vaccine

When it comes to vaccines, virtually nothing that comes out of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mouth is true.

The man in charge of the nation’s health and well being is impervious to science, expertise and knowledge. His brand of arrogance is not just dangerous, it is lethal. Undermining trust in vaccines, he will have the blood of children around the world on his hands.

Scratch that.

He already does, as he presides over the second largest measles outbreak in this country since the disease was declared “eliminated” a quarter century ago.

“Vaccines have become a divisive issue in American politics,” Kennedy wrote the other day in a Wall Street Journal essay, “but there is one thing all parties can agree on: The U.S. faces a crisis of public trust.”

The lack of self-awareness would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

Over the past two decades or so, Kennedy has done more than almost any other American to destroy the public’s trust in vaccines and science. And now he’s bemoaning the very thing he has helped cause.

Earlier this month, Kennedy fired the 17 medical and public health experts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — qualified doctors and public health experts — and replaced them with a group of (mostly) anti-vaxxers in order to pursue his relentless, ascientific crusade.

On Thursday, at its first meeting, his newly reconstituted council voted to ban the preservative thimerosal from the few remaining vaccines that contain it, despite many studies showing that thimerosal is safe. On that point, even the Food and Drug Administration website is blunt: “A robust body of peer-reviewed scientific studies conducted in the U.S. and other countries support the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines.”

“If you searched the world wide, you could not find a less suitable person to be leading healthcare efforts in the United States or the world,” psychiatrist Allen Frances told NPR on Thursday. Frances, who chaired the task force that changed how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, defines autism, published an essay in the New York Times on Monday explaining why the incidence of autism has increased but is neither an epidemic nor related to vaccines.

“The rapid rise in autism cases is not because of vaccines or environmental toxins,” Frances wrote, “but is rather the result of changes in the way that autism is defined and assessed — changes that I helped put into place.”

But Kennedy is not one to let the facts stand in the way of his cockamamie theories. Manufacturers long ago removed thimerosal from childhood vaccines because of unfounded fears it contained mercury that could accumulate in the brain and unfounded fears about a relationship between mercury and autism.

That did not stop one of Kennedy’s new council members, Lyn Redwood, who once led Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, from declaring a victory for children.

“Removing a known neurotoxin from being injected into our most vulnerable population is a good place to start with making America healthy again,” Redwood told the committee.

Autism rates, by the way, have continued to climb despite the thimerosal ban. But fear not, gullible Americans, Kennedy has promised to pinpoint a cause for the complex condition by September!

Like his boss, Kennedy just makes stuff up.

On Wednesday, he halted a $1-billion American commitment to Gavi, an organization that provides vaccines to millions of children around the world, wrongly accusing the group of failing to investigate adverse reactions to the diptheria vaccine.

“This is utterly disastrous for children around the world and for public health,” Atul Gawande, a surgeon who worked in the Biden administration, told the New York Times.

Unilaterally, and contrary to the evidence, Kennedy decided to abandon the CDC recommendation that healthy pregnant women receive COVID vaccines. But an unvaccinated pregnant woman’s COVID infection can lead to serious health problems for her newborn. In fact, a study last year found that babies born to such mothers had “unusually high rates” of respiratory distress at or just after birth. According to the CDC, nearly 90% of babies who were hospitalized for COVID-19 had unvaccinated mothers. Also, vaccinated moms can pass protective antibodies to their fetuses, who will not be able to get a COVID shot until they are 6 months old.

What else? Oh yes: Kennedy once told podcaster Joe Rogan that the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic was “vaccine-induced flu” even though no flu vaccine existed at the time.

He also told Rogan that a 2003 study by physician scientist Michael Pichichero, an expert on the use of thimerosal in vaccines, involved feeding babies 6 months old and younger mercury-contaminated tuna sandwiches, and that 64 days later, the mercury was still in their system. “Who would do that?” Kennedy demanded.

Well, no one.

In the study, 40 babies were injected with vaccines containing thimerosal, while a control group of 21 babies got shots that did not contain the preservative. None was fed tuna. Ethylmercury, the form of mercury in thimerosal, the researchers concluded, “seems to be eliminated from blood rapidly via the stools.” (BTW, the mercury found in fish is methylmercury, a different chemical, which can damage the brain and nervous system. In a 2012 deposition for his divorce, which was revealed last year, Kennedy said he suffered memory loss and brain fog from mercury poisoning caused by eating too much tuna fish. He also revealed he has a dead worm in his brain.)

Kennedy’s tuna sandwich anecdote on Rogan’s podcast was “a ChatGPT-level of hallucination,” said Morgan McSweeney, a.k.a. “Dr. Noc,” a scientist with a doctorate in pharmaceutical sciences, focusing on immunology and antibodies. McSweeney debunks the idiotic medical claims of non-scientists like Kennedy in his popular social media videos.

Speaking of AI hallucinations, on Tuesday, at a congressional committee hearing, Kennedy was questioned about inaccuracies, misinformation and made up research and citations for nonexistent studies in the first report from his Make America Healthy Again Commission.

The report focused on how American children are being harmed by their poor diets, exposure to environmental toxins and, predictably, over-vaccination. It was immediately savaged by experts. “This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point,” Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Assn. told the Washington Post.

If Kennedy was sincere about improving the health of American children he would focus on combating real scourges like gun violence, drug overdoses, depression, poverty and lack of access to preventive healthcare. He would be fighting the proposed cuts to Medicaid tooth and nail.

Do you suppose he even knows that over the past 50 years, the lives of an estimated 154 million children have been saved by vaccines?

Or that he cares?

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During the first meeting of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s recently downsized vaccine panel, the group voted to stop recommending flu vaccines containing thimerosal, a vaccine preservative.

