It was just two weeks ago when the public received some good news and some bad news related to public health. The good news was heartening: A Covid-19 vaccine was made available to Americans last year, and according to research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it made a significant difference in helping people avoid serious illness.

The bad news, however, was emblematic of a larger problem: The Trump administration’s political appointees at the CDC decided they didn’t want the public to know about the good news, and they blocked the research from being published to the agency’s flagship scientific journal.

As it turns out, the problem isn’t limited to the CDC. The New York Times reported:

Officials at the Food and Drug Administration have blocked publication of several studies supporting the safety of widely used vaccines against Covid-19 and shingles in recent months, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed.

The studies, which cost millions of dollars in public funds, were conducted by scientists at the agency, who worked with data firms to analyze millions of patient records. They found serious side effects to be very rare.

The Times’ report added that the developments dovetail with related administration efforts, including sharp cuts to research funding for vaccine development and releasing unvetted information intended to cast doubt on vaccines.

When the CDC buried the research on Covid-19 vaccines, the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, tried to defend the move by pointing to “concerns” about the research’s “methodology.” There was, however, no reason to question the methodology.

The FDA made a related argument this week, but more credible voices immediately pushed back.

Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, a former high-ranking National Institutes of Health official and chief executive of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told the Times that FDA leaders withdrawing papers from publication is a “pretty active act of sabotage.”

Similarly, Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, a Harvard University medical professor who studies FDA regulations, told the Times that he had worked with the FDA on a number of research papers and found its work to meet “the highest standards of scientific investigation.” He went on to argue that the request to pull the papers looked like an act of “censorship.”

Kesselheim added, “At any other time in history, this would be a major scandal that would lead to congressional hearings and resignations of leadership, and I hope that’s what happens next.”

Advocates of science and public health should hope for a similar outcome, though it will depend entirely on the outcome of the midterm elections in the fall. Watch this space.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post It’s not just the CDC: The FDA also blocked evidence in support of Covid-19 vaccines appeared first on MS NOW.

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