NBC News
The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appointed eight new members of an Independent Advisory Committee on vaccines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, in English), only two days after dismissing the previous ones.
Among the new members are known skeptics of vaccines and other people who have criticized vaccines against COVID-19 or measures against pandemic, such as confinements.
Kennedy said Wednesday on the social network X that the members would meet on June 25 for a scheduled meeting. He referred to them as “highly accredited scientists, leaders in public health and some of the most prominent doctors in the United States.”
The list includes Dr. Robert Malone, an activist against the vaccines he suggested earlier this year, without evidence, that the recent deaths of children due to measles were due to a medical error, and Vicky Pebsworth, director of research and safety of the patients of the National Center for Information on Vaccines, considered one of the main sources of misinformation about vaccines.
Historically, the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, better known as ACIP, have been submitted to an exhaustive selection process before being appointed. The panel is usually composed of 15 or more members, which means that the meeting of within two weeks It would be approximately half the usual size. It was not clear if Kennedy intended to name more members.
The ACIP is usually composed of pediatricians, geriatricians and other vaccines experts. The group selected by Kennedy includes a psychiatrist, an epidemiologist and an operations management teacher. One of the freshly appointed members, the Pediatrics professor Dr. Cody Meissner, has already been part of the ACIP between 2008 and 2012.
The group aims to analyze the most recent data on the safety and efficacy of vaccinesincluding recently approved vaccines and new data on existing vaccines. The panel offers recommendations to the CDC on who should receive certain vaccines, including the child vaccination calendar. Several times a year, the Committee celebrates public meetings in which the data is presented and reviewed. Although the CDC is not obliged to follow the advice, it often does.
Advisory members are also obliged to reveal their conflicts of interest and refrain from voting on vaccines in which there are such conflicts. It is not clear if Kennedy has demanded those revelations to the new members.
Kennedy said Monday in an editorial published in The Wall Street Journal that the ACIP “has been plagued by persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.” The members of the medical community have widely opposed that statement and have alleged that there is no evidence to support it.
