An influential committee that shapes U.S. vaccine policy – a flashpoint under the leadership of Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – has recommended that adults and children no longer receive flu vaccines containing trace amounts of a preservative that’s rarely used anymore.
The discussion of thimerosal, a form of mercury that’s sometimes added to vaccines for sterilization, dominated much of Thursday’s public meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. The committee guides the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the vaccine schedule for children and adults.
The two-day meeting at CDC headquarters in Atlanta was unusually high-profile, given Kennedy’s recent decision to boot the entire committee of experts a few weeks ago and replace them with his own hand-picked roster, which included some members with a history of making inaccurate claims about the safety of vaccines.
While ACIP typically includes 17 voting members, Kennedy’s overhauled panel only included seven of them, following a last-minute decision by one of them to step down.
On Thursday, a majority of the panel voted to reaffirm the existing CDC recommendations that anyone over six months receive the annual flu shot. They also voted 5-2 in favor of a monoclonal antibody shot made by Merck that offers protection against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, for infants younger than 8 months.
But in three separate votes the committee voted to recommend children, pregnant women and all adults receive single-dose flu immunizations with vaccines that don’t have thimerosal.
Theories that the chemical could cause autism in children have long been disproven. Even so, manufacturers voluntarily removed it from childhood vaccines. While it’s used in some multi-dose vials in several products, there are no vaccines on the pediatric vaccine schedule that contain thimerosal.
The ACIP votes could effectively ban use of the preservative, despite a preponderance of evidence that it is safe.
Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth College, was the only ACIP member who voted against those recommendations.