ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Florida plans to become the first state to eliminate vaccine mandates, a longtime cornerstone of public health policy for keeping schoolchildren and adults safe from infectious diseases.
State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who announced the decision Wednesday, cast current requirements in schools and elsewhere as “immoral” intrusions on people’s rights that hamper parents’ ability to make health decisions for their children.
Comments closedWe have each had the honor and privilege of serving as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, either in a permanent or acting capacity, dating back to 1977. Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the C.D.C., the world’s pre-eminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations — every president from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump — alongside thousands of dedicated staff members who shared our commitment to saving lives and improving health.
What Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced.
Secretary Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven “treatments” while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to the resignations of top C.D.C. officials — adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.
Comments closedSusan Monarez, PhD, was fired late yesterday as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after clashing with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine policy.
The White House fired her after Monarez refused to resign, and the action kicked off a mass resignation wave of three of the CDC’s top officials: Debra Houry, MD, MPH, the CDC’s chief medical officer; Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH, head of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Daniel Jernigan, MD, MPH, head of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Earlier this week Jennifer Layden, MD, PhD, who led the Office of Public Health Data, also stepped down.
Comments closedThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory group has long had a work group in place to review the latest COVID-19 vaccine science, including weighing the risks and benefits, but a newly constituted group will launch a sweeping new review of the vaccines led by a member who has opposed COVID vaccines.
The Brownstone Institute on August 22 reported that Retsef Levi, PhD, one of seven members appointed to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) by US Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been appointed to lead the COVID vaccine review. On August 20, the CDC posted updated terms of reference for the COVID vaccine work group, which is lengthy. Some of the topics include impacts from repeated boosting and mapping policies in other countries.
Levi does not have a biomedical degree or clinical medicine experience. He has a doctorate in operations research and is a professor of operations management at MIT Sloan School of Management. On social media, Levi has called mRNA vaccines dangerous and said they should be removed from the market.
Comments closedSix leading medical organizations filed a lawsuit on Monday against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and the federal Department of Health and Human Services, charging that recent decisions limiting access to vaccines were unscientific and harmful to the public.
The suit, filed in federal court in western Massachusetts, seeks to restore Covid vaccines to the list of recommended immunizations for healthy children and pregnant women.
Mr. Kennedy has been on a “decades-long mission” to undermine vaccines and to portray them as more dangerous than the illnesses they are designed to prevent, said Richard H. Hughes IV, a lawyer who teaches vaccine law at George Washington University and is leading the effort.
“The secretary’s intentions are clear,” Mr. Hughes said: “He aims to destroy vaccines.”
Comments closedThe authors are the presidents of American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Let us introduce ourselves. We are the doctors you trust with your health and the health of your family across every stage of life, from the first checkups in infancy and childhood, to health care during pregnancy and adulthood, through management of chronic illness and aging. We are family physicians, pediatricians, internal medicine physicians, OB-GYNs, and infectious disease experts. Our commitment is not to politics, but to the absolute well-being of our patients and populations, and to providing them with best evidence-based health care.
We have an urgent, united message: Immunizations work, they are very effective and safe, and they save lives. Vaccines are among the most rigorously studied and effective tools in public health. Through widespread immunization, we have eradicated debilitating and fatal diseases that once caused serious illness, hospitalization, and death for millions of people.
But today, that legacy is at serious risk.
Comments closedVANCOUVER – British Columbia Premier David Eby says the growing spread of measles across Canada is “the sadly predictable outcome” of the “recklessness” of anti-vaccination politicians.
Eby says the disease is “no joke,” given the potentially serious impact on those infected, and it’s preventable with two vaccine shots.
He told a Vancouver news conference that the focus for provincial public health authorities now is to make sure that people who are not protected receive full vaccination.
Comments closedComments closedI think we are on the verge of losing vaccines for this country, from this country. And the reason is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will hold up a paper, in the next four or five months, that says it’s aluminum in vaccines that are causing a whole swath of problems, including autism. I think he is about to destroy vaccines in this country. I do.
On May 27, the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics published a patient information page about Long COVID in children. It states “Long COVID is common, affecting up to 10 per cent to 20 per cent of children with a history of COVID-19. With almost six million U.S. children potentially affected, this is higher than the number of children with asthma, the most common chronic health problem in children.”
Two weeks later on June 13, Danielle Smith’s UCP, famously fans of the anti-science Trump government, highlighted horrifically unscientific new FDA guidance suggesting healthy children and pregnant women are not recommended for COVID vaccination, while announcing a new policy where most Albertans have to pay for immunization.
