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The Hill
25-06-2025
- Health
- The Hill
RFK Jr.'s vaccine advisory panel to review shots for children
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s newly remade federal vaccine advisory panel will examine the cumulative effect of the childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule, the panel's chairman said Wednesday. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will also weigh recommendations for vaccines that have long been on the market, including measles and hepatitis B. Martin Kulldorf made the announcement at the start of the first meeting of the ACIP since Kennedy dismissed all 17 previous members less than two weeks ago, accusing them of conflicts of interest. Kennedy appointed a new group of eight members two days later. One withdrew just before Wednesday's meeting during a review of his financial holdings, leaving seven members to vote on vaccine recommendations during the meeting. 'Secretary Kennedy has given this committee a clear mandate to use evidence based medicine. We're making vaccine recommendations and that is what we will do. Vaccines are not all good or bad,' Kulldorf said Wednesday. The health chief, who co-founded the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense and served as its chairman before being confirmed to lead HHS, has long called for an investigation into the number of childhood shots, saying they have been inadequately studied. The review will be undertaken by two new ACIP work groups, Kulldorff said, though it's not clear if they have been staffed yet. One group will be focused on the childhood and adolescent vaccine schedules and the other will focus on shots that have been approved for seven or more years. He specifically mentioned the recommendation for giving newborns the hepatitis B vaccine as well as the combination measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) and chickenpox shots. The panel chair added that the group will also consider religious objections to MMR vaccines derived from fetal cell lines and may look at an MMR vaccine approved in Japan. 'The number of vaccines that our children and adolescents receive today exceed what children in most other developed nations receive, and what most of us in this room received when we were children,' Kulldorf said. He added that it is also important 'to evaluate the cumulative effect of the recommended vaccine schedule. This includes interaction effects between different vaccines, the total number of vaccines, cumulative amounts of vaccine ingredients and the relative timing of different vaccines.' For decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) independent advisory panel recommended which shots Americans should get and when. The Affordable Care Act requires all insurance companies to cover, for free, the vaccines recommended by the panel. Those recommendations also help states decide which shots should be mandated for schoolchildren. Kennedy's shakeup is throwing that system into chaos. Outside physician and public health groups have been pressuring insurance companies to continue covering vaccines, no matter what ACIP does. 'Part of the role of ACIP is to look at vaccines across the lifespan,' said Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition. 'I think the important thing to note is we need to reevaluate vaccine recommendations based on whether science has changed, not based on whether the people who sit on a committee change, or in administration changes. And I think that's where we start to lose the public's trust.' The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announced Wednesday that it would no longer take part in ACIP hearings. 'We won't lend our name or our expertise to a system that is being politicized at the expense of children's health,' AAP President Susan Kressly said in a video posted on social platform X. Ahead of the meeting, the insurance industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) issued a statement that its plans are 'committed to ongoing coverage of vaccines to ensure access and affordability for this respiratory virus season.' 'We encourage all Americans to talk to their health care provider about vaccines,' the group wrote. As the meeting kicked off, President Trump's nominee to lead the CDC, Susan Monarez, was on Capitol Hill testifying in front of the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee during a confirmation hearing. Monarez said she does not see a causal link between vaccines and autism, and told Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) she hopes experts will step up and volunteer to fill the panel's remaining slots. 'These are not easy positions to fill. It takes a lot of time and commitment from some of these highly trained technical experts to want to participate,' Monarez said. 'They need to have a depth and a breadth of technical experience to be able to understand immunological processes, to understand statistical analysis.' Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), HELP Committee, lamented the 'rushed' meeting with a diminished panel. 'Given that there is no confirmed CDC director, along with an ACIP panel which has very few members, many of whom lack broad vaccine and immunology immunological expertise, there are concerns about the rushed nature of this process,' Cassidy said. The Louisiana Republican also expressed concern that Thursday's ACIP schedule will feature a presentation on thimerosal given by Lyn Redwood, a longtime anti-vaccine activist. Redwood is president emerita of Children's Health Defense. Thimerosal is a preservative used in some influenza vaccines, and anti-vaccine leaders have long linked it to autism in children, a claim that's been debunked. 'I will note that there are people who are critics of thimerosal who've been asked to testify, but no one speaking of the substantial evidence that in the amounts used in vaccines, thimerosal is safe,' the senator said. Prior to the meeting, a document was posted to ACIP's website summarizing that all available evidence shows thimerosal is safe and is not linked to autism or other neurological issues. That document was no longer available on Wednesday. 'I will say going forward, if the ACIP hearing today is being used to sow distrust, I would ask as you go forward that you would make sure that there really was a balanced perspective,' Cassidy said.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr. fired everyone on a key vaccine panel. Here's who he replaced them with.