In a lengthy June 24 X post that preceded the meeting, Kennedy, who spent two decades as an anti-vaccine movement leader, described thimerosal using terms such as “toxic” and said hundreds of studies identify it as a carcinogenic “potent neurotoxin”. He also said there are high doses of mercury in flu shots recommended to pregnant women and children.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices’ (ACIP) two-day meeting on June 25 and 26 included discussion of vaccines containing thimerosal before its vote on flu vaccines.

ACIP is an independent group which provides vaccine recommendations the CDC director reviews and decides whether to formally adopt. Earlier in June, Kennedy dismissed 17 ACIP members, replacing them with seven new members, including people who’ve expressed doubt about vaccine efficacy and promoted anti-vaccine falsehoods.

Doctors and scientists who study vaccines have been researching thimerosal’s use for decades. Here’s what we know about the vaccine preservative and its removal from flu vaccines.

What is thimerosal? 

Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative used in some vaccines.

Many people – particularly those who are pregnant or breastfeeding – encounter warnings about consuming mercury, such as in seafood. But those warnings are about methylmercury, which is found in certain kinds of fish and is known to be toxic to people when consumed at high levels.

Thimerosal contains ethylmercury – a single-letter difference that might not sound significant, but is.

Human bodies can break down and excrete ethylmercury quickly, meaning it is less likely to cause harm. By contrast, methylmercury is more likely to accumulate in the body and cause harm.

In vaccines, thimerosal is added to prevent harmful microbes such as bacteria and fungi from growing in vaccine vials.

“Introduction of bacteria and fungi has the potential to occur when a syringe needle enters a vial as a vaccine is being prepared for administration,” the CDC’s website said. “Contamination by germs in a vaccine could cause severe local reactions, serious illness or death. In some vaccines, preservatives, including thimerosal, are added during the manufacturing process to prevent germ growth.”

Thimerosal has been at the heart of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine activism for 20 years.

In 2005, Kennedy wrote an article co-published by Rolling Stone and Salon that alleged leading health agencies including the CDC and US Food and Drug Administration had colluded with vaccine manufacturers to conceal a study that found thimerosal “may have caused autism in thousands of kids”. Scientists and researchers said Kennedy’s argument was inaccurate and misleading. Continued research has found no link between thimerosal and autism. Kennedy’s article was removed from Rolling Stone, and Salon retracted it in 2011.

In 2015, Kennedy wrote a book opposing thimerosal’s use in vaccines.

Which vaccines use thimerosal? 

Thimerosal is not used in the vast majority of vaccines.

All vaccines the CDC routinely recommends for children age six or younger are available without thimerosal.

Children receiving the routine paediatric vaccine schedule “can get completely immunised without any thimerosal-containing vaccines”, said Dr Mark Sawyer, a paediatrics professor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and a paediatric infectious disease physician.

Some childhood vaccines have never contained thimerosal. These include the measles, mumps and rubella – or MMR – vaccine, the varicella or chickenpox vaccine, the inactivated polio vaccine and the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine.

Thimerosal was removed from most vaccines – including all childhood vaccines – as of 2001, the CDC said.

Thimerosal is still used in vaccines today, but not as widely.

The preservative is in only a small fraction of influenza vaccine vials, specifically the multi-dose vials that constitute a small portion of the US flu shot supply, Dr Jake Scott told PolitiFact. Scott is a Stanford University School of Medicine infectious disease specialist.

The FDA said thimerosal use has declined as vaccine manufacturers have developed more single-dose vaccines that do not require preservatives.

Scott said the CDC lists 12 influenza vaccine formulations for the 2024 to 2025 flu season, which will also cover the 2025 to 2026 season because no new flu vaccines have been licensed. Of those 12 vaccines, just three are multi-dose vaccines that contain thimerosal at 25 micrograms – equal to 25 millionths of a gram – per dose, he said.

CDC’s supply data shows single-dose, thimerosal-free syringes make up about 96 percent of the US flu vaccine supply, leaving roughly 4 percent as multi-dose vials, Scott said.

“Single-dose syringes are the default for paediatrics and prenatal care, so real-world exposure is even lower,” he said.

Because flu vaccines with thimerosal constitute a small portion of the influenza vaccine supply, public health experts told The Washington Post the committee’s vote to stop recommending them would have a limited impact, although it could make flu shots more expensive and less accessible in some parts of the US.

What does research show about thimerosal?

Because anti-vaccine activists’ focus has centred on whether thimerosal causes autism, numerous scientific studies have investigated a potential link and found no causal relationship between the preservative and autism.

When scientists evaluated thimerosal’s potential impacts and risks they found:

• Giving infants vaccines containing thimerosal “does not seem to raise blood concentrations of mercury above safe values in infants” as the ethylmercury “seems to be eliminated from blood rapidly via the stools” after vaccination.
• Three controlled and two uncontrolled observational studies “consistently provided evidence of no association” between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.
• “No scientific evidence exists that thimerosal-containing vaccines are a cause of adverse events among children born to women who received influenza vaccine during pregnancy.”

Vaccine researchers told PolitiFact that thimerosal was removed from vaccines out of an abundance of caution, not because research proved that thimerosal was unsafe.

Thimerosal was removed from vaccines because people thought it might cause problems, said Rachel Roper, a microbiology and immunology professor at East Carolina University. But ultimately, “studies were done and it was shown to be safe”.

There’s no evidence to date that thimerosal “causes any harm whatsoever”, Sawyer said.

LONDON — U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the country is pulling its support from the vaccines alliance Gavi, saying the organization has “ignored the science” and “lost the public trust.”

A video of Kennedy’s short speech was shown to a Gavi meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, where the organization that has paid for more than 1 billion children to be vaccinated through routine immunization programs was hoping to raise at least $9 billion for the next five years.

Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, mentioned Gavi’s partnership with the World Health Organization during COVID-19, accusing them of silencing “dissenting views” and “legitimate questions” about vaccine safety. His speech also cast doubt on the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine — which WHO and other health agencies have long deemed to be safe and effective.

Gavi said in a statement Thursday that its “utmost concern is the health and safety of children,” adding that any decision it makes on vaccines to buy is done in accordance with recommendations issued by WHO’s expert vaccine group.

Some doctors in the United States criticized the decision. Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said it was “incredibly dangerous” and warned that defunding immunization would put millions of children at risk.

Gavi is a public-private partnership including WHO, UNICEF, the Gates Foundation and the World Bank, and it is estimated that the vaccination programs have saved 18 million lives. The United States has long been one of its biggest supporters; before President Donald Trump’s reelection, the country had pledged $1 billion through 2030.

In just under four minutes, Kennedy called on Gavi “to justify the $8 billion America has provided in funding since 2001,” saying officials must “consider the best science available, even when that science contradicts established paradigms.” Kennedy said until that happens, the U.S. won’t contribute further to Gavi.

The health secretary zeroed in on the COVID-19 vaccine, which WHO, Gavi and other health authorities have recommended for pregnant women, saying they are at higher risk of severe disease. Kennedy called that a “questionable” recommendation; his U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently stopped recommending it.

He also criticized Gavi for funding a rollout of a vaccine to prevent diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis in poorer countries, saying he’d seen research that concluded that young girls who got the vaccine were more likely to die from all other causes than children who weren’t immunized.

Gavi said scientists had reviewed all available data, including any studies that raised concerns, and that the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine has “played a key role in helping halve childhood mortality.”

Some observational studies have shown that vaccinated girls do have a higher death rate compared to unvaccinated children, but there is no evidence the deaths are caused by the vaccine. But Offit said the studies cited by Kennedy were not convincing and that research examining links between vaccinations and deaths did not prove a causal connection.

“There’s no mechanism here which makes biological sense for why the [diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine] might result in more children dying,” Offit said.

Doctors Without Borders on Thursday predicted “countless children will die from vaccine-preventable diseases” as a result of the U.S. withdrawing support for Gavi.

“To invoke misleading and inaccurate claims about vaccine safety as the pretext for cutting all global vaccine funding is cruel and reckless,” said Mihir Mankad, the charity’s global health advocacy and policy director in the U.S. “When we vaccinate in the community, parents line up for hours to give their children a chance to be protected from these deadly diseases.

“For these children, vaccination programs … are a matter of life and death.”

Kennedy’s recorded speech to Gavi came on the same day that his reconstituted U.S. vaccine advisory panel met for the first time. He fired the previous 17-member panel this month and replaced it with a seven-member group that includes several vaccine skeptics.

Cheng writes for the Associated Press. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has announced that the United States will no longer contribute to Gavi, a global health programme that has vaccinated more than one billion of the world’s poorest children.

In a video that aired at a Gavi fundraising event in Brussels on Wednesday, Kennedy said the group had made questionable recommendations around COVID-19 vaccines. He also raised concerns about the diphtheria-tetanus-whole cell pertussis vaccine, known by the acronym DTPw, though he provided no evidence to support those fears.

“I call on Gavi today to re-earn the public trust and to justify the $8bn that America has provided in funding since 2001,” Kennedy said in the video.

Kennedy added that Gavi should consider all available science before investing in vaccines. “Until that happens, the United States won’t contribute more,” he said.

The details of the video were first reported by the publication Politico and later by the news outlet Reuters.

Gavi said in a detailed statement that safety was one of its top priorities and that it acts in line with World Health Organization recommendations.

The statement also indicated that Gavi has full confidence in the DTPw vaccine, which it credits with having helped to cut child mortality in half in the countries it supports since 2000.

“The DTPw vaccine has been administered to millions of children around the world for decades, and is estimated to have saved more than 40 million lives over the past 50 years,” the statement notes.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has previously indicated that it planned to cut US funding for Gavi, representing around $300m annually, as part of a wider pullback from international aid.

Advocacy groups called on the US to reverse its decision.

“Kennedy claims that Gavi ignored science are entirely false,” nonprofit consumer advocacy organisation Public Citizen wrote in a statement.

“Gavi’s recommendations are grounded in global evidence and reviewed by independent experts. His suggestion otherwise fuels the same disinformation that has already led to deadly measles outbreaks and the resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio.”

A longtime vaccine sceptic, Kennedy has upended the US medical establishment since taking office in February. He has raised questions about possible ties between autism and vaccines, though numerous studies have shown there is no link.

Earlier this month, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the expert panel on vaccines at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

Created 60 years ago, the committee serves as an independent government body to review data and make recommendations about who should get vaccines. Those recommendations, in turn, can affect which vaccines health insurance plans may cover.

Of Kennedy’s initial eight replacement members, about half have advocated against vaccines.

Kennedy’s new vaccine advisers hold inaugural meeting

The newly revamped committee met for the first time on Wednesday, under intense scrutiny from medical experts worried about Americans’ access to lifesaving shots.

But already, conflicts are starting to simmer in and around the panel.

Ahead of the two-day gathering, government scientists prepared meeting materials calling vaccination “the best protection” during pregnancy — and said most children hospitalised for COVID-19 over the past year were unvaccinated.

That advice, however, conflicts with Kennedy’s. The health secretary already announced COVID-19 vaccines will no longer be recommended for healthy children or pregnant women, and his new advisers are not scheduled to vote this week on whether they agree.

COVID-19 remains a public health threat, resulting in 32,000 to 51,000 US deaths and more than 250,000 hospitalizations since last fall, according to the CDC.

Kennedy’s newly reconstituted panel also lost one of its eight members shortly before Wednesday’s meeting.

