Will RFK’s new ACIP re-vote on vaccines the prior committee approved in April?

Update: I changed the headline here because I’m now hearing that ACIP may not be revoting on the April votes, as per the original headline on this post. I’m working on figuring it out.

We’ve also got an exclusive analysis from Grant Watch, through a new partnership between Inside Medicine and that exceptionally important project that has been rigorously tracking funding terminations.

And more. Let’s get to it. Thanks for supporting Inside Medicine.

The new agenda for the CDC’s upcoming vaccine meeting. Things that make you go “hmmm.”

Bill Cassidy, Robert Kennedy, and our shot-deprived kids.

In February, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Senator Bill Cassidy that he would not mess around with US vaccine policy, if confirmed as HHS Secretary. That assurance bamboozled Cassidy into becoming the key “yea” vote for his nomination.

From that moment forward, the fate of our national vaccine policy became inextricably linked to Senator Cassidy. The past month has not gone well for Cassidy, and thus our nation’s kids.

First, Secretary Kennedy pushed the CDC to alter its Covid-19 guidance, without the usual transparent and legal processes. Then, he vacated all seventeen members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), until then, a body of respected experts.

When this happened, Cassidy posted on Twitter/X rather sheepishly, I must say: “Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion. I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

Later in the week, Secretary Kennedy humiliated Senator Cassidy yet again, announcing eight new ACIP members. One of those members is Robert Malone, MD. A post on Twitter/X highlighted Malone’s views on Covid-19 vaccines. (In case it is not obvious, the notion that the vaccines have caused more harm than good is so wrong, not even Secretary Kennedy’s coterie of close HHS sycophants believe that.)

When a Washington Post reporter asked me what I thought of the new ACIP members, I said this: “This is the baseball equivalent of replacing the 1927 Yankees with the 1955 Senators. And that’s apropos because the US Senate owns this.” They didn’t print that. (They did print my feelings on the subject earlier in the week.)

Meanwhile, as expected, the CDC posted its notice regarding the upcoming ACIP meeting (June 25-27). Under “Matters To Be Considered,” something caught my eye:

“Recommendation votes are scheduled for COVID-19 vaccines, HPV vaccine, influenza vaccines, meningococcal vaccine, RSV vaccines for adults, and RSV vaccine for maternal and pediatric populations.”

Umm…

ACIP already voted in favor of the meningococcal vaccine (for some kids) and RSV vaccines (for some adults) back in April!!!¹ (Update: I spoke to a couple of experts who pointed out that the Federal Register makes it unclear exactly which exact votes will occur at the June 25-27 meeting. However, that by itself is highly problematic and unusual, if not unprecedented, as it means there will not have been a true public comment period, which is a legal requirement.)

The problem is that in the absence of a CDC Director, acting or permanent, the HHS Secretary is the only person who can adopt ACIP recommendations for adults. (The pediatric recommendations actually do not require further sign-off) And guess what? Secretary Kennedy has not stated whether he accepted the RSV recommendations (though he did sign off on a narrow recommendation on the Chikungunya vaccine for certain travelers and lab workers).

So, to see that RSV and meningococcus vaccines are possibly back on the ACIP docket for the June meeting looks to be an indicator that Secretary Kennedy has refused to accept the recommendations, and he wants Robert Malone and company to have a do-over. Given how unclear the Federal Register notice is, it’s simply impossible to know what is happening.

This is beyond troubling.

On what basis—upon whose expertise—did Secretary Kennedy make this call? Transparency is long gone. (And yet, RFK claims that he is trying to restore faith in public health.)

Then, yesterday, in a public relations stop on Fox News defending his newly installed ACIP members (and lambasting previous iterations of the committee), Secretary Kennedy attacked ACIP by literally lying about votes by a prior ACIP member, our friend Dr. Paul Offit.

Take a look at what Paul had to say about this on Twitter/X. Kennedy said that Dr. Offit voted to approve a rotavirus vaccine, falsely claiming that Offit was a patent holder on it.

If anyone cares, ACIP voted on that vaccine in 2006 and Paul had been off of the committee since 2003. Paul didn’t even have to recuse himself! If Secretary Kennedy has to lie to make his case, his case must not be very good.

Meanwhile, an email written to Senator Cassidy by Dr. Stanley Plotkin (one of the inventors of the rubella vaccine and an Inside Medicine subscriber, I’m honored to say) and posted online implies the Senator is having some second thoughts sufficient enough to ask for help. Take a look. I’m hoping to learn more soon.

Finally, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement that finally meets the moment. Until now, I have found many of their press releases to be weak, as if they believed they could reasonably work with Secretary Kennedy on the issues that count. For its part, the American Medical Association called for the Senate to investigate Secretary Kennedy’s decision to vacate ACIP. The AMA has also, until now, been unwilling to stand strongly against destructive actions by the Trump administration.

This kind of pushback is key and it’s our only hope.

Open tab:

• “Don’t Trust the Old FDA, Trust Us,” by Paul Offit.

Grant Watch update.

Grant Watch, the website tracking research funding terminations, has a new report out. We’ve got an exclusive analysis of the report provided to Inside Medicine by Grant Watch’s Emma Mairson. The analysis speaks to the care and rigor that the team at Grant Watch takes with their important work.

