Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is still chipping away at one of the biggest public-health wins of the last century: the widespread use of disease-eradicating vaccines.
On Dec. 5, his handpicked Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices tossed the recommendation for universal hepatitis B vaccines for infants at birth, instead advising it only for babies whose mothers tested positive for the disease — and recommending that babies who don’t get the jab at birth don’t receive it earlier than two months.
But . . . why?
The hep B vaccine has a stellar safety record, and relying on testing is a bad plan; it’s usually done in the first trimester or during birth, but can go wrong in plenty of ways — like moms being exposed post-test, or not getting tested at all.
Universal at-birth vaccination is a low-risk, very effective strategy for preventing a disease that has a 90% chance of becoming a chronic, liver-damaging, possibly deadly illness for babies who get infected.
Sorry: Who wants more kids with hep B?
There’s zero reason for the ACIP to change recommendations, except to further RFK’s obsessive agenda to reduce the number of vaccines for tots — based on his feverish belief that the jabs are dangerous.
The White House is, at the very least, giving him a long leash to carry out his anti-vax campaign.
The same day as the ACIP’s hepatitis B decision, President Donald Trump signed a memo directing a review of the vaccine schedules of “peer, developed countries,” noting that places like Denmark, Germany and Japan recommend fewer early childhood vaccines than the United States.
But that’s because Japan, Germany and Denmark are smaller countries with entirely different health-care systems and disease risks.
By the way, the rate of chickenpox in Denmark — frequently praised by anti-vaxxers for its sparse vaccine schedule — is sky-high compared to the United States.
It’s all part and parcel of RFK Jr.’s dangerous and plain dumb war on vaccines.
Earlier this month, the CDC updated its vaccine safety section to read that: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism” — when in fact the claim that vaccines do cause autism has been thoroughly shredded.
And on Dec. 10, the FDA announced that it’s “rigorously reviewing” the safety of the RSV vaccine for infants, despite a complete lack of reported safety issues — and the fact that the virus is consistently the leading cause of hospitalization for infants.
Objective, evidence-based safety checks are a good thing, but public-health agencies under this secretary have been anything but objective when it comes to vaccines.
Terrifying young parents by suggesting, based on debunked nonsense, that vaxxing their kids could ruin their health forever when the opposite is true isn’t just mind-bogglingly irresponsible, it’s downright cruel.
And that is exactly what the public-health bureaucracy under RFK Jr. is doing every time it casts doubt on vaccines that are proven safe.
The ugly truth: The only end result will be more sick and dead kids.