Ousted Vaccine Panel Members Say Rigorous Science is Being Abandoned
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:
Ousted Vaccine Panel Members Say Rigorous Science is Being Abandoned
The 17 experts who were ousted from a government vaccine committee last month say they have little faith in what the panel has become, and have outlined possible alternative ways to make U.S. vaccine policy.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly fired the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, accusing them of being too closely aligned with manufacturers and of rubber-stamping vaccines. He handpicked replacements that include several vaccine skeptics.
In a commentary published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the former panel members wrote that Kennedy-a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before becoming the U.S. government's top health official-and his new panel are abandoning rigorous scientific review and open deliberation.
That was clear, they said, during the new panel's first meeting, in June. It featured a presentation by an anti-vaccine advocate that warned of dangers about a preservative used in a few flu vaccines, but the committee members didn't hear from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staffers about an analysis that concluded there was no link between the preservative and neurodevelopmental disorders.
More information: Helen Y. Chu et al, The Path Forward for Vaccine Policy in the United States, New England Journal of Medicine (2025). DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsb2509134
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.