A federal vaccine panel handpicked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted Friday to stop recommending that all newborns be immediately vaccinated against hepatitis B, a dangerous virus that causes chronic liver disease in more than 90 percent of infected infants.
Earlier this year, Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, vowed during his confirmation hearing that he would not do anything to “make it difficult or hindered for people to get vaccinated.” Earlier this year, Kennedy fired all 17 former members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), replacing them with people who shared his views and who mostly lacked experience in vaccine research or clinical practice.
According to the New York Times, Kennedy’s panel had delayed three previous attempts to vote due to “divisiveness and dysfunction.” Panelists voted 8-3 on Friday that women who test negative for the hepatitis virus should consult their health care providers and “make decisions about when or whether their children” should be vaccinated. The panel added that these parents and their providers should “consider the benefits of the vaccine, the risks of the vaccine, and the risk of infection” and administer the shot “no earlier than 2 months of age.”
The panel did not change existing recommendations to immunize newborns of mothers with known infection or unknown status.
Experts argued against the new guidance, pointing out that hepatitis B shots have all but eliminated cases among U.S. newborns and that there is no evidence they harm anyone.
“We know it’s safe, and we know it’s very effective,” said Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine. But now “we’re going to see more children, adolescents and adults becoming infected with hepatitis B.”
Here’s everything you need to know to understand the change.
Where does this change come from?
In addition to claims that babies receive too many vaccines and that current vaccination programs must be unhealthy (a claim the American Academy of Pediatrics calls “dangerous and inaccurate”), anti-vaccine critics are particularly concerned about hepatitis B because of how it is often spread.
“Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted and there is no reason to give hepatitis B to an almost-newborn baby,” President Trump said in September. “So I would say wait until the baby is 12 years old and formed.”
Critics also say that, as ACIP panelist Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at MIT, said on Friday, “the risk of infection is very low in the early stages of life, and probably even throughout much of childhood.” “To quantify how low it is, it’s probably one in a few million.”
Why should all newborns be vaccinated against hepatitis B?
Experts say the panel’s reasoning is flawed.
First, testing is not foolproof. In the United States, more than 17,000 women with hepatitis B give birth to babies each year. But nearly one in five pregnant women are not tested for the virus, and only about one-third of women who test positive receive care, according to a report released Tuesday by the Vaccine Integrity Project.
Overall, about half of people infected with hepatitis B don’t know they have the virus.
And even a mother Do Testing negative, her child could still be infected with hepatitis B. Before universal hepatitis B vaccination for newborns began in the United States in 1991, about 18,000 children were infected each year before the age of 10. Only half of these infections come from the mother at birth. The rest were infected elsewhere.
Dr. Andrew Pavia, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of Utah and an expert on pediatric and adult infectious diseases, recently told NPR that “infections are already occurring in day care centers.” “Infections have occurred in sports teams. Infections have been documented from shared toothbrushes and shared razors.”
Under the new guidelines, 9,000 children will be left out.
Experts say the risk of hepatitis B infection in children is too serious to be ignored – even if cases are rare. Only 5% of infected adults will develop chronic hepatitis B. But among babies, that number jumps to 90 percent. The result? Increased risk of cirrhosis, liver failure, and liver cancer throughout life. About 25% of children with chronic hepatitis B eventually die from the infection.
“As a liver doctor who has been treating hepatitis B patients for decades, this change to the vaccination schedule is a mistake,” Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician, wrote in
