“Do not take us backwards,” many doctors and other stakeholders implored the CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices ahead of its meeting that starts Dec. 4 with a day-long discussion and votes on whether the current recommended birth dose of the hepatitis B virus vaccine should be delayed.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy continued his last-minute musical chairs ahead of the Dec. 4-5 meeting of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) when he named Kirk Milhoan as the new chair of the panel that advises the CDC on vaccine schedules.
Both the FDA and the CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices are on the threshold of revising how vaccines are approved and used in the U.S., but whether that opens to a precipice or a new era of stronger evidence and safer use is in the telling of the beholder.
