The panel will revisit the hepatitis B shot given at birth, among others. The former head of an anti-vaccine group has been hired as a special employee at H.H.S.
On Wednesday, just minutes after the first meeting of scientific advisers who had been appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began, it was clear that the new panelists intended to renew scrutiny of the shots recommended to Americans, particularly childhood vaccines.
The meeting of the group, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, marks a remarkable and fraught moment in public health. The gatekeepers of immunization policy in the United States, mostly scientists with deep expertise, have been replaced with people who are often deeply skeptical of the safety of many vaccines.
The advisers’ decisions may have a powerful impact on the availability of the shots. Insurance companies and government programs like Medicaid are required to cover immunizations that A.C.I.P. recommends, and states base their school mandates on the panel’s guidance.
Martin Kulldorff, formerly a professor of medicine at Harvard University and the committee’s chair, began the meeting by inviting people to freely share their skepticism of vaccines and chastising the media for fanning the “flames of vaccine hesitancy” by labeling some new panelists as anti-vaccine.
Dr. Robert Malone, a chair of the panel, has said he considers the label “anti-vaxxer” to be “high praise.”
At the meeting, Dr. Kulldorff said he had been fired from Harvard for refusing to get a Covid-19 vaccine because, he had said, he “already had immunity” from infections.
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