On Thursday, the key committee of centers for the control and prevention of diseases voted to change his recommendation about the vaccine in early childhood, after discussing that sometimes skeptics against the vaccine against the CDC's own data.
After 8-3 votes with one abstinence, the CDC Consultative Committee on Immunization Practice will no longer recommend that children under the age of 4 years receive a vaccine with one shot for mumps, measles, rubella and varicens (better known as a chicken).
Instead, the CDC will recommend that children aged 12 to 15 months receive two separate pictures at the same time: one for mumps, measles and rubella, or MMR, and one for Varicella.
On Friday morning, the group unanimously decided to apply the expected vote on changes in the vaccination schedule against hepatitis B, after the skeptics of the vaccines installed in the committee
ACIP member Vicki Pesvort, nurse, which is the director of research at the National Information Center of the vaccine, organization Criticized for a long time To assist inaccurate information about vaccines, she challenged the presentation of the previous day of CDC employees regarding the security of the vaccine.
She criticized the CDC for thinking about side effects, such as fever, drowsiness and fuss.
“These are not trivial reactions,” said Pensworth. “I personally think that we should be mistaken in relation to caution and accept a more prudent vaccination policy.”
The group should vote later on Friday for changes to the Covid-19 vaccine.
MMRV voting is a relatively small change in the current immunization practice. But the doctors said that the lack of experience and skepticism of the vaccine, demonstrated during most of the discussion, will only weaken public confidence in science and the leadership of public health.
“I think that the main goal of this meeting has already occurred, and this was to sow distrust and instill fear among parents and families,” said Dr. Sean O'Liri, chairman of the US Academy of Pediatrics, during the press conference, the chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“What we saw at the meeting today was actually no good efforts to create an immunization policy in the interests of the Americans. Honestly, an alarming attempt to undermine one of the most successful public health systems in the world, ”O'liri said. “This idea that our current vaccine policy is violated or needs to be a radical revision is simply false.”
The provision of vaccines against MMR and chickenpox in the same shot was associated with a higher relative risk of short seizures from high fever during the vaccination for children up to 4 – 8 out of 10,000 children, as a rule, have febrile convulsions after receiving a combined shot compared to 4 out of 10,000, which receive separate MMR images and the kitchen at the same time.
According to Dr. Cody Meissner, a former pediatric infectious disease, acting as in the case of anxiety, as for family members.
According to Meisner, the problem with the separation of vaccines into several shots is that it usually leads to lower compliance with vaccines. And the risk of non -vaccination is real.
“We look at the risk of feverish seizures … compared with a fall below 95% of the flock of immunity of the herd, and the consequences of this are destructive when pregnant women lose their children, dying newborn and congenital borders,” said Dr. Joseph Hibblen, psychiatrist and other current-member of the ACCIP.
Meisner, Hibbln and Hilary Blackburn were the only three members who voted against changes.
The first day of the meeting ended with voting regarding the continuation of the lighting of the MMRV shot under CDC Vaccines program for childrenThe state financed by the state, which provides immunization by almost half of the country's children. Currently, the program covers only the pictures recommended by ACIP.
As the chairman Martin Kulldorf called, several members of the committee complained that they did not understand this proposal, as it was written. Three refrained from voting.
When the meeting broke up, the members could be heard, trying to clarify with each other, for which they had just voted. The group revised the vote on Friday and decided to coordinate the VFC lighting with their recommendation. The combined shot will no longer be covered in a public program.
The committee spent most of his first day, discussing whether it is worth postponing the first dose of the vaccine against hepatitis B, which is usually given at birth until the child becomes 1 month. They will vote at the suggestion on Friday.
The medical reason for changing the hepatitis B schedule was less clear.
“What is the problem that we solve with the discussion of hepatitis B? As far as I know, there was no number of adverse results, ”said Dr. Amy Midlman, a pediatrician, one of several people who raised a point during the discussion and the period of public commentary.
Member of the Committee, Dr. Robert Malone, replied that a change in the recommendation for children should be vaccinated for hepatitis B, will improve the confidence of the Americans to exchange public health messages.
“A significant population of the United States has significant concern about the vaccine policy and about vaccination mandates, [particularly] The direct position of this vaccine during birth, ”said Malone. The problem, according to him, “is not security, but trust.”
