By Julie Steenhuysen and Michael Erman
CHICAGO (Reuters) -U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s newly reconstituted vaccine advisory panel, set to convene on Wednesday, has already strayed from norms and procedures designed to ensure scientific rigor and consensus, panel members, advisers and former government employees told Reuters.
Kennedy, who has a long history of sowing doubt about vaccine safety, this month fired all 17 members of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel and replaced them with eight of his picks. At least two CDC staff members have left over the changes.
Typically, vaccine advisory meetings require months of preparation and multiple subcommittee meetings with career CDC experts, panel members and outside experts who review scientific data and present recommendations for the committee to consider and vote on.
Agendas and voting questions are typically posted publicly weeks before to allow for public comment.
Instead, the final meeting agenda for Wednesday’s meeting was posted on the CDC’s website, and then changed on Tuesday, shifting who was assigned to present recommendations on a newly raised flu vaccine question.
COVID and influenza work group meetings to prepare for Wednesday’s panel were cancelled because no new ACIP members had been assigned, members of the groups said.
And one of the new panel members was slated to present data, rather than listen to information vetted and approved by a work group and presented to the whole panel by CDC expert staff, according to the meeting agenda.
An HHS spokesperson disputed the concerns, saying the additions and scheduling decisions were made transparently and in line with established procedures.
Lyn Redwood, former leader of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, is scheduled to make a presentation on Wednesday on flu vaccines containing thimerosal, a preservative that has been largely phased out of U.S. vaccines, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
“The normal process is for material and issues that are brought before the full committee to come through the work groups, those are the subcommittees,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a infectious disease and vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who serves on the influenza work group.
“I can tell you that the influenza vaccine work group has not discussed thimerosal,” he said.
Redwood’s presentation makes the case that thimerosal is a known neurotoxin and that the panel should recommend only thimerosal-free flu vaccines for all pregnant women, infants and children, according to slides posted on the CDC’s website on Tuesday. Reuters was unable to reach Redwood for comment.
A CDC briefing document compiled by staff and also posted on Tuesday noted in the 2024-2025 season, 96% of all influenza vaccines in the United States were thimerosal-free. It included a review of scientific literature and concluded that there is no link between vaccines containing thimerosal and autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert at UC Law San Francisco, called it “unheard of” that the lead presentation on thimerosal is being given by Redwood, given her association with an anti-vaccine organization.
“The procedures do not directly forbid it, but at least imply that presentations would be vetted by the work groups and presented by them,” she said.
Former CDC vaccine expert Dr. Fiona Havers, a 13-year veteran of the agency who resigned on June 16 over Kennedy’s recent changes, said a presentation scheduled to be given by new panel member, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, on combination measles vaccines was highly unusual.
Kulldorff is a biostatistician and epidemiologist who publicly criticized COVID-era lockdowns and served as an expert witness against Merck’s Gardasil vaccine used to prevent cancer from human papillomavirus. Kulldorff will be summarizing data on vaccines that combine immunizations for measles, mumps, Rubella with the varicella vaccine, which prevents chickenpox.
“I have never seen a sitting member of ACIP on the schedule do a presentation summarizing data,” she said, noting that the addition of both Redwood and Kulldorff “appears to be bypassing usual ACIP processes.”
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Michael Erman in New York; editing by Caroline Humer and Lincoln Feast.)
