AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has appointed eight new people to serve on a national vaccine advisory committee. That announcement came just days after firing all 17 of the previous members. Kennedy says the move was, quote, "a major step towards restoring public trust in vaccines." But his critics dispute this. The health secretary previously led an influential anti-vaccine group, and many fear the direction the committee will take under his watch.
Dr. Edwin Asturias was one of the doctors sacked by the administration, and he says the firings will actually do more harm to the public's confidence in vaccines. Dr. Asturias is a pediatrician and a professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, but he's coming on the program to speak in his individual capacity, not for the school. Welcome to the program.
EDWIN ASTURIAS: Good morning, Ayesha. Good being with you.
RASCOE: So for those of us not familiar with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices before these mass firings, can you tell me what was your work there?
ASTURIAS: Yeah, so this committee has been active for the last 60 years in the United States. It's an advisory committee constituted by federal regulations and is, you know, appointed by the health secretary. Its role is to really provide recommendations on how to use the vaccines when they have been previously approved by the FDA. So the committee doesn't have a say in how the vaccines are developed or how we do clinical trials for those vaccines, but it's when they are already approved, then how they going to be used for children, pregnant women, the public in general.
RASCOE: Well, so these new members that the health secretary has appointed, they hold a variety of views on vaccine safety and vaccine efficacy. Based on the makeup of the new panel, what do you see as its direction?
ASTURIAS: I cannot comment much on the new members. One thing that I can tell you that is a bit unusual that members have been named in a matter of a few weeks or a week. Typically, any appointment to the ACIP committee went through a very rigorous review. This will be conducted by not only the Center for Disease Control and Prevention after they have selected a roster of potential candidates, they went up to the health secretary to be reviewed again. And so it took sometimes a year to two years for people to be appointed into this committee.
RASCOE: Well, you know, Kennedy criticized previous panel members for what he called conflicts of interest or for being a rubber stamp for approvals. What is your response to that?
ASTURIAS: Well, one thing that I can tell you is that expertise in vaccination come through doing a lot of research and being involved in that work. Many of the previous members didn't have any conflicts of interest at all, and some may have had research that we conducted with some of the vaccine developers long time ago. But what I can tell you is that ACIP has one of the most rigorous conflict-of-interest standards among the federal advisory bodies. We all had to not only disclose every conflict that we had, but also if we had any conflict that was active or perceived before any votes, we were basically abstained from that vote and from that commentary.
RASCOE: Is it possible - and I have to note, of course, Secretary Kennedy has said he doesn't want to take anyone's vaccines away. But is it possible that these changes could make vaccines less accessible?
ASTURIAS: Yes, they may become less accessible, and let me explain why. ACIP recommendations that are then confirmed by the CDC director have implications because they become the vaccines that are not only provided through the vaccine for children's program, which is the public program that provides vaccines for kids that have less resources, but also they become the standard of what insurance companies use to sort of finance vaccines for people.
RASCOE: Well, I guess, what message do you give to the public who may feel like they're getting all of these different signals from the government, from medical professionals, and they may not know who to listen to or how to make sure that their children are safe, the elderly are safe and more?
ASTURIAS: What we can tell you as former ACIP members is that we, as well as many of your pediatricians, obstetricians, family providers and so forth, will be making sure that the public knows what is needed in terms of protection for their - themselves and their families.
RASCOE: That's Dr. Edwin Asturias. Thank you so much for coming on to talk with us today.
ASTURIAS: A pleasure.
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