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This week’s meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices represented a notable departure from its prior practice of presenting and debating high-quality data on vaccine safety and risk-benefit analyses. Committee members, many of whom were hastily installed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., cited—without solid evidence—hypothetical risks of immunization with mRNA COVID vaccines, disregarding extensive studies showing the Food and Drug Administration–approved vaccines are safe and effective. The consequences of this meeting extend far beyond the specific votes the committee made today and could undermine confidence in vaccines and the U.S. medical establishment more broadly, some experts have noted. The story below has been updated with details of the discussion and votes regarding each vaccine considered.

The already tumultuous landscape of U.S. vaccine policy faces more turmoil in what’s anticipated to be a politically charged two-day meeting of a recently overhauled advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is an independent panel of experts that has traditionally met three times a year to make science-based recommendations about who should receive certain vaccines. But this year the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine science and public health has upended the committee. Just yesterday former CDC director Susan Monarez, who led the agency for a month, testified to the Senate about her experience of being pushed out of office for not condoning attacks on vaccines unsupported by evidence. Most dramatically, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., secretary of health and human services and a veteran antivaccine activist, fired the panel’s membership, with the newest appointees announced only days ago.

On September 18 and 19, the committee is holding its second meeting of the year, and experts now worry that the new ACIP members will continue eroding public access to lifesaving vaccinations. Already, one in six parents in the U.S. reports delaying or skipping a vaccine for their child, according to a recent poll.

“I fear for the health of children in this country,” says Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “RFK, Jr.’s goal is to make vaccines less available, less affordable and more feared. That’s his goal, and he’s doing a great job of it.”

ACIP’s decisions are important because they dictate the price of lifesaving preventive care. The Affordable Care Act requires private insurance companies to cover ACIP-recommended vaccines at no cost; government-run insurance programs, including the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, which covers half of childhood vaccines administered nationwide, also base costs on the panel’s decisions.

At this week’s meeting, the newly reconstituted panel will discuss three vaccines: the combined measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccine, the hepatitis B vaccine and this year’s updated COVID shots.

The meeting’s agenda is a departure from ACIP’s norm, says Edwin Asturias, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at the University of Colorado, who joined ACIP in July 2024 and was dismissed during Kennedy’s overhaul of the committee earlier this year. “This is one of the shortest agendas that we have seen for a long time from ACIP,” Asturias says. “Typically, ACIP has a lot of things to look through because there’s a lot of vaccines that are advancing through different aspects of development, as well as new data being generated.” Meetings in 2024 each discussed at least eight different vaccines.

Asturias and other public health experts are particularly worried the meeting will institutionalize attacks on the childhood vaccine schedule—a carefully choreographed, evidence-based timeline of vaccines given to kids in their earliest years.

“The childhood immunization schedule has proven to be very effective at reducing a lot of diseases that cause a lot of pain, suffering, and death in children,” Asturias says.

The meeting will be livestreamed on both September 18 and September 19. Here’s what experts are keeping an eye on.

The Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Varicella Vaccine

What Happened

Members voted 8-3 not to recommend the single combination MMRV vaccine before age four, removing the option for children younger than four years old to receive the shot for the first dose. Children younger than age four are recommended separate MMR and varicella vaccines.

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Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

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The indictment of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, demanded by President Trump, sent a shiver of fear through others on the so-called enemies list of the current F.B.I. director Kash Patel. But one other person who might have reason for concern is Kash Patel himself.

There will, presumably, come a time when the Republican Party is no longer in control. A precedent has now been set for prosecuting a former F.B.I. director disfavored by the current administration for allegedly lying to Congress. Democrats already are accusing Mr. Patel of having lied to Congress in his confirmation hearings when he promised not to engage in political retaliation.

Mr. Trump’s campaign to imprison, fire or otherwise punish his political foes and use government power to crack down on free speech he does not like has broken norms that stood for generations. But it has also established new standards for what a president can do that even some conservatives worry may come back to bite them. Power claimed by one party is then eventually available to the other. Limits ignored by one administration may no longer seem binding on the next.

