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A federal vaccine advisory panel, which health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently stacked with handpicked members, recommended on Thursday that Americans should not receive flu vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal. (Branswell, 6/26)

Federal vaccine advisers installed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted Thursday to stop recommending influenza vaccines containing thimerosal, a preservative that has been long criticized by anti-vaccine activists. Scientists and public health authorities have deemed thimerosal safe, and the vast majority of flu shots don’t have it. But the removal would probably make flu vaccines more expensive and harder to receive for some Americans, public health experts said. (Weber, 6/26)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine advisory committee recommended Merck & Co.’s shot to prevent newborns from getting RSV, alleviating some concerns that the new Department of Health and Human Services secretary’s longstanding criticism of immunizations would interfere with its rollout. Members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted five to two in favor of Enflonsia, a one-time shot that protects against a virus that’s the most common cause of hospitalization in infants. (Garde, 6/26)

The meeting began with an airing of pandemic-era grievances and closed with a move to cement a decades-old, long-dismissed anti-vaccine talking point into U.S. national policy. (Mast, 6/26)

The first meeting of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s handpicked vaccine advisers concluded Thursday — setting the stage to change the childhood vaccine schedule and voting to stop recommending flu shots with an additive that has long been a target of the anti-vaccine movement. The meeting offered a glimpse into how the new Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will operate — and how federal vaccine policy is beginning to reflect Kennedy’s personal views. (Gardner and Gardner, 6/26)

Retsef Levi wasn’t convinced. Data for a new drug showed it can help keep babies out of the hospital with respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. Scientists of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presented the evidence in a long series of slides to the federal vaccine panel recently remade by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Outside experts considered recommending the drug an obvious choice for the committee. (Essley White, 6/26)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: Kennedy’s Vaccine Advisers Sow Doubts As Scientists Protest US Pivot On Shots

As fired and retired scientists rallied outside in the Atlanta heat, an advisory panel that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. handpicked to replace experts he’d fired earlier met inside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s headquarters to plan a more skeptical vaccine future. The new members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices began their tenure Wednesday by shifting the posture of the 60-year-old panel from support for vaccine advancement to doubt about the safety and efficacy of well-established and widely administered inoculations. (Allen and Whitehead, 6/27)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the US will cut funding to the organization responsible for vaccinating children in poor countries, a move experts warned will result in unnecessary deaths. The US will no longer fund Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, due to concerns over its approach to vaccine safety, Kennedy said in pre-recorded remarks to the agency’s meeting in Brussels on Wednesday. (Furlong, 6/26)

Conagra Brands, the parent company of Duncan Hines, Slim Jim and other brands, is the latest big food company to say it’s discontinuing the use of artificial dyes. In a statement released Wednesday – the same day as a similar statement from Nestle – Chicago-based Conagra said it will remove artificial colors from its frozen foods by the end of this year. Conagra’s frozen brands include Marie Callender’s, Healthy Choice and Birds Eye. (Durbin, 6/26)

In the crusade to reduce chronic disease and neurobehavioral issues in the United States, synthetic food dyes are a hot target. California began paving the way for legislation against petroleum-based synthetic dyes a few years ago, based on health concerns including a potentially increased risk of cancer and neurobehavioral issues in children and animals. (Rogers, 6/26)