RFK Jr’s vaccine committee changed its MMRV recommendations

A key committee of American disease control and prevention centers voted on Thursday to modify its recommendation on a vaccine against early childhood, after a discussion which sometimes opposed skeptics of vaccines to CDC’s own data.

After a vote of 8 to 3 with an abstention, the CDC advisory committee on vaccination practices will only recommend children under the age of 4 receive a vaccine for one mumps, measles, rubella and chickenpox (better known as chicken pox).

Instead, the CDC will recommend that children aged 12 to 15 months receive two distinct plans at the same time: one for mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) and one for chickenpox.

The first vote of the Committee’s two -day meeting represents a relatively low change in current vaccination practices. The Committee will vote on the proposed changes to vaccines to hepatitis B from childhood and headdresses on Friday.

But doctors have said that lack of expertise and vaccination skepticism exposed for a large part of the discussion would only dilute public confidence in scientific and public health councils.

“I think that the main objective of this meeting has already occurred, and it was to sow distrust and instill the fear of parents and families,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics’s Committee of Infectious Diseases, at a zoom press conference.

“What we have seen today in Reunion was really not a good faith effort to develop a vaccination policy in the best interests of the Americans. It is frankly an alarming attempt to undermine one of the most successful public health systems in the world,” said O’Leary. “This idea that our current vaccine policies are broken or need a radical overhaul is simply false.”

Giving mmr and chickpox hen vaccines in the same time was associated with a higher relative risk of brief crises of strong fevers in the days that followed vaccination for children under 4 years of age – eight children of 10,000 generally have febrile crises after receiving the combined shooting, against four out of 10,000 that receive separate MMR and PoulearPox shooting.

Also painful for family members, convulsions are a relatively common side effect for high fevers in young children and have not been associated with long-term consequences, said Dr Cody Meissner, a former chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Tufts-New England Medical Center which serves ACIP for the second time (it previously served under the presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama).

The problem of the division of vaccines in several shots is that it generally leads to a drop in the compliance of vaccines, said Meissner. And the risks of not vaccinating are real.

“We are examining an advantage at risk of febrile crises … compared to the fall in a 95% coverage rate for the immunity of the herd, and the consequences are devastating, pregnant women losing their babies, the dying newborns and having congenital syndromes Rubella and another current member of the ACIP.

Meissner, Hibbeln and Hilary Blackburn were the only three members to vote against change.

The meeting ended with a vote concerning the continuous coverage of mmrv shooting under the CDC Vaccine program for childrenA public funded service which provides vaccinations with almost half of the country’s children. VFC currently covers only the photos that the AIPI recommends.

While President Martin Kulldorff called the vote, several members of the committee complained that they did not understand the proposal as it was written. Three is entirely reflected in the vote.

While the meeting separated, the members could be heard trying to clarify with each other for which they had just voted.

The Committee also spent several hours discussing the opportunity to delay the first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, a shot generally given at birth, until the age of a month. They will vote on the proposal on Friday.

The medical reason for the change in hepatitis B calendar was less clear.

“What is the problem we are approaching with the discussion of hepatitis B? As long as I know, there have been no unfavorable results,” said the pediatrician, Dr. Amy Middleman, one of the many people to raise the point during the discussion and the period of public comments.

The committee member, Dr. Robert Malone, replied that the modification of the recommendation for when children should be vaccinated for hepatitis B would improve the confidence of Americans in public health messaging.

“A large population in the United States has important concerns about vaccine and vaccination mandates, [particularly] The immediate provision of this vaccine at the time of birth, “said Malone.” The signal that causes it is not security, but confidence. “”

Hepatitis B is often asymptomatic and half of the infected people do not know that they have it, according to the CDC. Up to 85% of babies born of infected mothers are infected themselves and the risk of long-term risks of the disease is higher, the more the infection is acquired.

