The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Aug. 14 said it is reviving a long-disbanded task force to improve vaccines, after facing a lawsuit funded by Children’s Health Defense, which Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. used to chair.
Health officials said they are reforming the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines, which was disbanded in 1998 after producing a report.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will chair the revived panel. Members will include senior leaders from the NIH, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all of which are part of the HHS.
The task force is going to work with the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines, which is made up of government officials, attorneys, and others, and advises the government on vaccine injuries. It will regularly produce recommendations focused on developing, promoting, and refining vaccines for children that result in fewer and less serious adverse reactions than the currently available vaccines, HHS said.
The body will also look to improve research on and reporting of adverse reactions to vaccines.
“By reinstating this Task Force, we are reaffirming our commitment to rigorous science, continuous improvement, and the trust of American families,” Bhattacharya said in a statement. “NIH is proud to lead this effort to advance vaccine safety and support innovation that protects children without compromise.”
A reformed advisory group to the government said over the summer it would be analyzing the cumulative impact of vaccines on the childhood immunization schedule.
Congress created the task force in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.
Lawsuit
“I’m very pleased,” Ray Flores, an attorney who sued Kennedy, told The Epoch Times.
Flores has represented Children’s Health Defense, which Kennedy chaired through 2023, in multiple recent cases and has been its senior counsel. Flores sued Kennedy in federal court earlier this year over the latter’s alleged failure to report to Congress how he has worked to make childhood vaccines safer. Children’s Health Defense, which says its mission is to end childhood epidemics by “eliminating toxic exposure,” funded the suit.
The vaccine injury statute states in part that the health secretary shall establish a task force on safer childhood vaccines to prepare recommendations to promote the development of vaccines resulting in fewer and less serious adverse events.
The law says that every two years, the secretary shall send to Congress a report on the actions taken to improve vaccines.
According to a 2018 stipulation in a case filed by Kennedy, HHS said there were no reports from health secretaries to Congress pursuant to the law.
Kennedy “personally became aware that the biennial reports required by the 86 Act were never submitted,” Flores said in his complaint. He added later that “along with Secretary Kennedy’s predecessors over the past 25 years, he has also failed to establish this Task Force to make or assure improvements as required by law.”
Kennedy received written notice of the violations but did not revive the task force, prompting the suit.
On July 25, government lawyers asked for an extension of time to reply to let the parties “explore the potential for early resolution of this matter before engaging in further litigation.”
A judge’s grant of that extension is the last filing in the case. The government’s response is due by Aug. 15.
“Kudos to Secretary Kennedy for fulfilling this reporting obligation of HHS Secretary under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act,” Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, said in a statement. “It took nearly 50 years … but at last the Secretary is following the law on this critical issue. We are grateful.”
Others took issue with how the announcement was presented.
“On the surface, improving vaccine safety is something everyone can support,” Dr. David Higgins, a pediatrician in Colorado, said on Bluesky. “But how this is framed implies we haven’t already been taking vaccine safety extremely seriously—which simply isn’t true.”
First Report
HHS is going to transmit the first formal report based on the task force’s work within two years to Congress, it said on Thursday.
Updates will be provided every two years thereafter.
Flores said that he plans on seeking dismissal of the lawsuit without prejudice.
He said he’ll ask for dismissal without prejudice “because I want to be able to hold them to it if they don’t file the formal reports.”
Flores said that the task force’s main goal should be safer vaccines “without all the dangerous products in there,” such as adjuvants.
Kennedy recently ordered the removal of thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, from influenza vaccines, and has targeted aluminum, a common adjuvant in other vaccines, pointing to a 2023 U.S. paper that found links between aluminum exposure and asthma.
Medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine said this week that it would not retract a newer paper from Denmark that did not find associations between aluminum and chronic diseases.
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