Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine advisory panel will spend days discussing and voting on an ingredient we barely use anymore.
Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has recently overhauled the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, which is responsible for evaluating the safety, efficacy and clinical need of vaccines and then presenting its findings to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He removed all 17 committee members earlier this month and replaced them with several people who have been critical of vaccines. Kennedy had said his picks were “committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense.”
The new committee members are now looking at a preservative called thimerosal, which is barely used in vaccines anymore.
Thimerosal was introduced in the 1930s to prevent bacterial contamination in vaccines. The preservative began getting phased out of vaccines in the early 2000s.
CNN reported that, at the time, there were concerns about whether the mercury-based preservative could cause neurotoxicity when used in childhood vaccines. Some critics suggested a link between thimerosal and autism.
Kennedy was among those critics who published a book in 2014 about thimerosal, in which he rejected the findings of a 2004 Institute of Medicine report which concluded there was no “causal relationship” between thimerosal and autism, according to CNN.
He called for the “immediate removal of mercury – a known neurotoxin – from vaccines,” in his book.
The CDC said the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation to remove thimerosal from childhood vaccines was a “precautionary measure” and that the agency found “no evidence of harm.”
The CDC also said thimerosal is safe and that there is no link between the preservative and autism.
This flu season, 94 percent of flu shots did not contain thimerosal, per the CDC.
CNN reported the vaccine advisory committee was to meet on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss thimerosal. They will vote on whether to ban the preservative on Thursday, per ABC News.
Dr. Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians and a liaison member to the vaccine advisory committee, told ABC News, “It’s just a mystery to me why they’re even having this on the agenda.”
