Sen. Invoice Cassidy (R-La.), the chair of the Senate Well being, Training, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, is looking on the Division of Well being and Human Companies’ advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) to indefinitely postpone a Sept. 18 assembly within the aftermath of a shakeup on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) that resulted within the ouster of Director Susan Monarez.
“Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting,” Cassidy stated in an announcement.
“These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted. If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership,” he stated.
The committee helps craft vaccine coverage and offers suggestions to the CDC.
Cassidy issued his assertion after a White Home spokesman introduced that Monarez, who had clashed with Secretary of Well being and Human Companies Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., over vaccine insurance policies, had been fired, regardless of having been confirmed by the Senate on July 29, lower than a month in the past.
Monarez resisted Kennedy’s request to rescind approvals for COVID-19 vaccines and declined to resign after Kennedy requested her to step down.
A White Home spokesman stated Wednesday that Monarez was “terminated from her positions” as a result of she is “not aligned with the president’s agenda of Making America Wholesome Once more.”
Her ouster was adopted by the resignations of 4 different senior CDC officers: Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer; Demetre Daskalakis, the company’s high respiratory sickness and immunization officer; Dan Jernigan, a senior official who helped oversee responses to infections illnesses; and Jennfier Layden, who dealt with public well being knowledge.
Daskalakis, who headed the middle that points vaccine suggestions, stated in a resignation letter that he posted on social media that the political management at Well being and Human Companies was utilizing the CDC “as a tool to generate policies that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.”
He additionally criticized Kennedy for firing the earlier members of the ACIP via social media and in addition asserting their replacements on social media.
And he criticized the work output of the brand new members the committee appointed by Kennedy.
“The recent term of reference for the COVID vaccine work group created by this ACIP puts people of dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor in charge of recommending vaccine policy to a director hamstrung and sidelined by an authoritarian leader,” Daskalakis wrote. “Their desire to please a political base will result in death and disability of vulnerable children and adults.”
Kennedy eliminated all 17 members of the advisory committee in June.
He stated on the time that “a clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.”
