A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed on Tuesday that in recent months, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has blocked the publication of multiple studies confirming the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and shingles vaccines. It is also the latest move by the Trump administration to question safe and effective vaccinations in the United States and make it more difficult for some people to access vaccination services.
The current Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has always publicly questioned the safety of vaccines. Under his leadership, federal health agencies have relaxed COVID-19 vaccination recommendations, scaled back research related to vaccine research and development, and attempted to comprehensively adjust the children's vaccination schedule.
The New York Times first reported on Tuesday that researchers from the Food and Drug Administration had teamed up with data companies to analyze millions of patient medical records and concluded that the two vaccines had extremely low rates of adverse reactions.
The report added that as early as October last year, relevant scientific researchers received instructions to withdraw two new coronavirus vaccine research papers that had been accepted by medical journals and were to be published; in February this year, senior officials from the Food and Drug Administration refused to approve the submission of the research abstract of the recombinant herpes zoster vaccine Shingrix to an academic conference on drug safety.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services responded to CNBC that many recent studies have been withdrawn becauseThe macro conclusions made by researchers cannot be supported by basic original data.
The spokesman also said: "The Food and Drug Administration's move is to maintain the rigor and fairness of the scientific research process and ensure that the scientific research results released by all related institutions meet high standards."
When asked about the study related to the shingles vaccine, the spokesperson said that the design of the studyBeyond the regulatory scope of the Food and Drug Administration.