FDA Suddenly Cancels Crucial Flu Vaccine Meeting
In a move suggestive of HHS secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s interference in FDA regulatory activities involving vaccines, the agency 2/26 abruptly canceled a 3/13-planned Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) meeting that would otherwise select the strains and the composition of next season’s influenza vaccines. The move follows a Kennedy-ordered cancelation of a 2/26-scheduled CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). The secretary reportedly is concerned about committee members' alleged conflicts of interest and close industry ties.
The VRBPAC meeting was canceled without explanation and has not been rescheduled, panel member Paul Offit told Inside Medicine. “This is a meeting where we pick flu strains,” he said. “It’s a six-month cycle. So, if we are not going to have the meeting, I guess it means we will be looking to the WHO [World Health Organization] for a flu shot formulation.” WHO held its influenza vaccine composition meeting 2/27, and FDA reportedly attended virtually.
A surprised Offit questioned whether VRBPAC’s cancelation is part of RFK Jr.’s “cleansing project” to remove anyone suspected of having a conflict of interest related to vaccines? “I don’t know,” he asserted. “But I feel like the world is upside down. We aren’t doing the things we need to do to protect ourselves.”
Offit was also asked by Inside Medicine for his reaction about Kennedy downplaying the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico during a White House cabinet meeting 2/26. “We just had a death due to measles and it was a preventable death,” Offit said. “And RFK Jr. is saying that outbreaks [like the one in Texas] are normal. But we didn’t used to have measles. It was eradicated in this country in 2000.”
Meanwhile, advocacy group Public Citizen had this to say: “Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must let CDC and FDA advisory committees meet and do their jobs. As flu cases skyrocket, canceling essential health advisory committee meetings without promptly rescheduling them is appalling.The 2024-2025 flu season in the United States is at high severity, with an estimated 430,000 to 910,000 flu hospitalizations and 19,000 to 92,000 flu deaths as of February 15, according to the CDC… It is senseless for the Trump Administration to interfere with these life-saving vaccines.”