When Health Minister Robert F. Kennedy Junior is all members of an impressive vaccine committee earlier this summer, He said The committee was “suffering from constant conflicts in interest.”
but New searchWhich was published on Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, it finds that the two main consultative committees of vaccines have been inconsistent with standard interests for nearly a decade.
Kennedy has long seen that members of the vaccine consulting paintings for diseases and prevention control and food and drug management centers maintain close relationships with the pharmaceutical industry. In his first confirmation session in January, Kennedy claimed that 97 % of the consultants of the Center for Disease Control have conflicts of interest.
“When he started referring to these great statistics like 97 %, I thought,” Wow, this is really big. “” When I started looking at the vaccine data, I didn’t really see these types of numbers, “said the head of the study, Jenviev Kanet, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of South California Sol.
The study has discussed the extent to which conflicts of interest over the past two decades for the members of the Consultative Committee for Evidence Practices at the Center for Disease Control (ACIP) Food and Drug Administration vaccines and related biological products (VRBPAC).
During that time period, each of the vaccine boards met about four times a year, as the most common meetings occur from 2016 to 2024.
The study has found that since 2016, only 6.2 % of ACIP and 1.9 % of VRBPAC members had a conflict of interests at any specific meeting.
Moreover, the type of conflict that is usually considered the most income – the income of vaccine makers – has been actually canceled among the committees.
Among those who suffer from a conflict in the interests reported, less than 1 % participated in personal income from vaccine companies, such as consulting fees, royalties, stocks, or ownership.
Canter said that in the early first decade of the twentieth century, conflict of interest in committees was much higher – its peak was 43 % for ACIP in 2000 and 27 % for VRBPAC in 2007.
At that time, it was generally the acceptable criterion of the advisory committee members to have conflicts in interest.
But starting from about 2007 and 2012, VRBPAC members began the Food and Drug Administration to undergo a tougher examination, including requirements for disclosing conflicts of interests and restoring themselves from voting on the vaccines for which there are conflicts for them, Canter said. She said it was less clear when ACIP started pressing for a tougher examination.
For ACIP, the reported conflicts decreased to 5 % by 2024. For VRBPAC, the reported conflicts have remained less than 4 % since 2010, including 10 years when conflicts have not been reported at all.
“It is relatively low,” said Canter. “Although there are certainly some who defend conflict or financial interests.”
She added that it is difficult to establish an advisory committee from experts with no conflict of interests.
The paintings are usually consisting of senior experts in the fields of infectious diseases, pediatrics, immunology and general health. Vaccine makers often communicate with these experts to oversee their clinical experiences or play a consultative role when developing a new product.
Canter said: “It is a balanced work.” “You want the people who have searched the clinical research on safety and effectiveness.” She added that her previous research showed that people who have financial relations with the opponent of any specific product are discussed often do not vote differently from people who do not have financial relationships.
In a statement, Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services, said: “Minister Kennedy is obligated to get rid of real and struggling conflicts to enhance confidence in public health decisions.”
Dorit Reese, a vaccine expert at the University of California, San Francisco, said it is important to maintain the consulting panels of low conflicts in interests because it helps prevent “perverted decisions.”
After Kennedy launched all 17 ACIP members, he replaced them with eight new members, including many well -known vaccine critics. (He left one person in front of the first meeting of the committee, leaving the group seven.)
“Anti -vaccine activists define conflict of interests differently from our rest,” said Reese. “They believe in great conspiracy as Pharma controls the media and the government, so for them, for example, the National Institutes of Health will be a conflict of interests, or work in the Health Care Organization.”
However, many new appoinals in Kennedy have relationships with anti -vaccine groups or have worked as experts in vaccinations related to vaccines, and witnessed on behalf of the prosecutors who are charged for vaccine makers.
Lawrence Gustin, a law professor at Georgetown University, who specializes in public health, said that he was not surprised by the results of the new study, noting that it is a common practice for the committee members to return themselves from voting if a conflict arises.
Gustin said he believed that the logical basis of Kennedy to replace ACIP was “just a smoke screen”, which was replacing pollinated pollen scientists with anti -vaccine activists.
He said: “Many current members of ACIP, if not more than most ACIP members are closely related to vaccine invitation groups, including those that Kennedy had previously led.”