#vaccine-policy

#vaccine-policy

For several hours on Wednesday, a fired public health official went before Congress and aired Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s dirty laundry. Former Centers for Disease Control director Susan Monarez laid into the Health and Human Services secretary's management of vaccines, his disregarding of career experts, and his plans for remaking public health according to his own bullheaded vision. Monarez, who was fired as CDC director only 29 days after her confirmation to the post, also gave her account of why she was fired.

Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who is a senior fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance (formerly Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance), which promotes misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and touts unproven and dubious COVID-19 treatments. Those include the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, the de-worming drug ivermectin, and various concoctions of vitamins and other drugs. Milhoan has stated that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines should be removed from the market, telling KFF in March: "We should stop it and test it more before we move forward."

"The new ACIP members bring a wealth of real-world public health experience to the job of making immunization recommendations," said Jim O'Neill, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and Acting Director of the CDC in a media statement. "We are grateful for their service in helping restore the public confidence in vaccines that was lost during the Biden era."

Four unnamed sources close to the situation told the Post that Trump administration health officials appear to be using information from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to make the claim that COVID-19 vaccines have killed children. VAERS is a system in which anyone can report anything they think is an adverse event related to a vaccination.

Jeanne Marrazzo, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Kathleen Neuzil, former director of the NIH's Fogarty International Center and former associate director for international research, filed complaints Thursday with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, seeking reinstatement. They allege they faced retaliation for whistleblowing and other protected activity. Marrazzo "objected to the Administration's hostility towards vaccines and its abrupt cancellation of grants and clinical trials for political reasons," according to her complaint.

I think the American Academy of Pediatrics is gravely conflicted. They get their biggest contributors are the four largest vaccine makers. They run a journal, Pediatrix, which they make a lot of money on, that is completely dependent on pharmaceutical companies. So I don't think I wouldn't put a big stake in what they say that benefits pharmaceutical interests. Senator, I didn't politicize it, but I de-politicize it, Kennedy argued.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert. F. Kennedy, Jr. will face intense questioning before the Senate Finance Committee Thursday morning. His appearance comes nearly one week after he forced the ouster of Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, after the two clashed over vaccine policy. Several top officials at the CDC also resigned following her firing, leaving the nation's most powerful public health agency in crisis.

A West Coast versus Southeast vaccine divide took shape on Wednesday as Pacific Coast states formed a compact to bulwark their vaccine recommendationswhile Florida moved to drop school shot requirements entirely. The moves come amid concern about changing vaccine recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ahead of flu season because influenza viruses often spread severely in schools. Last week the White House last week fired the CDC's newly installed director, Susan Monarez, prompting the resignation of other senior agency staff.

Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chicken pox, polio and hepatitis said Joseph Ladapo, the state's surgeon general, on Wednesday in a speech during which he likened vaccine mandates to slavery. Ladapo, hand-picked for the role by Ron DeSantis, Florida's Republican governor, is a long-time skeptic of the benefit of vaccines, and has previously been accused of peddling scientific nonsense by public health advocates.

The western states envision issuing guidelines they said would be driven by evidence-based recommendations from national medical organizations. The effort also includes releasing shared principles on how to build public trust in vaccines, they said. The move comes after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. effectively restricted COVID-19 vaccines to high-risk groups, limiting access for healthy children or healthy pregnant women.

Daskalakis posted his blistering resignation letter on X and Instagram on Wednesday evening. In it, he said he would step down as director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases on Thursday, citing irreconcilable ethical and scientific concerns. "I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public's health," Daskalakis wrote.

Perhaps most damningly, the younger Kennedy has elected to " wind down" the development of mRNA vaccines and cancel $500 million in research contracts because of his vaccine skepticism, particularly as it relates to COVID-19 vaccines. Along with its incredible efficacy at staving off further death from the coronavirus pandemic, researchers working with mRNA believe they may be close to achieving a monumental milestone: creating a universal cancer vaccine using the promising biotechnology.