By MIKE STOBBE and LAURAN NEERGAARD, Related Press
U.S. Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new vaccine advisers meet subsequent week, however their agenda suggests they’ll skip some anticipated matters — together with a vote on COVID-19 photographs — whereas taking on a longtime goal of anti-vaccine teams.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices makes suggestions on how one can use the nation’s vaccines, setting a schedule for youngsters’s vaccines in addition to recommendation for grownup photographs. Final week, Kennedy abruptly dismissed the present 17-member skilled panel and handpicked eight replacements, together with a number of anti-vaccine voices.
The agenda for the brand new committee’s first assembly, posted Wednesday, exhibits it will likely be shorter than anticipated. Dialogue of COVID-19 photographs will open the session, however the agenda lists no vote on that. As an alternative, the committee will vote on fall flu vaccinations, on RSV vaccinations for pregnant girls and kids and on the usage of a preservative named thimerosal that’s in a subset of flu photographs.
It’s not clear who wrote the agenda. No committee chairperson has been named and the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Companies didn’t remark.
Committee received’t take up HPV or meningococcal vaccines
Lacking from the agenda are some closely researched vaccine coverage proposals the advisers had been supposed to think about this month, together with photographs in opposition to HPV and meningococcal micro organism, stated Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
As an alternative, the committee is speaking about topics “which are settled science,” she stated.
“Every American should be asking themselves how and why did we get here, where leaders are promoting their own agenda instead of protecting our people and our communities,” she stated. She anxious it’s “part of a purposeful agenda to insert dangerous and harmful and unnecessary fear regarding vaccines into the process.”
The committee makes suggestions on how vaccines which were authorized by the Meals and Drug Administration ought to be used. The suggestions historically go to the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention director. Traditionally, practically all are accepted after which utilized by insurance coverage firms in deciding what vaccines to cowl.
However the CDC has no director and the committee’s suggestions have been going to Kennedy.
Thimerosal is a longtime goal of antivaccine activists
Thimerosal was added to sure vaccines within the early twentieth century to make them safer and extra accessible by stopping bacterial contamination in multi-dose vials. It’s a tiny quantity, however as a result of it’s a type of mercury, it started elevating questions within the Nineteen Nineties.
Kennedy — a number one voice in an antivaccine motion earlier than he turned President Donald Trump’s well being secretary — has lengthy held there was a tie between thimerosal and autism, and likewise accused the federal government of hiding the hazard.
Examine after examine has discovered no proof that thimerosal causes autism. However since 2001, all vaccines manufactured for the U.S. market and routinely advisable for youngsters 6 years or youthful have contained no thimerosal or solely hint quantities, aside from inactivated influenza vaccine.
Thimerosal now solely seems in multidose flu shot vials, not the single-shot packaging of most of as we speak’s flu photographs.
Concentrating on thimerosal would doubtless pressure producers to modify to single-dose vials, which might make the photographs “more expensive, less available and more feared,” stated Paul Offit, a vaccine skilled at Kids’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Medical doctors’ teams have opposed Kennedy’s vaccine strikes
Final week, 30 organizations referred to as on insurers to proceed paying for COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant girls after Kennedy stated the photographs would now not be routinely advisable for that group.
Medical doctors’ teams additionally opposed Kennedy’s adjustments to the vaccine committee. The brand new members he picked embody a scientist who researched mRNA vaccine expertise and have become a conservative darling for his criticisms of COVID-19 vaccines, a prime critic of pandemic-era lockdowns and a frontrunner of a gaggle that has been broadly thought of to be a supply of vaccine misinformation.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has lengthy put out its personal immunization suggestions. In current a long time it has matched what the federal government advisable. However requested if they could quickly diverge, relying on potential adjustments within the authorities’s vaccination suggestions, Kressly stated; “Nothing’s off the table.”
“We will do whatever is necessary to make sure that every child in every community gets the vaccines that they deserve to stay healthy and safe,” she stated.
The Related Press Well being and Science Division receives help from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Division of Science Training and the Robert Wooden Johnson Basis. The AP is solely accountable for all content material.
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