Overview
- People familiar with the effort say HHS has tasked CDC and FDA scientists, along with data contractors holding millions of medical records, with a new vaccine safety review led by biostatistician Martin Kulldorff.
- Planned studies include comparing the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children and fresh looks at possible links to autism and thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative still used in some flu shots.
- An HHS spokesperson, Andrew Nixon, said the work reflects President Trump’s push for “gold-standard vaccine research” to guide policy and said NIH and universities are also involved.
- Vaccine researchers warn the project could cherry-pick findings and note that vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated comparisons can misread higher medical visits in vaccinated children as vaccine harm.
- Planning sessions in late February brought HHS, CDC, and data partners such as Kaiser Permanente together to map study methods and discuss the overall childhood vaccine schedule.