The Department of Health and Human Services is resurrecting a long-disbanded federal panel to scrutinize childhood immunizations, fulfilling the demands of an anti-vaccine organization Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once chaired.
The Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines will “produce regular recommendations focused on the development, promotion, and refinement of childhood vaccines that result in fewer and less serious adverse reactions than those vaccines currently on the market,” the department said in a statement Thursday.
It’s the latest decision inviting vaccine skepticism into HHS. Kennedy announced earlier this month that the department was cancelling millions of dollars of contracts with companies developing mRNA vaccines. He also fired all the members of the committee that recommends which vaccines should be added to the childhood immunization schedule and replaced them with appointees of his own choosing, some of whom have a history of questioning vaccines.