When President Bill Clinton worked with the Bipartisan Congress on a federal program that guarantees vaccines for poor children, they agreed that the authority to buy shots from drug manufacturers should consist of Minister of Health. Drafters Bill did not take into account that an extremely loud critic of children’s vaccines would appear as nominated for the role.
This critic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., comes before the Senate for confirmation hearing this week. If confirmed, it should limit or even interrupt contracts with vaccine manufacturers for more than half of the children of the nation below $ 8 billion Program for children for children.
Program was credited As the national rate of vaccination is increasing and protects nearly 38 million children with low income and working class from diseases such as polio, measles, black cough and wild smallpox.
Mr. Kennedy said he would not take any vaccines, but has a long history of interrogation of the vaccine safety. The long -east authority of vaccines over the policy of vaccines is becoming increasingly worried about experts, researchers and legislators from both sides.
Some architects of the program are trying to persuade senators to oppose its nomination.
“I think she is dangerous for children’s health,” said Donna E. Shalala, Minister of Health Mr. Clinton and the former democratic congressman. She said she was talking to Republican senators who expressed the restlessness of Mr. Kennedy, but wouldn’t name them.
The confirmation hearing for Mr. Kennedy will begin on Wednesday before the Senate Financial Committee and continues on Thursday before the Health, Education, Senate Committee and Pensions. Back-to-back’s employment will give the senators the opportunity to ask Mr. Kennedy to ask questions about how he would supervise large health agencies and vaccination policies of the nation.
The legislators have already begun to ask questions about what authority the healthcare secretary would have compared to vaccines. To a A round table about policy of vaccines Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, Democrat Delaware, with Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, asked, “What are the protection and what ways someone could come and impact on the reduction of the use of vaccines?”
Experts told the senators that the Office included a developing power over the approval of the vaccine and the use of a significant position that could increase concerns or state affairs that are false.
Mr. Kennedy’s spokesman, Katie Miller, refused to respond directly to the question of Mr. Kennedy’s perspective to the children’s program.
For decades, Mr. Kennedy has sowed doubts about the safety of vaccines and their ingredients. In 2021 he Were asked by federal officials Cancel permission of all coronavirus vaccines at a time when thousands of Americans died every week from Covid.
Mr. Kennedy also worked for years in litigation and claimed that Merck against HPV, the main cause of cervical cancer, caused injury. Records published before confirmation hearing also show that it plans Keep your financial share In this vaccine, if confirmed.
His activism was worried about the legislators on both sides. Several Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, suggested that they are on the fence on how to vote.
McConnell, survivors of child palsy and former Republican leader, said The fact that anyone who deals with “efforts to undermine public confidence in proven medicines” will face problems with the Senate confirmation. Mr. Cassidy, physician and chairman of the Help Committee, did not say How will he vote. Mrs. Murkowski said CNN That she was worried and added, “Vaccines are important.”
The Program of Vaccines for Children It was created in response to the outbreak of measles, which disproportionately influenced poor children who could not afford vaccination. Now it protects against 19 diseases, according to the Center for Control and Prevention of Diseases.
The law that introduced this program gives the secretary power in the field of contracts for the purchase of millions of vaccine benefits, including authority to close, modify or reject agreements. Drug creators delivered 71.5 billion benefits to about 37,000 medical providers throughout the United States and its territories since the establishment of the program.
Federal officials “control the entire means of offer and distribution”, according to Sara Rosenbaum, professor of Emerites of Health Law and Policy at the University of George Washington, who was asked to build a program to build a program.
“Who would ever think it was a problem that the secretary gives such power?” She asked.
Some of the program defenders are afraid that just talking about the vaccine program could endanger it if Mr Kennedy wish.
“People are very nervous about talking aloud because they don’t want them to happen,” said Richard Hughes IV, a lawyer who represents vaccine manufacturers and is a lecturer at George Washington University. “But these are things that could happen very well.”
Lawyers who specialize in vaccines have pointed to other areas where the Minister of Health has national authority over vaccines. One of them is the program of compensation of the vaccine injuries, which was established in 1986, so that the manufacturers of vaccines against responsibility and the creation of the court system compensate for people damaged by vaccines.
Although Mr Kennedy suggested that Shield with responsibility provides incentives Manufacturers of vaccine to reduce cornersHe should not remove it – it lies with a congress. However, the Minister of Health can add injuries to the damage table that is expected to be caused by vaccines. The secretary can also add or remove vaccines from the court task.
As an official over food and drug management in the executive chain of command, the secretary could push the agency to suspend or cancel the approval of established vaccines or detain the approval of those looking for permission.
“These are real possibilities,” said Denise Hill, lawyer Iowa, who specializes in the right of vaccines. “And if you asked me five, 10 years ago, I would say it will never happen, but now I can’t say it with certainty.”
Mrs. Hill said that it would also be possible for Trump to try to place the conditions for funds on a program of vaccines for children, such as the abandonment of their mandate, so that students entering kindergarten are immunized.
The Secretary would also have the power over the influential advisory panel on the CDC entitled Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices or Aceci, according to Mr. Hughes, the Commission could be dissolved. The secretary could also re -see the issues of the vaccine and reject the recommendations of the committee.
This committee tends to influence state -level policy, physician and private insurance companies. However, it has a more direct authority over which vaccines are distributed by a children’s program. Dr. Walter Orenstein, who opened CDC immunization programs after the children’s program, said he was afraid that Mr. Kennedy could change the composition of the committee.
“There is a potential that a large number of people against vaccin could actually put into the ACCI, and that would have some potentially negative effects in terms of changing current recommendations,” Orenstein. “This could mean that vaccines would not be provided through a children’s vaccine program.”
Mrs. Rosenbaum, who helped create a system, said Medicaid was covering vaccines and the cost of managing them decades ago. But even so many doctors did not want to go to pay in advance to maintain vaccines supplied in their offices.
Mrs. Rosenbaum said that the system they built was revolutionary in that he had seized the Minister of Health to negotiate prices with vaccine manufacturers and gives the benefits directly sent to thousands of providers.
The program has been extended to cover families of working classes over the medical limits of income relying on the Chip or the Health Insurance Program of Children. These programs cover about 38 million infants, children and adolescents, including those who rely on the medical systems of native Americans.
After thirty years, she said that Mrs. Rosenbaum, as Mr. Kennedy faces a confirmation, people who introduced the program assumed that this could be a goal if confirmed. “People did not respond with the alarm for no reason,” she said.