US vaccine panel to hold high-stakes policy meeting

A US panel stacked with figures sympathetic to the anti-vaccine movement was to yesterday take on federal immunisation recommendations in a highly politicised meeting that could upend longstanding medical advice.

- 

President Donald Trump’s top health official, Robert F Kennedy Jr, handpicked the voting members of the medical advisory group that is expected to consider whether to alter the standard childhood vaccine schedule — a move public health experts warn could have dire consequences.

The specific questions that will come to a vote during the two-day meeting in Atlanta aren’t public, but it’s expected discussion will include delaying childhood shots including against the highly contagious disease Hepatitis B.