Michael Ross, a Virginia-based obstetrician and gynecologist, stepped down from the committee, bringing the panel’s number to just seven. The Trump administration said Ross withdrew during a customary review of members’ financial holdings.

The meeting opened as the American Academy of Pediatrics announced that it will continue publishing its own vaccine schedule for children, but now will do so independently of the ACIP, calling it “no longer a credible process”.

ACIP’s recommendations traditionally go to the director of the CDC. Historically, nearly all are accepted and then used by insurance companies in deciding what vaccines to cover.

But the CDC currently has no director, so the committee’s recommendations have been going to Kennedy, and he has yet to act on a couple of recommendations ACIP made in April.

Separately, on Wednesday, Senate hearings began for Trump’s nominee for CDC director, Susan Monarez.

During the hearings, she said she has not seen evidence linking vaccines and autism and said she would look into the decision to cut Gavi funding.

“I believe the global health security preparedness is a critical and vital activity for the United States,” she said.

“I think that we need to continue to support promotion of utilisation of vaccines.”

June 25 (UPI) — A key vaccine-focused committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met Wednesday despite bipartisan protestations and controversy that surrounds the group’s membership.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, began at 10 a.m. EDT to discuss vaccination policy in regard to COVID-19 and RSV before its adjournment at 5:30 p.m. The panel will reconvene Thursday to discuss vaccines and vaccination recommendations for flu, chikungunya, anthrax, MMRV and the use of thimerosal in inoculations.

The panel had consisted of eight members, who replaced the 17 people who were terminated by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this month, but Dr. Michael Ross stepped down Tuesday night as two United States senators recently suggested the ACIP meeting be postponed.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician and chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Monday that the new members of the panel selected by Kennedy “lack experience studying new technologies such as mRNA vaccines, and may even have a preconceived bias against them,” and declared that Wednesday’s meeting should not happen.

“The meeting should be delayed until the panel is fully staffed with more robust and balanced representation-as required by law-including those with more direct relevant expertise, Cassidy wrote. “Otherwise, ACIP’s recommendations could be viewed with skepticism, which will work against the success of this administration’s efforts.”

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., put out an X post late Tuesday that also took umbrage with the new ACIP panel.

“RFK Jr. fired all of the experts at CDC’s vaccine advisory committee,” Murray said. “He installed [eight] unvetted people, including anti-vaxxers who should have zero role in deciding which vaccines insurance should cover.”

“The committee’s next meeting must be postponed,” she added.

The American Academy of Pediatrics also spoke against the ACIP meeting in an announcement on its social media platform Wednesday.

“Today’s ACIP meeting is usually a time where experts come together to inform the future of vaccines,” the post stated. “That is not what today will be. That is not what we can stand behind.”

The AAP concluded its post by sharing that it “will continue to recommend its own childhood vaccine schedule.”

Wednesday’s ACIP meeting, which can be viewed online, opened with a preamble from the ACIP chair Dr. Martin Kulldorff, in which he stated that “Secretary Kennedy has given this committee a clear mandate to use evidence-based medicine when making vaccine recommendations. And that is what we will do.”

NEW YORK — All 17 experts recently dismissed from a government vaccine advisory panel published an essay Monday decrying “destabilizing decisions” made by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that could lead to more preventable disease spread.

Kennedy last week announced he would “retire” the entire panel that guides U.S. vaccine policy. He also quietly removed Dr. Melinda Wharton — the veteran Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who coordinated the committee’s meetings.

Two days later, he named eight new people to the influential panel. The list included a scientist who criticized COVID-19 vaccines, a leading critic of pandemic-era lockdowns and someone who worked with a group widely considered to be a leading source of vaccine misinformation.

“We are deeply concerned that these destabilizing decisions, made without clear rationale, may roll back the achievements of U.S. immunization policy, impact people’s access to lifesaving vaccines, and ultimately put U.S. families at risk of dangerous and preventable illnesses,” the 17 panelists wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

The new committee is scheduled to meet next week. The agenda for that meeting has not yet been posted, but a recent federal notice said votes are expected on vaccinations against flu, COVID-19, HPV, RSV and meningococcal bacteria.

In addition to Wharton’s removal, CDC immunization staff have been cut and agency experts who gather or present data to committee members have resigned.

One, Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, resigned after 12 years at CDC, disclosing her decision early this month in a note to members of a COVID-19 vaccines work group. Her decision came after Kennedy decided — without consulting the vaccine advisers — to pull back COVID-19 vaccination recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women.

“My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,” she wrote in a message viewed by the Associated Press.

Those CDC personnel losses will make it hard for a group of new outside advisers to quickly come up to speed and make fact-based decisions about which vaccines to recommend to the public, the former committee members said.

“The termination of all members and its leadership in a single action undermines the committee’s capacity to operate effectively and efficiently, aside from raising questions about competence,” they wrote.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to the JAMA commentary, but instead pointed to Kennedy’s previous comments on the committee.

Kennedy, a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before becoming the U.S. government’s top health official, has accused the committee of being too closely aligned with vaccine manufacturers and of rubber-stamping vaccines.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, created in 1964, makes recommendations to the CDC director on how vaccines that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration should be used. CDC directors almost always approve those recommendations, which are widely heeded by doctors and guide vaccination programs.

ACIP policies require members to state past collaborations with vaccine companies and to recuse themselves from votes in which they had a conflict of interest, but Kennedy has dismissed those safeguards as weak.

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named eight new vaccine policy advisers to replace the panel that he abruptly dismissed earlier this week.

They include a scientist who researched mRNA vaccine technology and became a conservative darling for his criticisms of COVID-19 vaccines, a leading critic of pandemic-era lockdowns, and a professor of operations management.

