RFK Jr.’s panel weakens guidance

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s hand-picked vaccine committee voted on Friday to do away with the long-standing, universal recommendation that all babies receive a hepatitis B shot at birth, issuing weaker guidance for certain infants.

The group, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, recommended that parents use individual decision-making in consultation with a health-care provider to determine when or if to give the hepatitis B birth dose to a baby whose mother tested negative for the virus. For babies who don’t receive the birth dose, the committee recommended that they wait to receive a first vaccine until they are at least 2 months old.

The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still has to sign off on that new recommendation. The CDC currently recommends that every baby get vaccinated against hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, regardless of their mother’s testing status.

The move overturns that guidance, which has been credited with driving down infections in children by 99% since it was first introduced three decades ago and is widely considered to be a public health success story. Some members and public health experts warn that the change could have wide-ranging consequences, such as an increase in infections among kids.

Eight members voted yes, while three voted no. Some advisors strongly pushed back on the new guidance ahead of the vote.

“This has a great potential to cause harm, and I hope that the committee accepts the responsibility when this harm is caused,” said Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, psychiatrist and voting member.

Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, said he hopes that pediatricians will continue to administer the birth dose within the first 24 hours of delivery and before discharge from the hospital.

“To follow any other course is not in the interest of infants,” he said.

Meissner added that more children will be injured and will catch hepatitis B infections. Hepatitis B, which can be passed from mother to baby during childbirth, can lead to liver disease and early death. Infants are more vulnerable to developing chronic hepatitis B infections, which have no cure.

“We will see hepatitis B come back,” he said. “The vaccine is so effective. It does not make sense in my mind to change the immunization schedule.”

A 2024 CDC study showed that the current vaccination schedule has helped prevent more than 6 million hepatitis B infections and nearly 1 million hepatitis…