RFK Jr.’s vaccine panel meets, he says U.S. won’t donate to global vaccination effort
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new vaccine advisers “alarmed” pediatricians on Wednesday by announcing inquiries into some long-settled questions about children’s shots, says The Associated Press.
Also on Wednesday, Kennedy said in an “inflammatory video speech” that the United States won’t contribute to Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, Politico reports. Gavi is a public-private partnership founded in 2000 that helps vaccinate half the world’s children against some of the world’s deadliest diseases, according to the World Health Organization.
Vaccine panel
Opening the first of two days of meetings of Kennedy’s handpicked seven-member panel, committee chairman Martin Kulldorff said he was appointing a work group to evaluate the “cumulative effect” of the children’s vaccine schedule — the list of immunizations given at different times throughout childhood.
Also to be evaluated, he said, is the way two other shots are administered — one that guards against liver-destroying hepatitis B and another that combines chickenpox protection with MMR, the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.
The announcement reflected a common message of vaccine skeptics, says AP: that too many shots may overwhelm children’s immune systems or that the ingredients may build up to cause harm. Scientists say those claims have been investigated repeatedly with no signs of concern.
Children now are exposed to fewer antigens — immune-revving components — than their grandparents despite getting more doses, because of improved vaccine technology, says Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The American Academy of Pediatrics announced on Wednesday that it would continue publishing its own vaccine schedule for children but now will do so independently of Kennedy’s panel, calling it “no longer a credible process.”
“The narrative that current vaccine policies are flawed and need ‘fixing’ is a distortion,” says the AAP’s Dr. Sean O’Leary. “These policies have saved trillions of dollars and millions of lives.”
The AAP boycotted the meeting, says Reuters.
Gavi
In his video, Kennedy accused Gavi of neglecting vaccine safety, making questionable recommendations around coronavirus vaccines and silencing dissenting views.
“I call on Gavi today to re-earn the public trust and to justify the $8 billion that America has provided in funding since 2001,” he said. “And I’ll tell you how to start taking vaccine safety seriously: Consider the best science available, even when the science contradicts established paradigms. Until that happens, the United States won’t contribute more to Gavi.”
Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon who led global health work in the Biden administration and served on Gavi’s board, says Kennedy’s remarks are “stunning and calamitous.”
“This establishes an official U.S. position against childhood vaccination and its support,” he says. “In the face of demonstration that vaccines are the single most lifesaving technology for children, over half a century, he is asserting a position that the U.S. will not support vaccination. This is utterly disastrous for children around the world and for public health.”
The United States has been the largest donor to Gavi, whose work is estimated to have saved the lives of 17 million children around the world, says The New York Times.