American Academy of Pediatrics: RFK Vax Moves "Not Credible" - Will Provide Its Own Advice to Patients

In an extraordinary rebuke to Trump's HHS Secretary, the nation's leading association of childhood doctors refuses to countenance his anti-vax quackery

(Editor’s note: Founded in 1930, the American Academy of Pediatrics is the leading professional association in the U.S. dedicated to the health and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. Amid efforts to delegitimize and distort the science and protocols of childhood immunization practices by anti-vaccine conspiracist Robert F.. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, the organization last week sharply criticized the moves, terming government vaccine oversight “no longer a credible process.” The AAP will continue “to publish its own evidence-based recommendations and schedules,” the group said in an article in its newsletter, excerpted here. /jr).

AAP will continue to publish its own vaccine recommendations after CDC advisers sow mistrust

By Melissa Jenco Senior News Editor, AAP News

On June 25, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) new vaccine advisers announced they will be conducting a review of the child and adolescent vaccine schedules, a move the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) criticized as aiming to sow distrust in immunizations.

The AAP said it will continue to publish its own evidence-based recommendations and schedules. The AAP has provided vaccine recommendations for its entire 95-year history.

“What we heard in this meeting was really a false narrative that the current vaccine policies are flawed and that they need fixing,” Sean T. O’Leary, M.D., M.P.H., FAAP, chair of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases, said in a press conference. “That's completely false. These policies have saved millions of lives, trillions of dollars.”

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met for the first time since Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 voting members and replaced them with eight new ones, one of whom reportedly stepped down before the meeting. Several of the new members have a history of spreading vaccine misinformation.

Dr. O’Leary said AAP liaisons to the advisory committee did not participate in the meeting “because we view it as illegitimate.”

As the meeting opened, committee chair Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., a former Harvard University professor of medicine fired for refusing a COVID vaccine, announced a new working group to “evaluate the cumulative effect of the recommended vaccine schedule.”

Dr. O’Leary said that reviewing the schedule “has been an anti-vaccine trope for many, many years, and it sounds good at first glance, but the fact is, these vaccines are essentially always being reviewed in real time through a number of different mechanisms, safety surveillance mechanisms, as well as disease surveillance mechanisms.”

Politicizing children’s health. Another new ACIP work group will look at vaccines that have not been studied for more than seven years. Dr. Kulldorff specifically brought up the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine, a move Dr. O’Leary called “deeply concerning.”

“The hepatitis B birth dose is one of the cornerstones of our hepatitis B prevention policy here in the U.S., and it has been highly successful in reducing the rate of perinatally acquired hepatitis B,” Dr. O’Leary said.

A child infected at birth has a 90 percent chance of developing chronic hepatitis B, according to an AAP Fact Checked article published on June 25. Without treatment, about one-quarter of those children with chronic infection will die of the disease.

In a video released the same day, AAP President Susan J. Kressly, M.D., FAAP, said creation of federal immunization policy is “no longer a credible process.”

“We won’t lend our name or our expertise to a system that is being politicized at the expense of children’s health,” she said. “But we’re not stepping back, we’re stepping up. The AAP will continue to publish our own immunization schedule just as we always have, developed by experts, guided by science, trusted by pediatricians and families across the country.”

The Covid vaccine. The ACIP meeting also included an in-depth review of data on COVID-19 vaccines, although no votes were taken. Kennedy already directed the CDC to stop routinely recommending COVID-19 vaccination for healthy children and people who are pregnant. Children could get vaccinated following a conversation with their doctor.

Despite Kennedy’s attempts to downplay the need for vaccination, CDC staff highlighted the dangers of COVID-19 to young children. Rates of COVID-19 hospitalization among infants under 6 months are comparable to rates for adults ages 65-74 years.

The only way to protect these children is through maternal vaccination, CDC staff said. Hospitalization rates for children ages 6-23 months are nearly equal to people ages 50-64 years. Among children under 2 years admitted to an intensive care unit for COVID-related illness, 53 percent did not have underlying medical conditions.

ACIP members peppered CDC staff with questions about the data. Similar to the announcement about immunization schedules, Dr. O’Leary said their discussion was “designed to sow mistrust in the data.” The group is expected to discuss COVID-19 vaccines again at a future meeting.

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