Journalism of Courage
A federal vaccine advisory committee in the US on Friday voted to end the longstanding recommendation that all babies should get the hepatitis B vaccine on the day they are born.
The vaccine advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), appointed by vaccine-sceptic US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, on Friday, recommended the birth dose only for babies whose mothers test positive, and in cases where the mom wasn’t tested.
For other babies, it will be up to the parents and their doctors to decide if a birth dose is appropriate, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) said.
The committee also suggested that when a family decides not to get a birth dose, then the vaccination series should begin when the child is 2 months old.
According to The Associated Press, the acting director of the CDC, Jim O’Neill, is expected to decide later whether to accept the committee’s recommendation.
Committee members said the risk of infection for most babies is very low and that earlier research that found the shots were safe for infants was inadequate.
“If you’re a baby that was born to a mother that was tested negative to hep B, you need to realize as a parent that your risk of infection throughout your early stage of life, and probably throughout most of your childhood, is extremely low… As a parent, we encourage you, in consultation with your physician, to think very carefully. Do you want to expose your child, your baby, to an intervention that could have some potential harms when the risk is so low?,” ACIP member Retsef Levi told Reuters.
The committee also worried that in many cases, doctors and nurses don’t have full conversations with parents about the pros and cons of the birth-dose vaccination.
“This irresponsible and purposely misleading guidance will lead to more hepatitis B infections in infants and children. I want to reassure parents and clinicians that there is no new or concerning information about the hepatitis B vaccine that is prompting this change, nor has children’s risk of contracting hepatitis B changed. Instead, this is the result of a deliberate strategy to sow fear and distrust among families,” Levi said.
The committee members voiced interest in hearing the input from public health and medical professionals, but chose to ignore the experts’ repeated pleas to leave the recommendations alone.
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who is a medical doctor and the Chairman of the Senate Health Committee, however, called the ACIP vote a mistake and warned that it will makes America sicker.
“As a liver doctor who has treated patients with hepatitis B for decades, this change to the vaccine schedule is a mistake. The hepatitis B vaccine is safe and effective. The birth dose is a recommendation, NOT a mandate. Before the birth dose was recommended, 20,000 newborns a year were infected with hepatitis B. Now, it’s fewer than 20. Ending the recommendation for newborns makes it more likely the number of cases will begin to increase again. This makes America sicker. Acting CDC Director O’Neill should not sign these new recommendations and instead retain the current, evidence-based approach,” Cassidy said in a post on X.
