RFK Jr.’s selected vaccine consultants say: Not all babies need the hepatitis B vaccine at birth

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal vaccine advisory panel voted Friday to end the longstanding recommendation that all children in the United States get the hepatitis B vaccine on the day they are born.

Watch live: RFK’s Disease Control and Prevention Committee votes on hepatitis B vaccine for newborns after delay

A vocal group of medical and public health leaders denounced the actions of the panel, whose current members were appointed by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a prominent anti-vaccine activist before he this year became the nation’s top health official.

“This is the group that can’t shoot straight,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University who has been involved for decades with ACIP and its working groups.

For decades, the government has advised that all children be vaccinated against liver infection immediately after birth. These shots are widely viewed as a public health success in preventing thousands of diseases.

But the Kennedy Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided to recommend the birth dose only for babies whose mothers test positive, and in cases where the mother has not been tested.

For other children, it will be up to the parents and their doctors to decide whether the birth dose is appropriate. The committee voted to propose that when a family decides not to get the birth dose, the vaccination series should begin when the child is 2 months old.

Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Jim O’Neill, is expected to decide later whether to accept the committee’s recommendation.

The decision represents a return to a public health strategy that was abandoned more than three decades ago.

Asked why the newly appointed committee moved so quickly to reconsider the recommendation, committee member Vicki Pebsworth on Thursday cited “pressure from stakeholder groups who want to reconsider the policy.” It did not say who was lobbying the committee, and a Kennedy spokesman did not respond to a question about the matter.

The committee members said that the risk of infection for most children was very low, and that previous research that found the doses were safe for infants was insufficient.

They also worry that in many cases, doctors and nurses are not having full conversations with parents about the pros and cons of birth-dose vaccination.

Committee members expressed interest in hearing the opinions of public health and medical professionals, but chose to ignore repeated pleas from experts to leave the recommendations alone.

Dr. Peter Hotez, of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, declined to appear before the group “because ACIP appears to have shifted its mission away from science and evidence-based medicine,” he said in an email to The Associated Press.

The committee advises the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to use approved vaccines. CDC directors have almost always adopted the committee’s recommendations, to which doctors have broadly responded and directed vaccination programs. But the agency currently does not have a director, leaving the decision to acting O’Neill.

In June, Kennedy dismissed the entire 17-member committee earlier this year and replaced it with a group that included many anti-vaccine voices.

Hepatitis B is a serious liver infection that lasts in most people for less than six months. But for some, especially infants and children, it can become a long-term problem that can lead to liver failure, liver cancer, and scarring called cirrhosis.

In adults, the virus is spread through sex or through sharing needles while injecting drugs. But it can also be transmitted from an infected mother to the child.

In 1991, the committee recommended that a first dose of hepatitis B vaccine be given at birth. Experts say rapid immunization is crucial to preventing the spread of infection. In fact, cases of infection in children have declined sharply.

However, many members of the Kennedy Committee expressed discomfort with vaccinating all newborns. They argued that previous safety studies of the vaccine in newborns were limited and that larger, longer-term studies could reveal a problem with the birth dose.

But two members said they had not seen documented evidence of harm from birth doses and suggested the concern was based on speculation.

The committee was scheduled to vote on Thursday, but voted to postpone after some members said they had just received strongly worded voting proposals and wanted clarification and more time to consider them.

Three panelists asked about the scientific basis for saying that the first dose should be delayed by two months for many children.

“This is unconscionable,” said committee member Dr. Joseph Heblin, who repeatedly voiced his opposition to the proposal during the two-day, sometimes heated, meeting.

Committee chair Dr Kirk Milhoan said two months had been chosen as the point at which babies would mature beyond the post-natal stage. Hiblin responded that there was no data presented that two months was an appropriate deadline.

Some observers criticized the meeting, pointing to recent changes in how it was conducted. CDC scientists are no longer submitting vaccine safety and effectiveness data to the committee. Instead, these spots were given to people who were prominent voices in anti-vaccine circles.

Elizabeth Jacobs, a member of the Public Health Advocacy Group, a group of researchers and others who have opposed the Trump administration’s health policies, said the committee “is no longer a legitimate scientific body.”

In a statement, she described this week’s meeting as a “pandemic crime scene” — a massacre of the way disease control specialists typically examine and act on evidence.

Associated Press writer Laura Ungar in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this report.