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced this week that he had removed every member of an independent panel key to vaccine policy and access in America. After removing the 17 members of the panel, Kennedy announced eight new names, many of whom have been skeptical of vaccines. The Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), which works under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was recently made up of people with extensive experience in public health, infectious diseases and immunizations. For more than half a century, the panel of experts has used evidence-based data to help evaluate the safety of vaccines that are administered to people — and their guidance is used by insurance companies to determine coverage. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, claimed the move was aimed at addressing conflicts of interest, though the panel had operated under a comprehensive conflict of interest policy. The unprecedented shakeup could change what vaccines are readily available in the future, including whether they are covered by insurance. Without insurance, some vaccines — including those for COVID-19, HPV and measles, mumps and rubella — could cost people hundreds of dollars out-of-pocket. It's not clear if Kennedy will appoint more members. Here's what to know about his picks: Who is he? A nutritional scientist who has worked as a psychiatrist and professor. His experience on nutritional neurosciences includes a stint as acting chief within the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. In 2018, Hibbeln co-authored research that tested whether a person's fish consumption during the first half of pregnancy is associated with autism. Vaccine experience: Hibbeln has no professional background in vaccines. Who is he? A biostatistician and epidemiologist who is a former professor of medicine at Harvard University. Vaccine experience: Kulldorf has served on a vaccine safety subgroup within ACIP and was a member of an FDA drug safety and risk management advisory committee. He is known for researching the development of vaccine safety surveillance and the monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks. Kulldorf has been highly skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines and related government policies and mandates. In 2024, he said he lost jobs at Harvard and Mass General Brigham because he criticized policies that mandated COVID-19 vaccination. In late 2020, he co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which proposed reaching herd immunity for COVID-19 through 'natural' infection instead of public health restrictions. He co-wrote the declaration with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who was critical of COVID-19 restrictions and is now director of the National Institutes of Health. Kulldorf has aligned publicly with Kennedy on changing the process for vaccine trials. Who is he? A professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to his university biography, his research includes examining data models and tools used in health care management. Levi has described his work as using data and analytics to assess and manage risk in health systems. Vaccine experience: Levi has no professional background in vaccines. He has challenged the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and its impact on young people. In May, Levi expressed ongoing skepticism of the safety of administering COVID-19 vaccines to pregnant people, despite evidence of its benefits. Who is he? A medical doctor and infectious disease researcher who has gained national attention within right-wing media for his criticism of COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccine experience: After the news of his addition to the panel, Malone shared a biography that asserts years of experience in developing and testing vaccines. But Malone has spread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. He has claimed credit for inventing mRNA vaccines that have been critical to the fast development of COVID-19 vaccines — an assertion that has been challenged — while also questioning their safety. Malone said in April that the second child who died of measles this year had actually died from other complications, a claim that went against public health officials' statements. Who is he? A professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth University, Meissner served on the committee between 2008 and 2012. Since 2018, he has served on another committee that advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccines. Vaccine experience: Meissner has in the past defended vaccines, writing in a 2022 article for the New England Journal of Medicine that 'widespread understanding and acceptance of vaccines will be an integral aspect' of limiting the harm of future pandemics. He also helped craft vaccine schedules for the American Academy of Pediatrics, and in 2017 was named the Massachusetts recipient of the CDC Childhood Immunization Award. Recently, Meissner endorsed a move by the CDC to stop recommending COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant people. Those changes were criticized by many major medical groups, including the American College for Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. In August 2021, he expressed opposition to requiring that children wear a mask to prevent the spread of COVID, arguing that kids suffered negative consequences and that the availability of vaccines for adults undermined the need for children to mask. He has also opposed vaccine mandates and signed onto the Great Barrington Declaration. Who is he? An emergency room doctor from Los Angeles Vaccine experience: Pagano does not appear to have any research or work experience related to vaccines readily available. Who is she? A California-based regional director of the National Association of Catholic Nurses and board member of the National Vaccine Information Center, an anti-vax organization that many doctors and public health researchers say is a leading source of vaccine misinformation. Vaccine experience: Pebsworth has argued that vaccines cause chronic illnesses and disabilities in children, a false talking point frequently used by vaccine opponents. She has also done work questioning the safety of the HPV vaccine, which Kennedy also opposes. The uptake of the HPV vaccine has contributed to substantial decreases in cervical cancer. Who is he? A Virginia-based OB-GYN and medical technology executive, working currently as interim chief medical officer at a startup trying to use artificial intelligence to deliver medicines. His Linkedin also lists him as a board member for LarreaRx, a supplement company. Vaccine experience: Ross does not appear to have any research or work experience related to vaccines readily available. The post RFK Jr. fired everyone on a key vaccine panel. Here's who he replaced them with. appeared first on The 19th. News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday. Subscribe to our free, daily newsletter.
