Washington Post Reports on ‘Plan to Vaccinate All Americans, Despite RFK Jr.’

Vaccine makers, pharmacists and professional medical societies opposed to recent changes in vaccine policy are banding together to create their own system for recommending and purchasing vaccines.

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

Vaccine makers, pharmacists, professional medical societies and others opposed to recent changes in vaccine policy are banding together to create their own system for recommending and purchasing vaccines in a move designed to bypass government health agencies’ recommendations, The Washington Post reported.

Members of the new group, all of whom profit from the vaccine industry, along with some state health officials and a “new advocacy group,” are strategizing ways to preserve the vaccine status quo under U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The anonymous group, which hopes to create “a nongovernmental vaccine system” for vaccine recommendations and purchasing, according to the Post, is engaged in a series of discussions.

Topics include ordering vaccines directly from manufacturers and prioritizing recommendations from medical associations rather than from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which makes vaccine recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The move comes as Kennedy dismissed all of ACIP’s sitting committee members earlier this month due to concerns over conflicts of interest in the committee. He filled eight of the 17 committee seats a few days later.

Commenting on industry insiders’ efforts to create a new commission, research scientist James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., told The Defender:

“They want to create and lend authority to a corporation-backed, corporation-friendly committee to replace the one that was just disbanded. These moves would represent replacing the facade of regulating vaccines by a government agency with overt industry self-governance and regulation.”

The Post called the move by the unspecified group of actors “extraordinary,” but conceded that it “faces major challenges.”

For example, insurance companies typically don’t cover shots that aren’t recommended by ACIP. An ACIP recommendation is also the basis on which the federal Vaccines for Children Program pays for vaccines for minors whose families can’t afford them. That program covers vaccine costs for about half of U.S. children.

Also, in many states, pharmacists’ ability to prescribe or administer vaccines is tied to the adult and child immunization schedules recommended by ACIP. And state laws for school vaccine requirements, as well as requirements for healthcare workers, are typically tied to ACIP recommendations.

Another problem, according to the Post, is that “potential competing recommendations could sow confusion among doctors as well as patients if it becomes unclear which recommendations to follow.”

Lyons-Weiler said physicians should be wary of any recommendations coming from the nongovernmental group, especially because participating in federal programs while failing to comply with ACIP regulations could violate statutes.

“The dismissed ACIP committee members can form whatever opinion group they want, but physicians follow their recommendations over the rules and regulations of the HHS at their own peril,” he said.

In a recent article, Lyons-Weiler said calls to ignore recommendations from the new ACIP committee are largely circulated by the former ACIP members who were dismissed because of their ties to Big Pharma.

Former Merck consultant and dismissed ACIP member Dr. Helen Chu was quoted in a recent op-ed in MedPage Today as calling on physicians to “turn away” from ACIP’s vaccine recommendations. She received thousands of dollars from Merck in the year before her ACIP appointment.

Merck is the manufacturer of multiple major childhood vaccines, including the Gardasil HPV vaccine; the MMRII for measles, mumps and rubella; a chicken pox vaccine and several others.

“Undermining ACIP in favor of non-statutory organizations may represent a breach of federal compliance by physicians and healthcare institutions receiving federal funds,” Lyons-Weiler wrote. Chu should be well aware of that fact, he added.

Initiative pushes Pharma-linked medical associations to make recommendations

According to the Post, the group’s discussions are being facilitated by the “Vaccine Integrity Project,” a new initiative at the University of Minnesota, which includes “vaccine manufacturers, health insurers and medical associations.” The group is funded by iAlumbra, a nonprofit founded by Walmart heiress and billionaire philanthropist Christy Walton, known for her anti-Trump advocacy.

Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and Dr. Harvey Fineberg, former president of the Institute of Medicine and current president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, co-chair an eight-member steering committee leading the initiative.

In an op-ed published in STAT News, Hamburg and Fineberg said the project will use “the best available evidence” to “safeguard vaccine policy, information and utilization.”

When the group was launched, Michael Osterholm, Ph.D., a member of the COVID-19 Advisory Board under the Biden administration, said it was not intended to serve as a shadow or parallel version of the ACIP.

However, according to today’s report from the Post, that intention appears to have changed.

Dr. Anne Zink, member of the Vaccine Integrity Project, told the Post that having each state set its own recommendations is “not ideal” and that instead, the major medical associations should make recommendations.

Medical associations participating in the Vaccine Integrity Project talks include the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians, the American Pharmacists Association, and the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, the Post reported.

In her op-ed, Chu also named the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) as a key group advising alternative vaccination policy.

Lyons-Weiler noted that AAP has received millions of dollars in grants from Merck, Sanofi and Pfizer, and that ACOG has endorsed products from its sponsors without conducting any independent review.

ACOG also took $11 million from the CDC to push the COVID-19 vaccines on pregnant women.

HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the agency and CDC “remain committed to ensuring that vaccine guidance is rigorous, independent, and truly in service to the health of the American people — not corporate interests.”

The Post reported that Nixon also called one of the new coalition’s leading organizations “a self-appointed echo chamber masquerading as oversight.”

Under Kennedy, the CDC has changed its guidance on COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women from recommended to “no guidance.”

One member of the Vaccine Integrity Project, Asa Hutchinson, former Republican governor of Arkansas, noted that beyond changes to COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, no other changes have been made to vaccine policy since Kennedy took office.

In the upcoming meeting this week, ACIP is set to vote on RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) immunization recommendations for pregnant mothers, babies and young children.

The committee will also vote on the mercury-containing flu vaccine, and will discuss but not vote on other vaccines, including COVID-19, chikungunya, anthrax and MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella, varicella).

Related articles in The Defender

• Pharma-Friendly Public Health Officials Launch New Project to ‘Shore Up U.S. Vaccination Policy’

• RFK Jr. Taps 8 New ACIP Members, Offit Concedes Most ‘Seem Reasonable’

• RFK Jr.’s ‘Clean Sweep’ of CDC Vaccine Advisers Draws Mix of High Praise, Harsh Criticism

• After Years of Silence, New CDC Vaccine Panel to Vote on Mercury in Flu Shots