(Reuters) -The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted a report on Tuesday that said evidence does not support a link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders, ahead of a two-day meeting of an advisory panel later this week.
The report was posted on the agency’s website on Tuesday, along with some presentations and final agenda of the meeting, which is scheduled for June 25 and 26.
The meeting will be the panel’s first after health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. abruptly fired all 17 members of the independent committee of experts on vaccines, and replaced them with just eight new members, some of whom have previously advocated against vaccines.
On Monday, Senator Bill Cassidy, who heads the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, called for the meeting to be delayed, saying it should not take place with a relatively small panel and without a CDC director in place.
Last week, a draft agenda for the meeting was posted indicating it was adding two new issues to discuss: thimerosal in flu shots and a safety review of the measles, mumps, rubella and varicella shot.
The report posted on Tuesday reviewed some studies on vaccines that contain thimerosal and neurodevelopmental outcomes. Thimerosal has long been used in the United States in multi-dose vials of medicines and vaccines to prevent germs, such as bacteria and fungi, from growing in them.
Lyn Redwood, a former leader of anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, is set to make a presentation on flu vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal at the meeting on Thursday. Redwood’s presentations were not yet available on the CDC’s website.
Kennedy, who founded the Children’s Health Defense and has a long history of casting doubt on the safety of vaccines contrary to scientific evidence, wrote a book in 2014 claiming that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, causes brain damage.
According to the evidence report, 96% of all influenza vaccines in the United States were thimerosal free during the 2024-25 flu season.
The number of pregnant women receiving a thimerosal-containing flu vaccine has also decreased over time, with only 0.3% of doses administered in 2024 containing thimerosal, the report added.
(Reporting by Christy Santhosh and Bhanvi Satija in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Shailesh Kuber and Shinjini Ganguli)
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