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The Trump administration has cancelled a meeting of scientific experts called to discuss next winter’s flu shots in a move that has underscored fears of emerging anti-vaccine polices under the new health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which Kennedy oversees, notified members of its vaccines and related biological products advisory committee on Thursday that the next meeting scheduled for 13 March was cancelled without providing an explanation.
No new date was set for a meeting and scientists warned that the cancellation risked undermining the development of flu vaccines for next year.
The committee was due to discuss the development of appropriate vaccine for combatting expected prevalent influenza strains next year, using data provided by the World Health Organization, from which the US recently withdrew, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Kennedy has been critical of the CDC.
Committee members were given no advance notice that the meeting, which is held in late February or late March every year, was to be called off. “We’re all left trying to understand what is going on. Why was this meeting cancelled? It’s an important meeting. What’s the plan for flu vaccines this year,” Paul Offit, a committee member and director of the vaccine education centre at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told CBS.
The cancellation followed the postponement of another CDC advisers panel on immunisation practices last week.
Scientists say it takes about six months to produce vaccines that fit the anticipated flu strains. Flu vaccines are generally rolled out in September. Some 86 children and 19,000 adults have died from flu in the US this year, according to CDC figures, while 430,000 people have been hospitalized.
Kennedy, who has drawn widespread criticism for his vaccine-sceptic views, has complained of “regulatory capture”, alleging that panels regulating drugs and vaccines are captive to the pharmaceutical industry. He has pledged to root out what he sees as conflicts of interests on government advisory panels. He has singled out Offit, who invented a rotavirus vaccine that was later developed by the pharmaceutical company Merck and subsequently given FDA approval. Offit, in turn, has been critical of Kennedy, calling him a “science denialist” who makes up “his own truths”.
Kennedy denied being anti-vaccine at his recent Senate confirmation hearing and argued that his goal was to get more data.
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