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An HHS task force responsible for oversight of childhood shots that was disbanded in 1998 is coming back.
The Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines is responsible for childhood vaccine safety oversight. The panel was created by Congress.
It will be headed by National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.
The panel will work with the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines to develop recommendations on the development of childhood vaccines that have fewer and less serious side effects than those presently on the market as well as boost adverse reaction reporting.
The task force’s first report to Congress is due in two years, with subsequent reports every two years.
“I fear we are going to be right back to where we were in the 1980s, when the making of these vaccines became more and more onerous for the companies who make them,” Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told Axios. “Vaccines are going to be less available, less affordable, and there is going to be more fear.”
In May, Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization previously chaired by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sued him in that capacity to revive the task force.
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