Pharma-funded pediatrician group seeks block on smaller vaccine schedule, CDC advisors' meeting

Mainstream medical associations plan to ask a judge to block the next meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine advisers and to suspend the agency's newly revised childhood vaccine schedule – to halt the further spread of "misinformation" and "non-scientific" decision-making, they said in a recent court filing.

The feds balked at the administrative component of the proposals by the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Public Health Association, their Massachusetts affiliates, American College of Physicians, Infectious Diseases Society of America and Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, saying in the filing they violate legal procedure.

The joint status report submitted Friday by the associations and defendants – Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CDC acting Director Jim O'Neill and their respective federal entities – followed U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy's refusal to dismiss the plaintiffs' Administrative Procedure Act and Federal Advisory Committee Act lawsuit Jan. 6.

Murphy raised eyebrows by granting AAP legal standing to sue on the basis that it had to "devote significant time and resources to counseling many" of its 67,000 members in response to the feds modifying COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and replacing CDC advisers. (He didn't evaluate other plaintiffs because only one needs standing for litigation to proceed.)

Order 'tacitly admits' families often aren't given informed consent

The judge denied he was flouting recent SCOTUS precedent that rejected standing for pro-life emergency room doctors challenging the Food and Drug Administration's repeated relaxing of regulations for the abortion pill mifepristone, claiming the federal changes threatened AAP's "core business activities."

"AAP’s recommendations to physicians on vaccine use predate the creation of" the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices "by more than 25 years," going far beyond the mere “educational and advocacy work" that SCOTUS rejected as grounds for standing in the mifepristone challenge, Murphy wrote. 

By changing COVID vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and "healthy" children from universal to "shared clinical decision making" – a designation "typically reserved for vaccines where the risk/benefit analysis is less clear or complex" – the feds plausibly imposed costs on AAP members, the judge said. 

These include "engaging in SCDM conversations without compensation, absorbing the full cost of purchasing vaccine doses that go unused due to the Directive’s suppression of vaccine uptake, and being able to see fewer patients per day due to the increased amount of time spent with patients discussing vaccines," as the plaintiffs allege.

"For standing purposes, it was certainly predictable that the changes in recommendations would and will cause insurers to change their billing for the COVID vaccine," Murphy wrote. 

Kennedy also issued a "credible threat" that doctors could face "liability under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act" by departing from the CDC schedule, the judge said. He cited the Supreme Court's grant of legal standing to website designer Lorie Smith to prevent Colorado from punishing her if she were ever asked to design a same-sex wedding website and refused.

"It is telling that one of the alleged financial injuries to doctors discussed in the judge’s order is that pediatricians will have to spend more time discussing vaccines with families and thus will not be able to see as many patients each day,” general counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg of Children's Health Defense, founded by Kennedy, told CHD's in-house publication.

Murphy's reasoning "tacitly admits that, in many pediatric practices," families are not getting "informed consent" from doctors, she said.

The Epoch Times documented AAP's financial connections to vaccine makers last summer when AAP released its own COVID vaccine recommendations at odds with the CDC schedule as it existed then, which also prompted Kennedy to note its corporate donors and call on AAP to fully disclose conflicts of interest.

AAP got another recent win against Kennedy when Judge Beryl Howell ordered HHS to restore $12 million in grants, nearly two-thirds of AAP's budget. The agency likely had a “retaliatory motive” for terminating the funds, that AAP is a vocal critic of the administration's actions on vaccines and so-called gender-affirming care, the President Obama nominee said.

Even Justice Kagan rebuked Judge Murphy for flouting SCOTUS

Nominated by President Biden but confirmed after the 2024 election, Murphy is known as one of the alleged "activist judges" frustrating the Trump administration's immigration enforcement agenda. He blocked the acceleration of deportations, said the administration violated his order concerning a pair of deportees and ordered it to return another. 

SCOTUS lifted Murphy's nationwide injunction that required officials to give illegal aliens "meaningful" advance notice and a chance to object before their deportation to third-party countries, but Murphy said it didn't apply to his ruling about the administration's alleged violation of his order. The feds denounced his "unprecedented defiance" of SCOTUS.

South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman documented "the lower court revolt" among Boston's federal judges last month, marveling that Murphy was likely to get reversed by SCOTUS three times in a single case after the judge again reportedly "wave[d] off" the second SCOTUS rebuke he received in July.

Even Justice Elena Kagan, who dissented on the first rebuke, concurred on the second. 

"I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed," she wrote.

Friday's joint status report responded to Murphy's request to propose a deadline for the "administrative record" and a briefing schedule for "contemplated motions," recounting their Thursday video-conference and suggesting a hearing before Murphy in mid-February.

The associations plan to challenge the newly revised vaccine schedule and the CDC's Jan. 5 "decision memo" in a fourth amended complaint, and to secure an injunction against holding its next ACIP meeting Feb. 25-26.

The feds object to the document demands by the associations related to the latest vaccine schedule, alleging they are trying to jump the gun before Murphy even agrees to let them update the lawsuit for a fourth time, which the government opposes.

"Because the January 5 action is not challenged in the Third Amended Complaint, it is beyond the scope of this case and Defendants are under no obligation to produce its AR," the government's portion of the report says. 

Murphy doesn't need an AR for the schedule change to evaluate a proposed preliminary injunction, which the government didn't know the associations were planning until last Thursday, because the memo and "underlying scientific assessment" are public, the feds said.

An AR for the next ACIP meeting is not only out of scope but also pointless "as a practical matter" because "no AR exists for a meeting that will not occur for weeks, they said.

Must preempt 'more misinformation' at next ACIP meeting

Injunctions against the schedule change and next ACIP meeting are necessary because the feds "have demonstrated a pattern and practice of actions intended to fundamentally change United States vaccine policy" that encouraged access and uptake before Kennedy took over HHS, the plaintiffs' portion of the report says.

The Jan. 5 change "is the most egregious of the Defendants’ actions to date, is a continuation of their bad faith conduct, has not been reasonably explained, and, therefore, must be enjoined," the associations said. 

They listed a timeframe "perhaps as short as 31 days" for the AR, from President Trump's Dec. 5 memo directing Kennedy to "FAST TRACK" a review of peer nations' vaccine schedules to inform U.S. changes, to the CDC's O'Neill adopting the decision memo Jan. 5. An AR on this "could be easily collected and produced in short order," they said.

The associations have "identified so many instances of misinformation" at ACIP's three meetings since Kennedy's reconstitution, most recently Dec. 4-5, "that it would be harmful to the public if the next ACIP meeting went ahead as scheduled at which more misinformation could be disseminated."

They want, "at a minimum, documents regarding the selection of agenda items and speakers for the June, September, and December 2025 ACIP meetings," to prove the "inappropriate influence" of the defendants in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

"After three strikes, this ACIP should be put on the bench until a new ACIP can be constituted," the plaintiffs said.