When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His new position as a health secretary accepted, he made a big show to distance himself from his previous life. “News reports have claimed that I am an anti-vaccine or anti-industry,” said Kennedy, who has promoted the displacid idea for decades that vaccines have caused autism and undoubtedly has doubted the ability of the US government to veterinarians, said in his confirmation in January. “I am neither. I am pro-security.”
But for all the speech by Kennedy, this week, he did exactly what a person would do if he tried to undermine the scientific consensus about vaccination in the United States. He abruptly rejected the entire expert committee that advises the CDC on its national vaccine recommendations – and started filling the schedule with like -minded people Ready to set up doubt about the benefits of vaccination.
Just like Kennedy, some of these new people in the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practice or ACIP openly embraced the idea that they are anti-vaccine. But among them are people who have spoken against COVID vaccines and policy, vaccine injuries claimed for their own children, and falsely connected Covid shots of killing -or even unfounded those vaccines of “causing a form of acquired immunity deficiency syndrome. “
In January I wrote that re -making the committee in this way would be a particularly harmful blow to the health of Americans: perhaps more than any other set of experts in the US, Acip guides the future readyness of the nation against infectious diseases. By appointing a committee that is ready to identify more of its own radical views, Kennedy gives his crooked version of the scientific reality the imprimatur of the government. Whether he will admit it or not, he serves the most core goal of the anti-vaccine movement access to and trust in immunization.
In an e-mail declaration of repeated health and human services secretary Emily G. Hilliard that “secretary Kennedy is not an anti-vaccine IS-HIJ is pro-safety, pro-transparency and pro-accountability” and added that his “evidence-based approach, the trust in our Public Health system.” (Kennedy in particular promised Senator Bill Cassidy during his confirmation process that he would maintain Acip, as Cassidy said, “without changes.”)
Since the 1960s, ACIP has borrowed government policy for vaccines the influence of scientific evidence. The mandate is to convene experts in areas such as infectious diseases, immunology, pediatrics, vaccinology and public health to carefully check the data on immunisations, to weigh their risks and benefits and vote on recommendations that the public guides about how to use – who should receive vaccines and when. These guidelines are then passed on to the CDC director, who – with only the rarest exceptions – accepts wholesale advice.
“These recommendations are what states are looking at what providers are looking at,” Rupali Limaye, an expert in vaccing behavior at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told me. For example, Medicare is required to fully cover the vaccines that ACIP recommends; ACIP also determines which vaccines are covered by the Vaccins for Children Program, which offers free vaccines for children whose families cannot pay them. The experts who serve on ACIP have the chance, more than almost their scientific colleagues, to translate their vaccinretoric.
So far, Kennedy has rejected the 17 people who served on Acip and fulfilled eight of the new open slots. Most new nominees have a clear bone to choose with at least a few vaccines, especially Covid shots, and have publicly advocated limiting the use of their use. Among the new members is, for example, Robert Malone, a controversial doctor who did that Speaking of anti-vaccinationsWhere he has denounced Covid vaccines and, without evidence, suggested that they could worsen coronavirus infections. Another appointment is Vicky Pebsworth, who is a member of the board of the National Vaccine Information Center, an anti-vaccine non-profit organization that is previously known as dissatisfied parents together. A third, RETSEF LEVI, an expert in health care management, called for the management of COVID vaccines in 2023 and has questioned the safety of the shots, despite a large amount of evidence from clinical tests that support their constant use. In general: “This is not a list that would increase trust in vaccine decisions,” said Dorit Reiss, an expert in vaccine policy at UC San Francisco, Me. (None of these new ACIP members has returned a request for comments.)
The next ACIP meeting is planned for the end of this month – and the agenda Contains discussion about Anthrax vaccines, Chikungunya vaccines, Covid-19-vaccines, cytomegalovirus vaccine, the vaccine of the Mens-Papillomavirus, flu vaccines, the vaccines of the Lyme, the vaccines of the Lymevacins and Rvacins. That is a large lation of topics for a brand new panel of members, Paul Offit, a pediatrician and a vaccine expert who has previously served on ACIP, told me: depending on how the meeting was structured, and on the input of CDC scientists, these new committee members could be recommended the guidelines on different immunisations of certain groups. Based on the composition of the committee to date, Offit predicts that the new ACIP will eventually push the CDC away from the persevering approval of many of these vaccines.
Even subtle changes in the formulation of CDC recommendations – one should have to exchanged for one be able to– Can have large wrinkle effects, Limaye told me. Insurers can, for example, be more cautious to cover vaccines that are not actively endorsed by the CDC; Some states – especially those in which vaccines have become a political battlefield – do not stop obliging that kind of shots. If the CDC mitigates its recommendations, “we will probably see more part-time divorces” in who opts for national protection, Jason Schwartz said, an expert in vaccine policy at Yale. Pharmaceutical companies can in turn reduce the production of vaccines that do not have full CDC support, maintain a cycle of reduced availability and reduced enthusiasm. And doctors in primary care, who look at the vaccination schedule of the CDC as an essential reference, can describe the language they use to describe children, so that more parents are registered to simply unsubscribe.
Historically, medical and public health associations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, have their vaccine recommendations tailored to ACIPs that those recommendations were all driven by scientific evidence. But now the scientific consensus and the government position are starting to deviate: several groups of doctors, scientists and scientists in the public have issued statements that the vaccine decisions of Kennedy and his allies convicted; A number of prominent scientists have now tied together to form a kind of alt-acip and to call themselves the vaccine gritness project. As the views of Franjvaccing Groups become the position of the government, Americans must soon have to choose between following science and following what the leaders of their country say.
Identify as a “anti-vaccine” has traditionally been taboo: in a nation that most people are largely left for shots, the term Pejorative, an open recognition is that someone’s views are outside the norm. But the more vaccine resistance HHS and his advisers infiltrates, the more is considered normal, can shift to Kennedy’s own views on vaccines; The reputation of ACIP for continuing evidence can even be gilded with scientific legitimacy. Compiling their own team of friendly experts is a particularly effective way of extremism from Sanewash, Reiss told me, and to cancel the system through what normal channels seem to be. If the most prominent group of vaccine advisers of the nation bends anti-vaccineThe term loses its extremist lead and the scientists who claim, based on sound data, that vaccines run safely and effectively, is labeled anti-government.
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