The first meeting of the vaccine board handpicked by the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., opened on Wednesday amid concerns that many of the board members would be pushing an anti-vaccine agenda. 

The new co-chairman of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Martin Kulldorff, among the most controversial members of what was originally an eight-member panel, came out swinging in his introductory comments, stressing that he was following Mr. Kennedy’s mandate to “follow evidence-based medicine.”

“Vaccines are not all good or bad. If you think that all vaccines are safe and effective and want them all, or if you think that all vaccines are dangerous and don’t want any of them, then you don’t have much use for us,” Dr. Kulldorff said. 

Dr. Kulldorff announced that Mr. Kennedy’s new ACIP panel will be creating two new work groups to evaluate the cumulative impact of the CDC’s recommended vaccine schedule on children and adolescents.

“The number of vaccines that our children and adolescents receive today exceeds what children in most other developed nations receive and what most of us in this room received when we were children,” Dr. Kulldorff said. 

The group will look at the interaction effects between different vaccines, the total number of vaccines, the cumulative amounts of vaccine ingredients, and the relative timing of different vaccines.

Dr. Kulldorff singled out the hepatitis B shot, administered to newborns at the time of birth, and the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine as two shots that will be examined more thoroughly to “stay true to evidence-based medicine.”

“Is it wise to administer a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine to every newborn before leaving the hospital? That’s the question. Unless the mother is hepatitis B positive, an argument could be made to delay the vaccine for this infection, which is primarily spread by sexual activity and intravenous drug use,” Dr. Kulldorff said. 

In response, the American Academy of Pediatrics posted on X research showing that the United States is on the path to “eliminating perinatal hepatitis B, with only 13 reported cases in 2022.”

The group will also look into “the optimal timing of the MMR vaccine to resolve religious objections some parents have,” he said. 

In a video posted on X Wednesday, the AAP president, Susan Kressley said that ACIP as currently constituted “is no longer a credible process.”

“Today’s ACIP meeting is usually a time where experts come together to inform the future of vaccines. That is not what today will be. That is not what we can stand behind,” the AAP posted on X.

ACIP traditionally establishes recommendations for the CDC on vaccine policy, including setting the list of vaccines for the childhood vaccination schedule. ACIP’s recommendations are tied to federal policies and programs like the Vaccines for Children program, which provides free shots to families that may not be able to afford them. 

Mr. Kennedy’s decision to wholesale fire all 17 members of the previous ACIP board alarmed a Republican senator of Louisiana, Bill Cassidy, who called for this week’s ACIP meeting to be delayed indefinitely due to the perceived inexperience of the new panel members in “studying new technologies such as mRNA vaccines.” 

On Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy announced in a video that the United States government will cease funding to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, until it can “re-earn the public trust to justify the $8 billion that America has provided in funding since 2001.” 

On Tuesday, one of Mr. Kennedy’s initial eight picks to replace the 17 former members he fired wholesale, Michael Ross, withdrew from the ACIP panel. 

During Wednesday’s introductory roll call, Dr. Kulldorff immediately addressed his controversial positions on the Covid-19 vaccine and his firing from Harvard Medical School and Harvard Brigham and Women’s Hospital for refusing to follow vaccine mandates. 

“I did not take the Covid vaccine because I already had immunity, superior immunity from having had Covid,” Dr. Kulldorff said.

Also present was Robert W. Malone, whom Mr. Kennedy on Tuesday named ACIP co-chairman alongside Dr. Kulldorff.  

Dr. Malone was involved in the foundational work behind the messenger ribonucleic acid vaccine in the 1980s but came under fire after making unsubstantiated claims about the Covid-19 vaccines, including that the vaccines were “causing a form of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, that’s what AIDS stands for,” as he said in 2022.

“Having Martin Kulldorff and Robert Malone chairing the ACIP vaccine advisory committee is like having Pablo Escobar and El Chapo leading the Drug Enforcement [Administration],” an infectious disease specialist, Neil Stone, posted on X.

On Thursday, the Children’s Health Defense president emerita, Lyn Redwood, is slated to deliver a presentation on the use of thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used to prevent microbial growth, in vaccines. Her presentation was abruptly removed from the CDC’s website after it had evidently cited a nonexistent 2008 study to support claims regarding the risk of thimerosal. 

One of the slides in the presentation, “Thimerosal as a Vaccine Preservative,” cited a 2008 study in Neurotoxicology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, that claimed newborn rats given vaccine-level thimerosal developed “long-term neuroimmune effects.”

But that study, cited as “Low-level neonatal thimerosal exposure: Long-term consequences in the brain,” does not exist. A University of California at Davis professor emeritus who is listed as the author of the study, Robert F. Berman, confirmed with CNN that he didn’t publish a study of that name in Neurotoxicology and that the reference made in the report “does not exist.”

Dr. Berman was the author of a 2008 paper, “Low-level neonatal thimerosal exposure: further evaluation of altered neurotoxic potential in SJL mice,” that was published in a different journal. The report reached a different conclusion than the one Ms. Redwood suggests in her original presentation: “Results do not indicate pervasive developmental neurotoxicity following vaccine-level thimerosal injections” in mice. 

ACIP is expected to hold votes on maternal, pediatric respiratory syncytial vaccines later Wednesday. There will also be presentations, followed by a vote, on influenza vaccines, containing thimerosal.