Data for a new drug showed it can help keep babies out of the hospital with respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. Scientists of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presented the evidence in a long series of slides to the federal vaccine panel recently remade by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.

Health experts were shocked to see that thimerosal, a preservative that has largely been phased out of U.S. vaccines, was on the ACIP agenda.

The move could shift long-standing practices of how and when children are immunized in the United States.