An advisory committee for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pledged to reassess childhood vaccine schedules.
“The number of vaccines that our children and adolescents receive today exceed what children in most other developed nations receive and what most of us in this room received when we were children,” the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)’s co-chair, Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., said during a meeting. “In addition to studying and evaluating individual vaccines, it is important to evaluate the cumulative effect of the recommended vaccine schedule,” he explained. “This includes interaction effects between different vaccines, the total number of vaccines, cumulative amount of vaccine ingredients, and relative timing of different vaccines.”
The advisory board later urged the CDC to stop recommending flu vaccines containing a mercury-based preservative, voting 5-1 to recommend against inoculations containing the ingredient, ABC News reported.
The preservative, called thimerosal, was recently the subject of a report where the CDC argued that the ingredient is not linked to autism. “Since 2001, all childhood vaccines licensed and recommended in the United States have been thimerosal-free, with the exception of some multi-dose formulations of influenza vaccines,” the report said, adding that several vaccines in the country have “never” contained the preservative, including inoculations for MMR, varicella, inactivated polio, pneumococcal conjugate.
A presentation shown to the advisory committee and created by Lyn Redwood, the former president of the organization Children’s Health Defense, detailed previous health statements suggesting that thimerosal may contribute to health risks. “Because any potential risk is of concern, the Public Health Service (PHS), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and vaccine manufacturers agree that thimerosal-containing vaccines should be removed as soon as possible,” a 1999 statement listed in the presentation read.
Similarly, an FDA rule published in the Federal Register in 1998 said that thimerosal in over-the-counter products is not “generally recognized as safe or effective,” the presentation noted.
The reevaluation of vaccines and other health measures supports the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again Commission to combat chronic childhood diseases. The commission will “advise and assist the President on how best to exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease crisis” through a “Make our Children Healthy Again Assessment.” It will then develop a “Make our Children Healthy Again Strategy” to restructure the federal government’s response to childhood diseases.