If the precedent set by Mr. Trump takes hold, America may be entering a period when each new administration takes aim at the last one in a cycle of retaliation, a what-goes-around-comes-around pattern more familiar in authoritarian countries than in developed Western democracies. Even presidents more restrained than Mr. Trump may succumb to the temptation to follow at least some of his example.

“Conservatives should see this for what it is: shortsighted and dangerous,” said Sarah Matthews, a deputy White House press secretary in Mr. Trump’s first term who resigned in protest after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“If a Democrat wins in 2028, what’s to stop them from turning the D.O.J. on Trump officials or unleashing the F.C.C. on Fox News?” she said. “Trump is setting a precedent that will come back to haunt the right, and they’ll have no leg to stand on if Democrats use the same playbook against them.”

Mr. Trump’s threat to investigate and prosecute left-wing groups after the assassination of the right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk crystallized the concern among some of the president’s own MAGA allies. In particular, some bristled at the pressure applied by Mr. Trump’s Federal Communications Commission to take the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air because of comments related to Mr. Kirk’s murder.

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, decried the threat against ABC and its affiliates by Brendan Carr, the F.C.C. chair, comparing it to mafia tactics, and added that it would empower Democrats to someday do the same. “They will silence us,” Mr. Cruz said. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”

Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News host and a MAGA favorite, warned that the Trump administration’s threats to go after “hate speech” could impinge on everyone’s free speech rights. “If they can tell you what to say,” he said, “they’re telling you what to think.”

The concern about precedent goes beyond Mr. Trump’s self-described campaign for “retribution.” . His assertions of vastly expanded presidential power will naturally accrue to his successors. If he can override Congress on what money to spend or not spend, fire leaders of independent agencies, unilaterally gut government departments, and send troops into the streets of American cities, then so can the next president — a point made recently by the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page about his effort to rein in the independence of the Federal Reserve.

“I worry about future presidents of both parties abusing all of the unprecedented powers that Trump is claiming,” said Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College.

“Do Republicans want to give President A.O.C. unilateral powers to determine which Defense Department programs she wants to fund?” he added, referring to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a liberal Democrat from New York and bête noire to conservatives.

“We shouldn’t trust any administration with the dangerous and extraordinary powers Trump is claiming,” he continued. “Unfortunately, the recent history of the office suggests Democrats will pocket past expansions of executive power and just promise to wield them more carefully.”

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President Trump demanded the indictment of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director.Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

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Dick Van Dyke’s fitness routine has Rick Springfield in awe.

In a Sept. 26 Instagram post, the “Jessie’s Girl” singer posed with the “Mary Poppins” star, who turns 100 Dec. 13, in the gym as the two showed off their muscles.

“Filming an episode of Men’s Health, and I went to the gym and who should be there but 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke working out on every machine,” Springfield captioned the photo. “I thought I was doing well at 76, but Dick got up from the chest press machine and did a little dance step before I left! ❤️ Amazing!”

Van Dyke, whose book “100 Rules for Living to 100: An Optimist’s Guide to a Happy Life” is scheduled for release in November, has maintained an impressive gym regimen for years.

“I’ve always exercised three days a week. We go to the gym, still, three days a week,” Van Dyke told Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen on the Jan. 22 episode of the “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast.

“I get down and do a lot of stretching and yoga-type things, sit-ups. And they have machines … something for almost every exercise.”

Dick Van Dyke ‘couldn’t be happier’ as he nears 100 years old

On Sept. 21, three months after dropping out of a Vandy Camp event due to illness, Van Dyke celebrated his wife Arlene Van Dyke’s birthday with a “whimsical” Vandy Camp birthday bash in Malibu.

He and the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to Arlene more than once, with the couple sharing a sweet smooch at the end of one of the serenades.

“We’ve been married 13 years. In two-and-a-half months, I’m going to be 100 years old. I hope!” he told the crowd, per a video shared by photographer Trevor Perez. “And I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman in my life than this one.”

After explaining their fated first meeting at the 2006 Screen Actors Guild Awards, Van Dyke said, “Now we’ve been married 13 years, and I couldn’t be happier.”

Another video from the event shows Van Dyke holding a cane in his left hand as he wiggles his hips and twists his leg.

