Are ACIP Members Jumping a Sinking Ship?
government members stepping in as temporary voting members???
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is having some trouble filling seats.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which has in recent years been a 15-person panel, has eight vacancies — one of which dates back more than a year. The other seven members’ terms ended in July, though they were extended through the year because they had no replacements. There is no chairperson. Four of the seven remaining members are due to finish their terms at the end of June…
There’s a paywall, but I did find this story, which includes an interview with Louisiana State Health Officer Dr. Joe Kanter, who puzzles over the ACIP situation:
From the interview (starting around 3:50):
Dr. Kanter: The ACIP, the Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices, is a CDC body that makes formal recommendations for the nation on what vaccines are recommended… and anyone that’s taken their kid to the pediatrician’s office is in some sense familiar with their work, because the vaccine schedule that we all vaccinate our kids according to is a product of this ACIP committee. It is an incredibly important committee.
Usually it’s 15 people. I think 8 slots are open now, including the chair… and I really don’t know why. From what I understand, the CDC has forwarded, quite some time ago, their nominated individuals to the larger department the federal HHS, and HHS just hasn’t moved on it. And now we’re in an election year, vaccine skepticism is one of the topics that’s become a campaign issue… I’d really like to see this committee get fully staffed with a chairperson and get onto its work well ahead of the election and any potential transition government…
Newell Normand: Correct me if I’m wrong, the committee is also kind of a check on what manufacturers and their representations as it relates to the alignment with the most recent Covid variant and the vaccines that they want to bring to market, right?
Dr. Kanter: In a sense, absolutely. Look, I mean the vaccine manufacturers, the pharmaceutical companies, if they had their way, recommendations for their vaccines would be brought. They want the largest market possible. So they have a lot of lobbyists that try and expand the body of individuals that would be recommended to get a vaccine like you would expect any lobbyist in that position to do. That’s just the reality of it. It's the job of this committee, which is made up of experts – pediatricians, immunologists, researchers – to actually look at the data, look with a very critical eye at the studies that the vaccine manufacturers sponsored, compare that to studies that were truly financially independent, and to make the best decision on behalf of the American people…It’s a very important counterbalance to whatever information the vaccine manufacturers are putting in front of people…
Apparently, Kanter is not aware of the conflicts of interest that have plagued this and other regulatory organizations:
Back to the interview…
Newell: We’re kind of on a new frontier relative to mRNA as it applies to these immunizations. It would seem to me that this is a period of time where we want to make sure that this committee would be as robust as robust could be.
Kanter: Yeah. I mean Covid is like less than 1% of what this committee does. We talked a lot about the ACIP committee during Covid and a lot of people probably learned about it for the first time just because of the pandemic, but Covid’s actually a very small part of what they do. You know, you take a step back, we’re looking at declining childhood vaccination rates around the country, we just got over a measles outbreak in Philadelphia… And as you point out, the technology around vaccines is moving faster than ever. And the mRNA platform holds a lot of promise, but it deserves appropriate scrutiny. And this is the body to do that. So this is probably the worst time I could ever think of to have a half-staffed committee right now. It’s a very crucial time when you think about what’s ahead and what the challenges are around vaccines.
Some speculation from X:
What Now?
Apparently government officials are stepping in to “help”…
“When it meets this month, gov’t officials will serve as temporary voting members to achieve quorum.”
Yikes.
I much prefer this idea. How do we make this happen?
This is really worrisome! Are these people engaging in wrongdoing without any way to stop them? It appears that way.
- Luc