U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s new vaccine advisers meet next week, but their agenda suggests they'll skip some expected topics — including a vote on COVID-19 shots — while taking up a longtime target of anti-vaccine groups.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices makes recommendations on how to use the nation's vaccines, setting a schedule for children's vaccines as well as advice for adult shots. Last week, Kennedy abruptly dismissed the existing 17-member expert panel and handpicked eight replacements, including several anti-vaccine voices.
The agenda for the new committee's first meeting, posted Wednesday, shows it will be shorter than expected. Discussion of COVID-19 shots will open the session, but the agenda lists no vote on that. Instead, the committee will vote on fall flu vaccinations, on RSV vaccinations for pregnant women and children and on the use of a preservative named thimerosal that's in a subset of flu shots.
It's not clear who wrote the agenda. No committee chairperson has been named and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not comment.
Committee won't take up HPV or meningococcal vaccines
Missing from the agenda are some heavily researched vaccine policy proposals the advisers were supposed to consider this month, including shots against HPV and meningococcal bacteria, said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Instead, the committee is talking about subjects “which are settled science,” she said.
“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 said. She worried it's "part of a purposeful agenda to insert dangerous and harmful and unnecessary fear regarding vaccines into the process.”
The committee makes recommendations on how vaccines that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration should be used. The recommendations traditionally go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director. Historically, nearly all are accepted and then used by insurance companies in deciding what vaccines to cover.
But the CDC has no director and the committee's recommendations have been going to Kennedy.
Thimerosal is a longtime target of antivaccine activists
Thimerosal was added to certain vaccines in the early 20th century to make them safer and more accessible by preventing bacterial contamination in multi-dose vials. It's a tiny amount, but because it's a form of mercury, it began raising questions in the 1990s.
Kennedy — a leading voice in an antivaccine movement before he became President Donald Trump’s health secretary — has long held there was a tie between thimerosal and autism, and also accused the government of hiding the danger.
Study after study has found no evidence that thimerosal causes autism. But since 2001, all vaccines manufactured for the U.S. market and routinely recommended for children 6 years or younger have contained no thimerosal or only trace amounts, with the exception of inactivated influenza vaccine.
Thimerosal now only appears in multidose flu shot vials, not the single-shot packaging of most of today's flu shots.
Targeting thimerosal would likely force manufacturers to switch to single-dose vials, which would make the shots “more expensive, less available and more feared,” said Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Doctors' groups have opposed Kennedy's vaccine moves
Last week, 30 organizations called on insurers to continue paying for COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women after Kennedy said the shots would no longer be routinely recommended for that group.
Doctors' groups also opposed Kennedy's changes to the vaccine committee. The new members he picked include a scientist who researched mRNA vaccine technology and became a conservative darling for his criticisms of COVID-19 vaccines, a top critic of pandemic-era lockdowns and a leader of a group that has been widely considered to be a source of vaccine misinformation.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has long put out its own immunization recommendations. In recent decades it has matched what the government recommended. But asked if they might soon diverge, depending on potential changes in the government's vaccination recommendations, Kressly said; “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 said.
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Mike Stobbe And Lauran Neergaard, The Associated Press
