GEOFF BENNETT: A major shift in a key vaccine advisory committee has raised alarms among some public health experts about its potential impact on access and guidance.

ACIP, as the committee is known, routinely makes recommendations to the CDC, but Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired every prior member of the panel and appointed seven new ones.

The committee just finished a two-day meeting pushing for a new direction, including a new review of the entire cumulative childhood vaccination schedule, a reevaluation of universal hepatitis B vaccinations for babies, which most experts say should be maintained, and it no longer recommends multidose flu vaccines containing thimerosal.

Joining us now to discuss this is Dr. Jerome Adams, former surgeon general during the first Trump administration.

Thanks for being with us, sir.

DR. JEROME ADAMS, Former U.S.

Surgeon General: Hey, thanks for having me today.

GEOFF BENNETT: So let's start with the makeup of this committee.

One of the co-chairs is Dr. Robert Malone, who says he helped invent the mRNA vaccine technology, but is now widely known for promoting skepticism about those same vaccines.

What are your concerns about some of the new folks who were appointed to this committee by the health secretary?

DR. JEROME ADAMS: Well, that's a great place to start.

And there's so much going on.

I want to try to help people compartmentalize it.

I think about people, policies, and priorities.

And, as you mentioned, very troubling that there was the abrupt dismissal of all of the 17 prior ACIP members, that they were replaced by seven.

And you may have heard this week that the head of the Health Committee, Senator Cassidy, actually called on this ACIP meeting to be postponed until it was fully staffed and staffed with appropriate individuals.

The people who were put on this committee by RFK Jr., many of them have conflicts of interest that weren't disclosed.

They have made money off of vaccine litigation.

They don't have the expertise that other members do.

So the people are concerning.

The policies and procedures are concerning.

This is unprecedented.

The chair of the committee for the first time ever is someone who doesn't have any experience serving on the committee and, as I mentioned, was involved in an anti-vaccine litigation, which was not disclosed.

The fact that you had for the first time ever groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics choosing not to participate in this meeting, unprecedented.

And then, finally, the priorities.

So, people, policies, priorities, we saw a lot of time spent in the last two days discussing long-debunked theories and really not as much time as you would have hoped focused on things like, should we be getting a COVID vaccine this fall?

GEOFF BENNETT: The committee is now reviewing vaccines like MMR and hepatitis B, long considered safe by the medical community.

You mentioned the committee's chair, Martin Kulldorff.

Here's what he had to say.

DR. MARTIN KULLDORFF, Chairman, Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices: We will also be convening a new work group to look at vaccines that have not been subject to review in more than seven years.

This was supposed to be a regular practice of the ACIP, but it has not been done in a thorough and systematic way.

We will change that.

GEOFF BENNETT: So is there any merit to his claim that these vaccines haven't been reviewed in a thorough and systematic way?

DR. JEROME ADAMS: Well, the thorough and systematic way these vaccines were reviewed was through the VRBPAC, which is the FDA committee that the secretary did an end-around on, and the CDC ACIP.

So one of the big problems here is trust.

The way they have gone about this, even if they come up with recommendations that make sense -- we will probably talk about this hopefully before the end of this interview, the thimerosal debate, today -- things that people can in many ways agree upon, they're not going to be trusted.

And I have a lot of fear, concern, and, quite frankly, confidence that far more people are going to be unlikely to be vaccinated moving forward, again, because we're spending so much time talking about debunked theories and baseless claims, instead of focusing on facts and timely things like the measles outbreak in Texas, where we have got two children who died, and the outbreak of whooping cough in Louisiana, where two children have died.

And we're talking about long-settled science.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

Well, you mentioned thimerosal.

Let's talk about that briefly.

This is a mercury-based preservative that's been extensively studied, found not to cause autism.

That's the concern among some of these folks who want to bring it up now.

It's no longer used in the vast majority of flu vaccines.

What should we know about it?

The CDC has long said it's safe.

DR. JEROME ADAMS: Well, the newly restructured ACIP voted 5-1, with one abstention, to recommend against use of any thimerosal-containing flu vaccines.

This is symbolic, but it's impactful.

Thimerosal is only found in about 5 percent of currently available flu shots.

So, this signals a major shift towards legitimizing long-discredited vaccine fears.

It's going to fuel public mistrust.

Experts fear that this could escalate vaccine hesitancy, add extra cost, and reduce access.

The panel member Dr. Meissner pointed out at the end when this vote was going on, and he voted against it, that there are concerns that getting rid of the multidose vials of flu vaccine, that small percentage, would decrease access to some individuals.

And, finally, this vote proceeded without comprehensive CDC analysis or peer-reviewed data, and featured presentations from individuals who lack medical credentials, so, again, not a process that is engendering trust.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, the new chair of this committee, Martin Kulldorff, who we mentioned, said the goal of this new effort is, in his words, to rebuild integrity and trust after missteps during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There were objectively some mistakes, some public health mistakes during the pandemic.

What, in your view, is the best way to rebuild trust?

DR. JEROME ADAMS: There were absolutely mistakes made during the pandemic.

We have to separate a careful litigation and appraisal of what happened during the pandemic from what's going on with vaccines.

And that's important because we're conflating the two, and you're seeing measles, mumps, rubella, vaccination rates fall, and people are blaming it on COVID, which is going to harm us all.

I think it's important that we don't shame and blame individuals who were unvaccinated or undervaccinated.

I would never shame a parent for asking questions.

Yet we also need to make sure we are supporting the long-held and trusted processes that allow scientists, that allow pediatricians, that allow individuals who understand vaccines to debate these issues publicly.

What you're seeing right now is that, instead of advancing science, it really seems to be advancing a political narrative, and that's going to erode confidence, restrict access, and inflate costs for vaccines, all while ignoring pressing disease burdens like flu, COVID-19, and, as I mentioned again, measles, which is spreading like wildfire across our country.

GEOFF BENNETT: Former U.S.

Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams, thank you for your insights this evening.

We appreciate it.

DR. JEROME ADAMS: Thank you.