By Christy Santhosh and Kamal Choudhury
Dec 5 (Reuters) – A group of vaccine advisers to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will meet on Friday to vote on whether to scrap a long-standing recommendation for the hepatitis B vaccine for most U.S. children, a move that would be the most consequential yet under President Donald Trump’s health secretary.
The vote, originally scheduled for Thursday, was pushed back during an unusual and chaotic day of presentations, including some that suggested the current U.S. birth dose policy was unsafe.
Since 1991, the U.S. has had a universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendation including administering a dose just after birth, which cuts infection rates by 95%, studies found. The first dose is followed by two more, at 1 to 2 months and 6 to 18 months.
Public health experts warn dropping a universal recommendation for the birth dose will result in children developing life-long infections that can lead to liver cancer and death.
Kennedy, who founded the anti-vaccine Children’s Health Defense, in June fired the previous 17 independent experts on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory committee, and replaced them with a group that largely supports his views.
The committee is expected to vote on three proposals including a recommendation that only infants born to mothers who test positive for hepatitis B get the vaccine.
For most other children, parents, in consultation with healthcare providers, should decide if and when to begin the series of shots, the proposal said. It advised parents who elect to delay vaccination to offer the first dose no sooner than two months of age.
The committee also plans to vote on testing children for hepatitis B antibodies before deciding to give subsequent shots.
The panel will also vote on whether to continue supporting vaccination of infants whose mother’s hepatitis B status is unknown.
“Although it appears the change might still allow for parents and providers to utilize the vaccine without additional cost, the actual implementation of shared clinical decision-making could be cumbersome and could lead to missed opportunities for vaccinating infants,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, Taube Endowed Professor of Global Health and Infectious Diseases at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Vaccine makers Sanofi, Merck and GSK, whose shares were down slightly on Thursday, defended their products as safe.
DISCUSSION ON US VACCINATION SCHEDULE
The final day of the two-day meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is also set to include presentations to compare the U.S. child and adolescent immunization schedule with that of other developed nations.
Aaron Siri, a lawyer and leading anti-vaccine activist, is scheduled to address the panel on the immunization schedule during the session. Non-scientists rarely present at such meetings.
“Siri is a trial attorney who makes his living suing vaccine manufacturers. He is presenting as if an expert on childhood vaccines,” U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a Republican and a physician who chairs the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions Committee, wrote on X.
“The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children,” added Cassidy, who was instrumental in getting Kennedy confirmed to the nation’s top health post.
The schedule, developed by the committee and approved by the CDC, is a list of recommended vaccinations that all children 18 years old or younger should have and at what age they should receive them.
FDA official Tracy Beth Hoeg will give a presentation comparing the U.S. vaccine schedule to Denmark’s.
In addition, the committee will review the safety of aluminum adjuvants, which are used in vaccines to help boost immunity, focusing on the potential association between aluminum exposure and asthma.
According to CDC’s website, aluminum salts were initially used in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s with diphtheria and tetanus shots and have been used safely in vaccines for more than 70 years.
(Reporting by Christy Santhosh and Kamal Choudhury in Bengaluru, Michael Erman in New Jersey and Nancy Lapid in Phoenix, Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)
Comments