Upending decades-old guidance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee voted to no longer issue a blanket recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine at birth. Throughout the meeting, many panelists made misleading claims about the vaccine.
The head of the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine division claimed in a leaked email that “at least 10 children” died from COVID-19 vaccination, using that to justify major vaccine regulatory changes. Experts, however, say too little information was provided to verify the claim.
The vaccine advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled to meet Dec. 4 and 5. On the agenda: the hepatitis B vaccine, the overall childhood vaccine schedule and specific vaccine ingredients. We’ll summarize what we’ve written about these topics and what the committee has said about them in recent meetings.
Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine advocate who is now Health and Human Services secretary, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its website to say that its previous statement that “vaccines do not cause autism” is “not an evidence-based claim.” But it’s the revised website that misleads about vaccines.
Amid confusion over this year’s updated COVID-19 vaccines, we explain what’s different this year and who experts say should get vaccinated.
A substantial body of evidence supports the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy, contrary to the suggestions of some members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently reconstituted the committee.
On Sept. 18, the vaccine advisory committee for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to change its recommendation on the combined vaccine for chickenpox and measles, mumps and rubella, called the MMRV vaccine. We spoke to experts about claims made at the meeting as well as the implications of the vote.
An hourlong press conference about autism was filled with false and misleading claims about the condition and vaccines from President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., many of which we have written about before.
News reports have indicated Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may point to Tylenol and folate deficiency in his promised announcement on the causes of autism. But neither Tylenol nor folate deficiency has been shown to cause autism. Some evidence has pointed away from Tylenol as a risk factor.
A large Danish study recently provided reassurance that aluminum-containing vaccines are not associated with increased rates of chronic health conditions in children, including autism. But Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. misrepresented the study’s findings, claiming that the paper’s supplementary data “shows calamitous evidence of harm.”