Draft Agenda for the June 25th-26th ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) Meeting

ACIP can eliminate your vaccine access, and their draft agenda is a disaster...

In discussing the sweeping changes to ACIP I have gotten numerous comments from people who believe that even if the vaccines aren’t ‘recommended’ that they will still be available for those who want them, this is simply not the case. I outline this further below, but first, let’s talk about the upcoming ACIP meeting.

The newly appointed ACIP is comprised of just 8 members, increasing the individual influence of each voting member significantly.

The new ACIP is having their first meeting June 25th and I think it is important that concerned citizens, scientists, and physicians show up to let them know that they are being scrutinized, closely, like anyone should be if they are making sweeping health decisions for ~340 million people.

To sign up to speak or leave a public comment please go to my substack post here where I provide the links and a ‘how to’.

There are several concerning issues highlighted by the draft agenda, here are a few that were immediately concerning to me.

1. Lack of speaker variety/repeat speakers

There are typically multiple different speakers during an ACIP meeting with deep expertise in their specific topic.

The April 2025 ACIP meeting hosted over 40 different speakers with specific knowledge of and expertise in their areas of presentation. The June 2025 meeting has SIX (6) total speakers with many repeat speakers on a variety of topics.

For example, Adam MacNeil who works in the global tuberculosis branch of the CDC is slated to give an update on COVID epidemiology as well as clinical considerations for clesrovimab, and updates on the effectiveness of maternal (RSV) vaccine and nirsevimab, among several other topics. Typically there would be dedicated experts in each area slated to speak. Best of luck Adam MacNeil and Georgina Peacock, you are the only two speakers scheduled for the entire day of the 25th of June.

2. No scheduled speaker on critical topics on the agenda

No speaker is scheduled, for example, to talk about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines or the safety of material RSV vaccines and nirsevimab. There is also no speaker listed for “MMRV Vaccine Presentation on MMRV vaccine in children under under 5 years of age” or “Proposed recommendations regarding MMRV in children under 5 years of age”. This agenda was published 5 working days before the meeting.

Call me boring but I like my public health agendas without the element of ‘surprise’. The lack of speakers raises serious questions: Is there anyone who will speak in a way that matches the HHS’s well known anti-vaccine agenda (these topics are settled science without known data to the contrary)? Are scheduled speakers being obfuscated? Is this group simply so disorganized they’re publishing half-baked agendas? Or, is it all of the above?

3. Significant time is dedicated to settled science

Entire sections are dedicated to an already approved maternal RSV and MMRV vaccines with no slated speaker covering safety concerns for either.

These vaccines have been approved and are constantly monitored for safety issues with MMRV being approved and administered for over 20 years. It would be surprising if the unnamed speakers have found a safety issue in the data. The source of this data should most certainly be audited, verified, and at the very least be made public, if it exists.

Review of thimerosal in vaccines is also on the list (with no speaker attached). Thimerosal was removed from all vaccines given to children under 6 years old in 1999 citing a ‘precautionary’ move, which was not evidence based. Some multi-dose influenza vaccines still contain thimerosal, but parents can request thimerosal free vaccines. The small amount of mercury in thimerosal vaccines is not absorbed well by the body and mercury exposure through eating fish (which does contain absorbable methylmercury) is a significant source of mercury exposure far beyond an influenza vaccine which can be actively avoided. Notably, there has never been a link between vaccination and autism found and removal of thimerosal from vaccines did not reduce autism rates.

4. HPV and meningococcal vaccine discussions are dropped

ACIP was expected to discuss both HPV and meningococcal vaccines this month. This is especially concerning as the HPV vaccine has been a massive public health triumph, reducing cervical cancer diagnosis by nearly 90% in women. Please remember to point to this fact if anyone around you says that science isn’t curing cancer. Cervical cancer used to be far more common and often a death sentence for women. Ask someone who is a little grey around the ears, they will likely know someone who died from cervical cancer.

I personally knew a girl who died from meningococcal disease her freshman year of college. She was sweet, brilliant (she was going to Princeton), and she had a bad headache. The ER sent her home with tylenol, 12 hours later she was dead. These vaccines are lifesaving. Period. Shortly after her death (and the deaths of other college freshmen in various outbreaks) college campuses one by one began requiring or recommending meningitis vaccines for their incoming freshman as the bacteria (it can also be virus and fungus caused) can spread quickly in close living situations such as college dorms.

The June 2025 ACIP draft agenda in complete reads as nothing more than a disorganized and chaotic swipe at United States public health. The only business as usual (from the outside) things listed is the continued progress forward on a Chikungunya virus vaccine. Perhaps RFK Jr. and his rag-tag crew of science illiterate recognize the Chikungunya virus as dangerous because it is difficult to pronounce.

Here is the agenda as of 6/20/2025:

How does ACIP control vaccine access?

ACIP determines if a vaccine is recommended for routine use for a given population. This recommendation then must be adopted by the director of the CDC. There is no current CDC director, only an interim director appointed by RFK Jr. (who apparently does not show up to all-staff meetings etc.). This recommendation determines if a health care provider required to cover the cost of vaccination, and, if a pharmacist will give the vaccine.

If you walk into a pharmacy and ask for a vaccine (even if you are willing to pay out of pocket) and it was NOT approved by ACIP and then adopted by the CDC director it is most likely that the pharmacist will not give you this vaccine.

I learned this first-hand when I attempted to get one of my COVID-19 boosters on a day between ACIP recommendation and CDC approval. I was denied by a CVS pharmacist and had to come back later.

So not only will millions of Americans not be able to afford a vaccine for themselves and/or their whole families, but even those who can afford it will most likely be denied.

Now, let’s say your family physician can give the vaccine and you can afford it and/or your insurance company will still cover it. Congratulations, you’re in a minority of lucky people. But you are in a privileged minority and vaccine makers do not see that as a good business strategy. The likelihood that they will continue to make the vaccine or update the vaccine either in the United States (one of the largest vaccine markets) or overseas is very low. If vaccines are still produced, distributed, and updated the are likely to be significantly more expensive than they are today, pricing out more and more people until almost no one has access.

Now, let’s say you’re extremely privileged and you don’t mind paying tens of thousands of dollars for vaccination of you and your family. Because everyone around you will be sick more often with higher viral loads two things will happen. 1) the effectiveness of your vaccine will decrease because unless you are avoiding people and consistently masking you will be exposed to higher doses of virus more often (and so will your children). 2) Viruses mutate faster when they infect more people and have higher viral loads in those who are infected. The fewer people who are vaccinated the faster viruses will mutate around vaccine protection, increasing infection rates even in those who are vaccinated.

I’m willing to bet if you don’t mind paying tens of thousands of dollars to be vaccinated that you may also be benefiting from concierge doctor services. Do expect those to also increase in price and or disappear completely for all but the 0.01% tax bracket. Yes, you the vast majority of the 1% are directly benefiting from public health measures for the 99%.

Make no mistake that the anti-vaccine movement has a crystal-clear understanding of how ACIP control can eliminate vaccine access for the public.

Today is the last day to make a public comment for the June 25-26th ACIP meeting. I implore everyone to do so. I’ve written out instructions here.

(Note to my lovely readers: Please excuse any typos, this was written in haste to ensure a timely publication date. If you’d like to volunteer to be my copyeditor I assure you it is a thankless job with weird hours and no pay as these write-ups are provided for free, and always come with a side of anti-vaccine troll abuse)