Key US panel to vote on changing infant hepatitis B vaccine recommendation | US healthcare
After a delay and an unusually contentious meeting, a federal vaccine advisory committee was scheduled to vote Friday whether to change the longstanding recommendation that all newborns be vaccinated against hepatitis B.
The first day of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting Thursday was marked by a heated debate over restricting access to the hepatitis B vaccine for infants and a decision to postpone the vote for a day to give members more time to review the wording. The panel, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on how to use vaccines, had already postponed the vote twice.
The injection is currently recommended for all infants within 24 hours of birth to prevent hepatitis B infection, which can cause serious liver damage. It has been offered to 1.4 billion people for more than three decades.
The Atlanta meeting did not provide any new evidence of harm caused by the vaccine. The advisory committee, handpicked by Donald Trump’s controversial Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., includes longtime anti-vaccine advocates.
Kennedy, himself a prominent anti-vaccine campaigner, has long campaigned to delay the shot. Experts say any changes to the current recommended hepatitis B vaccination schedule could have significant and far-reaching consequences for the health of children in the United States.
In a focused discussion Thursday, ACIP member and psychiatrist and neuroscientist Joseph Hibbeln asked, “Is there specific evidence of the danger of giving this vaccination before 30 days? Or is it speculation?”
“There is little evidence of long-term risk,” said Mark Blaxill, an author who has argued that vaccines cause autism and other conditions, and who was recently named a senior adviser to the CDC.
“So it was speculation and limited evidence,” Hibbeln responded. “Okay, I got it.”
The advisory committee can only make recommendations to the head of the CDC, Acting Director Jim O’Neill. The former director, Susan Monarez, was ousted by the Trump administration in August after the White House claimed she was “not aligned” with the president’s agenda.
Earlier this year, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the advisory committee. He replaced them with his own people, including several vaccine skeptics who align with Kennedy’s desire to revise — and perhaps, in some cases, abandon — long-standing vaccination recommendations.
The committee’s membership changed again this week, when the Department of Health announced that the committee’s most recent chair, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, would be leaving for an official role within the agency. He was replaced by Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a cardiologist who has been critical of the Covid vaccine.
Melody Schreiber contributed reporting