Infants infected with hepatitis B virus during the first year of life have 90% chance of developing chronic disease, and 25% of those who will die He, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Since the introduction of the vaccine in 1991, Hepatitis B infections for infants dropped 95% in the United States Nearly 14,000 children Hepatitis B infections acquired between 1990 and 2002, according to the CDC; Today, new annual infections in children are near zero.

The two -day meeting of this week is the second time that the committee has been encountered from Kennedy drawn the 17 previous ACI members In June, in what he describe Like a “clean scanning [that] is necessary to restore public confidence in vaccine science. »»

The next day, he appointed seven new members to the committee and added the last five earlier this week. New members include doctors with a relevant experience in pediatrics, immunology and public health, as well as several people who have been skeptics of free or criticized vaccines for propagating medical disinformation.

They include Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse who is research director for the National Vaccine Information Center, an organization with A long story to share inaccurate and misleading information on vaccines, and Malone, a vaccinologist who has contributed to early RenM research but has since made a number of False and discredited affirmations On the flu and the COVID-19 plans.

In some cases, new members of the AIPI also lack medical or public health experience of any kind. Retsef Levi, for example, is a professor of operations management at the MIT without a biomedical or clinical degree which has nevertheless been a frank critic of vaccines.

“The appointment of members of the anti-vaccine groups to the directors of staging of the policies to the CDC and to the FDA raises them from the dominant fringe. They are not only at the table, which would be quite serious; studied the role of Nvic in the propagation of the disinformation of vaccines. “It’s a worst case.”

Although the AIPI holds three public meetings per year, it generally works all year round Dr Paul offerDirector of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia and former member of the AICI in the early 2000s.

New recommendations to the vaccine calendar is generally written before APIP meetings in consultation with expert working groups who advise committee members all year round, said Offer. But in August, medical groups such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases Society of America were informed that they were more guest To examine scientific evidence and advise the committee before the meeting.

The same month, Kennedy dismissed the director of the CDC, Dr. Susan Monarez, who had been appointed to the post of President Trump and confirmed by the Senate. Last Wednesday, Monarez said to a Senate committee That Kennedy dismissed it in part because she refused to sign the changes he planned to bring to the calendar of vaccines this month without seeing scientific evidence.

She did not specify during the hearing what these changes would be.

The recommendations of the APIP only become official after the director of the CDC approves them. With Monarez, this responsibility is now to the Deputy Secretary of Health and Social Services Jim O’Neill, who is acting director of the CDC.

Request by journalists On Wednesday, if the American public should trust any change that the AIPI recommends to the childhood vaccination calendar, Senator Bill Cassidy (representative – la) was frank: “No.”

Cassidy presides over Senate Committee who supervises hhs, and launch decisive vote For the appointment of Kennedy. Before going to the elections, Cassidy, a liver specialist, created a public-private partnership providing Hepatitis B vaccinations For 36,000 children from Louisiana.

He voted after Kennedy engaged in private in Cassidy that he would maintain the CDC vaccination calendar.

As a public confidence in the integrity of the guidelines of the CDC that border, alternative sources of information have intensified. Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics announcement That he would publish his own vaccination calendar based on evidence that differs from CDCs on the flu and cocovid shots. And Wednesday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law Giving California the power to establish its own vaccination calendar, the same day, the state has teamed up with Oregon and Washington make a joint recommendations For COVID-19, vaccines against flu and RSV.

On Tuesday, an association representing many health insurers in the United States announced that its members would continue to cover all the vaccines recommended by the previous ACIP – regardless of what happened at Thursday’s meeting – until the end of 2026.

“While health plans continue to operate in an environment shaped by federal and state laws, as well as by the requirements of the program and customers, the approach based on evidence of the coverage of immunizations will remain coherent”, American health insurance plans said in a press release. The group includes major insurers like Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanent, Cigna and several blue groups. Unitedhealthcare, the largest insurer in the country, is not a member.

We do not know what will be covered after 2026.