Kennedy’s decision to “retire” the previous 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was widely decried by doctors’ groups and public health organizations, who feared the advisers would be replaced by a group aligned with Kennedy’s desire to reassess — and possibly end — longstanding vaccination recommendations.

On Tuesday, before he announced his picks, Kennedy said: “We’re going to bring great people onto the ACIP panel — not anti-vaxxers — bringing people on who are credentialed scientists.”

The new appointees include Vicky Pebsworth, a regional director for the National Assn. of Catholic Nurses. She has been listed as a board member and volunteer director for the National Vaccine Information Center, a group that is widely considered to be a leading source of vaccine misinformation.

Another is Dr. Robert Malone, the former mRNA researcher who emerged as a close adviser to Kennedy during the measles outbreak. Malone, who runs a wellness institute and a popular blog, rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as he relayed conspiracy theories around the outbreak and the vaccines that followed. He has appeared on podcasts and other conservative news outlets where he’s promoted unproven and alternative treatments for measles and COVID-19.

He has claimed that millions of Americans were hypnotized into taking the COVID-19 shots and has suggested that those vaccines cause a form of AIDS. He’s downplayed deaths related to one of the largest measles outbreaks in the U.S. in years.

Malone told the Associated Press he will do his best “to serve with unbiased objectivity and rigor.”

Other appointees include Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist who was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 letter maintaining that pandemic shutdowns were causing irreparable harm. Dr. Cody Meissner, a former ACIP member, also was named.

Abram Wagner of the University of Michigan’s school of public health, who investigates vaccination programs, said he’s not satisfied with the composition of the committee.

“The previous ACIP was made up of technical experts who have spent their lives studying vaccines,” he said. Most people on the current list “don’t have the technical capacity that we would expect out of people who would have to make really complicated decisions involving interpreting complicated scientific data.”

He said having Pebsworth on the board is “incredibly problematic” since she is involved in an organization that “distributes a lot of misinformation.”

Kennedy made the announcement in a social media post on Wednesday.

The committee, created in 1964, makes recommendations to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC directors almost always approve those recommendations on how vaccines that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration should be used. The CDC’s final recommendations are widely heeded by doctors and guide vaccination programs.

The other appointees are:

• Dr. James Hibbeln, who formerly headed a National Institutes of Health group focused on nutritional neurosciences and who studies how nutrition affects the brain, including the potential benefits of seafood consumption during pregnancy.
• Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies business issues related to supply chain, logistics, pricing optimization and health and healthcare management. In a 2023 video pinned to an X profile under his name, Levi called for the end of the COVID-19 vaccination program, claiming the vaccines were ineffective and dangerous despite evidence they saved millions of lives. Levi told the AP he would try to help inform “public health policies with data and science, with the goal of improving the health and wellbeing of people and regain the public trust.”
• Dr. James Pagano, an emergency medicine physician from Los Angeles.
• Dr. Michael Ross, a Virginia-based obstetrician and gynecologist who previously served on a CDC breast and cervical cancer advisory committee. He is described as a “serial CEO and physician leader” in a bio for Havencrest Capital Management, a private equity investment firm where he is an operating partner.

Of the eight named by Kennedy, perhaps the most experienced in vaccine policy is Meissner, an expert in pediatric infectious diseases at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, who has previously served as a member of both ACIP and the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory panel.

During his five-year term as an FDA adviser, the committee was repeatedly asked to review and vote on the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines that were rapidly developed to fight the pandemic. In September 2021, he joined the majority of panelists who voted against a plan from the Biden administration to offer an extra vaccine dose to all American adults. The panel instead recommended that the extra shot should be limited to seniors and those at higher risk of the disease.

Ultimately, the FDA disregarded the panel’s recommendation and approved an extra vaccine dose for all adults.

In addition to serving on government panels, Meissner has helped author policy statements and vaccination schedules for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

ACIP members typically serve in staggered four-year terms, although several appointments were delayed during the Biden administration before positions were filled last year. The voting members are all supposed to have scientific or clinical expertise in immunization, except for one “consumer representative” who can bring perspective on community and social facets of vaccine programs.

Kennedy, a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before becoming the U.S. government’s top health official, has accused the committee of being too closely aligned with vaccine manufacturers and of rubber-stamping vaccines. ACIP policies require members to state past collaborations with vaccine companies and to recuse themselves from votes in which they had a conflict of interest, but Kennedy has dismissed those safeguards as weak.

Most of the people who best understand vaccines are those who have researched them, which usually requires some degree of collaboration with the companies that develop and sell them, said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University health policy researcher.

“If you are to exclude any reputable, respected vaccine expert who has ever engaged even in a limited way with the vaccine industry, you’re likely to have a very small pool of folks to draw from,” Schwartz said.

The U.S. Senate confirmed Kennedy in February after he promised he would not change the vaccination schedule. But less than a week later, he vowed to investigate childhood vaccines that prevent measles, polio and other dangerous diseases.

Kennedy has ignored some of the recommendations ACIP voted for in April, including the endorsement of a new combination shot that protects against five strains of meningococcal bacteria and the expansion of vaccinations against RSV.

In late May, Kennedy disregarded the committee and announced the government would change the recommendation for children and pregnant women to get COVID-19 shots.

On Monday, Kennedy ousted all 17 members of the ACIP, saying he would appoint a new group before the next scheduled meeting in late June. The agenda for that meeting has not yet been posted, but a recent federal notice said votes are expected on vaccinations against flu, COVID-19, HPV, RSV and meningococcal bacteria.

A HHS spokesman did not respond to a question about whether there would be only eight ACIP members, or whether more will be named later.

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press reporters Matthew Perrone, Amanda Seitz, Devi Shastri and Laura Ungar contributed to this report. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

US President Trump-appointed Health Secretary and vaccine sceptic will replace panel with his own selections.

United States Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr has purged a 17-member panel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that provides expertise on vaccines.

