NBC News
An independent experts committee that advise the Government on vaccines plans to review both the children’s vaccination calendar and the injections that have been approved for decades, which feeds the concern that the panel can make changes in some of the recommendations for the public that have been in force for a long time.
The newly appointed Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP, in English) met for the first time this Wednesday. At the beginning of the month, the Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dismissed the 17 members of the panel and appointed eight people, many of whom have expressed their skepticism about the value and safety of vaccines. One of the members, Dr. Michael Ross, withdrew from the Committee, announced Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican for Louisiana, during a Senate audience on Wednesday.
The independent expert panel recommendations to the centers for disease control and prevention (CDC, in English) on who should receive certain vaccines, which in turn can influence that vaccines are covered by public and private health insurance.
The new president of the Committee, Martin Kulldoff, a bioestadistic that criticized the confinements during the pandemic and said he was fired from Harvard for refusing to vaccinate against COVID-19, adopted a combative tone at the beginning of the meeting.
“Some media have been very hard with the new members of this committee, they have launching false accusations and made concerted efforts to typecast scientists on sides in favor or against vaccines,” Kulldorff said. “Those labels undermine scientific research criticism and further feed doubts about vaccines. “
Kuldff also said that the decision of federal health agencies to temporarily suspend the distribution of the covid-19 of Johnson & Johnson was opposed due to reports on rare blood clots rarely frequent in young women.
“There was a shortage of vaccines and people were dying, so I think the suspension of the J & J vaccine was inadequate,” Kuldff said. “So, in that case, I suppose I was the person in favor of vaccines among scientists specialized in vaccines in this country. That is why it is a bit ridiculous that the media say that I am against them.”
He also announced the creation of two new work groups, subdivisions of the independent panel that reviews the data on vaccines and prepares recommendations to present at ACIP meetings.
(The main FDA scientist in charge of vaccination regulation leaves the agency)
One will analyze the cumulative effect of children’s vaccines which are recommended, including possible interaction effects between vaccines. Another reassess will not be reviewed in more than seven years, said Kulldorff, including hepatitis B vaccines and a combined vaccine that protects against measles, papers, rubella and chickenpox.
“This was supposed to be a common practice of ACIP, but it has not been done exhaustively and systematic,” he said at the meeting.
Kennedy has frequently criticized children’s vaccination calendar, including the fact that children are vaccinated against many more diseases that decades ago.
“When I was a child, they put me three vaccines,” Kennedy said Tuesday during an audience in Congress. “Today they receive between 69 and 92 vaccines from conception to 18 years.”
However, many vaccine experts argue that current vaccines contain less antigens – key components of vaccines that train the immune system to recognize germs – compared to those of previous generations and, therefore, are less aggressive for the immune system.
When announcing the new work groups of the ACIP on Wednesday, Kuldff questioned some of the previous recommendations of the committee, including that vaccines against hepatitis B are administered to newborns and that it is acceptable that one -year -old children receive a vaccine that combines the passionate vaccine, paperas and rubella with the vaccine against the chickenpox.
“Unless the mother is a carrier of hepatitis Bit could be argued that the vaccine against this infection is delayed, which is mainly transmitted by sexual means and by the consumption of intravenous drugs, “he said.
The combined vaccine against measles, papers, rubella and chickenpox (MMRV, in English) was approved in 2005 and the CDC initially recommended that it was administered to children from 12 to 15 months and again between 4 and 6 years. However, the CDCs changed their guidelines in 2009 after the first dose was linked to an increase in the risk of febrile seizures (caused by a sudden increase in temperature) in one in every 2,300 to 2,600 vaccinated children.
Now, CDC recommends that young children be vaccinated with the triple viral vaccine and the separate chickenpox vaccine for the first dose, and that the combined vaccine is used for the second dose. However, according to the agency, the general risk of febrile seizures is very low in both options.
Kuldff questioned an previous recommendation of the ACIP according to which, for the first dose, children can receive the combined vaccine or vaccines against chickenpox and viral triple separately.
He also pointed out that the working group “could examine new research on the optimal moment to administer the triple viral vaccine, in order to solve the religious objections that some parents have With respect to what is used in the United States. They could also examine other triple viral vaccines, such as the one used in Japan. “
During the next two days, the panel plans to discuss the updated data on the Vaccines against Ántrax, Chikungunya, Covid-19 and MMRV, and vote on the vaccines against the VRS and the flu.
The recent discussions of the Working Group on the COVID-19 presented on Wednesday determined that updated vaccines against COVID-19 are suitable for pregnant women, babies from 6 to 23 months and children and adults from 2 to 64 years with high risk of exposure to the virus. Immunodepressed people over 6 months and adults over 65 should receive two doses of the updated vaccine, according to the discussions of the working group.
The group also determined that healthy children and adults can consult with their doctors about the possibility of receiving an updated vaccine against COVID-19. In May, Kennedy announced that CDCs no longer recommended the vaccine for this group or for pregnant women.
In another presentation made this Wednesday afternoon, a working group determined that the CDC should recommend the Clesrovimab, an antibody injection that can prevent VRS, for all babies under 8 months born during or entering their first season of VRS. The group determined that the drug was effective in preventing severe VRS in small babies and had a favorable security profile. However, he also noted that very few babies were included in the clinical trial to detect rare adverse events.
The drug, Merck, was approved by the Food and Medicines Administration (FDA) earlier this month. A similar drug is already approved and recommended for these babies.
(A change in FDA guidelines can limit access to vaccines against COVID-19 of healthy adults and children)
On Thursday, Lyn Redwood, an activist against vaccines, will make a presentation on the thimerosal, a mercury -based preservative that was eliminated from all children Non -profit organization against vaccines founded by Kennedy. He was also one of the founders of Safeminds, a group that financed an investigation with which he hoped to demonstrate that the vaccines beameries was related to autism. There is no evidence of such a relationship.
The CDC Vaccines Advisory Committee will vote on Thursday if the Timerosal must continue to present in certain flu vaccines.
In the presentation, Redwood says that “eliminating a known neurotoxin from vaccines that is injected into our most vulnerable populations is a good starting point to recover health in the United States.”
However, there is no evidence that Low doses of thimerosal Present in flu vaccines are harmful, beyond some redness or swelling in the place of injection. The preservative is composed of ethylmercury, which is much less likely to accumulate in the body than the mercury that is in the environment. In addition, most of the scientific evidence have shown that low doses in vaccines do not damage the nervous system.
