Cancel culture continues at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as it observes National Immunization Awareness Month with another strike against vaccines. This time, a $500 million strike specifically targets 22 mRNA vaccine R&D programs at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), marking the beginning of the end of BARDA’s funding for mRNA vaccines.
The other shoe dropped on the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) when at least nine liaison organizations were informed by email late July 31 that they would no longer be involved in ACIP’s process of reviewing scientific evidence and informing vaccine recommendations.
President Donald Trump sent letters July 31 to the CEOs of 17 major drug manufacturers doing business in the U.S., giving them 60 days to comply with his May 12 executive order (EO) on most-favored-nation (MFN) pricing. The EO appealed to drug companies to undertake MFN pricing voluntarily to end the freeloading in which other developed countries pay, on average, three times less than Americans are charged for the same medicines.
It’s not surprising that, of all the recommendations the U.S. CDC’s vaccine advisory board made at its June meeting, the first one Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy signed off on would essentially remove thimerosal from influenza vaccines in the U.S. What is surprising is the time it took for him to do so, given his long-held position on the preservative used in multidose vials and his insistence that a thimerosal presentation and vote be added to the agenda.
Regulonix LLC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have jointly patented new sodium channel protein type 9 subunit α (SCN9A; Nav1.7) blockers reported to be useful for the treatment of neuropathic pain.
With the June 9 U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee party-line vote of 12-11, Susan Monarez’s nomination is headed to the Senate floor where she could become the first CDC director to go through the confirmation process. That’s thanks to a provision in the bipartisan PREVENT Pandemics Act that was signed into law in 2022.
Led by the American Academy of Pediatrics, several medical groups went to court July 7 to force Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy to restore the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and healthy children ages 6 months to 17 years.
Finding they were “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedures Act, the District Court for the District of Columbia vacated a White House Office of Personnel Management memo and a subsequent Department of Health and Human Services’ guidance intended to implement President Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive order pertaining to gender ideology.
With no U.S. CDC director in place yet, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy recently adopted two vaccine recommendations from the April meeting of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), making them official CDC recommendations and ensuring coverage of the vaccines for the specified populations.
The U.S. Health and Human Services and the Justice Departments are bringing more resources to their crack down on False Claims Act (FCA) violations involving drugs, medical devices and Medicare fraud.
