Conflicts of interest declared by vaccine advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dropped significantly before the advisers were all dismissed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to a new study.
The reported conflict of interest prevalence rate at Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meetings declined from 13.5 percent from 2000 to 2004 to 6.2 percent from 2016 to 2024, researchers found after examining declared interests in a new tool released by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the CDC’s parent agency.
The average annual rates of conflicts reported by ACIP members fell from 42.8 percent to 5 percent.
There was also a decline over time in reported conflicts of interest for the parallel panel that advises the Food and Drug Administration, although the conflict reporting rate for that panel bounced back up from 0 percent per meeting from 2008 to 2015 to 1.9 percent in 2016 to 2024….