Science Friday - AMA Joins Effort To Launch Independent Vaccine Review Panel

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

The gap between vaccine science and vaccine policy has been widening under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Now, the American Medical Association and the Vaccine Integrity Project, based at the University of Minnesota, have announced that they are partnering to create their own vaccine review process, effectively creating a parallel system to the CDC’s. Host Ira Flatow talks with Michael Osterholm, executive director of the Vaccine Integrity Project, about the role of this new review panel.Guest: Dr. Michael Osterholm is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and executive director of the Vaccine Integrity Project at the University of Minnesota.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Hi, it's Ira Flato, and you're listening to Science Friday. This week, NIH director, Dr. J. Badacharya, was named acting director of the CDC. We have been following the turmoil at the agency, including the widening gap between vaccine science and policy under RFK Jr.'s Department of Health and Human Services. Now, the American Medical Association and the Vaccine Integrity Project, based at the University of Minnesota, announced that they would be partnering to create their own vaccine review process, in effect creating a parallel system to the CDCs. Joining me now to explain the role of this new review system is my guest, Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy,

Executive Director of the Vaccine Integrity Project at the University of Minnesota based in Minneapolis. Mike, welcome back to Science Friday. Thanks, Ira. It's great to be with you. All right, let's start with how we got here. Why did you feel it was necessary to create a review process for vaccines independent from the CDC's review panel? Well, first of all, just to put into historic perspective, I wrote an op-ed piece in New York Times in November of last year, right after the election, saying, be prepared world of vaccines, because in fact, with Mr. Kennedy likely to become the Secretary of HHS, they were going to come under heavy a tax. And most notably, it's likely that the advisory community immunization practices are what we call ACIP, an independent group of experts that advise the CDC on how vaccines should be used would be dismantled and it would no longer be science-based.

Well, that all came true. But the work groups that the ACIP has had over decades has been the group that did the heavy lift to make all the information in a summarized form available for the medical societies to make recommendations, and also ACIP all of made their own. And with that being absent, we had no real way of connecting all the scientific information that's out there. For example, we're looking right now at the HPV vaccine, and just in the last 15 months, there's been over 3,000 papers published on HPV vaccine. So we need to stay current. And so what this group was really all about was, first of all, acknowledging we'll never be the ACIP. That's a legally mandated organization.

structural structure with the authority and the power of the federal government. But can we fill in in the places where we are going to lose that science capability? And so we in fact started this as an operation to, in the time period while the ACIP is in this compromised scientific position, to actually try to do the work that they were doing and to provide the information back to the medical societies so that they, whether it's the Academy of Pediatrics or the adult infectious disease people or it's for pregnant women, they could have the summarized body of information for which they could then justify their recommendation, which was, as it has turned out to be different than what the ACIP now has for a recommendation. And in addition to that, allow the

payers, which is a critical group, to say, yeah, we can now authorize payment for that vaccine as you've recommended medical community because, in fact, the data support that. So that's really what we're all about. It's just transparency. It's science-based. And most of all, it is about also securing the confidence of the public that someone is really using a science approach to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of our vaccine. So you mentioned something I thought was very important. You're actually allowing the provider to say, yes, we have a legitimate source that we can depend on if we don't use the CDC. Exactly. And ours is all science-based. As you may not be aware, but even last fall, we published a very detailed recommendation document in the New England Journal of Medicine,

which actually was all about summarizing the data for influenza, COVID, and RSV vaccines, and provided all the data for those reviews. In turn, that was used by medical societies and so forth to say, here is the current state of the art in terms of this vaccine. and that was quite successful. It allowed the payers to actually come to the table and support payment for these vaccines. And by partnering with the American Medical Association, you've added more integrity to that. Well, in fact, it's really important because they obviously, as a organization, are so critical representing physicians and medical societies, by the way. The medical societies, too, are part of the AMA.

And so from that perspective, what you might say, a legitimized, process where we are hand in hand and we could not be more pleasing to collaborate with the AMA on this. And they're helping to do the convening part while we're doing the heavy lift of the review part. We're doing this in conjunction with the medical societies. We're meeting multiple times monthly. We're providing updates. We will have a new set of recommendations updated on flu, influenza, and COVID again well before the fall viral vaccine season here upon is we're working on vaccines, for example, and pregnant women right now, a number of areas, all then which can be used by the societies and the physicians and the nurse practitioners

and the pharmacists who are giving vaccines now have a reliable source of information that they can use. It's kind of surprising you hear that the AMA partnered with you on this because they haven't historically focused on public health interventions, have they? You know, Ira, you're right on the Mark with that comment, but let me just say, these are the most unusual times I've ever experienced in my 52 years in the business. You think? Nothing. Nothing is comparable to any experience we've had in the past.

