RFK Jr revives task force on childhood vaccine safety
The American health agency rekindles a working group on infant vaccine safety after pressure from anti-vaccine activists to restore the panel.
In a statement, health and social services (HHS) said that it restored the working group on safer infant vaccines – which was dissolved in 1998 – “to improve the safety, quality and monitoring of vaccines administered to American children”.
The working group will provide recommendations on infant vaccines “which will cause unwanted reactions that are less and less serious than these vaccines currently on the market,” said the agency.
This is the last move of the Secretary of Health, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to examine the calendar of American childhood vaccines.
The reintegration of the panel comes after the defense of children’s health, an anti-vaccine group that Kennedy founded, financed legal action against his administration in May for not having restored the working group.
Children’s Defense of Health Defense, who disinfused disinformation on vaccines, praised the news of the panel.
“It took almost 50 years to HHS to do so, but finally the secretary follows the law on this critical issue,” wrote CEO Mary Holland. “We are grateful.”
The workinger working group working group was created in 1986 through the National Childhood Vaccine Buthing Act, in order to provide compensation to children who have had undesirable reactions to certain vaccines.
The working group will include members of the National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said HHS.
Since its entry into office, Kennedy has made a number of changes to the agency’s vaccination policies.
In June, he withdrew all the members of a federal committee of independent experts who made recommendations to the CDC on which receives vaccinations and when. He replaced the panel with new members, many of whom are skeptics of vaccines and criticized COVVI-19 shots.
Shortly after the conduct of his new panel, they announced that they would examine the effects on the health of the vaccination calendar on childhood.
In May, Kennedy also removed the CDC recommendation from the COVVI-19 vaccine for pregnant women and healthy children.
