The HHS returns the working group on the safety of infant vaccines

A longtime federal working group on the security of infantile vaccines is being stimulated, the Ministry of Health and Social Services announced on Thursday.

Hhs said in a press release That he restores the working group on safer infant vaccines, which dissolved in 1998, “to improve the safety, quality and monitoring of vaccines administered to American children”.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, will be president. Other members of the working group will include Susan Monarerez, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Marty Makary, Commissioner of Food and Drug Administration, said Andrew Nixon, HHS spokesperson. Nixon said additional members will be announced in the future.

Dr. Howard Koh, professor of public health at the Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health, said: “Everyone wants childhood vaccines to be as safe as possible. But relaunch this panel must now be put in the context of recent HHS actions. ”

Many public health experts have accused the HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of continuing an aggressive anti-vaccine program as a health secretary. Since he took office in February, he has Cut $ 2 billion in a program that supports vaccines for vulnerable children,, minimized the importance of measles vaccines in the middle of a record epidemic And Cut $ 500 million in contracts for research on mRNA vaccines.

In June, Kennedy licensed members of the Vaccination Practices Advisory Committee (ACIP) – Medical health and public health experts who make recommendations to the CDC on who should obtain certain vaccines – and replaced them with well -known vaccinated skeptics Or criticism from coastal vaccines. The new chairman of the committee, Martin Kulldorff, said that the committee would train two working groups, one in Examine the infant vaccination calendar And another to reassess the vaccines that have not been examined for over seven years.

The workinger working group working group was created in 1986 in the national vaccine vaccine law, which aimed to compensate the small number of children who have had unwanted vaccine reactions and to combat growing threats of dispute on vaccine injuries.

A trial brought in May Kennedy claims violated the 1986 law by failing to establish a working group dedicated to making infant vaccines safer. The costume is Funded by the defense of children’s healthThe anti-vaccin group founded Kennedy. Mary Holland, the group’s CEO, congratulated Kennedy on Thursday for fulfilling his obligation.

“Finally, the secretary follows the law on this critical issue. We are grateful,” said Holland A declaration on X.

The working group will work in close collaboration with the advisory committee on infant vaccines, which provides recommendations to the HHS secretary on how to implement a national compensation program for injuries of infant vaccines. According to HHS, groups will regularly give advice on how to improve relationships on adverse reactions and develop infant vaccines that cause less and less serious unwanted reactions.

Vaccine injuries are extremely rare and the United States has robust systems to detect adverse effects, including the System of reports on unwanted vaccine events,, Vaccine safety data link And V-SAFE. Before vaccines never reach the market, clinical trials are looking for safety problems and a break if major problems arise. Then, the independent advisory committees at the FDA and the CDC evaluate the security data and issue recommendations on the vaccines to be approved and which should obtain them.

But Kennedy has repeatedly said that the federal government was not doing enough to monitor the side effects of vaccines.

“At least once a week, he offers a new zinger trying to discredit vaccines, and it is very dangerous,” said Dr. Peter Hooz, co -director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

HOTEZ said that it is difficult to know why Kennedy would relax a working group on the safety of infant vaccines, since the current system has proven itself to use the rare adverse events.

“What is the interest now, apart from he will use it as an intimate chair to push his Maha and Anti-Vaccin agenda? This is concern,” said Hooz.

“Who will he put on this committee?” He added. “Will it be like Aipic, where he begins to stack him with anti-vaccine activists?”