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Experts to Publish Alternative Maternal Vax Recommendations
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) plans to develop and release recommendations on maternal immunizations, including COVID-19 vaccination, alongside the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy’s Vaccine Integrity Project. The move comes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ended its recommendation for routine COVID-19 vaccination among pregnant women and healthy children back in May.
In announcing the forthcoming recommendations, ACOG noted the “importance of unbiased, evidence-based guidance about maternal vaccination for respiratory conditions.” “All of ACOG’s recommendations for maternal immunization are based on the available evidence, and that science hasn’t changed,” Steven Fleischman, MD, MBA, president of ACOG, said in a statement.
“We have made the commitment to join the [Vaccine Integrity Project] because we want to ensure that absent the historically robust government-led annual review of data and subsequent evidence-based recommendations, our patients and our colleagues across the healthcare system are able to make maternal immunization decisions that are founded on science.”
ACOG CEO Sandra Brooks, MD, MBA, added that “immunization is especially important during pregnancy, when the risks of severe outcomes are heightened — and when vaccines can provide critical protection to the infant after birth.” “The prospect of unvaccinated patients and their infants developing respiratory distress and being hospitalized from COVID-19, flu, or RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] is frightening,” she added. “The fact remains that vaccination is our best tool to prevent serious outcomes from respiratory diseases.”
Florida’s Surgeon General Calls for More Study of People Injured by COVID mRNA Vaccines
Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo is urging more study of people who say they were injured by COVID-19 vaccines. A press conference in Tampa on Thursday, Ladapo also praised the federal government’s decision in May, announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to no longer recommend COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women.
Ladapo said he’d like to see an even broader recommendation. “I hope that we get there because these products, they should not be used in any human beings,” Ladapo said. “Increasingly, it appears that the folks who have received these vaccines, particularly when they’ve been boosted, and particularly when they continue to be boosted, appear to actually be at highest risk of becoming seriously ill from the virus,” he added.
But major pediatric and women’s health groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American College of Obstetrician-Gynecologists continue to recommend COVID-19 vaccines to pregnant women and children older than 6 months.
“Honestly, we don’t know where his data are coming from. And it’s not going to deter us from continuing to recommend the vaccines,” said Dr. Rana Alissa of the Florida chapter of the AAP. “We are not going to just throw out decades of science and research and information just because of one person or a group of people that decided to take over and just continue to spread conspiracy theories about the danger,” she said.
Vaccine Injury Advocates Sue RFK Jr. To Force COVID Shot Inclusion in Federal Compensation Program
In a high-stakes legal challenge that puts the nation’s vaccine injury policy on trial, a federal lawsuit filed by vaccine-injured plaintiff Paul Brundage is demanding that U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. immediately include COVID-19 vaccines in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). Brundage, who developed a serious blood-clotting disorder after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, filed the suit (Brundage v. Becerra, now v. Kennedy) in January 2025.
His legal team accuses HHS of violating federal law by failing to add COVID-19 shots to the VICP’s Vaccine Injury Table within the required two-year window after the CDC recommended the vaccine for children. “This isn’t a request,” said Brundage’s attorney, Anne Toale of mctlaw. “It’s a mandate in the statute. The Secretary has no discretion here.”
Under the National Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, once the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a vaccine for routine use in children or pregnant women, HHS must add it to the Injury Table within two years — triggering eligibility for no-fault compensation. That deadline passed, Brundage argues, and HHS has done nothing. Instead, those harmed by COVID-19 vaccines remain stuck in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), a rarely used emergency system described by legal experts as a “black hole.”
Adults Largely Don’t Need Tetanus, Diphtheria Vaccine Boosters, Researchers Say
With certain exceptions, U.S. adults could safely forego tetanus and diphtheria booster vaccination — if uptake of childhood vaccines stays high, an Oregon Health & Science University–led research team wrote yesterday in Clinical Microbiology Reviews. Discontinuing the 10-year doses could save about $1 billion each year.
While diphtheria is highly contagious, the community is broadly protected through childhood vaccination, and “Tetanus is unique among vaccine-preventable diseases because it is not transmitted from person to person; therefore, vaccination provides important individual protection but does not impact the risk for a community at large,” the study authors wrote.
The current U.S. vaccination schedule calls for giving children five doses of the Tdap (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis [whooping cough]) vaccine by age seven, adolescents one dose at age 11 or 12, and adults one dose every 10 years. Current U.S. childhood vaccine coverage is 95%. Studies the team conducted in 2016 and 2020 suggested that the vaccines generate at least 30 years of immunity against the life-threatening infections, far beyond the current 10-year booster recommendations and previous recommendations for even more frequent boosters (eg, every 3 years in 1955).
In addition, childhood vaccination against tetanus and diphtheria have achieved roughly 95% and 99.9% reductions in those diseases, similar to those of other routine pediatric vaccines such as measles (99.9%), mumps (97.6%), and rubella (99.9%), the researchers said.
US May Revise Hormone Replacement Therapy Warnings
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary signaled Thursday that he is open to revising strict warning labels on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), following testimony from experts who said the treatment’s risks have long been exaggerated. HRT is taken to replace estrogen the body stops producing after menopause — when periods end permanently — and helps relieve symptoms such as hot flashes, vaginal discomfort, and pain during sex.
But its use has plummeted in recent years amid concerns including a possible link to invasive breast cancer. FDA chief Marty Makary, who convened Thursday’s meeting of outside experts, told AFP: “We have to revisit these topics.” He argued that the framework that led to so-called “black box warnings” — the strongest warning the FDA can require for prescription drugs — “came from a different era.”
“Not only is there no clinical trial showing an increase in breast cancer mortality, but there are also other tremendous long term health benefits,” Makary added.
The 12 experts convened by the agency said HRT’s benefits go beyond easing menopausal symptoms. They cited evidence for reduced fracture risk, improved cardiovascular and cognitive health, and fewer urinary tract infections.
