By Chad Terhune
(Reuters) -U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s surprise ouster of a national vaccine advisory board, claiming it was “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest,” puts new scrutiny on the group that recommends which shots should be administered to the American public.
Kennedy said most vaccine experts on the 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) have received “substantial funding” from drugmakers. He did not provide examples of conflicts of interest for any individual adviser or say how that may have influenced specific recommendations.
Committee members say their work with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention follows rigorous vetting of their financial ties. They must abstain from votes on any vaccine for which they have a conflict, as well as any rival to that vaccine or any product from the same manufacturer, according to CDC rules.
The agency’s website lists one of the departing panel members as recusing herself over such conflicts.
“To determine that the whole (advisory board), all 17 members, have conflicts of interest, that has not been shown by the evidence,” fired board member Dr. Oliver Brooks told Reuters. “However, the decisions that have been made (by Kennedy) undermine confidence in the process and in vaccines.”
Six of the vaccine advisers fired by Kennedy received a total of $80 or less from drugmakers from 2017 to 2023, according to a Reuters review of the Open Payments federal database of industry payments to healthcare providers.
Seven other panel members received between $4,000 and $55,000 from drugmakers for consulting, speaking fees, travel or meals over the period 2017 to 2023. Two of those experts had also worked with other scientists in industry-funded research projects worth several millions of dollars.
Brooks, retired chief medical officer at Watts Healthcare in Los Angeles and former president of the National Medical Association, received nearly $44,000 in general payments from Sanofi, according to the government records.
Most of the payments occurred in 2017 and 2018, with nothing after 2020. Brooks became a vaccine adviser in 2021, and did not disclose any conflicts that would preclude him from voting. He said the panel’s sole aim is “to prevent vaccine-preventable illness.” Sanofi declined to comment.
At least three vaccine advisers were not health professionals tracked by mandatory Open Payments reporting.
KENNEDY’S CONFLICT
Kennedy, who has spent years sowing doubts about vaccine safety and efficacy contrary to scientific evidence, faced questions from Congress about his own potential conflicts of interest during a confirmation hearing.
Kennedy said he would divest his financial interest in litigation against Merck over its Gardasil vaccine, which prevents cancers caused by the human papillomavirus, to his non-dependent, adult son.
In posts on X this week, Kennedy said he would share “examples of the historical corruption at ACIP” and announced eight new panel members. Four of them had received nominal reimbursement for meals, according to Open Payments, while the remainder recorded no payments or weren’t covered by the database.
A 2009 federal inspector general’s report criticized the CDC for lax enforcement of disclosures among its advisory panels. New research shared with Reuters suggests conflicts have since declined among vaccine board members.
“People are more aware of these issues on advisory committees, so they’re facing greater scrutiny there,” said Dr. Genevieve Kanter, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Southern California who has studied conflicts among government health advisers.
Kanter’s analysis of vaccine panel disclosures found that, on average, 43% of panel members facing decisions on specific vaccines declared conflicts in 2000 compared to 5%, on average, at meetings over the last 10 years.
Kanter said it will also be important to understand how the vaccine advisers assembled by Kennedy are vetted for conflicts. They are due to meet at the end of June.
“We don’t want to replace one conflict with another set of conflicts,” she said. “If someone has a financial interest in treatments that are believed to be alternatives to vaccines for certain conditions, we want to know that.”
DISCLOSURE RULES
ACIP members are required to divest all stock in vaccine makers and stop any active consulting work for those companies before joining the panel. They can’t accept travel or food from vaccine companies or collect product royalties. Similar restrictions apply to family members.
Committee members can keep working on vaccine clinical trials funded by industry and those research grants can help cover their salaries. They are required to file annual disclosures and recuse themselves from votes when specific conflicts arise.
“ACIP members … are carefully screened for major conflicts of interest and selected through a lengthy process,” said the California Department of Public Health, whose immunization chief, Dr. Robert Schechter, was fired from the panel by Kennedy.
One of the fired panel members, Dr. Bonnie Maldonado, is a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Stanford University who has led vaccine studies worldwide.
She participated in research that received $4.65 million in funding from Pfizer, most of it spanning 2021 to 2023. The studies involved vaccines for COVID-19, RSV and other diseases. Maldonado also received general payments from drugmakers, including $26,465 from Pfizer and nearly $7,000 from Merck.
Maldonado abstained from a vote on COVID vaccine recommendations in June 2024, declaring a conflict of interest. In October, she did participate in a COVID-related vote. Maldonado didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Noel Brewer, a professor of public health at the University of North Carolina, is not a clinician and therefore not included in Open Payments.
In a 2017 research paper, he disclosed receiving research grants from Merck, Pfizer and GSK and serving on a paid advisory board for Merck. The disclosures did not give details on the payment amounts. Spokespeople for the three vaccine makers were not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Chad Terhune in Los Angeles, additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Michael Learmonth and Bill Berkrot)
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