The U.S. is going backwards on vaccines, ... very fast

America’s vaccine advisory committee is now taking seriously a baseless anti-vaccine flash point.

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Excerpt from first link: "The panel that will meet this week is more skeptical of vaccines than any version in ACIP history. Earlier this month, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly dismissed all 17 existing members of the panel—among them, some of the nation’s foremost experts in vaccinology, infectious disease, pediatrics, and public health—and replaced them with eight new members who largely lack expertise in vaccines and, in several cases, have espoused anti-vaccine viewpoints.

This new panel will hear a presentation on thimerosal not from a career vaccine scientist—as is usual ACIP practice—but from Lyn Redwood, one of the first vocal advocates of the false notion that thimerosal causes autism and the former president of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization that Kennedy chaired until 2023.

ACIP’s charter is to evaluate the data and guide the country’s approach to vaccines. By reopening the case on thimerosal, Kennedy’s handpicked committee has already chosen to entertain a classic anti-vaccine talking point. If the new ACIP’s vote further limits the use of vaccines containing the compound, it will also show, from the get-go, how willing it is to disregard evidence.

A multitude of studies, going back more than 20 years, have shown that thimerosal has no link to autism. Children who have received thimerosal-containing vaccines aren’t at higher risk of developing autism. Nor has removing the compound from much of the vaccine supply in multiple countries—including the U.S.—decreased autism rates. Instead, autism rates have gone up. (Experts who study autism attribute that rise largely to more awareness and more sensitive diagnostics; Kennedy, meanwhile, insists, without evidence, that the uptick is the work of an “environmental toxin” that “somebody made a profit” on.)

But around the turn of the millennium, experts felt pressured to remove thimerosal from vaccines, especially those targeted to young children. After studies had linked chronic exposure to high levels of mercury found in fish and whale blubber to developmental delays, scientists began to worry about the element’s effects on the young brain. The FDA kick-started a campaign to suss out the mercury content of the products it oversaw. By 1999, researchers had pinpointed thimerosal as suspect: The levels of the type of mercury found in vaccines containing the compound seemed, at the time, worryingly high, Walter Orenstein, who directed the U.S.’s National Immunization Program from 1988 through 2004, told me. “So there were concerns that it might be harmful to children.” (Autism, notably, wasn’t a consideration.)"