
- Health
- The Hill
RFK Jr. accepted flu shot recommendations for children
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accepted a vote by a federal immunization panel to recommend the influenza vaccine for children, pregnant women and all adults earlier this year. In June, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unanimously voted to recommend the 2025-2026 influenza vaccine for people aged 6 months and older. 'ACIP reaffirms the recommendations for routine annual influenza vaccination of all persons aged ≥ 6 months who do not have contraindications for the 2025-2026 season,' stated vaccine recommendations published by the CDC on Wednesday. 'With no current CDC Director and pending confirmation of a new CDC Director, this recommendation was adopted by the HHS Secretary on July 22, 2025, and is now an official recommendation of the CDC.' This vote occurred soon after Kennedy fired all sitting ACIP members and replaced them with ideological allies. In the same June meeting, the ACIP voted in favor of only recommending vaccines that don't contain the mercury-based vaccine preservative thimerosal. Vaccines without thimerosal are already widely available, with the preservative more often used in multidose vials in low-income countries. At the time of the vote, the Department of Health and Human Services publicized that the recommendation on thimerosal had been adopted but made no mention as to whether the recommendation on flu vaccines had similarly been adopted. The vote on thimerosal was not unanimous, with a minority of members arguing the evidence suggesting any harm from the substances was lacking and there were more important matters the ACIP could be looking into. Others argued that any actions that restrict access to FDA-approved vaccines should be avoided.
USA Today
7 days ago
- Health
- USA Today
There's a war brewing between medical groups and RFK Jr. It's about to explode.
Dr. Beth Oller is no stranger to answering questions about COVID-19 and flu shots. As a family physician in Stockton, Kansas, she's fielded many questions over the years about vaccine safety and effectiveness. But lately, there are new questions that stump her: Can I get the shot this fall and will my insurance cover it? 'I legitimately don't know and that's why it's so confusing,' said Oller, who is also a clinical instructor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita. While Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. changed guidance recommending the COVID-19 shot for healthy people, medical groups representing doctors have publicly rejected those changes. RFK Jr. and ultra-processed foods: What does it mean for your diet? The constant back-and-forth between the department and the nation's top doctors is creating confusion and sowing distrust among patients and providers, said Dr. Stephen Patrick, chair of health policy and management at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health. As new developments emerge, policies impacting patients and their healthcare hang in the balance. "At the root level, these actions affect people and children,' Patrick said. 'Each of these things are linked to what we do (as doctors) and often linked to what states do and what insurance companies do and that's where a lot of these things can be worrisome.' What has happened so far? In the span of just a few months, Kennedy has made monumental changes to a longstanding system that crafts health policy and recommendations. In June, the Health Secretary fired an entire vaccine panel and hired eight new members, including some vaccine skeptics. In its first meeting later that month, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to remove a controversial ingredient that was largely phased out of influenza vaccines. On July 9, Kennedy also postponed another health committee meeting hosted by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), sparking concerns that the Health Secretary may be planning to fire task force members. Medical groups pushed back immediately. The American Academy of Pediatrics refused to attend the ACIP meeting. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists announced it was no longer accepting federal funding. And the American Medical Association sent Kennedy a letter urging the Health Secretary to retain the USPSTF's original members. Several organizations have also sued Kennedy over HHS guidance that no longer recommended the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women, a move that broke with previous expert guidance and bypassed the normal scientific review process. The Health Department announced on August 5 that it was winding down development activities for mRNA, the vaccine technology behind the COVID-19 shot, according to a video posted on X. Liaisons that represented these professional organizations were banned on July 31 from ACIP work groups that would typically assist with vaccine reviews and craft recommendation language, according to media reports. What does this all mean? Although many of the policies have yet to take effect, 'all the noise' in Washington has already impacted Americans, Patrick said. A new survey from Emory University shows how most of the policy decisions haven't been widely popular and sowed more distrust and doubt in health systems. About 85% of Americans who voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election reported decreased trust from the ACIP firings, while only 34% of those who voted for President Donald Trump reported increased trust, according to the survey published August 6. Similarly, about 65% of Harris voters reported decreased trust due to the COVID-19 vaccine recommendation changes, while only 35% of Trump voters reported increased trust. About half of Trump voters reported that ACIP and vaccine changes did not affect their trust. So, while many of the changes from HHS were made in the name of improving trust and reducing bias, it seems to have had the opposite effect, Patrick said. 'Many of these changes are not rooted in evidence and not rooted in public support, either, and that's worrisome,' he said. Otter urges patients to continue depending on their family doctors for trusted information. She keeps up with the developing news and tries to parse out the 'squabbling' and 'infighting' to help her patients make the best decisions for their health. 'That's the best we can do as medical organizations,' she said. 'Push out there what the truth is and keep encouraging patients when there are things that are confusing.' Adrianna Rodriguez can be reached at adrodriguez@