Hepatitis B is often asymptomatic, and half of the infected people does not know that they have it, according to CDC. Up to 85% of children born from infected mothers are infected themselves, and the risk of long -term dangers from this disease is higher than the infection is acquired before.
Infants infected with hepatitis B virus in the first year of life have 90% probability of developing a chronic disease, and 25% of those who do this will die from This is, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Since the vaccine was introduced in 1991, infections with hepatitis B baby Falled by 95% in the USA Almost 14,000 children Hepatitis B infections from 1990 to 2002 were acquired, according to CDC; Today new annual infections in children Close to zeroField
A two-day meeting of this week or second when the committee met with Kennedy fired all 17 previous ACIP members In June, that he described Like “pure scanes [that] It is necessary to restore public confidence in the science of vaccines. ”
The next day, he called seven new members to the committee and added the last five at the beginning of this week. New members include doctors with appropriate experience in the field of pediatrics, immunology and public health, as well as several people who were frank skeptics against the vaccine or were criticized for the spread of medical misinformation.
They include PEBSWRTH whose organization A long story the exchange of inaccurate and misleading information about vaccines and Malone, a vaccinologist who participated in the early studies of the MRNU, but has made a series since then false and discredited allegations About the flu and pictures of Covid-19.
In some cases, the new ACIP members also lack some kind of medical health care. For example, Retsef Levi is a professor of operations in MIT without a biomedical or clinical degree, which, nevertheless, was a frank critic of vaccines.
“The appointment of members of anti-Waccine groups to the Committees on Policy in CDC and FDA raises them from fringe to the mainstream. They are not only at the table that it would be bad enough Studied Information center of the vaccine role With the spread of vaccine disinformation. “This is the worst scenario.”
Although ACIP holds three public meetings a year, it usually works all year round, said Dr. Paul OffitDirector of the Vaccine Educational Center in the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the former ACIP member in the early 2000s.
According to the Officer, the new recommendations on the vaccine schedule are usually written before ACIP meetings in consultation with expert working groups advised by the members of the Committee all year round. But in August to medical groups, including American medical Assen., The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Society of Infectious Diseases. No longer invited Review scientific evidence and advise the committee before the meeting.
In the same month, Kennedy was fired by the director of CDC, Susan Zhusen, who was appointed President Trump and confirmed by the Senate. On Wednesday, monyr He told the Senate Committee That Kennedy fired her partly because she refused to sign the changes that he planned to make vaccines to the schedule this month, not seeing scientific evidence for them.
During the hearing, she did not indicate what these changes would be.
The ACIP recommendations become official only after the director of the CDC approves them. With a monyrus, this responsibility is now going on in relation to the deputy secretary in the field of health and social services Jim O'nil, who acts as the acting director of the CDC.
He asked Journalists Wednesday, whether the US public should trust any changes that ACIP recommends to the childhood immunization schedule, Senator Bill Cassidi (R -la.) Was stupid: “No”.
Cassidy of the chair Senate Committee This is controlled by the Ministry of Health and Social Services and make a decisive voice For Kennedy's nomination. Before running for a position, Cassidy, a doctor and access specialist, created state private partnership Righty HeVacinations Patit B. For 36,000 children, Louisiana.
He voted after Kennedy promptly promised Cassidy that he would retain the CDC immunization schedule.
Since public confidence in the integrity of the CDC leading principles fluctuates, alternative sources of information intensified. Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced that he will publish his own vaccination schedule, based on actual data, which differs from CDC to the flu-grip-grip-signs. And on Wednesday Governor Gavin News Signed the law California, the authority to establish its own immunization schedule, on the same day the state collaborated with Oregon and Washington Release joint recommendations For Covid-19 flu and RSV vaccines.
On Tuesday, the Association, representing many US health insurers, announced that its members will continue to cover all the vaccines recommended by the previous ACIP, regardless of what happened at a meeting on Thursday – until the end of 2026.
“While healthcare plans continue to work in an environment formed by federal laws and state laws, as well as in software and customer requirements, the approach to coating the immunization based on the actual data will remain agreed,” America's medical insurance plans He said in a statementThe group includes the major insurers Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, Cigna and several Blue Cross and Blue Shield groups. Unitedhealthcare, the country's largest insurer, is not a member.
It is unclear what will be covered after 2026.
