Sen. Cassidy says vaccine panel lacks expertise and meeting should be delayed

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) on Monday said that the new members of CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) lack expertise and that their meeting scheduled for this week should be delayed.

Earlier this month, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of ACIP, arguing in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that ACIP was "plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine," adding that ACIP has "never recommended against a vaccine — even those later withdrawn for safety reasons" and "failed to scrutinize vaccine products given to babies and pregnant women."

Days later, in a post on X, Kennedy named the eight doctors and researchers who would be part of ACIP, saying his picks included "highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America's most accomplished physicians." All of Kennedy's picks are either medical doctors or doctorates.

In a post on X, Sen. Cassidy, a physician, expressed concerns about the expertise of the newly appointed ACIP members.

"Although the appointees to ACIP have scientific credentials, many do not have significant experience studying microbiology, epidemiology or immunology," Cassidy wrote. "In particular, some lack experience studying new technologies such as mRNA vaccines, and may even have a preconceived bias against them."

"Wednesday's meeting should not proceed with a relatively small panel, and no CDC Director in place to approve the panel's recommendations," Cassidy added. "The meeting should be delayed until the panel is fully staffed with more robust and balanced representation — as required by law — including those with more direct relevant expertise."

(Miller, NBC News, 6/24; Cirruzzo, STAT, 6/23)

RFK Jr. says HHS will require medical schools to teach nutrition or risk losing funding

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in April said he plans to tell American medical schools they have to offer nutrition courses to students or else they will risk losing federal funding.

At an event in North Carolina, Kennedy said that there are "almost no medical schools that have nutrition courses, and so [aspiring physicians] are taught how to treat illnesses with drugs but not how to treat them with food or to keep people healthy so they don't need the drugs."

"One of the things that we'll do over the next year is to announce that medical schools that don't have those programs are not going to be eligible for our funding, and that we will withhold funds from those who don't implement those kinds of courses," Kennedy added.

An HHS official told ABC News that Kennedy is "committed to understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease, which includes fresh thinking on nutrition and over-reliance on medication and treatments."

A study published in the Journal of Biomedical Education in 2015 that surveyed 121 American medical schools from 2012 to 2013 found that medical students, on average, spend just 19 hours on required nutrition education over four years.

Some nutrition experts have expressed concern over the lack of nutrition education and argued that doctors should focus more on preventing conditions driven by diet like obesity and diabetes and less on prescribing drugs that treat those problems.

"I think there's a great sense of urgency that we have to do something about this," said David Eisenberg, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who added that requiring nutrition education at medical schools is "long overdue."

(McDuffie, ABC News, 6/4)

Some aspects of the proposal laid out by Makary and Prasad were met with skepticism by experts, especially the idea that AI could take over the work of examining applications companies submit when seeking approval for a drug or high-risk medical device.

"I don't want to be dismissive of speeding reviews at the FDA," said Stephen Holland, a lawyer who formerly advised the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on healthcare. "I think that there is great potential here, but I'm not seeing the beef yet."

(Goldman, Axios, 6/2; Jewett, New York Times, 6/10)

White House gives HHS agencies Aug. 22 deadline to report plans to implement 'gold standard' science

Michael Kratsios, director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, sent a memo on Monday to all HHS agencies giving them a deadline of August 22 to report on the steps they're taking to implement "gold standard" science. The memo also said agencies need to prioritize policies that promote skepticism of research, increase transparency, communicate about scientific uncertainty, and ensure peer review is free of bias, all while cutting costs.

The memo states that "gold standard" science is defined by nine core tenants:

• Reproducible
• Transparent
• Communicative of error and uncertainty
• Collaborative and interdisciplinary
• Skeptical of its findings and assumptions
• Structured for falsifiability of hypotheses
• Subject to unbiased peer review
• Accepting of negative results as positive outcomes
• Without conflict of interest

The gold standard process should include accessible sharing of all components of the research process, as well as all methodologies and analytical tools used, the memo said. The memo also emphasized "clear, precise and accurate disclosure of limitations, variability, and potential sources of error or limitations in measurements or research findings."

While also implementing high standards of scientific work, the memo states that agencies should reduce administrative costs and improve efficiency, recommending that agencies consider "the use of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies for implementing Gold Standard Science, such as automated tools for validating reproducible protocols, standardizing transparent data reporting, quantifying uncertainty, facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration, detecting biases in peer and merit review, and managing conflict-of-interest disclosures."

(Karins, Inside Health Policy [subscription required], 6/23)