HHS revives child vaccine safety panel sought by anti-vaccine activists

The Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday it is reviving a long-defunct task force aimed at improving the safety of childhood vaccines, fulfilling a demand of anti-vaccine activists.

The resurrection of the panel appears to be the first concrete step to achieve HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s longtime goal of upending the current childhood immunization schedule, which recommends which shots children receive and when.

The task force will make recommendations focused on developing and refining childhood vaccines that result in “fewer and less serious adverse reactions,” improving the reporting of adverse reactions and supporting research on vaccine safety, according to HHS. The first report will be sent to Congress within two years.

“By reinstating this Task Force, we are reaffirming our commitment to rigorous science, continuous improvement, and the trust of American families,” Jay Bhattacharya, the head of the National Institutes of Health, who will lead the task force, said in a statement. “NIH is proud to lead this effort to advance vaccine safety and support innovation that protects children without compromise.”

Some vaccine and medical experts said they are concerned the task force will undermine trust in vaccines, even if the goal of improving vaccine safety is laudable.

“What I am concerned about is making sure that we don’t overemphasize very small risks and underestimate the real risk of infectious diseases and cancers that these vaccines help prevent,” said Anne Zink, Alaska’s former chief medical officer.

Congress mandated the creation of the task force in 1986 as part of legislation to address childhood vaccine safety. The Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines was disbanded in 1998 and released a report that year recommending an expansion of research on vaccine safety and surveillance of injuries. Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, funded a lawsuit filed against Kennedy in May, seeking to compel him to reconvene the task force and submit reports to Congress every two years.

Del Bigtree, head of the anti-vaccine organization Informed Consent Action Network, said the return of the task force has excited people in Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.

“It’s a great day for people who want safe vaccines and know that there are people that care in the government now finally looking at it,” said Bigtree, the former communications director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

Walter Orenstein, a former member of the task force, said reviving the panel isn’t necessarily harmful and improvements can still be made to the country’s “really good vaccine safety monitoring system.” But the revamped task force could be a problem if HHS “constitutes it with people who are extremely biased, who don’t have accepted scientific credentials, who have conflicts of interest,” said Orenstein, who led the U.S. immunization program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1988 to 2004.

For now, the task force’s membership is limited to officials from federal health agencies, including the NIH, CDC, and Food and Drug Administration, according to HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon.

The childhood immunization schedule includes more than a dozen routine immunizations, many required by states to attend public school, including measles, mumps and rubella; polio; and pertussis. Studies have found the cumulative effects of the childhood immunization schedule to be safe.

A White House “Make America Healthy Again” commission chaired by Kennedy released a report in May that raised doubts about the immunization schedule, contending “there has been limited scientific inquiry into the links between vaccines and chronic disease.”

In June, Kennedy ousted all members of a federal committee of independent vaccine advisers and replaced them with his own appointees, most of whom have criticized coronavirus vaccine policies. Weeks later, that committee announced plans to review the cumulative health effects of the entire childhood vaccination schedule.

The new task force is “another forum Kennedy can populate with vaccine deniers, apparently, to produce reports that fit his biases,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California College of the Law at San Francisco, whose research focuses on vaccine law and policy.

Vaccines undergo rigorous safety testing before they are licensed by the FDA and are continuously monitored for safety once they are in use.

“I am concerned that bringing this committee back implies to the public that we have not been looking at vaccine safety,” said David Higgins, a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “The reality is, we evaluate the safety of vaccines more than any other medication, medical intervention, or supplements available.”

While Kennedy said he supported the childhood immunization schedule during his Senate confirmation hearings, he has previously blasted the schedule as “overburdened” with too many shots and threatening to shorten lives and cause chronic disease.

The May lawsuit aiming to re-establish the task force made similar claims that the schedule included too many vaccines and that the increase in vaccine dosage correlates with the rise of autism. Overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates no link between immunization and autism.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician who chairs the Senate’s health committee, publicly grappled with whether to support Kennedy’s nomination. He ultimately voted in favor of Kennedy after securing commitments that Kennedy would protect federal vaccine oversight. That included a pledge that whoever chairs the health committee would get to choose a representative on any board or commission formed to review vaccine safety.

A spokesperson for Cassidy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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• Caitlin Gilbert and Lauren Weber contributed.