“RFK Jr.'s vaccine advisers raise disproven fears about the preservative thimerosal”
“An influential committee that shapes U.S. vaccine policy – a flashpoint under the leadership of Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – has recommended that adults and children no longer receive flu vaccines containing trace amounts of a preservative that's rarely used anymore.
The discussion of thimerosal, a form of mercury that's sometimes added to vaccines for sterilization, dominated much of Thursday's public meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. The committee guides the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the vaccine schedule for children and adults.”
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“On Thursday, a majority of the panel voted to reaffirm the existing CDC recommendations that anyone over six months receive the annual flu shot. They also voted 5-2 in favor of a monoclonal antibody shot made by Merck that offers protection against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, for infants younger than 8 months.
But in three separate votes the committee voted to recommend children, pregnant women and all adults receive single-dose flu immunizations with vaccines that don't have thimerosal.
Theories that the chemical could cause autism in children have long been disproven. Even so, manufacturers voluntarily removed it from childhood vaccines. While it's used in some multi-dose vials in several products, there are no vaccines on the pediatric vaccine schedule that contain thimerosal.
The ACIP votes could effectively ban use of the preservative, despite a preponderance of evidence that it is safe.
Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth College, was the only ACIP member who voted against those recommendations.
‘Of all the issues that ACIP needs to focus on, this is not a big issue,’ he said. ‘The risk from influenza is so much greater than the non-existent, as far as we know, risk from thimerosal.’
He added: ‘There is no scientific evidence that thimerosal has caused a problem.’“
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