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December 20, 2025<\/p>\n
4 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n U.S. Plan to Drop Some Childhood Vaccines to Align with Denmark Will Endanger Children, Experts Say<\/p>\n The U.S. reportedly plans to overhaul the country\u2019s childhood vaccine schedule. The move could set public health back decades, experts say<\/p>\n By Lauren J. Young & Tanya Lewis edited by Claire Cameron<\/span><\/p>\n Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic, has spearheaded the push to change the U.S. vaccine schedule.<\/p>\n Tasos Katopodis\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The U.S. reportedly plans to overhaul the country\u2019s childhood vaccine schedule. The move, first reported by CNN, would change how many vaccines to protect against various diseases children get and when they receive those immunizations.<\/p>\n Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., secretary of health and human services, is a longtime vaccine skeptic and supports altering the vaccine schedule. Recommendations for several vaccines that are currently given routinely to children in the U.S.\u2014including shots for rotavirus, varicella (chickenpox), hepatitis A, meningococcal bacteria, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)\u2014could be scrapped entirely under the plans, according to CNN.<\/p>\n Childhood vaccines collectively protect children and the U.S. population as a whole against diseases, such as measles and hepatitis B, that once sickened, hospitalized or killed hundreds or even thousands every year. Currently, children in the U.S. are recommended vaccines for 18 diseases, compared with 10 in Denmark.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Changing what vaccines kids get would be \u201ca terrible mistake,\u201d says Jessica Malaty Rivera, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Defend Public Health, an all-volunteer organization sponsored by a nonprofit. More children could get sick and die from preventable illnesses as a result.<\/p>\n RSV, for example, is the leading cause of infant hospitalization, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 58,000 to 80,000 children younger than five years old are admitted to the hospital each year in the U.S. because of the disease. The two available shots, which are not technically vaccines but antibody drugs that protect against RSV, were approved in 2023 and 2025 and are more than 90 percent effective at protecting against hospitalization. Many of the vaccines that are reportedly targeted for removal are ones that were approved more recently, Malaty Rivera notes.<\/p>\n People have an arbitrary line of \u201cold-school\u201d vaccines, such as those for polio and measles, and \u201cnew-school\u201d vaccines, such as those for chickenpox and human papillomavirus (HPV), Malaty Rivera says. But these newer vaccines have been around for decades and have been shown to be highly effective, she says.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has previously stated that it wants to model the U.S.\u2019s vaccine policy after other developed countries and specifically Denmark, which recommends fewer vaccines than the U.S. does and recommends them at different times of life. The comparison was a core focus of discussion at the most recent meeting of the CDC\u2019s vaccine advisory committee. But it doesn\u2019t make sense to compare the U.S. to countries, such as Denmark, that have a vastly different health care system.<\/p>\n Such a comparison is \u201cnot apples to oranges; it\u2019s apples to steaks,\u201d Malaty Rivera says. \u201cI cannot understate the value of universal health care and the extremely organized health care infrastructure\u201d in Denmark.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can learn a lot from some studies that come from other countries, but we have to use a critical mind to figure out what is applicable to our context and what isn’t,\u201d says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University.<\/p>\n A key difference between the U.S. and Denmark that Kennedy and other U.S. health officials seem to avoid is that the European country has a national health care system that covers everyone for free while the U.S. does not.<\/p>\n \u201cDenmark or other places have universal health coverage where people don\u2019t fall into health care gaps like they do in the United States. The reality of our health system is that people fall into the gaps,\u201d Nuzzo says.<\/p>\n In the U.S., a change to the vaccine schedule would also affect who would be able to get a vaccine. Whatever the CDC recommends influences what private health insurers will cover and what federal programs, such as the Vaccines for Children program, will subsidize.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen changes are made to the schedule, it will have consequences for who is able to get vaccines, whether or not you want them,\u201d Nuzzo says. \u201cThis isn\u2019t about allowing you to opt out. This is about making it harder for you to opt in.\u201d<\/p>\n The plan may yet change, according to CNN. The Department of Health and Human Services had scheduled a press conference about children\u2019s health on Friday but has since pushed the announcement back until next year.<\/p>\n If these further changes come to pass, they will chip away at the collective protection against deadly infectious diseases, Nuzzo says. Individual medical providers and states may step up to preserve access to vaccines, but people could still slip through the cracks of an increasingly patchwork public health system.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to make public health recommendations that work for all. There are clearly people who can\u2019t spend a bulk of their time trying to find the credible sources of information,\u201d Nuzzo says. \u201cI\u2019m worried about people who just won\u2019t get the lifesaving protection that they need.\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" December 20, 2025 4 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm U.S. Plan to Drop Some Childhood Vaccines to Align with Denmark Will Endanger Children, Experts Say The U.S. reportedly plans to overhaul the country\u2019s childhood vaccine schedule. The move could set public health back decades, experts say By Lauren J. Young & Tanya Lewis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[21042,6768,166,3251,4136,16540,320,1436,811,78],"class_list":{"0":"post-38398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-align","9":"tag-childhood","10":"tag-children","11":"tag-denmark","12":"tag-drop","13":"tag-endanger","14":"tag-experts","15":"tag-plan","16":"tag-u-s","17":"tag-vaccines"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38398","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=38398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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