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Kennedy's US vaccine panel votes in favor of Merck's RSV antibody drug
- 6/26/2025
(Reuters) -U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s newly revamped vaccine advisory panel voted on Thursday for recommending use of Merck's RSV antibody drug for infants 8 months or younger whose mothers did not receive a preventive shot during pregnancy.
The panel voted 5-2 in favor of Merck's respiratory syncytial virus antibody drug, Enflonsia.
It also unanimously voted for Enflonsia to be added to the CDC's Vaccines for Children program that provides vaccines and therapies free of charge to those without insurance.
Voting on the RSV drug had initially been scheduled for Wednesday, the first day of a two-day meeting of the panel set up by the health secretary. The panel advises the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on who should take specific vaccines and related products and when they should be given after Food and Drug Administration approval.
Kennedy, who has a long history of sowing doubt about vaccine safety, this month fired all 17 members of a CDC vaccine advisory panel and replaced them with his own picks.
One prominent medical group has boycotted the meeting, which is unfolding under intense scrutiny following Kennedy's revamping of the advisory panel, which includes several individuals who have advocated against vaccines.
Before Thursday's vote, Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management who has called for the immediate withdrawal of COVID mRNA vaccines, asked a series of questions about the safety of the antibody class, which were addressed by experts at the FDA and the CDC.
QUESTIONS OVER THIMEROSAL
One area of focus at the second day of the meeting is a presentation on the use of thimerosal in flu vaccines, a mercury-based preservative that has been largely phased out of U.S. vaccines.
That presentation is being led by Lyn Redwood, former leader of the Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy.
According to a CDC briefing document, there is no evidence of harm caused by low doses of thimerosal in vaccines.
The CDC's background briefing on the topic, which was released on Tuesday, has since been taken down from the agency's website. The document was still part of the briefing documents given to members of the panel, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, said the document had not gone through the appropriate process before being posted.
Redwood's presentation initially included a reference to a study that does not exist, the listed author told Reuters, but it has since been updated to remove that reference.
(Reporting by Michael Erman in New York and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Christy Santhosh and Bhanvi Satija in Bengaluru, Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Frances Kerry)