Ousted vaccine panel members say rigorous science is being abandoned

New York – The 17 experts who were ousted from a government vaccination committee last month say they have little confidence in what the panel has become and described possible alternative means to make us a vaccination policy.

The Secretary in the United States of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., suddenly dismissed the entire consultative committee of vaccination practices, accusing them of being too closely aligned with manufacturers and snap vaccines. He has selected replacements that include several vaccine skeptics.

In a commentary published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the former members of the panel wrote that Kennedy – a leading voice in the anti -vaccine movement before becoming the highest head of the American government – and its new panel abandon a rigorous scientific journal and open deliberation.

It was clear, they said, at the first meeting of the new panel in June. He presented a presentation by an anti-vaccine defender who warned against the dangers of a curator used in some flu vaccines, but the members of the committee had not heard disease control and prevention centers on an analysis which concluded that there was no link between the disorders of the conservative and the neurodeveloppement.

The new panel recommended that the curator, the Thimérosal, be deleted even if some members recognized that there was no evidence that it caused damage.

“This meeting was a parody, honestly,” said former member of Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, member of the ACIP, expert in pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Stanford.

Last month, the 17 dismissed experts published a shorter test in the Journal of the American Medical Association which decreed the “destabilizing decisions” of Kennedy. The emphasis was placed on their dismissal and the decision of Kennedy in May to stop recommending COVVI-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women.

In the new commentary, the members of the ousted committee pushed a little further and prescribed certain measures which could be taken to maintain recommendations of scientifically solid vaccines.

“An alternative to the committee must be established quickly and – if necessary – regardless of the federal government,” they wrote. “No viable route exists to fully replace the structure and the ACIP of confidence and previous impartials. Instead, alternatives must focus on limiting damage to vaccination policy in the United States. ”

The options understood to have professional organizations working together to harmonize the recommendations of the vaccines or establish an external verifier of the ACIP recommendations. There are huge challenges to ideas, including having access to the best data, recognized the authors.

There is also the question of whether health insurers would pay for vaccinations recommended by alternative groups but not APIP.

They could choose the vaccines to be covered, said the Brewer Christmas of the University of North Carolina, another former member of the ACIP.

For example, they could pay vaccines that offer more immediate cost savings for health care, such as influenza vaccine.

“But perhaps not those who have a longer-term advantage like the HPV vaccine”, which is designed to prevent cancers in the long term, said Brewer.

Officials from the US Health and Social Services have not immediately responded to a request for comments.

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