Kennedy, who before taking a position in the administration of President Donald Trump was a vocal anti-vaccine activist, has said he will replace the panel with his own picks.

“Today, we are prioritising the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” Kennedy said. “The public must know that unbiased science – evaluated through a transparent process and insulated from conflicts of interest – guides the recommendations of our health agencies.”

Kennedy’s reorganisation of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is the latest move by the Trump administration to shake up US health practices, sometimes by pushing ideas that depart strongly from the existing scientific consensus on issues such as vaccinations and fluoride.

“That’s a tragedy,” a former chief scientist of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Jesse Goodman, said of the firings.

“This is a highly professional group of scientists and physicians and others … It’s the kind of political meddling that will reduce confidence rather than increase confidence.”

The HHS said that all 17 members of the panel were selected during the administration of former President Joe Biden, and that keeping them on would have prevented Trump from choosing the majority of the panel’s members until 2028.

The department said that the ACIP will convene its next meeting on June 25-27. While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves vaccinations for public use, the ACIP reviews data in public meetings before voting on whether to recommend a vaccine.

In a one-minute video, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr revoked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that healthy children and healthy pregnant women be vaccinated for COVID-19, leaving some experts concerned and others unsure about the policy’s details.

Kennedy was joined in the video, posted on May 27 on X, by Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.

Kennedy, who was tapped by President Donald Trump after a years-long embrace of vaccine conspiracy theories, did not make it clear whether he was referring to a recommendation for children or pregnant women getting vaccinated for the first time, for getting subsequent booster shots, or both. Days after the announcement, HHS’s website provided no clarity, saying, “COVID-19 vaccines are available to everyone 6 months and older. Getting vaccinated is the best way to help protect people from COVID-19.” A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage dated January 7 – before Kennedy was secretary – provided a similar broad vaccine endorsement.

Some experts say the low rates of serious COVID-19 cases among children justify tightening the federal vaccine recommendation. Others say that the move will make it harder to get vaccinated and cause preventable serious illnesses.

Kennedy broke from norms by not waiting for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to vote on vaccine guidance at a scheduled June meeting.

Recommending against vaccination for certain groups could make it harder for most children and pregnant women to get the shot, if insurers decide not to cover COVID-19 shots for those groups. Immunization rates are already low, with 13 percent of children and 14.4 percent of pregnant women up to date with the 2024-25 edition of the COVID-19 vaccine, the CDC found in late April.

We fact-checked the three federal health officials’ comments with health experts.

Kennedy said child vaccine boosters lacked clinical data

Kennedy said, “Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot, despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children.”

In recent years, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices – a group of outside experts that advises the CDC on who should be vaccinated and how often – has recommended annual boosters for healthy children who have already received COVID-19 vaccines.

The committee made this recommendation without also recommending that every annual iteration of the vaccine undergo new rounds of clinical trials before being used, said Dr William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. (The vaccine had been approved by the FDA for safety and efficacy early in the pandemic.) The panel concluded that the coronavirus vaccine operated in the same way as the annual flu vaccine, which has not required repeated clinical trials, said Schaffner, a former committee member and current adviser.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians also recommended COVID-19 vaccinations for children and did not urge new clinical trials.

Kids generally don’t need the vaccination, FDA chief said

Makary said, “There’s no evidence healthy kids need” the vaccine.

This is disputed. Most children will not face serious illness from COVID-19, but a small fraction will. Experts draw different lines when deciding how widespread the vaccination programme needs to be, given this scale of risk.

During the 2024-25 COVID-19 season, children and adolescents age 17 and younger comprised about 4 percent of COVID-19-associated hospitalisations. The relatively small number of serious cases among children has driven the belief among some scientists that the universal vaccination recommendation is too broad.

However, among all children, rates of COVID-19-associated hospitalisations were highest among infants less than six months old.

“With 4 million new children born every year with no exposure to COVID, young children have rates of disease similar to the disease rates in people older than 65,” Schaffner said, citing a September 2024 article on the CDC’s website.

COVID-19 was among the top 10 causes of death in children during the worst of the pandemic between 2020 and 2022, said Tara C Smith, a Kent State University epidemiologist. “Though we may no longer be at that stage … we vaccinate for influenza, so why not continue to do so for COVID?”

Some doctors are concerned about the lingering syndrome known as long COVID, about which less is known, especially among children.

The outside advisory committees and the medical academies found this level of serious disease to be sufficient to recommend continued annual vaccinations.

Makary said this policy is similar to those in other countries

Makary was accurate when he said that “most countries have stopped recommending” routine COVID-19 vaccination for children.

“Many countries will only offer the COVID vaccine to children if they have underlying health conditions or are immunocompromised,” said Brooke Nichols, a Boston University associate professor of global health.

Makary co-wrote a May 20 article that included a list of booster recommendations in Canada, Europe and Australia. It said in most countries, the recommendation was to vaccinate older people or those at high risk.

Most countries have taken this course, Schaffner said, because “by now, 95 percent of us have had experience with COVID, either through the vaccine or through illness or both. And second, the current variants are thought to be much milder than some of the earlier variants.”

The World Health Organization in 2024 recommended the COVID-19 vaccine for children with health risks who had never been vaccinated. For children and adolescents who had previously been vaccinated, it did not routinely recommend revaccination.

The European Medicines Agency recommended the BioNtech Pfizer vaccine for children over the age of five years and said the use of the vaccine for children is effective and safe. Euronews reported that the agency issued its recommendation in November 2021 and later recommended the Moderna vaccine for children ages 12 to 17.

In the United Kingdom, “only older people or those with specific diseases or illnesses making them susceptible to severe COVID were recommended to get boosters, and as a result, uptake in those groups was actually higher than in the US,” where outreach and advertising for the vaccinations focused on children as well as older people, said Babak Javid, an associate professor in the division of experimental medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.

