Vaccine makers, pharmacists, professional medical societies and others opposed to recent changes in vaccine policy are banding together to create their own system for recommending and purchasing vaccines in a move designed to bypass government health agencies' recommendations, The Washington Post reported.

Members of the new group, all of whom profit from the vaccine industry, along with some state health officials and a "new advocacy group," are strategizing ways to preserve the vaccine status quo under U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The anonymous group, which hopes to create "a nongovernmental vaccine system" for vaccine recommendations and purchasing, according to the Post, is engaged in a series of discussions.

Topics include ordering vaccines directly from manufacturers and prioritizing recommendations from medical associations rather than from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which makes vaccine recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The move comes as Kennedy dismissed all of ACIP's sitting committee members earlier this month due to concerns over conflicts of interest in the committee. He filled eight of the 17 committee seats a few days later.

Commenting on industry insiders' efforts to create a new commission, research scientist James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., told The Defender:

"They want to create and lend authority to a corporation-backed, corporation-friendly committee to replace the one that was just disbanded. These moves would represent replacing the facade of regulating vaccines by a government agency with overt industry self-governance and regulation."

The Post called the move by the unspecified group of actors "extraordinary," but conceded that it "faces major challenges."

For example, insurance companies typically don't cover shots that aren't recommended by ACIP. An ACIP recommendation is also the basis on which the federal Vaccines for Children Program pays for vaccines for minors whose families can't afford them. That program covers vaccine costs for about half of U.S. children.