General views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
Tami Chapel | Reuters
A key government panel of vaccine advisors is holding its first meeting Wednesday since Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed several vaccine critics to the group.
Earlier this month, Kennedy took a stunning step by replacing all members of the Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices, or ACIP, to advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The group will review vaccine data and develop recommendations to determine who is eligible for the shot and whether the insurance company should cover them.
ACIP members are independent medical and public experts who make recommendations based on rigorous scientific reviews and evidence. Given some of their skepticism about vaccination, it is unclear how new Kennedy members will affect US vaccine policy and availability.
“Not all vaccines are good or bad,” said Dr. Martin Kruldorf, a new ACIP chair, in his opening remarks.
“If you think that all vaccines are safe and effective and you want all of them, or that all vaccines are dangerous and you don’t want any of them, you’re not of much use to us.
“But if you want to know which vaccines are suitable for you and your child, and based on your age, we provide evidence-based recommendations,” he added.
At the all-day meeting in Atlanta on Wednesday, the panel will evaluate data on Covid-19 vaccines and RSV shots and vote for the latter recommendation. The group will re-convene on Thursday to see data on shots of the flu and other diseases.
CDC Directors must approve these recommendations in order to become official policy.
Kulldorff said ACIP will create a new workgroup. This is staff who review published data, review unpublished data, and develop recommended options to present it to the committee. He said one new workgroup will review childhood vaccine schedules and look at shots where another new vaccine schedule has not been covered by reviews for more than seven years.
The latter group can look at the universally recommended hepatitis B vaccine and ask whether it is “smart” to manage shots on all newborns before leaving the hospital, among other topics.
“This was supposed to be a regular ACIP practice, but it wasn’t done in a thorough and systematic way. It’s going to change that,” Kulldorff said.
Prior to the meeting, one of Kennedy’s new appointees resigned from the panel.
In a statement, a spokesperson for HHS said Dr. Michael Ross had withdrawn from ACIP during a mandatory review of each member’s financial holdings without providing details. It is unclear what his financial holdings are.
Ross is a clinical professor in obstetrics and gynecology and serves as another CDC advisory panel focusing on breast and cervical cancer.
What a new panel member said about the vaccine
Kennedy’s eight new members include well-known vaccine critics, including Dr. Robert Malone.
Malone charges himself for playing an important role in creating the mRNA vaccine, but has gained great support for making unfounded, unfounded claims about the Covid-19 shot.
Another new member, Retsef Levi, has pushed them to stop administering mRNA vaccines, falsely claiming in X’s post that it “causes serious harm, including death, especially among young people.”
Another member, Vicki Pebworth, is a nurse on the National Vaccine Information Center’s board of directors. The organization has been widely criticized as the main source of misinformation and fear about vaccinations.
At a meeting Wednesday, Pebworth revealed that she owns funds for the stock and health sector, including vaccine makers. However, she said her holdings could be attended at the ACIP meeting under an amount the government considers to be a conflict of interest.
Kennedy fired a former ACIP member for having what he called a “lasting conflict of interest.” However, all HHS agencies and their advisory panels have strict policies for conflicts of interest and have not had any related issues for many years.
