Each year about this time the FDA sponsors an Advisory Committee meeting to flush out the best guesses of experts on what would be the best composition of next season’s flu vaccines.
MSN reports (here), “[T]he annual meeting of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) is crucial for drugmakers to ensure there’s adequate time to produce vaccines to prepare for this fall’s flu season. However, the meeting has been canceled without any explanation.”
Delaying a decision at this time could result in a delay in preparation of the flu vaccine in sufficient supply to meet demands this fall. Also, according to MSN, this is FDA’s “latest healthcare AdCom meeting to get canceled under the new Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known vaccine skeptic. Last week, a meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices scheduled for this week to review immunization data was postponed.”
Is this a portend of things to come in the vaccine and healthcare arena? Look out, we have just begun!
