News: The CDC vaccine committee is set to vote on thimerosal in influenza vaccines. Vote revives and elevates a longstanding anti-vaccine conspiracy theory.
Also: No Covid votes are scheduled at the June 25-27 meeting, leaving fall policies unclear.
Thanks for supporting Inside Medicine. And thanks to the CDC employees who brought this information to me, so we can get ahead of this and stand up for science.
The CDC’s newly installed panel of voting members for its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will vote on “Thimerosal containing influenza vaccine recommendations.” The eight-member panel (hand-picked by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after he sacked the seventeen incumbent experts with minimal explanation) includes individuals who have been paid experts in lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and spread lies about vaccine safety.
The agenda item was posted on the CDC’s website this morning.
The anti-vaccine movement has long tried to blame autism on vaccines containing thimerosal. The link has been debunked many times.
The vote will follow a presentation on thimerosal in vaccines and proposed recommendations regarding thimerosal-containing influenza. Who will be presenting is “TBD.”
Thimerosal has long been an obsession of the anti-vaccine movement. While the CDC’s website (as of today, at least) says, “a robust body of peer-reviewed scientific studies conducted in the U.S. and other countries support the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines,” most vaccines do not contain them.
Here’s a screenshot of the CDC’s website of “key points” on thimerosal, as of 11:30am ET, June 18, 2025. (It will be interesting to see how long this lasts.)
The notion of using ACIP time and dedicating votes to the topic of thimerosal will be seen as a major win for the anti-vaccine movement—especially if the committee votes to recommend removing the compound from vaccines.
To be clear, removing the compound will do nothing to improve vaccine safety, but it certainly will undermine confidence in other existing vaccines. While there are many alternatives for influenza vaccines that do not contain thimerosal, elevating this debunked myth to national policy lends credence to misinformation, and sets the stage for other actions that may undermine vaccine confidence in the United States.
The committee will also hear a presentation entitled “proposed recommendations regarding MMRV [measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella] in children under 5.” No vote is scheduled around this, but it’s alarming nonetheless.
Lastly, no votes regarding Covid-19 vaccine policy are scheduled. The June ACIP meeting is the opportunity for the committee to make recommendations for the upcoming flu, Covid-19, and RSV season. The committee will vote on flu and RSV, the docket says, but so far it does not mention Covid-19 votes. In addition, RSV votes from the committee’s April meeting remain in limbo, as there remains no acting or permanent CDC Director, and Secretary Kennedy has allowed the yes votes regarding RSV vaccines to remain untouched. (He signed off on a narrow set of yes votes for Chikungunya vaccines from the same meeting.)
Two CDC employees who saw the docket reached out to Inside Medicine to express concern. One told me that, “Given the new panel members, many of whom have expressed concerning views in the past toward vaccines, I am particularly worried about the MMR vaccine topic.”
Former ACIP member Dr. Paul Offit reacted strongly when I informed him of the news, saying: “RFK Jr has now stocked ACIP with like-minded individuals. He’s now created something where we are going to simply have to decide, as a nation, how much pain are we willing to take before someone asks this guy to step down? His goal is simple: Make vaccines less available, less affordable, and more feared. When do we step forward? Who will step forward? I do not believe Senator William Cassidy will do this. It’s going to come down to the public—to parents.”
Dr. Offit is a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which usually picks influenza and Covid-19 strains for each season.
When asked if he is still a member of the committee, Dr. Offit laughed. “I guess I’ll have to read the newspaper and find out. We don’t have a scheduled meeting.”
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading and supporting science, facts, and the actual American way!
If you have information about any of the unfolding stories we are following, please email me or find me on Signal at InsideMedicine.88.
Hi Dr. Faust, thank you for all of your hard work! Is there any way that the old and reputable ACIP committee could form again so that we can have stability and safety back? I continue to write my Senators and Congress representatives. We have one (in Texas) who is brave enough to stand up but not our Senators. It feels very scary out here in the wild.
Senator Cassidy may be the greatest enabler in this story, or perhaps the most dangerously naïve. Either way, his actions helped open the door for RFK Jr.’s dismantling of evidence-based public health. Cassidy had the credentials and the platform to sound the alarm, but instead he lent credibility. If he truly believed RFK Jr.’s promises, that was a grave misjudgment. If he suspected they were false and voted anyway, then he was complicit. And now, when the consequences are clear, he remains silent. That silence speaks volumes.