The New York Times found that in Europe “many countries do not recommend the vaccines for healthy children under 5, but the shots are approved for everyone 6 months and older,” meaning that they can be safely used by anyone who’s at least six months old.

Doctors say the vaccine protects pregnant women

Experts disagreed with Kennedy’s recommendation against vaccinating pregnant women, saying the vaccine protects pregnant women and their infants.

Steven J Fleischman, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists president, said, “It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families. In fact, growing evidence shows just how much vaccination during pregnancy protects the infant after birth, with the vast majority of hospitalised infants less than six months of age – those who are not yet eligible for vaccination – born to unvaccinated mothers.”

After a vaccination, antibodies reach the fetus. The doctors’ group said there is no evidence the vaccine creates adverse effects for either mother or the fetus, although fever or pain at the injection site are possible.

The federal government in May provided conflicting information about the vaccine and pregnancy.

In Makary’s May 20 article, he and his co-author included pregnancy on the CDC’s 2025 list of underlying medical conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19.

“They literally contradicted themselves over the course of a couple of days,” said Dr Peter Hotez, Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development co-director. “It appears RFK Jr reversed his own FDA’s decision.”

Following the May 27 video announcement, Makary told NBC that the decision about vaccination should be between a pregnant woman and her doctor.

A 2024 review of 67 studies found that fully vaccinated pregnant women had a 61 percent lower likelihood of a COVID-19 infection during pregnancy.

What’s next?

In its June meeting, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices might move towards less sweeping recommendations for vaccinating children, closer to those that Kennedy enacted.

“If you listened to the discussions in the most recent previous meeting, they very much seemed to be moving in a more targeted approach,” Schaffner said.

The question of pregnant women may be one where the advisory committees may recommend more flexibility with vaccine usage than what Kennedy’s video statement seems to suggest, Schaffner said.

Other areas where the panels could back greater flexibility could be for otherwise healthy people who serve as caregivers or who live with more vulnerable people who are advanced in age or are immunocompromised.

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas this year has been the center of the nation’s largest measles outbreak in more than two decades, as a mostly eradicated disease has sickened more than 700 in the state, sent dozens to hospitals and led to the death of two children who were unvaccinated.

But even as the outbreak slows, a bill approved by state lawmakers and sent to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott would make it significantly easier for parents to enroll their children in school without standard vaccinations for diseases such as measles, whooping cough, polio and hepatitis A and B.

Supporters say the bill streamlines an already legal exemption process that allows families to avoid vaccines for reasons of conscience, religious beliefs or medical reasons. It would let them download the required forms from a website instead of contacting state health officials and waiting for one to come in the mail.

The bill does not change which vaccines are required. However, critics say easing the exemption process opens a door to further outbreaks with potentially deadly results.

“If this bill becomes law, Texas is likely to see more illness, more death and higher health care costs for families and business,” Rekha Lakshmanan, chief strategy officer for Texas-based nonprofit Immunization Project, told state senators before the bill won final approval.

“The outbreak (in Texas) is not a coincidence. It is the canary in the coal mine screaming at the top of its lungs,” she said.

The exemption bill — as well as other bills passed by the Texas House on lawsuits against vaccine makers and removing immunization restrictions on organ transplants — are a snapshot of efforts across dozens of conservative states to question vaccines or roll back requirements.

At the national level, this wave has been buoyed by still-lingering pushback from the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump administration’s embrace of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine advocates before being appointed secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.

The most recent federal data shows U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates have dipped since the pandemic — 92.7% in the 2023-24 school year compared to 95% before COVID-19 — and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high. And last week, the “Make America Healthy Again” federal report on the nation’s health and wellness questioned the necessity of vaccine mandates for schoolkids.

The national Association of Immunization Managers, an organization of state and local immunization officials, has been tracking nearly 600 vaccine-related bills across the country in 2025, and the majority would not be considered pro-vaccine, said Brent Ewig, the group’s the group’s chief policy officer.

“We saw a spike in vaccine-related bills during the pandemic. The last few years it had been tapering off. With recent actions at the federal level, there has been a spike again,” Ewig said.

The Texas measles outbreak and vaccine requirements

Measles has been considered eliminated from the United States since 2000. The Texas outbreak started in late January in West Texas’ Mennonite communities that have been resistant to vaccines and distrustful of government intervention, and the highly contagious virus quickly jumped to other places with low vaccination rates.

Like many states, Texas requires children to obtain vaccines to protect against 11 diseases to attend public and private schools and child care centers. The state’s vaccination rates for the 2023-24 school year ranged between 93.78% for chicken pox to 95.78% for hepatitis B.

But parents can obtain exemptions for religious or personal reasons, or if a doctor determines it would not be safe because of a medical condition.

Exemption rates in Texas have been rising for nearly two decades, with a dramatic spike over the last five years. According to the Texas Department of Health Services, the agency received exemption requests for nearly 153,000 students in the 2023-2024 fiscal year, up from 136,000 the previous year and nearly double the 77,000 requested in 2019.

Texas’ vaccine rollback

The bill on vaccine exemption paperwork would make it easier for parents to obtain the needed form by letting them download it to a computer or smartphone. The current system where parents ask state health officials to mail a paper copy to their home can sometimes take weeks. The form would still need to be notarized before it is turned in to a school and a student is enrolled.

Advocates say the changes would help parents thread the bureaucratic process and get their children enrolled in school quicker.

“This bill is not about whether vaccines are good or bad, it’s about government efficiency and keeping kids in schools,” said Jackie Schlegal, founder of Texans for Medical Freedom, which advocates for “vaccine freedom of choice.”

Critics argue that simplifying the exemption form process makes it too easy for unvaccinated kids to enroll in a school, endangering the health of other kids and families.

