RFK Jr.'s vaccine advisors to re-examine childhood vax schedule

State of play: Kulldorff, a biostatistician who was fired from Mass General Brigham after refusing a COVID vaccine, said the commission will look into the "cumulative effect" of current U.S. childhood and adolescent vaccine schedules.

• Questions may include whether a Hepatitis B vaccine should be recommended for all newborns, as well as the optimal time for administering the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and possible exemptions from the shot on religious grounds, he said.
• "Unless the mother is Hepatitis B positive, an argument could be made to delay the vaccine for this infection, which is primarily spread by sexual activity and intravenous drug use," Kulldorf said.

Guidelines posted on the CDC website state that work groups within ACIP should be established when there's new data around existing recommendations, or when a new vaccine is on the market or expected soon.

• Kulldorff didn't indicate that there is new data surrounding the childhood vaccine schedule.
• ACIP is also launching a new work group to study vaccines that haven't had their evidence reviewed in more than seven years. The commission's guidelines say that past recommendations should be reviewed at least every seven years.

Members for the new work groups are still to be determined, HHS communications director Andrew Nixon told Axios.

• Work groups should include at least two voting members of ACIP, a subject matter expert from CDC and other representatives from medical societies and other federal agencies, according to the commission's guidelines. They may also include a consumer representative.
• Recommended group size is 15 or less people. The work group meetings are not open to the public.

Context: The full ACIP panel on Wednesday kicked off its first meeting since HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the previous 14 commissioners this month and quickly replaced them with eight hand-picked members.

• The group is now down to seven, following Virginia physician Michael Ross's decision to withdraw as a member, as first reported by the New York Times.
• Ross decided to pull out during a financial review that new members must complete before starting work on the committee, HHS's Nixon confirmed to Axios.

Zoom out: CDC staff began Wednesday's meeting by presenting efficacy and safety data for COVID shots made by Pfizer and Moderna.

• Several commissioners scrutinized the way CDC had designed its studies and analyzed data, indicating they were skeptical of the mRNA vaccine's utility.
• "A lot of people on this panel desire to see randomized control trials to minimize these types of bias, so we aren't sitting here ... wondering, are we being misled by these data," said Tracy Beth Hoeg, a non-voting member of the commission and a special assistant to FDA Commissioner Marty Makary.
• CDC staff responded that scientific literature shows that adding controls or cases that test positive for other vaccine-preventable diseases would add bias to the study.

Commissioners are not due to vote on COVID-19 vaccine recommendations during the meeting, which continues on Thursday.

• A vote on updates to recommendations for RSV vaccines that was planned for Wednesday was postponed to Thursday's session.

The intrigue: The American Academy of Pediatrics did not participate in Wednesday's meeting. Medical associations are typically included in ACIP meetings as non-voting liaison representatives.

• "We won't lend our name or our expertise to a system that is being politicized at the expense of children's health," AAP President Susan Kressly said in a video posted online Wednesday.
• The organization will continue to put out its own immunization recommendations that are guided by science, she said.

Go deeper: CDC contradicts RFK Jr. on COVID vaccine for kids

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional reporting.