Politics

New Tool Lets You Search CDC Advisors’ Big Pharma Ties

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaigning in Grand Rapids, Mich., Feb. 10, 2024. (Screen Capture/CSPAN)

A new search tool unveiled Friday increases public access to information about the connections between advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy and the pharmaceutical industry.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) discusses epidemiological studies, weighs the benefits and side effects reported in clinical trials, and makes recommendations to the CDC on the routine vaccination schedules for children and adults. The ACIP’s recommendations inform which shots are reimbursed by health plans. In a bid to enhance transparency around the process, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has enabled users to search which advisors reported potential conflicts of interest and recused themselves from casting a vote affecting a drugmaker they had ties to.

The new tool is consistent with pledges by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restore trust and the nation’s health agencies lost during the pandemic through increased information.

“In alignment with HHS Secretary Kennedy’s commitment to radical transparency, CDC released a tool for Americans to easily access conflicts of interest for ACIP committee members,” a CDC spokesman said in an email. “Rather than conflicts of interest being buried within meeting minutes, this tool quickly provides the public with ACIP members’ conflicts of interest.”

The ACIP became a flashpoint for controversy during the COVID-19 pandemic, reenergizing concerns about payments advisors receive from the pharmaceutical industry.

Of the experts who have served on the ACIP from 2000 to 2024, 38 advisors reported potential conflicts of interest.

Reported connections between the advisors and pharma included a range of potential conflicts: honoraria for lectures, consulting fees, employment at academic institutions conducting studies with drugmakers, or direct collaboration with drugmakers on clinical trials.

Advisors are asked to disclose conflicts of interest at the beginning of each public meeting and prior to a vote, but were otherwise tricky to track before the new tool became available.

ACIP members are required to submit confidential financial disclosures annually and self-report conflicts of interest at the start of each meeting and vote. Conflicts of interest and perceived conflicts of interest are vetted by the CDC if necessary, according to the committee’s website. But special government employees receiving no salary are not required to make public financial disclosures.

Some scientists praised the ACIP tool.

“They are the gatekeepers. The vendors’ job is to bring products into the market. At the same time, the gatekeepers ensure the product’s safety, accuracy, and reliability before human use,” said Masfique Mehedi, associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of North Dakota, in an email to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

By contrast, Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who served on the ACIP from 1998 to 2003, said in an interview with DCNF that the tool is reflective of Kennedy’s beliefs about the pharmaceutical industry and could decrease public trust in vaccines.

“It’s very easy to say Big Pharma is this monster capturing the FDA. I just don’t see that in the vaccine world,” Offit said.