“This is a big mistake that would endanger American children. Don’t mess with success,” said Tom Frieden, CDC head under President Barack Obama, in an appearance on CNN.
Frieden, now president and CEO of global health nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives, noted that the universal recommendation hasn’t resulted in “any significant harm to children” since the panel initially made it three decades ago.
On Friday, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — composed of vaccine skeptics handpicked by conspiracy theorist and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — voted 8-3 to only recommend the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine for infants born to mothers who test positive for the virus.
Hepatitis B is a liver infection that can lead to diseases such as liver cancer, cirrhosis and liver failure, especially for infants and children. Medical experts have since slammed the panel’s decision to roll back the recommendation.
“And let me be very clear: Hepatitis B is a serious infection, and it’s not only spread from the mother. That’s why universal birth dose is the standard of care,” he stressed. “This is basically infusing fiction-based rather than fact-based recommendations into the protection of our children.”
Frieden called on health care professionals to ignore the recommendation from the “handpicked, unscientific group of people.”
“What I hope will happen is that insurers, states, cities, obstetricians, pediatricians will look at this and say there is no scientific credibility to this recommendation,” he said. “It’s a violation of all of the basic principles of effective protection. Every vaccine is given with informed consent.”