A panel of scientific experts that advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccine policy — and that has been the target of criticism from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — learned Wednesday that its upcoming meeting to discuss next year’s flu vaccines had been canceled.
The FDA sent an email to members of the panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, on Monday afternoon informing them of the cancellation, according to a senior official familiar with the decision. There was no reason given. The panel was to meet March 13.
One committee member, Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, an outspoken critic of Kennedy, confirmed the cancellation and warned that it could interfere with or delay production of flu vaccines.
“It’s a six-month production cycle,” Offit said. “So one can only assume that we’re not picking flu strains this year.”
The cancellation — and the postponement last week of a similar meeting of scientific advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — plays into fears among scientists who worry that Kennedy will use his perch to sow doubts about vaccines and interfere with the regulatory process that leads to their approval.
Richard Hughes, a lawyer for some vaccine makers, said the postponement was concerning since the schedule for making the flu vaccine tends to be quite strict. Strains are usually selected in the FDA meeting in February or March using data from the World Health Organization — a relationship the United States walked away from early in the Trump administration. He said manufacturing tends to begin in June.
“The stakes are incredibly high,” he said, noting that this year’s flu season has been especially intense.
According to the CDC, 86 children and 19,000 adults have died from flu this season. About 430,000 people were hospitalized. In June, a CDC committee tends to decide whether to advise use of the vaccine, which sets in motion insurance and government coverage of the vaccines, Hughes said.
As a presidential candidate and more recently as a supporter of Trump, Kennedy repeatedly warned of “regulatory capture” — the idea that federal regulators are captive to industry. He has said he intends to root out conflicts of interest on the scientific panels that advise federal regulatory agencies.
Among those Kennedy has singled out is Offit, an inventor of a rotavirus vaccine that was later developed by pharmaceutical giant Merck and approved by the FDA in 2006, before Offit served on the FDA advisory panel. Offit’s research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, not the drug company; his hospital, which owned the patent on the vaccine, licensed the patent to Merck.
The meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices would have covered topics related to a number of vaccines, including one that protects against the human papillomavirus. Kennedy has been sharply critical of that vaccine and worked on a lawsuit against its maker, Merck. He has said he would pass any fees earned from the lawsuit to an adult son.