Van Dyke often takes opportunities to display his spryness by dancing in public, including in Coldplay’s “All My Love” music video in 2024. In the seven-minute director’s cut, he imparted his musings on a long career in Hollywood as well as the meaning of love.

“I think I’m one of those lucky people who got to do for a living what I would have done anyway,” he said. “I got to do what I do. Play and act silly.”

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Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the week with a quick roundup of some of the latest science news.

First, let’s check in on vaccines. On Thursday and Friday of last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, met to review and vote on recommendations for official U.S. vaccine guidelines. Back in June, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, dismissed all sitting members of the committee. Several of the 12 new panel members, all handpicked by Kennedy, have publicly expressed doubts about the safety of vaccines or the severity of the COVID pandemic.

An agenda released ahead of last week’s meeting stated that the ACIP would propose recommendations for the hepatitis B, COVID and measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccines.

Here’s Lauren Young, associate editor for health and medicine at Scientific American, with a quick update as of Friday.

Lauren Young: So far we’ve seen a few votes come through. The first one that they focused on was the MMRV vaccine. This is the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine. Varicella is commonly known as chickenpox, and they decided not to recommend the single combined shot for kids younger than age four.

Another vaccine that was discussed was the hepatitis B vaccine. There wasn’t really any changes to this, but members did vote in support that all pregnant people should be tested for hepatitis B infection, which is the current standard practice of care.

ACIP also considered an additional recommendation to remove the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine, with the first dose not given earlier than one month of age, [for infants born of people who test negative for the virus]. But they decided to table that vote because there was some confusion around some of the phrasing around that recommendation. That’s been a really big theme around these meetings this past week. There’s just been a lot of confusion.

So that’s just come to show how much these meetings have changed since RFK, Jr., has overhauled the ACIP panel. We’ve seen the shift away from science and away from scientific evidence of reviewing, very rigorously, vaccine data. And now it’s turned more into a lot of confusion and a lot of discourse around questioning the evidence in ways that just don’t quite always make sense. And our staff is watching this super closely. So check out our website for the latest updates.

Feltman: Speaking of vaccines, last Tuesday AHIP—the national trade association representing the health insurance industry—put out a statement on vaccine coverage. The organization said its member insurance plans would continue to cover all immunizations recommended by ACIP as of September 1, 2025, through the end of 2026. This includes updated flu shots and COVID vaccines.

Now for some public health news on a very different topic: head injuries in sports. You’ve probably heard of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. This progressive neurodegenerative disease, which can only be diagnosed with certainty via autopsy, is believed to be caused by repeat brain trauma, including the kind of repetitive head injuries one might endure while playing contact sports. It can include symptoms such as headaches, confusion, memory loss, poor judgment, depression, dementia, sensory-processing disorders, and other potentially debilitating issues. CTE symptoms generally appear some years after repetitive brain trauma occurs. In a study published Wednesday in Nature, researchers reported that brain degeneration may be detectable in young athletes before CTE starts to set in.

Researchers studied frozen brain tissue from 28 adult men. Some of the study subjects hadn’t played contact sports at all, and others had played American football or soccer but hadn’t been diagnosed with CTE. The rest of the study subjects played contact sports and had been diagnosed with early stages of CTE.

The researchers found signs of inflammation and vascular injury, including a marked drop in the number of neurons, in all the contact athletes they studied—even those who did not have the telltale signs of full-blown CTE. According to the study authors, this suggests that all athletes who frequently hit their heads could be at risk of experiencing some amount of brain damage.

A separate study also published last Wednesday, this one in the journal Neurology, found an association between headers, or a player using their head to control or pass a soccer ball, and changes in the brain. The study asked 352 amateur adult soccer players to estimate their number of head impacts over the course of a year. The use of headers varied pretty widely. When divided into four groups, the top head-users cited an average of 3,152 headers, while those at the other end of the spectrum estimated just 105 a year.

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Above: Maciej Rogowski/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images; Below: Chris Leduc/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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Jimmy Kimmel is back hosting late-night TV, and President Trump has some big feelings about it.

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