And so I think one of the things we've also come to the conclusion is we can be creative. We can be innovative. We can find ways to minimize the damage that's been done to the science community and particularly around the science of vaccines by this administration. And so, you know, again, our job is not to try to replace them. We can't wait for one day for the ACIP to be reconstituted with the kind of expertise on the process that they had before. But until then, we're here. And we're going to hold us up our side of the bargain of making the information available so that we can assure parents,

we can assure the clinicians that the vaccines that they're using are safe and effective. So these scientific reviews that you're putting out, they're not aimed directly at the public, but the people who advise the public. Exactly. In fact, we do not make recommendations on how to use the vaccines. Our job is to provide the very detailed systematic review basis for should a vaccine be recommended at a given time and part of life under what conditions of this vaccine warranted. That's our job is to get the information to the medical societies who have the expertise. This is where, you know, there's nobody better with kids and vaccines in the American Academy of

Pediatrics. They're outstanding. What we are doing is giving them the ammunition to say, we are up to date. We do have the latest and most important information around vaccines. And this is why we made the recommendations we did. But not everybody has a family doctor or a pediatrician. How do they find out about this? In this case, again, from...

the clinical standpoint, it's about the doctor, the nurse practitioner, the pharmacist. Our first line of work is to make certain that they have the current information at their fingertips and that if a patient comes in to be vaccinated or is being seen and the child should be vaccinated but not being done, that they have the information to share. Now, there's going to be additional outreach efforts, particularly with the AMA and some of our group and clearly the medical society to then also get this information out to the public so that the public can understand, wait a minute, but the federal government is telling me I don't need this vaccine, but you're saying I do. You know, how do you stand up against that? And what we're doing is

we'll be providing the kind of information that will be educational in nature, fact-based, and shared with prospective parents. So what happens if your evidence conflicts with the ACIP at the CDC? Do you think there's going to be confusion here at all? Well, let me just be really clear. It's going to conflict because it conflicts now. Okay. I mean, just recently they eliminated the mandatory hepatitis B vaccine for newborns, which is going to result now in a number of children becoming chronically infected with hepatitis B virus

because they're born to mothers who are infected and no one knows it and the child is not vaccinated at birth. That's a recommendation that we believe that was absolutely a mistake by the federal government for which we believe should still be in place. So will the public be confused? Well, they may be, but I surely don't want them to be convinced by the false scientific information put forward by the administration. Remember, what they're putting forward right now is not science. It's somewhere between magic and craziness. And I think that that's the challenge we have right now is helping parents understand. understand. Look at you got the entire medical community. You got the entire public health community.

You know, we all are together on this. I mean, there's been one thing that's united, all of us together in public health and the medical community. It's this issue. I mean, I've never seen anything with this kind of support across the board. And that should give you the parents some indication of how far off base the current federal efforts are around vaccines. Do you feel optimistic, I mean, about the future? that this will reverse any time, you know, in our lifetime? Has there been permanent damage done to the public's perception of the health care system and to the health care system itself?

Yeah. Well, you know, let me answer that in two ways. First of all, as I sit at my desk, I have a 12 by 18 inch electronic picture frame that flashes a picture across it every 30 seconds. And they're all of one of my six grandchildren. And when I look at that, I never have any doubt that failure is not an option. It's just not. And so from that perspective, there is a very deep personal sense of we can do this. But I also believe very much that we can maintain the course of good science review

and allowing the public and the medical community to have confidence in vaccines, even in the face of what's happening with the current federal exercise to get rid of vaccines. And so do I think it's going to be perfect? Do I think it's surely what we want? No. But do I think we can come through the other end better? You know, we can build back better in the end. And if anything, my hope is that the ACIP and our federal agencies, our state public health agencies,

our medical societies all come out the other end with lessons learned, and we do it even better in the end. So I am optimistic. What we have to do is hold the line until that time happens. Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. That's at Sid Rapp, an executive director of the Vaccine Integrity Project at the University of Minnesota based in Minneapolis. Thank you, Michael, for your work. Thank you, Ira. Today's episode was produced by Shoshana Bucksbaum.

Thanks for listening. I'm Ira Flato. We'll catch you next time.