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White House Says It’s ‘Done’ With Vaccines. MAHA Begs to Differ
White House officials are steering the Trump administration away from vaccine reform, fearing the political consequences of emphasizing a relatively unpopular issue in a key election year. But the Make America Healthy Again movement, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a health secretary with a history of anti-vaccine activism — isn’t going along without a fight.
The administration’s shift began late last year, when Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio published a memo finding that “vaccine skepticism is bad politics,” especially as the midterm elections near.
This month, the White House fully pivoted the administration on the issue, according to two White House officials who were granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy.
“We’re just kind of done with the vaccine issue,” said one of the officials. “We’ve done what we want to do on the vaccine front.”
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla Collects $27.6M in 2025 Pay Following Metsera, MFN Deals
Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, Ph.D., has yet to top the $33 million in compensation that he earned on the coattails of megablockbuster COVID-19 sales in 2022, but a $27.6 million pay package after a busy 2025 isn’t too shabby. Bourla’s 2025 rewards are his second-largest since he took the helm at Pfizer in 2019, topping last year’s increase to $24.6 million.
The CEO was credited with driving the Big Pharma firm to “solid financial results,” setting the company up for “strong growth” toward the end of the decade, Pfizer explained in its proxy report (PDF).
Beyond its 2025 revenue of $62.5 billion, which was down 2% from 2024, Pfizer had a busy year highlighted by a landmark drug pricing agreement with the Trump administration and a GLP-1 bidding war that saw the company snatch up obesity biotech Metsera for $10 billion, away from the grasp of rival bidder Novo Nordisk.
How Health Workers Are Adapting as HPV Vaccination Rates Stall
The HPV vaccine helps prevent infections that can lead to cancer, but efforts to raise vaccination rates among young people have slowed. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2022 to 2024, the share of teens who received at least one dose held steady at about 78 percent, while about 63 percent completed the full series.
That slowdown is part of a larger trend: Childhood vaccination rates for other diseases have fallen too. In the 2024-2025 school year, fewer kindergarteners received the MMR vaccine to protect against measles, mumps, and rubella. In Texas, MMR vaccination rates among young children dropped from nearly 97 percent in 2019 to about 93 percent today.
At the same time, more families are requesting exemptions, and reduced funding for vaccination programs is making it harder for health workers to reach kids and their families.
GSK’s RSV Shot Wins Expanded US Approval Amid Vaccine Pressure
GSK Plc’s vaccine to protect against a dangerous respiratory virus won expanded US approval to cover all high-risk adults, a reassuring move for drugmakers given the Trump administration’s increased scrutiny of immunizations.
The shot, called Arexvy, already has US Food and Drug Administration approval for all adults aged 60 and over and those aged 50 to 59 with at least one health condition that puts them at risk of severe infection. The new approval will expand the eligible population by around 21 million adults in the US and put Arexvy on par with a rival vaccine from Pfizer Inc.
RSV is a potentially deadly virus, particularly for babies and the elderly, and it leads to tens of thousands of hospitalizations every year in the US alone. About 17,000 adults 18 to 49 are hospitalized in the US because of the virus annually. GSK’s shot is made using an ingredient to boost the immune system, called an adjuvant, from Agenus Inc.
29 States and DC Now Reject Federal Vaccine Guidance
Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia now reject at least some federal vaccine guidance as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to de-emphasize the importance of childhood vaccinations under U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., according to research by KFF, a nonprofit health policy organization based in California and Washington, D.C.
The tally as of March 10 reflects states that have announced they will go their own way on childhood vaccines since last May, when Kennedy began to make changes to the vaccine schedule. Those changes culminated with a reduction in recommended routine childhood vaccinations, from 13 to 7, as of January.
New state-by-state recommendations reflect a partisan divide, as all states with Democratic governors have rejected federal childhood vaccine guidance while many Republican states have not.
FDA Vaccine Advisers Recommend Adding Subclade K to Fall Shots
Although the United States officially left the World Health Organization (WHO) in January, US scientists have continued to collaborate with international researchers to track the evolution of influenza viruses. Today, the Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) unanimously endorsed the WHO’s recommendation for viral strains to include in flu shots starting this fall. The final decision will be made by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Martin Makary, MD, MPH.
Seven voting members of the committee recommended that fall flu vaccines include a new variant that emerged in October, called A(H3N2) subclade K. Although the strain appeared too late to be included in last year’s vaccines, subclade K has since become the dominant flu variant in the Northern Hemisphere, Lisa Grohskopf, MD, MPH, an influenza expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told the committee.
Wegovy May Carry Highest Risk of Blinding Condition Among GLP-1 Drugs
The obesity drug semaglutide (Wegovy) conferred a significantly higher risk of ischemic optic neuropathy (ION) than any other GLP-1 agonist, including semaglutide for diabetes (Ozempic), an analysis of FDA data showed. In a review of 31,774 semaglutide-related reports in the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), researchers found that Wegovy was associated with a nearly fivefold higher risk of ION versus Ozempic, with an adjusted odds ratio (aOR) of 4.74. Men had a threefold higher ION risk versus women.
Given the higher maximum recommended dose for Wegovy (2.4 mg vs 2 mg for Ozempic), the findings suggest a dose-dependent safety issue that should be evaluated prospectively, reported Edward Margolin, MD, of the University of Toronto, and colleagues in British Journal of Ophthalmology.
“Semaglutide, in any formulation, was the only agent significantly associated with ION,” the authors noted. “These findings extend our prior global analysis and, whereas previous studies identified only an agent-specific association, this study provides the first evidence of a formulation- and dose-dependent ION risk, with the strongest association observed for Wegovy.”
