The CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices: Do its members have conflicts of interest?
I watched and live-blogged almost every ACIP meeting for 2 years during the pandemic, almost all on the Children’s Health Defense website. Most of my commentaries are still there, and some are on this blog as well. Sometimes I summarized what happened afterwards, and often I provided comments to The Defender on the ACIP meetings. The committee discussed all the COVID vaccines and many other vaccines. Often vaccines were discussed while they were still being studied, long before licensure. This seems strange and I don’t know why, except to give the manufacturer hints about any roadblocks it might face marketing the vaccine to the ACIP later, when it did have a license.
I saw how CDC “managed” the proceedings to get the answers it wanted. I saw how the ACIP members would be allowed to exceed their terms, and how sometimes members would disappear, then perhaps come back… none of this was explained to the public. Nearly all the ACIP members were in the vaccine industry. Most conducted clinical trials of vaccines in universities, so the university, and not the researcher, would be the direct payee of Big Pharma.
Vaccinemakers also paid several members’ institutions up to $4.8 million over the course of the 7 years, largely for costs associated with clinical trials including members’ time spent running them—a standard practice for universities that conduct such work. The two largest amounts went to the University of Colorado, home to ACIP member Edwin Asturias, a pediatrician, which received $3.9 million in research funding from industry during the time period; and Stanford, where Maldonado works, which received $4.8 million.
Some members worked on vaccines for the federal government. Some members bounced back and forth between the ACIP and the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee. Vaccine scientists seem to be in a guild, and rarely does anyone criticize any vaccine. Almost all votes taken by the ACIP were unanimously in favor of rolling out every new vaccine. Sometimes there would be one dissenter, maybe two—but I can only remember once in many years when the ACIP voted against what the manufacturer and CDC wanted, in this case the first COVID booster for adults.
What happened then? Then-CDC Director Walensky simply ignored the ACIP vote and issued a directive to roll out the vaccine, a COVID booster, anyway. This was in late 2021 I think. It may have been late August. That taught the members a lesson—don’t endanger your future career by voting your conscience, cause it won’t make any difference to the final outcome, anyway. Interestingly, just a day or two earlier, the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee VRBPAC had voted against this booster, and Peter Marks, FDA’s head of vaccines, had overruled them too.
Recently there was a massive efflux of ACIP members, when over a short period of time about 10 left the committee. It is possible that the new members were selected without conflicts, but I can guarantee that most of the of the older members were financially conflicted.
I think CDC pays the ACIP members to be on work groups for the various vaccines that are being evaluated, so the members are actually CDC employees. But that conflict is NEVER mentioned. Shhhh! Don’t tell Science magazine.
The CDC is a wonderful example of that old George Carlin routine, where he says, “The game is rigged…”. CDC has rigged the ACIP every which way. It is crucial to ring out the old and bring in some new, intelligent members who will represent the public and not the vaccine industry, who will actually care about balancing the pros and cons of every new vaccine.
https://illusionsrevolt.blogspot.com/2016/07/george-carlin-explains-how-system-is.html