RFK Jr.'s Handpicked Vaccine Panel Unsurprisingly Delivers Antivaccine Conclusions
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices' vote ratifies unscientific claims linking a vaccine preservative to autism.
For years, antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is now the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has asserted that thimerosal, the ethyl mercury preservative in some vaccines, causes autism. Earlier this month, he fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the federal advisory committee that develops recommendations on the use of vaccines for civilians in the United States.
Kennedy has since replaced them with handpicked appointees who share his beliefs. On Thursday, the new members voted to confirm the secretary's unscientific claims about the illusory dangers of thimerosal by no longer recommending flu vaccines that contain the preservative. Multi-dose vaccine vials containing thimerosal comprise about 4 percent of all annual flu shots. Keep in mind that thimerosal was removed from most vaccines in 2001.
Amusingly, on Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a new report reviewing numerous studies that conclusively found no connection between the minute quantity of thimerosal in vaccines and autism. That report mysteriously disappeared a day later from the CDC's website.
Instead, the new ACIP members were treated to a presentation from Lyn Redwood, Kennedy's fellow longtime antivaccine activist. After being posted online, a study Redwood cited about the alleged neurotoxicity of thimerosal was found to be nonexistent. (Gold-standard science indeed!) The false citation quietly disappeared. RFK, Jr. is now reportedly hiring Redwood to work in the CDC's vaccine safety office.
"The fearmongering and speculation by the mainstream media that this committee would cast doubt on vaccines to promote hesitancy were not just wrong, they were reckless and defamatory," HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon told The Washington Post. "The members of this committee are respected experts who take their responsibility to public health seriously. What they did today is what Secretary Kennedy appointed them to do, which is review the evidence, debate it with scientific rigor, and deliver recommendations rooted in data and medical integrity. The public deserves nothing but this."
Reviewing the evidence, debating it with scientific rigor, and delivering recommendations rooted in data and medical integrity is pretty clearly not what the ACIP did in this case. The public deserves much better than this.