Beyond the obvious inequities and loss of access that payment for prophylaxis presents, the UCP introduced a new four-phase rollout plan whereby those under age 65 without qualifying conditions cannot be vaccinated until the final phase. This means kids will likely head back to schools months before they are eligible for vaccination, ensuring they are exposed to the latest COVID strains before becoming eligible for updated vaccination. It also leaves the UCP an opening to not buy pediatric vaccines at all and claim “low demand.”
Comments closedTORONTO – As Dr. Theresa Tam prepares to leave her position next week, Canada’s top doctor says it’s more important than ever for Canada to stand up for science and combat disinformation.
She’s held the role of chief public health officer for eight years, but became a household name in the last five years as she led the country’s public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her term ends June 20 and she doesn’t have another job lined up, Tam said in a wide-ranging interview Friday that touched on her desire to be remembered for more than COVID, her passion for health equity and the musical side of her the public hasn’t seen.
Comments closedWASHINGTON — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday unveiled the names of the eight new members who will sit on the panel of experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy, and said they would review the current vaccine schedule, as well as evaluate new shots.
The new members include several well-known critics of vaccines.
“The slate includes highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians,” Kennedy wrote in a post on X.
The appointment comes just days after Kennedy dismissed every member of the committee, calling for a “clean slate” with new members. The committee is scheduled to hold a meeting later this month.
Comments closedHealth secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed another unorthodox view on vaccines, with the long-time vaccine critic declaring that vaccines for respiratory bugs that target a sole part of the pathogen they are meant to protect against do not work.
The claim was dismissed as erroneous by vaccine experts, who were befuddled by the secretary’s theory, espoused during an interview with CBS News.
Kennedy made the claim in explaining a controversial recent decision by political appointees at the Food and Drug Administration to delay granting a full license to Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine, which is still given under an emergency use authorization or EUA.
Comments closedLUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, state officials said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious — but preventable — respiratory disease since 2015.
The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night amid the widespread outbreak, Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties.
The Texas Department of State Health Services and Lubbock health officials confirmed the death to The Associated Press. The child wasn’t identified but was treated at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, though the facility noted the patient didn’t live in Lubbock County.
Comments closedA panel of scientific experts that advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccine policy — and that has been the target of criticism from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — learned on Wednesday that its upcoming meeting to discuss next year’s flu vaccines had been canceled.
The F.D.A. sent an email to members of the panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, on Monday afternoon informing them of the cancellation, according to a senior official familiar with the decision. There was no reason given. The panel was to meet on March 13.
Comments closedWASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Thursday confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Donald Trump’s health secretary, putting the prominent vaccine skeptic in control of $1.7 trillion in federal spending, vaccine recommendations and food safety as well as health insurance programs for roughly half the country.
Comments closedLast week the province of Alberta published a report on its pandemic-response calling for COVID vaccines to be restricted to “high-risk groups” and to stop “their use in healthy children and teenagers.” A mix of vaccine skeptics, fringe academics, and a Trump-appointee were behind it.
The report also recommends regulators, namely the province’s medical licensing body, be stripped of powers to discipline doctors who promote risky and ineffective off-label treatments.
The report has garnered nationwide criticism from the scientific and medical communities, with dozens of experts calling on the government to officially dismiss the report in an open letter. Dr. Joss Reimer, president of the Canadian Medical Association, said the report was “an unfortunate use of public dollars” that funneled CAD$2,000,000 into furthering misinformation. She said it will cause harm globally, as it will be referenced in jurisdictions outside of Canada.
Comments closedWASHINGTON (AP) — The man who hopes to be President Donald Trump’s health secretary repeatedly asked to see “data” or “science” showing vaccines are safe – but when an influential Republican senator showed him evidence, he dismissed it.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent two days this week insisting to senators that he’s not anti-vaccine. He said that he instead supports vaccinations and will follow the science in overseeing the $1.7 trillion Department of Health and Human Services, which, among other duties, oversees vaccine research, approval and recommendations.
But Kennedy repeatedly refused to acknowledge scientific consensus that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism and that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives, and he falsely asserted the government has no good vaccine safety monitoring. While appearing to ignore mainstream science, he cited flawed or tangential research to make his points, such as suggesting Black people may need different vaccines than whites.
Comments closedComments closedRFK Jr. has a well-documented history of spreading dangerous disinformation on vaccines and public health interventions, leaving vulnerable communities unprotected and placing millions of lives at risk. His appointment is a direct threat to the safety of our patients and the public at large.
