Postponing last week’s vaccine meeting endangers Americans’ health

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — a group of pediatricians, parents and public health specialists that provides vaccine recommendations to the FDA — was scheduled to meet last week. Instead, the meeting has been postponed indefinitely.

The panel's webpage says the meeting was “postponed to accommodate public comment in advance of the meeting.” But the Trump administration has had since Feb. 3 to open the comment period, and it still has not done so. This is the first time this committee's meeting has been postponed since it was first established in 1964.

This is concerning. But what’s more troubling is the possibility that this delay could be used to change the panel’s composition, for example by claiming conflicts of interest among its members.

In the coming days, expect to see claims that panel members’ disclosures, which are designed to prevent conflicts of interest, are proof of corruption. And expect efforts to discredit the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices by portraying medical and public health experience as bias rather than the result of decades of fact-based investigations.

These tactics aim to sow distrust, undermine public confidence and pave the way for fringe beliefs to shape vaccine policy.

The reality? The committee's members follow strict conflict-of-interest rules. They publicly disclose past affiliations and funding sources as a safeguard — not a scandal. Those serving on the panel cannot have financial ties to vaccine manufacturers. If they have been involved in past vaccine research, they recuse themselves from relevant decisions. The idea that members are profiting from their work is false.

During his confirmation hearings, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that 97 percent of its members have conflicts of interest. That is simply not true. This number comes from a misrepresentation of a 2009 audit of all Centers for Disease Control advisory committees with member paperwork from 2007. That review found that 97 percent of forms were missing a response to at least one question — not that 97 percent of members had actual conflicts. The audit was out of date by the time it was issued, as CDC had already strengthened the process of ensuring complete and accurate completion of these 10-page forms; CDC further strengthened this process as a result of the audit.

But the bottom line gets lost in those details — not a single Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices member was found to have had a conflict of interest. If there are allegations that any member has conflicts of interest, or that any specific recommendations are the result of improper influences, these claims should be stated and considered openly. Avoiding conflicts of interest is extremely important — as is avoiding misleading statements that undermine confidence in a transparent, fact-based process.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices isn’t just another advisory group — it is the only committee that publicly reviews the latest data on vaccine safety and effectiveness before making recommendations. It has long been the gold standard for open, transparent vaccine policy. Every meeting is fully public, streamed online, and with all deliberations, data, presentations and recommendations available for review.

When I was CDC director, leaders from countries around the world came to observe Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meetings and adapt its best practices to their own countries so that vaccine recommendations can be made openly, with full disclosure of the evidence and without conflicts of interest. Unlike some regulatory bodies, it does not include industry representatives, and its strict conflict-of-interest policies prevent financial ties to vaccine manufacturers. Every recommendation is based on rigorous analysis of safety, effectiveness and the best available evidence — not politics, not profit and not pressure from any outside groups.

Without the panel’s recommendations, critical vaccine guidance is stalled. The items the committee was set to discuss include: infant meningitis protection; a Chikungunya vaccine and which travelers should receive it to prevent severe, prolonged joint pain; which flu shots should be recommended and how FluMist should be given; protection for infants and adults from RSV, a disease that annually kills at least 100 children and 6,000 older adults; and the latest evidence on developing vaccines against pneumonia, cytomegalovirus and Lyme disease.

For each of these topics, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting would have provided all relevant data, heard from the public and technical experts and shared their decisions in an open forum. Nothing happens behind closed doors. The delay also means uncertainty about whether vaccines will be covered by the Vaccines for Children program and insurance so families don’t have to pay out-of-pocket for lifesaving immunizations.

Every day the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices doesn’t meet risks Americans’ health. The meeting should be rescheduled soon, with its current members intact and without interference that could undermine its work providing recommendations and ensuring that families don’t have to pay for life-saving vaccines.

Tom Frieden, M.D., is president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a global nonprofit organization working to prevent epidemics and deaths from heart attacks and strokes. He was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2009 to 2017.