Kennedy’s new vaccine advisers meet for first time
Atlanta – The new vaccination advisers from the Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began their first meeting on Wednesday under a meticulous examination of medical experts worried about the Americans’ access to rescue photos.
The first on the agenda is an annoying scenario: Kennedy has already announced that COVVI-19 vaccines will no longer be recommended for healthy children or pregnant women, and his new advisers should not vote on their agreement. However, government scientists have prepared meeting materials calling for vaccination “best protection” during pregnancy – and said most of the children hospitalized for COVID -19 in the past year were not vaccinated.
COVID-19 remains a public health threat, resulting in 32,000 to 51,000 American deaths and more than 250,000 hospitalizations since last fall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of the risks of hospitalization are elderly and children under 2 years of age – especially infants under 6 months of age which could have some protection if their mother was vaccinated during pregnancy, depending on the presentation of the CDC.
It is a signal that the two -day meeting of this week of the advisory committee on vaccination practices is not as usual.
Another sign: shortly before the meeting, an obstetrician and gynecologist based in Virginie left the committee, bringing the panel number to only seven. The Trump administration said that Dr. Michael Ross retired during a usual financial asset examination.
The meeting opened while the American Academy of Pediatrics has announced that it would continue to publish its own vaccination calendar for children, but would now do it independently of the ACIP, the appellant “plus a credible process”.
The panel, created over 60 years ago, helps the CDC to determine who should be vaccinated against a long list of diseases, and when. These recommendations have a significant impact on the question of whether insurance covers vaccinations and where they are available, as in pharmacies.
Earlier this month, Kennedy suddenly rejected the panel of experts from 17 existing members and has sorted on the eight replacements, including several anti-vaccine votes. And a number of the best scientists in the CDC vaccine – including some who direct the data declaration and the verification of presentations during the ACIP meetings – resigned or far from the previous positions.
The very unusual measures caused a last -minute advocacy of an eminent republican senator to delay this week’s meeting. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who chairs the House Health Committee, said on Monday that many panelists chosen by Kennedy did not have the required expertise and “could even have a preconceived bias” against new vaccination technologies.
During a house audience on Tuesday, Kennedy defended his purge, saying that the old panel had been “a model of medical fault”.
Representative Kim Schrier, pediatrician and democrat of Washington’s state, told Kennedy: “I will impose all responsibility for each death of a preventible vaccine disease on your feet.”
The agenda of the two -day meeting was suddenly changed last week.
The COVVI-19 shots discussion will open the session on Wednesday. Later in the day, the committee will take the RSV, with expected votes. On Thursday, the Committee will vote on vaccinations against the fall flu and the use of a curator in certain influenza shots.
The VRS, or syncytial respiratory virus, is a frequent cause of cold -type symptoms that can be dangerous for infants.
In 2023, American health officials began to recommend two new measures to protect infants – an antibody made in the laboratory for newborns and a vaccine for pregnant women – who, according to experts, have probably improved infant mortality.
The committee will discuss the newly approved antibody shooting from another company, but the exact language of the vote was not published before the meeting.
“I think there can be a theme of the pedal gently or withdrawn from recommendations for healthy pregnant women and healthy children”, even if they are at risk of practicing vaccine diseases, said Lawrence Gostin, expert in public health at Georgetown University which co-authors a recent commentary of medical newspaper criticizing the decision of vaccination COVID-19.
During its June meetings, the Committee generally refreshes advice for Americans 6 months and more to obtain a vaccine against flu and helps Greenlight the annual vaccination campaign by fall.
But given the recent changes to the Committee and to the Federal Directorate of Public Health, it is difficult to know how routine subjects will be treated, said Jason Schwartz, a health researcher at the University of Yale who studied the Committee.
Thursday also promises controversy. The advisory panel should consider a curator in a subset of influenza plans that Kennedy and certain antivaccine groups have allegedly disputed is linked to autism. In preparation, the CDC has published a new report confirming that the research shows no link between the conservative, the Thimérosal and the Autism or any other neurodevelopmental disorder.
GOSTIN said that the agenda seems to be “a combination of what we would normally touch that the AIPI covers with a mixture of potential conspiracy theories,” he said. “We are clearly in a new standard which is very skeptical of the science of vaccines.”
The committee’s recommendations traditionally go to the director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Historically, almost all are accepted and then used by insurance companies to decide the vaccines to be covered.
But the CDC does not currently have a director, so the committee’s recommendations have been to Kennedy, and it has not yet acted on a few ACIP recommendations made in April.
The candidate of the director of the CDC, Susan Monarez, should appear on Wednesday before a senatorial committee.
___
Neergaard reported to Washington.
___
The Department of Health and Sciences of the Associated Press receives the support of the Department of Science Education from Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
