RFK Jr.’s New Panel Tackles Vaccine Ingredients, Kids’ Shots (2)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s plan for America’s vaccines is coming into focus, with his revamped immunization advisory panel set to discuss the use of measles shots in kids next week and vote on an ingredient that’s been wrongly linked to autism.

The draft agenda for next week’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting revisits old topics concerning vaccine safety, raising questions that many public health experts consider long settled. Any decisions could have sweeping implications for American public health, potentially upending how vaccines are manufactured, paid for, and distributed around the country.

Just last week, Kennedy overhauled the ACIP panel, firing all of the existing members and putting several new people on the board who’ve been vocal vaccine critics. The group recommends which vaccines go on the childhood and adult schedules after reviewing safety data, helping determine which shots are covered by insurance.

The new members will hear a presentation about thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative that is used in some adult flu vaccines, and later vote on “thimerosal-containing vaccine recommendations,” according to details posted Wednesday. They will also review presentations and proposed recommendations for measles, mumps and chicken pox vaccines for kids under 5 years of age. Details about the proposals and the scope of the votes weren’t available.

Kennedy, the Health and Human Services secretary, had also been considering asking the advisers to examine shots that contain aluminum ingredients, which could impact at least two dozen vaccines on the market, a source familiar with the matter said. That topic isn’t on the agenda for next week’s meeting, and the person, who isn’t authorized to speak publicly on the deliberations, said they could evolve.

Federal policy guides billions of dollars in industry investment, and dramatic changes to recommendations could have a chilling effect on vaccines.

“What they are doing is launching a complete dismantling of vaccine recommendations,” said Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Disease Society of America. If the committee votes to remove thimerosal from vaccines, manufacturers will have to create and ship single doses, which some manufacturers may not be able to do, she said. Ultimately, the move would “chip away access to vaccines,” she said.

Thimerosal is currently used in multidose vials of three flu vaccines for adults sold by Sanofi SA and CSL Ltd., according to the Food and Drug Administration. It was removed from most childhood vaccines in the early 2000s and has never been found to be unsafe, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It has no link to the development of autism.

Kennedy has long been a critic of the additive, however, publishing a book calling for its immediate removal from vaccines in 2014. The book’s title is Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury — a Known Neurotoxin — from Vaccines.

Aluminum is one of a number of substances called “adjuvants” that manufacturers use to bolster the body’s immune response to immunizations. It can be found in shots from GSK Plc., Merck & Co Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Sanofi to prevent diseases including polio, hepatitis A and B, HPV, meningitis, and whooping cough.

Sanofi’s American depositary receipts fell as much as 1.7% in New York.

Spokespeople for Sanofi and CSL, which is based in Australia, each said separately that they looked “forward to a productive discussion with the ACIP.” A representative for the Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment on the aluminum issue.

Notably missing from the agenda was discussions on the meningitis and human papillomavirus — or HPV — vaccines, Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in an interview. Both were originally slated for discussion before the former ACIP committee members were fired.

Instead, the agenda includes discussions on what Kressly called “settled science.”

“It is an extreme miscarriage of trust,” Kressly added.

(Updates with comment from CSL in 12th paragraph)

--With assistance from Jessica Nix, Bill Haubert, Amber Tong and Karen Leigh.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Rachel Cohrs Zhang in Washington at rzhang698@bloomberg.net;
Gerry Smith in New York at gsmith233@bloomberg.net;
Damian Garde in New York at dgarde@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Cynthia Koons at ckoons@bloomberg.net

Kelly Gilblom, Michelle Fay Cortez

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