The ACIP, empowered by RFK Jr., is just getting started on vaccines

The meeting began with an airing of pandemic-era grievances and closed with a move to cement a decades-old, long-dismissed anti-vaccine talking point into U.S. national policy. 

In the intervening 13 hours came technical issues, forgotten procedures, and a public comments session featuring a parade of alarmed experts speaking on behalf of health organizations. At one point, a panelist asked staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention whether a “pattern of broad-based energy of some type” may be responsible for a surge in flu deaths this year. Another member, one of the few with public health credentials, beseeched his colleagues to quit raising what he and career officials at the CDC consider long-investigated and discarded concerns. 

“These are extraordinarily remarkable products, they are safe, and they are effective, and I don’t think there’s any further data that needs to be presented,” said Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine, after another panelist, a professor of management, raised concerns about new drugs to protect against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. “The work group has spent an enormous amount of time, the FDA has spent an enormous effort looking at safety and efficacy. It is simply not an issue here.”

So went the first meeting of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a hearing unlike any other in the nerdy, august body’s 64-year history. 

By the end, it was clear that a new era in U.S. vaccine policy had arrived, one in which individuals with long-simmering objections to public health conventions — and in some cases, ties to the conspiracy-ridden anti-vaccine movement — had been empowered to make critical health recommendations for an entire nation. 

CDC advisory panel, selected by RFK Jr., recommends thimerosal be dropped from flu vaccines

“We have an ACIP. It’s just not a good or qualified or trustworthy ACIP,” said Dorit Reiss, who studies vaccine law and policy at the University of California, San Francisco, in an email after the proceedings. “I think at this point, it might be time to either disband the committee completely or legislate to preserve its integrity.”