U.S. court halts Trump administration decision to scale back childhood vaccines

[The Financial News] A federal court has blocked a Trump administration policy change that recommended halting the use of several vaccines for children.
On the 16th local time, Judge Brian Edward Murphy of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts (USDC-MA) granted a request from six medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), to suspend implementation of a revised list of recommended childhood vaccines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The groups had sued to stop the CDC’s scaled-back recommendations from taking effect, and the judge ordered the new vaccine list put on hold.
In January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sharply reduced the number of recommended childhood vaccines in the United States from 17 to 11. As a result of the CDC’s decision, vaccines for diseases such as rotavirus, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A and B, influenza, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) were removed from the list of recommended shots.
Judge Murphy found it unlawful that the CDC unilaterally revised the vaccine recommendation list without review by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). ACIP is an advisory body that develops recommendations on vaccines for people in the United States.
Regarding the decision to bypass ACIP, he noted that it "not only constitutes a procedural and technical violation, but more fundamentally suggests that the agency has abandoned the expertise and technical capacity vested in that committee."
Murphy also stated that "United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced 15 ACIP members by appointing many experts with no background in vaccines, and there were procedural problems in the appointment process," and he likewise suspended the effectiveness of the new appointments.
Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has insisted that "the use of vaccines causes conditions such as autism" and, despite strong opposition from the medical community, has aggressively pushed policies to reduce vaccine use during his first year in office.
whywani@fnnews.com Reporter Hong Chae-wan Reporter