\n<\/p>\n
The entire US childhood vaccine schedule is now open for scrutiny, experts say, after government vaccine advisers took up discussions of the safety and efficacy of the vaccines and their components and changed its recommendations on one crucial prevention.<\/p>\n
Several of the vaccine advisers are longtime anti-vaccine activists, and they were all chosen by Donald Trump\u2019s controversial health secretary Robert F. Kennedy after he fired the previous advisers in an unprecedented move to enact dramatic changes to US vaccination policy. Kennedy has been a frequent critic of vaccines.<\/p>\n
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) makes recommendations to the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who decides whether to change official policy. The recommendations also have sweeping effects on state-level policies and insurance coverage. Some states have laws based on recommendations made by the ACIP.<\/p>\n
The panel\u2019s landmark vote to change the hepatitis B recommendation will create confusion and access issues for families, and questions about routine vaccines more widely indicate a worrying trend, experts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really very devastating to have seen what unfolded today,\u201d said Susan Wang, a pediatrician and the former lead for prevention of perinatal hepatitis B at the CDC. \u201cIt\u2019s also laying the groundwork for destroying the rest of the childhood immunization schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robert Malone, vice-chair of the ACIP and an outspoken critic of vaccines, raised doubts about the vaccination schedule, calling it the \u201celephant in the room\u201d on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe specific elephant, in this case, has to do with cumulative risk across the entire childhood vaccine schedule \u2013 and that is a risk for which we do not have adequate data,\u201d he said. Vaccines have been given safely in combination to children for decades, and no risks have been observed, according to the CDC.<\/p>\n
Malone and other advisers also took aim at aluminum adjuvants, which help vaccines work effectively and multiple studies have shown are safe.<\/p>\n
Aaron Siri, a lawyer who is currently engaged in several lawsuits against the US government over vaccines, presented for 90 minutes a selective history of vaccine trials and called into question the long-term effects of vaccination \u2013 arguing, without evidence, that some effects may not appear for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you have said is a terrible, terrible distortion of all the facts,\u201d said Cody Meissner, an adviser and professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College, sharply criticizing Siri\u2019s presentation.<\/p>\n
Siri also claimed that Paul Offit and Peter Hotez, both well-known vaccine experts, were invited but chose not to attend the meeting alongside him.<\/p>\n
Offit, reached by phone, said he was \u201cnever contacted\u201d about speaking before ACIP. But, he said, he would have declined.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not an ACIP any more. It\u2019s an anti-vaccine organization,\u201d he said. He pointed to previous decisions to limit flu vaccines containing thimerosal and Covid vaccines for vulnerable populations as unscientific decisions.<\/p>\n
The hepatitis B decision is a major misstep, he said. The virus lives on surfaces for a week, making it a concern for anyone who comes into contact with it \u2013 but young children are especially vulnerable to long-term illness and death.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no doubt in my mind that this shortens children\u2019s lives. Why would I be part of that?\u201d Offit said. \u201cIt\u2019s a parody of public health. It\u2019s a clown show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recommending new restrictions on established vaccines with no evidence of harm means any vaccine is now up for debate, he said.<\/p>\n
For Raksha Raheja, the committee\u2019s decisions are professional and personal. She is a pediatrician whose child is living with cancer.<\/p>\n
Eroding access to and confidence in vaccines puts her immune-compromised son at greater risk, she said.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n
Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning<\/p>\n
Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cWhen enough people in a community are vaccinated, it protects those that cannot get immunized, like my son with cancer,\u201d Raheja said. \u201cWith vaccination rates dropping, we are putting vulnerable populations at risk, and we see the resurgence of preventable illnesses, like measles.\u201d<\/p>\n The US is currently experiencing the worst measles outbreak in three decades; two unvaccinated children and one adult died of measles in the US this year. If the outbreak is not contained by mid-January, the US will lose its measles-elimination status.<\/p>\n At the meeting, several presenters and advisers repeated myths and misinformation about vaccines, including inaccurate claims that they weren\u2019t studied adequately or that they cause allergies and autism, links that have been roundly debunked in decades of research.<\/p>\n Yet debates about established vaccines that have long been proven as safe and effective has caused public trust in vaccines to begin dropping.<\/p>\n Vicky Pebsworth, an adviser and a nurse said to have been \u201canti-vax longer than RFK\u201d, seemed to argue on Thursday that the hepatitis shot should not be given because the US has low prevalence of the virus \u2013 but that dip in prevalence is due in large part because of \u201cefforts to vaccinate newborns\u201d, said Kevin Ault, an obstetrician and gynecologist and previous ACIP member.<\/p>\n Even so, 2 million people in the US have hepatitis B, indicating the need to continue the vaccination program, Ault said. Ending or impeding widespread vaccination will result in more disease, he added.<\/p>\n Insurers are required to cover vaccines recommended on the childhood immunization schedule, though they may opt to cover optional shots as well. Vaccines for Children, a federal program, covers the vaccination of more than half of children (52%) in the US, and it must follow ACIP recommendations.<\/p>\n Changing the vaccine recommendations will \u201cgenerate lots of confusion for parents\u201d, said Wang.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, she has cared for several children who came in sick and were completely unvaccinated.<\/p>\n \u201cThe mothers say that they\u2019re not against vaccines, but they\u2019re concerned about safety, they\u2019re not sure which ones to give their children, and they need to do their own research,\u201d Wang said.<\/p>\n Dropping vaccination rates aren\u2019t just a danger to children who aren\u2019t protected by vaccination \u2013 they make preventable disease a greater threat to everyone, she said. \u201cYou have to worry about things we, in the past, did not have to worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The entire US childhood vaccine schedule is now open for scrutiny, experts say, after government vaccine advisers took up discussions of the safety and efficacy of the vaccines and their components and changed its recommendations on one crucial prevention. Several of the vaccine advisers are longtime anti-vaccine activists, and they were all chosen by Donald<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[270,6768,320,1518,20264,3194,6192,1824,2133],"class_list":{"0":"post-36208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-change","9":"tag-childhood","10":"tag-experts","11":"tag-fear","12":"tag-guideline","13":"tag-healthcare","14":"tag-hepatitis","15":"tag-schedule","16":"tag-vaccine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}