So you might have heard that the ACIP committee (CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) voted yesterday to remove a preservative called thimerosal from flu vaccines. There are several things we want you to know about this:
Perhaps most importantly,
THERE IS NO THIMEROSAL IN ANY OF OUR VACCINES.
And there hasn’t been since 2001. There was a preliminary concern about it raised in a 2001 Institute Of Medicine (IOM) report, and as a result all routinely recommended childhood vaccines given in the US were reformulated into single dose packaging that eliminated thimerosal. Vaccine safety is a high priority for the medical community and people moved quickly at that time to eliminate a potentially legitimate concern. Later reports found no evidence of harm related to thimerosal, but by then it had been eliminated from everything but a few multi-dose flu shot products (about 4% of the flu shot supply). And we do not use those products in our office. A good summary of thimerosal and vaccines can be found here if you are interested in learning more about it.
Why is this coming up now?
The topic was added to the ACIP agenda this month after the recent firing of all 17 of the committees original members and replacing them with 7 others picked by the current Secretary of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The Secretary has long advocated a role for thimerosal in causing autism and other neurodevelopment disorders, despite the large body of evidence to the contrary, and the obvious fact that removing thimerosal from childhood vaccines has not decreased the incidence of these problems.
Before the meeting yesterday, officials removed a comprehensive CDC review of the evidence related to thimerosal and neurodevelopmental outcomes from the CDC website and declined to enter it into the record of the meeting because “it was not authorized” according to one member of the committee. Instead, the committee heard a presentation filled with misleading and mischaracterized information that contradicted most professionals’ understanding of the science. At one point, the presentation even “cites a study that does not exist,” according to the scientist listed as the study’s supposed author. (The “citation” was later removed.) The presentation was given by Lyn Redwood, formerly of Children’s Health Defense, a well known source of vaccine misinformation that was discovered just earlier this year to be behind an imposter CDC website designed to spread false information linking measles vaccines and autism. In contrast to usual ACIP procedure, no CDC scientists presented data on the proposed actions and, rather than referring to the usual working groups to study the underlying data, the newly constituted committee moved straight to a vote.
Why does any of this matter?
In one immediate sense, it does not because the compound in question has already been largely been removed from our vaccine supply. Like most pediatricians, we have not used thimerosal in our office for the last 24 years. However, what we are seeing is the apparent politicization of a process that doctors have relied upon for quality information on the safety and efficacy of vaccines for over 60 years. The thimerosal presentation before the committee even concluded with the political slogan “Making America Healthy Again,” a clear departure for an organization that is supposed to provide non-partisan assessments of medical data. Sadly, it appears we will not be able to rely upon the CDC ACIP for the time being as an expert resource. However, the good news is that professional organizations like the AAP, and ACOG, and the AMA are working quickly to develop high quality sources that families and providers can rely upon for vaccine information in the future. Stay tuned!
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out. These are confusing times, but we are always here to help.