Anti-vaxxers are running the show at the CDC vaccine advisory meeting
This semiannual bureaucratic conclave of public health professionals is not usually must-see TV. (The summer meeting typically fine-tunes flu shot recommendations.) But earlier this month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. removed all 17 sitting members of the committee and replaced them with the seven who now make up the group.
Critics have flagged several of the new members for their anti-vax views. But this week's conference, which began Wednesday morning, is their public debut. On Friday, the American Academy of Pediatrics put out a video message blasting the new committee and declaring themselves 'the experts on vaccinations for infants' — an allusion to the fear among many in public health that ACIP could radically alter current guidelines for childhood inoculation.
I called my favorite health communicator, infectious disease epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera, to get the down-low from Day One while the meeting played in the background. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I cannot believe I am watching ACIP, a previously highly respected body, allow folks like [Dr.] Robert Malone and [Dr. Retsef] Levi to repeat demonstrably false claims. This is platforming harmful dangerous medical misinformation. It is a manipulation of data, it is a farce.
This [meeting] will likely lead to decisions being made about what's available this fall for flu and respiratory virus season.
I was not lucky enough to have an RSV vaccine when I had my kids. When my child was hospitalized for a week with RSV in 2019, I remember sobbing in the hospital wishing there was a vaccine so I didn't have to see my 19-month-old on oxygen. No parent should have to experience that, and now it is preventable.
What's at stake here is the entire pediatric vaccine schedule. The American Academy of Pediatrics posted saying if [the new committee] go after the vaccines, we will continue to have an AAP-approved vaccine schedule based on evidence. It's going to confuse parents. There's already so much distrust over who is a reliable source. They're forcing groups who've previously been in lockstep to become alternate sources of information because we can no longer rely on these .gov websites.
I now have to second-guess when I send somebody to the CDC website. And that is terrifying. When people make decisions based on lies, people will die.
They're going to cast doubt about vaccine ingredients, about vaccines and autism, about the number of vaccines, about whether it's a 'toxic load' — which is a bunch of bull. If you look at the schedule, the only thing that's increased is the amount of protection. What's in the vaccines is 90% less taxing than what was in the vaccines when I was getting them in the '80s. [Modern vaccines use far fewer antigens, and they protect from far more diseases. That makes them less demanding on kids' immune systems.]
Everybody will be impacted by these decisions. They're going to be withholding funding from the Global Vaccine Alliance, which is an absolutely abhorrent decision. It's wicked. So many kids used to die before these interventions.
ACIP has been compromised and our systems have been hijacked. So any decisions that come out of ACIP today or tomorrow, I would be extremely skeptical about. That's something I say with a very, very heavy heart.
On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage that can't be denied by state law.
Although California had legalized same-sex marriage two years prior, supporters around the state said they were no less elated to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court had extended the right to all Americans. The historic news moved many to tears, shouts of joy and spontaneous celebration.
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RFK Indefinitely Postponed A Critical Meeting — And It Could Have 'Devastating Effects' On All Of Us
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All members are screened for biases, are chosen through public nomination and appointed by the Health and Human Services secretary. They serve four-year terms with new task force members rotating in each year. 'The cancellation of this specific task force ... is going to affect every American if [Kennedy and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services does] what they did to the ACIP and fire or remove the 16 independent medical experts who really scour the literature and then grade the evidence for each of their recommendations,' Dr. Anita Patel, a pediatric critical care doctor in Washington, D.C., told HuffPost. Once again, this hasn't been done yet, but it is allegedly in the works. One of the significant roles of the task force is to make recommendations and guidelines for preventative care services such as mammograms, colonoscopies, depression screenings and more, said Patel. 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