“The “total lost funding” has dropped since last week because we’ve refined our algorithm for calculating lost funding for supplements. Our method for identifying termination dates has also improved. The currently active grants number has increased compared to last week, but I do still think we’re seeing a steady drop over time as a result of terminations, Notice of Award delays, and delays with funding new grants.

This is more of a longer-term change but perhaps worth noting – when I started making these reports, the “Commonly used words - Terminated grants” was filled with words like “HIV,” “gender,” “sexual,” “minority,” “covid,” “disparities” – words you’d expect to see given the alleged focus on gender, COVID, and DEI. But the list of most common words for terminated grants is starting to look more like the list of active NIH grants (e.g. “cell”, “cancer”, “brain”, “aging”, “immune”). I would guess that this is driven by targeting institutions instead of topics. But I think it speaks to the fact that we’re losing critically important research of all kinds.

At present, there are 77,807 active NIH grants, up from 74,597 last week. Terminated grant funding now totals $3.18 billion (a downward revision from last week, as per above).

We’ll continue to track this, and I’m grateful for Grant Watch’s willingness to collaborate with Inside Medicine.

Open tabs:

• “U.S. college is first to decline federal science grants because of new DEI language. Williams College says NSF and NIH requirement related to discrimination “undermines” academic freedom,” Science. I am proud that my alma mater is taking this stand. Go Ephs!

• “Science Shattered,” ProPublica. A compelling collection on some of the research that the Trump administration has halted.

Trump administration actually follows a ruling, returns censored papers to the web. Yay.

Back in March, the ACLU allowed Inside Medicine to break some news on a lawsuit filed by two Harvard physicians. The lawsuit alleged that the government had violated the First Amendment and procedural federal law when it scrubbed a government-run patient safety research website of peer-reviewed articles that included so-called “gender ideology.”

In May, a judge ordered the papers to be restored. Last week, the ACLU informed me that the Trump administration in fact has now complied with that ruling, including restoring articles co-authored by the litigation plaintiffs. The restored papers can be found at the bottom of today’s Inside Medicine, thanks to ACLU lawyers.²

It’s very good news to see evidence that fighting back works. This should embolden us to stand up to the destruction of science and academic freedom.

Some coverage of my pediatric firearm mortality study.

After my colleagues and I published a national study of pediatric firearm mortality since the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 ruling McDonald v. Chicago, there has been a lot of conversation and coverage. I’m proud to say that of the 7,198 peer-reviewed manuscripts released around the time of our JAMA Pediatrics study, ours is ranked #1 in attention by Altmetrics, and is already in the 99th percentile among the 28 million papers ever tracked. That was our hope. We don’t know precisely which policies in which places are needed to save kids’ lives—but we know our research strongly suggests that firearm laws (in both directions) really matter. We want states to figure out what will work for them. Ignoring this won’t work.

Here’s a rundown of just some of the coverage of our study.

• The New York Times, including a quote from the NRA that was so useless, I actually have to take it as a compliment.

• An article in Scientific American added gorgeous new visuals to its story that make our data even easier to understand.

• The Boston Globe had great quotes.

• A particularly elegant roundup appeared in the AFP/Barron’s.

• Here’s an on-the-air interview I did with Rhitu Chatterjee for NPR’s All Things Considered with Mary Louise Kelly (#goals).

• Here’s a great CBS News segment, thanks to my friend and Inside Medicine regular Dr. Céline Gounder (used by permission).

• Senator Elizabeth Warren even posted about the study on Instagram and Threads! (Yes, I indeed told her about this study when I sat next to her on the plane in May. Her staff was very interested and helped get the word out, for which I am grateful.)

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading and supporting science, facts, and the actual American way!

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If you have information about any of the unfolding stories we are following, please email me or find me on Signal at InsideMedicine.88.

1. After this went live, a colleague pointed out to me that it’s possible that the committee won’t be revoting on the same questions as those considered in April. But the question is whether the votes will be similar ones or not. And if there is no revote on the April questions, the fate of those votes remains unclear, because unlike the Chikungunya vaccine vote, the April ACIP votes on RSV and meningococcus vaccines remain in limbo.

2. https://psnet.ahrq.gov/web-mm/multiple-missed-opportunities-suicide-risk-assessment-emergency-and-primary-care-settings (Erb, Shah, Schiff – litigation plaintiffs)

https://psnet.ahrq.gov/web-mm/endometriosis-common-and-commonly-missed-and-delayed-diagnosis (Mackenzie and Royce – litigation plaintiffs)

https://psnet.ahrq.gov/web-mm/its-sarah-not-stephen (Sarkar)

https://psnet.ahrq.gov/web-mm/great-pretender-syphilis-still-stumping-healthcare-providers (Glaser and Dray)

https://psnet.ahrq.gov/perspective/patient-safety-concerns-and-lgbtq-population (Wesley, Van, Mossburg)

https://psnet.ahrq.gov/perspective/conversation-connor-wesley-rn-bsn-patient-safety-concerns-and-lgbtq-population (Wesley, Van, Mossburg)

https://psnet.ahrq.gov/perspective/cultural-competence-and-patient-safety (Brach, Hall, Fitall)

https://psnet.ahrq.gov/web-mm/copy-and-paste-notes-and-autopopulated-text-electronic-health-record (MacDonald)

https://psnet.ahrq.gov/perspective/conversation-richard-platt-md-msc (Platt and Wachter)