We are living in serious times when medical professionals in the United States are bewildered by an unprecedented decision by the Trump administration.
Bahamians like others around the world are likely to see diseases that we have not seen before. That is the view of a range of Epidemiologists in the United States and the Caribbean as they react to the decision by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to remove the entire membership of the influential vaccine advisory panel that makes immunization recommendations for the United States.
These people were the professional scientists who we counted on to steer us out of danger during the height of the recent COVID Pandemic. These are also the people who made the big decisions on who should get vaccines. Kennedy has replaced them with some individuals who are anti-vaccine proponents.
In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy said he decided to retire the 17 independent vaccine experts from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices because the panel has been “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest” and has become a “rubber stamp” for vaccines. Doctors and pharmacists look to the committee’s recommendations to decide which shots to offer.
Kennedy has long criticized the panel, which makes vaccine recommendations to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When the recommendations are approved by the Director, they become official public health guidance and are required to be covered by insurance plans at no cost to consumers.
The ouster by ACIP members marks the latest move by Kennedy that raised alarms among proponents of vaccines. He also forced out the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine scientist, hired a vaccine skeptic to scrutinize CDC vaccine safety data and has offered mixed messages about measles vaccines amid one of the worst outbreaks in the United States in decades.
Kennedy bypassed ACIP to say federal health officials would no longer recommend coronavirus vaccines for healthy children and healthy pregnant women.
Kennedy, the founder of an anti-vaccine group, said his overhaul of ACIP would restore public trust in vaccines. But medical, public health and infectious-disease experts say his actions do the opposite.
The action of Kennedy to remove the sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives.
With an ongoing measles outbreak in his own country which could spread in neighbouring countries and with routine child vaccination rate declining, Kennedy’s decision will further fuel the spread of vaccine-preventable illnesses.
Before casting a pivotal vote to confirm Kennedy, Republican Senator Bill Cassidy said he received a commitment to maintain the vaccine committee “without changes.” But that promise has been broken and now there are worries throughout the scientific community in the United States.
This move by Kennedy must face protest and condemnation throughout the western world, including the Caribbean.
As our closest neighbour, it is true that “when America sneezes, we catch a cold.” With Kennedy in his present position, let us pray that we do not experience another pandemic.
As Jeremy Faust of the Harvard Medical School says in reaction to the appointment of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine allies, “we’re going to have a sicker society. We’re going to have people missing school, being in the hospital instead of in school, being in the hospital instead of at work, being in the graveyard instead of at weddings.”
