“That's a red flag for me, that people were hand-picked to represent a particular perspective and may have big conflicts of interest that were not disclosed." — Susan Mayne, PhD, a former director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition

Meanwhile, expert panels are announced last minute, held in small rooms, panelists have significant COI, and often share the opinion of federal health officials.

Experts worry these expert panels sidestep regulated advisory committees which require transparency measures like advance notice, public comment periods, shared evidence, and conflict of interest disclosures.

"I don't want to stand by the bed of children and watch them die of vaccine-preventable diseases, which I have done in the past, before we had these vaccines," Kathryn Edwards, MD, a retired pediatrician and vaccine expert said.

“Medicine isn't about silencing the people that you disagree with. Medicine is about taking science and looking at the data and coming up with conclusions." — Kathryn Edwards, MD, a retired pediatrician and vaccine expert in Tennessee.

For people experiencing a poisoning emergency or who have questions, America’s Poison Centers encourages contacting Poison Help at 1-800-222-1222, or visiting PoisonHelp.org for online resources and support.

"It is markedly concerning to see an increasing trend of pediatric exposures this year already." —Christopher Holstege, MD, medical director of UVA Health's Blue Ridge Poison Center.

“Vitamin A cannot prevent measles. Vaccines prevent us from getting measles.”

“As a friend of mine likes to say: vaccines don't prevent disease -- vaccination prevents disease. And as I like to say, vaccine in the refrigerator never yet prevented a single case of infection.” — William Schaffner, MD, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Private industry produces the vaccines, but government promotes them. Sources told me people are worried about how recent staffing cuts will impact health agencies' ability to function — including on the vaccine front.

“From a pure efficacy standpoint, the cell-based vaccines have always been superior," Amesh Adalja, MD, of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told me. Egg-based vaccines have downsides, like a long production time, which can lead to vaccine mismatch. // @ameshaa.bsky.social

Previous bird flu outbreaks and decades-old public health infrastructure have led industry to protect the hens used for vaccine production, protecting them from wild birds. These are not the same flocks used for commercial egg production. Plus, we have other vax technologies that don’t rely on eggs.

"These findings indicate that many pregnant people were unable to overcome barriers to access abortion services and instead were forced to continue an unwanted or unsafe pregnancy to term.” —Suzanne Bell, PhD, MPH, of @johnshopkinssph.bsky.social

"Watching what happened in the past week has me asking, do we need to have more than one warehouse? What are the costs versus benefits of locating all the data in one spot? Should we have a backup?" — Epidemiologist Becky Smullin Dawson, PhD, MPH, told @medpagetoday.bsky.social

Cross-referencing archived data with re-released data will be critical for understanding what exactly was altered, said epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina, PhD, MPH // @kkjetelina.bsky.social