Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
A federal judge weighing whether to block changes to U.S. vaccine guidance and an advisory panel did not immediately rule Feb. 13 after hearing from attorneys representing medical groups and the government.
Lawyers for the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and other groups told U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy during a hearing at the federal courthouse in Boston that recent changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine schedule and the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel violate federal law and will reduce vaccination rates.
“This is a clear and present danger to public health,” said James Oh, a lawyer for the groups.
Oh said the schedule update, which removed the broad recommendation for six childhood vaccines for diseases including rotavirus, influenza and hepatitis A, “set off alarms” in the medical community and occurred without any rational explanation from the agency.
The CDC on Jan. 5, with backing from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., narrowed the number of vaccines routinely recommended by the childhood schedule.
Government officials said in filings that the the reasoning behind the change was in part due to an assessment carried out by senior health officials that analyzed the U.S. childhood schedule against schedules from other countries.
“The U.S. is a global outlier among peer nations in the number of target diseases included in its childhood vaccination schedule and in the total number of recommended vaccine doses,” the officials, Drs. Tracy Beth Hoeg and Martin Kulldorff, concluded.
The plaintiffs, which also include several women who say changes under Kennedy have prevented them from receiving vaccines, are challenging a series of actions. They focused on arguments for and against imposing an injunction blocking that update and the health secretary’s remaking of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee.
Oh said that the committee is not fairly balanced because it is dominated by people who oppose vaccines, in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and urged Murphy to block the committee’s upcoming Feb. 26–27 meeting.
Government lawyers said in a recent brief that the advisory committee members have a variety of employment histories and that the accusation they are anti-vaccine “does not accurately represent the members’ complex and nuanced perspectives and their committee voting records.”
Murphy asked during the hearing whether he could consider the “broader public health impacts” of the changes in vaccine recommendations while weighing the case.
Department of Justice lawyer Isaac Belfer told him health officials were not pursuing an anti-vaccine agenda and welcomed “spirited debate about vaccine policy.”
But he said the Department of Health and Human Services had broad authority to change policy to address a decline in public trust in vaccines following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The court cannot substitute its judgment in place of the agency,” Belfer said.
Murphy did not immediately rule.
With the meeting upcoming, he said he “must make a decision in this case on an uncomfortably tight timeline.”
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