RFK Jr. Appoints 5 New Members To CDC Vaccine Advisory Panel

Sept. 15 (Reuters) – U.S. Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday appointed 5 new members to the revamped advisory panel that advises the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention on vaccine coverage.

This comes forward of the panel’s assembly this week to evaluate steerage on photographs for hepatitis B, measles-mumps-rubella-varicella and COVID-19, in a intently watched session that might additional reshape the federal vaccination coverage. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic, dismissed all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June and put in a brand new, smaller panel, with members who’ve questioned features of mRNA and childhood vaccination. The committee will now have 12 members.

The 5 new members shall be participating on this week’s assembly, stated HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon. The committee’s new members are: Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric heart specialist who has examined instances of myocarditis associated to COVID-19 vaccination. In accordance with a information report from 2022, he backed using hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin – each unproven remedies for COVID-19 – to deal with the sickness in the course of the pandemic. Catherine Stein, an epidemiologist at Case Western Reserve College who argued towards campus COVID-19 vaccine mandates in 2022. Hilary Blackburn, a pharmacist based mostly in St. Louis, Missouri. She is the daughter-in-law of Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn. Raymond Pollak, a semi-retired transplant surgeon with a background in immunology. Evelyn Griffin, a Louisiana-based obstetrician who has referred to as vaccine mandates for COVID-19 vaccines “a line within the sand” that ought to not have been crossed.

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The committee members couldn’t instantly be reached for remark. In accordance with an inner CDC doc obtained by Reuters earlier this month, HHS had directed the CDC to call seven new members to the committee, however two of these potential nominees — Joseph Fraiman and John Gaitanis — weren’t amongst these named on Monday.

(Reporting by Michael Erman in New Jersey and Puyaan Singh in Bengaluru; Modifying by Shinjini Ganguli and Chizu Nomiyama)

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