Conflicts of interest reported by US national vaccine advisory committee members were at a record low before Robert F Kennedy Jr’s decision to dismiss the entire Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine panel, researchers have said.
In a letter, published on 18 August in JAMA, researchers investigated the US Department of Health and Human Services secretary’s claims that the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was “plagued” with conflicts of interest and that “97% of them” had conflicts.1 At the time he cited a 2009 report that looked at conflicts from 2007.2 These views were voiced as part of his justification for dismissing all 17 members of the ACIP in June.3
While acknowledging that conflicts of interest are of genuine concern, experts have accused Kennedy of using this as a “transparently fake excuse” to advance his “anti-vaccine, anti-science agenda.” Earlier this month, Annals of Internal Medicine refused Kennedy’s demand to retract a study that found vaccines containing the adjuvant aluminium hydroxide did not increase the …
