Plans include reviewing hepatitis B and measles vaccine recommendations.
The vaccine advisory committee remade by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to look at multiple other vaccines, after it voted to advise officials to stop recommending influenza shots that contain mercury.
Martin Kulldorff, the new chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), said on June 26 that one proposal is to tell the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to make clear that young children should not receive the measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) combination immunization.
Instead, the CDC would recommend that children under the age of 47 months receive two separate vaccines: the measles, mumps, rubella shot, and the varicella, or chickenpox, vaccine.
The change would reflect data that indicate the MMRV combination vaccine causes more febrile seizures, he said. The CDC said the same thing in a background paper on the subject dated June 25.
A vote on the matter could occur as early as the next meeting, which is expected to take place in August or September.
2 New Subcommittees
Kulldorff, an epidemiologist who was fired by Harvard Medical School for declining a COVID-19 vaccine, also announced two new work groups, or subcommittees.
One will examine the impact of vaccines on the childhood immunization schedules.
“It is important to evaluate the cumulative effect of the recommended vaccine schedule,” Kulldorff said. “This includes interaction effects between different vaccines, the total number of vaccines, cumulative amounts of vaccine ingredients, and the relative timing of different vaccines.”
Researchers with the CDC and other institutions said in a 2022 paper that exposure to aluminum in vaccines was associated with asthma, although they said that additional investigation was required to confirm a link.
The second subcommittee will examine vaccines that have not been reviewed in more than seven years, including the hepatitis B vaccine, the first dose of which the CDC recommends at birth for infants.
“Unless the mother is hepatitis B positive, an argument could be made to delay the vaccine for this infection, which is primarily spread by sexual activity and intravenous drug use,” Kulldorff said.
Kulldorff declined in an email to The Epoch Times to say whether he’d been directed by Kennedy to look at the measles vaccines, or to reveal any other proposals the committee plans to take up at its next meeting.
The Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency, did not respond to a request for comment, including on whether Kennedy directed the committee to vote on vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal.
Kennedy, earlier in June, removed all 17 members of the ACIP and replaced them with Kulldorff and others.
