It’s Friday. As usual, that means there is a lot of news.
Today’s update is mostly public health focused; including a summary of RFK Jr’s appearance before congress, statements from fired CDC and NIH employees, and news from HHS’s forthcoming report on autism. There’s also some news out of UCLA and Northwestern.
Health Secretary RFK Jr. testified before the Senate Finance Committee yesterday in a hearing ostensibly about the President’s 2026 healthcare agenda. Here is coverage from Stat, NYT, CNN, and Nature all have reports.
The tone of the questioning was largely split across party lines, though three Republican senators - Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), John Barasso (Wyoming), and Tom Tillis (North Carolina) all expressed criticism of the Secretary’s leadership of HHS. Senators Cassidy and Barasso are both physicians.
The hearing grew quite contentious, including a very heated back and forth with Senator Ben Ray Luján (New Mexico) over HHS’s investigation into possible causes of autism (more on this below)
According to Stat’s reporting, Director Kennedy drew gasps when he cited a (debunked and retracted) 2002 analysis purporting to show a link between vaccines and autism.
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published an editorial from former CDC director Susan Monarez, in which she stated that she was fired for refusing to reapprove the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which is slated to meet in the next few weeks.
According to reporting earlier this week, HHS Director RFK Jr., who fired every member of the committee back in June, plans to appoint new members who share his perspective on vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry.
During his testimony yesterday, the Health Secretary denied this account and stated that he fired Dr. Monarez because she was “untrustworthy.”
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo (the former director of NIAID) and Dr. Kathleen Neuzil (the former director of NIH’s Fogarty International Center) filed whistleblower complaints on Wednesday alleging that that they were removed from their leadership positions after objecting to the Administration’s efforts to undermine vaccines and politicize the grant making process. The complaints can be read here and are really quite something.
According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, the HHS report on autism that is due out later this month will - among other things - draw a link between autism and Tylenol use during pregnancy. This is one way to draw attention to “gold standard science”, I guess (ahem ahem ahem).
States are splitting even further along party lines in regards to vaccine policy.
Hawaii has joined the West Coast Health Alliance, which will start by aligning their immunization recommendations to those of respected national medical organizations.
The Governor of New York signed an executive order in the state today that expands vaccine access while longer term legislative solutions can be explored.
Massachusetts announced yesterday that it would make its own rules about vaccine availability and would not solely depend on recommendations by the CDC.
HHS issued a Dear Colleague letter yesterday stating that and programs or providers that receive funds from the Vaccines for Children Program (VCP) must respect state religious and conscience exemptions from vaccine mandates. This program provides free vaccines to children whose families are uninsured or could not otherwise afford vaccination.
The president of Northwestern University, Michael Schill, announced his resignation yesterday. Approximately $790 million in federal research funds to the University have been frozen since May and President Schill testified before congress last year in a hearing about antisemitism on college campuses.
The president of the University of California sent a letter to state officials describing how the situation at UCLA could grow to encompass all ten UC campuses. If federal funding were removed, he estimates the UC system would need 4-5 billion dollars to minimize the damage.
NIH has quietly provided an update about how funding opportunities will be communicated next year. I’ve seen the move to Grants.gov for funding announcements before, but I hadn’t seen the plan to reduce the number of NOFOs. The announcement is careful to say that the intent is to “reduce the number opportunity announcements without reducing an applicant's opportunity to submit investigator-initiated applications to NIH.”