The conflicts on the vaccine panels were at low records before Kennedy connections

When the health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. triggered all members of an influential vaccine panel Earlier this summer, He said The committee was “in the grip of conflicts of persistent interests”.

But new researchPosted on Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, notes that The two main consulting committees on vaccine have had record conflicts for almost the last decade.

Kennedy has long judged that members of the consultative panels of vaccines to the centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at the Food and Drug Administration maintain close links with the pharmaceutical industry. HAS His first confirmation hearing In January, Kennedy said that 97% of CDC advisers had conflicts of interest.

“When he started to quote these large statistics like 97%, I said to myself:” Wow, it’s really tall, “said the author of the main study Geneviève Kanter, associate professor of public policy at the University of Southern California Sol Public Policy.” When I started watching the data from the vaccines, I didn’t really see this kind of figures. “

The study has examined how conflicts of common interests would have been in the past two decades for the members of the CDC Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices (ACIP) and the Vaccine Advisory Committee and related organic products (VRBPAC).

During this period, the vaccine panels all gathered about four times a year, with the most frequent meetings from 2016 to 2024.

The study revealed that since 2016, only 6.2% of members of the ACIP and 1.9% of VRBPAC members have reported a conflict of interest to a given meeting.

In addition, the type of conflict generally considered to be the most concerning – vaccine income – had been practically eliminated from the two committees.

Among persons with declared interest conflicts, less than 1% involved personal income from vaccine companies, such as consultation costs, fees, shares or property, the study revealed.

Kanter said that in the early 2000s, conflicts of interest on committees were much higher – culminating at 43% for the ACIP in 2000 and 27% for VRBPAC in 2007.

At the time, it was generally the standard accepted for members of the Advisory Committee to have conflicts of interest, she added.

But from 2007 and 2012, members of The FDA VRBPAC Begun to undergo a stricter verification process, including requirements to disclose conflicts of interest and rejoice to vote on vaccines for which conflicts exist, Kanter said. It is less clear when the AIPI has started to put pressure on a more rigorous verification process, she said.

For the AIPI, the reported conflicts fell to 5% by 2024. For the VRBPAC, the reported conflicts have remained less than 4% since 2010, including 10 years when there were no reported conflict.

“They are relatively low,” said Kanter. “Although there are certainly some who argue for zero conflicts or financial interests.”

It is difficult to create an advisory panel of experts without interest conflicts, she added.

The panels are generally made up of high -level experts in the fields of infectious diseases, pediatrics, immunology and public health. Vaccines often contact these experts to supervise their clinical trials or to play an advisory role when developing a new product.

“It’s a balance,” said Kanter. “You want people who did clinical research on safety and efficiency.” She added that her previous research has shown that people who have financial links with the competitor of a given product often discussed do not vote differently from people who have no financial link.

In a statement, Andrew Nixon, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Social Services, said: “Secretary Kennedy is committed to eliminating real conflicts and perceived to strengthen confidence in public health decisions.”

Dorit Reiss, an expert in vaccine policy at the University of California in San Francisco, said it was important that advisory panels maintain low interest conflicts because it helps prevent “biased decision -making”.

After Kennedy dismissed the 17 members of the ACIP, he replaced them with eight new nominees, including several well -known vaccine reviews. (One person abandoned before the first meeting of the Committee, leaving the group with seven.)

“Anti-Vaccin activists define the conflicts of interest differently from the rest of us,” said Reiss. “They believe in a large conspiracy where the pharmacy controls the media and the government, therefore for them, for example, a subsidy of NIH would be a conflict of interest or working in a health care organization.”

However, several of the new nominees from Kennedy have links with anti-vaccine groups or have served as expert witnesses in prosecution related to vaccinestestifying on behalf of the complainants who pursue vaccines.

Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at the University of Georgetown who specializes in public health, said that he was not surprised by the conclusions of the new study, noting that the members of the committee are challenging themselves to vote if a conflict arises.

Gostin said he believed that Kennedy’s justification to replace the members of the AIPI was a “simple smoke screen for his real reason”, which was to replace scientists from vaccines renowned by anti-vaccine activists.

“Much, if not the members, the members of the APIP were closely associated with anti-vaccine advocacy groups, including that previously led by Kennedy,” he said.