“For years Texas has struck a delicate balance of parents’ right and public health and safety,” Lakshmanan said. “This bill is more than just a form … We can support parents without putting other families at risk.”

Still waiting for a Senate vote is a bill that would allow vaccine makers who advertise in Texas to be sued if their vaccine causes a person to be injured. That bill has been opposed by the Texas Association of Manufacturers.

The author of that bill is first-term state Rep. Shelley Luther, who was briefly jailed in 2020 for opening her Dallas salon in violation of governor’s emergency order during the pandemic. Abbott quickly weakened his enforcement of coronavirus safeguards and a court ordered her released.

Vertuno writes for the Associated Press.

Millions of elderly Americans are still hunting for appointments to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Millions of younger Americans are waiting impatiently for their turn in line.

But there’s one group whose members are far more skeptical about the vaccine — and in some cases are actively refusing to get jabbed at all.

That group is Republicans, especially GOP men.

In a recent NPR/PBS/Marist survey, fully 49% of Republican men said they do not plan to get vaccinated — a higher share of refusers than any other demographic group. Among Democratic men, the number saying no was only 6%.

The finding, which has been confirmed in other polls, has confounded public health professionals.

“We’ve never seen an epidemic that was polarized politically before,” Robert J. Blendon, a health policy scholar at Harvard, told me.

For months, Blendon and his colleagues expected “vaccine hesitancy” to be a problem mainly among African Americans, whose history has been marked by neglect and abuse by medical authorities. But Black Americans, after some initial hesitance, now say they want the vaccine at the same rate that white people do.

Republicans, on the other hand, have become more resistant — especially since a Democrat became president.

They don’t trust the federal government — and they trust it even less since Joe Biden came to the White House. They don’t trust scientists, and they especially don’t trust Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical advisor.

Many tell pollsters they’re worried that the vaccine might not be safe. Such fears have been fed by Fox News, whose star polemicist Tucker Carlson has frequently accused authorities of “lying” about the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness.

Blendon said he expects many of those Republican skeptics to come around once they see friends and relatives get immunized without ill effects.

“We have to find a way to depoliticize this issue,” he said. “Instead of hearing Joe Biden or Tony Fauci tell them to take the vaccine, they need to hear it from physicians in their own states — people who have never worked in Washington.”

But some GOP politicians have decided to make resistance part of their political brand. As many as half of the 211 Republicans in the House of Representatives have refused to get vaccinated. So have at least four GOP senators.

A few, like Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, have asserted that they don’t need an injection because they contracted COVID-19 the natural way. (Scientists disagree, recommending that COVID survivors like Paul get booster shots.)

In perhaps the least devastating insult of the year so far, Paul dismissed Fauci last week as “a government worrywart.”

Others, like freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, have defended the right not to be immunized as an exercise in individual freedom.

“The survival rate [from COVID-19] is too high for me to want it,” Cawthorn, who is 25, explained.

But there’s a flaw in that argument: The hazards of refusing the vaccine don’t confine themselves to the individual refuser. Vaccine resisters are putting the rest of us in danger, too.

Unvaccinated people who contract COVID-19, even if they don’t become seriously ill, can pass the virus to family and friends.

And resisters are making it harder to achieve “herd immunity,” the point at which the virus can no longer find new hosts to infect. That’s when the pandemic will come to an end.

Herd immunity against the coronavirus will require between 70% and 85% of the population to be vaccinated, Fauci estimates. It’s a new disease, so nobody knows the precise level, and new variants of the virus could push the number higher.

“If a significant number of people do not get vaccinated, that would delay where we would get to that endpoint,” Fauci warned recently.

And the longer it takes, the more people will get sick.

Paul, Cawthorn and their colleagues are casting themselves as courageous individualists. In fact, they’re acting as epidemiological moochers. They’re free riders, relying on the rest of us to protect them by helping the country reach herd immunity.

Their relatives and friends, especially those 65 or older, should give them a wide berth. And their voters should treat them as what they are: dangerous to the health of their communities.

ENGLAND will roll out the world’s first gonorrhoea vaccine campaign this summer.

The NHS said it will begin immunising against the sexually transmitted infection, also known as ‘the clap’, in August.

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Health chiefs reckon they can prevent around 10,000 cases per year with an existing meningitis vaccine.

Cases have tripled since 2012 and hit a record 85,000 in 2023.

Local sexual health clinics will offer the jab to gay and bisexual men, who are most at risk.

Patients will receive the 4CMenB vaccine for meningitis B, which has been found to nearly halve the chances of catching gonorrhoea in adults.

The jab is already routinely given to babies to protect them from MenB, but its protection wears off as they grow up.

Vaccination could also head off growing concerns about superbug versions of the infection, which are resistant to antibiotics.

Dr Amanda Doyle, of NHS England, said: “The launch of a world-first routine vaccination for gonorrhoea is a huge step forward for sexual health.

“It will be crucial in helping to reduce the rising rates of antibiotic resistant strains of the bacteria.”

Gonorrhoea is a bacterial infection spread by unprotected sex.

Many people do not have any symptoms but if it is left untreated it can spread and lead to infertility.

It is the second most common STI in Britain by new cases per year, after chlamydia.

The vaccine rollout was approved by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) after research by Imperial College London suggested it could prevent 100,000 cases and save the NHS £8million over the next 10 years.

Dr Sema Mandal, from the UK Health Security Agency, said: “In 2023 we saw gonorrhoea diagnoses reach their highest since records began in 1918. 

“Not only will this rollout protect those that need it most, but it will make the UK the first country in the world to offer this.

“STIs aren’t just an inconvenience – they can have a major impact on your health and that of your sexual partners.”

Public health minister Ashley Dalton added: “Once again our NHS is leading the way.”