Toxic Exposures
AAP Rejects New Hep B Recommendation, Claims Kids Will ‘Die’ if Newborns Don’t Get the Shot
The American Academy of Pediatrics said it will continue to recommend the Hep B vaccine for newborns, despite last week’s recommendation by CDC vaccine advisers that babies not receive the vaccine until they are 2 months old. Some experts suggest the AAP’s decision is motivated by conflicts of interest, not safety.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said it will continue to recommend the hepatitis B (Hep B) vaccine for newborns, despite last week’s recommendation by advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that babies not receive the vaccine until they are 2 months old.
But some experts suggest the decision by AAP, and some state and local health departments’ decision to reject the new recommendation, are motivated by conflicts of interest, not safety.
Last week, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to recommend Hep B shots only for babies whose mothers test positive for the virus or whose infection status is not known.
On Tuesday, Dr. Aaron M. Milstone, a pediatrician speaking on behalf of the AAP, said during a press conference, “Children will acquire hepatitis B and die as a result of these recommendations.”
Michael T. Osterholm, Ph.D., director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy (CIDRAP), suggested that ACIP’s recommendations are politically motivated and that the Hep B shot has saved children’s lives.
“If the political appointees running our health agencies and communities are going to ignore data and evidence, we must absolutely ignore them,” Osterholm said.
Earlier this year, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced ACIP’s 17 former members with new appointees.
Dr. Stephen Patrick from the Children’s Hospital of Atlanta said 30,000 children annually were infected with hepatitis B before 1991, when the CDC recommended universal Hep B vaccination for newborns. He also said that about 90% of infants who are infected at birth develop chronic hepatitis B, and approximately 25% will die prematurely of liver cancer or cirrhosis.
But Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said Hep B shots “are unsafe and inappropriate for a newborn with no vector of disease,” because of their aluminum content.
“Universal vaccination only makes sense if there is zero risk,” Jablonowski said. “All Hep B vaccines administered to infants contain a certain risk — some amount of the injected aluminum, a neurotoxin, will enter the child’s brain and have a toxic effect,” he said.
Pediatrician Dr. Michelle Perro agreed. “I don’t think it’s responsible to tell parents that ‘children will die’ if we stop injecting every newborn on day one, even when the mother has already screened negative for hepatitis B. The serious outcomes we all worry about, which are cirrhosis and liver cancer, develop over decades and can be prevented in many other ways.”
Critics of the AAP’s stance pointed out that the AAP receives funding from major pharmaceutical companies, including Merck and GSK, which manufacture Hep B vaccines — and from the federal government.
“Merck and GSK manufacture the only two newborn Hep B vaccines available in the U.S,” Jablonowski said. “Both companies are also corporate donors to the AAP. Do the interests of selling drugs and those of keeping our children healthy conflict? I think it’s a big problem that we even have to ask.”
ACIP’s new recommendation still needs final approval from the CDC’s acting director, Jim O’Neil.
‘Parents can handle the idea that science evolves’
Shortly after last week’s ACIP vote, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum instructing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the CDC to conduct a “comprehensive evaluation” of the childhood immunization schedule — including a review of evidence supporting the vaccination schedules of other high-income countries, which require fewer shots.
Public health professionals criticized the Trump and ACIP members for drawing on international comparisons, arguing that “many differences in vaccine recommendations are rooted in local conditions,” The Washington Post reported.
The AAP also dismisses those comparisons. “The truth is that while vaccine guidance is largely similar across developed countries, it may differ by country due to different disease threats, population demographics, health systems, costs, government structures, vaccine availability, and programs for vaccine delivery,” according to the group’s website.
Perro disputed those claims. She said:
“Hepatitis B is spread primarily through blood and sexual contact, not by the latitude where a baby is born. Many high-income countries with health systems and demographics similar to ours have historically controlled hepatitis B by vaccinating babies of infected mothers plus giving the series in later infancy or adolescence, rather than universally on day one.”
Dr. Lisa Costello, chair of AAP’s committee on state government affairs, told CIDRAP that parents will be “confused” by ACIP’s new Hep B shot recommendations.
Perro disagreed. “Parents can handle the idea that science evolves. What confuses and alienates them is when one set of experts carefully revises a recommendation and other organizations immediately announce they will ignore it while accusing everyone else of ‘misinformation.’”
Physicians still ‘free to make individualized recommendations’ after ACIP vote
In August, AAP released its own “evidence-based” immunization schedule, calling universal immunization essential to protect children. That month, the AAP also called for an end to religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions for schoolchildren.
In July, the AAP and other medical organizations sued Kennedy and HHS, alleging the new ACIP members unilaterally changed COVID-19 vaccine recommendations without evidence. Last week, the plaintiffs in that lawsuit updated their complaint.
In June, ACIP formed a work group to study the cumulative effect of all childhood vaccines. In August, the CDC removed AAP and American Medical Association representatives from ACIP vaccine work groups.
Perro said the divergent recommendations of organizations like the AAP and CIDRAP’s Vaccine Integrity Project leave families “wondering who is actually reading the evidence and who is defending past policy.”
For Jablonowski, the “dissenting health alliances and health collaboratives are setting the conditions for a population-wide study” that would enable a comparison of the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
Perro said physicians remain “free to make individualized recommendations” but said they “should be honest that the federal vaccine advisory committee no longer sees a universal birth dose as essential for babies of hepatitis B-negative mothers.”
Related articles in The Defender
- CDC Vaccine Panel Votes to End Universal Hep B Vaccine for Newborns
- Vaccine Injury Lawyer Delivers Scathing Rebuke of Childhood Vaccine Schedule — Offit, Hotez Decline Invitation to Debate
- In Show of Support for RFK Jr., Trump Orders ‘Comprehensive Evaluation’ of Childhood Vaccine Schedule
- Leading Pediatrician Group Defies CDC, Tells Parents to Get COVID Shots for Infants, Kids
- AAP Ratchets Up Complaints Against RFK Jr.’s CDC Vaccine Panel in Updated Lawsuit
- AAP Received Tens of Millions in Federal Funding to Push Vaccines and Combat ‘Misinformation’
- Pharma-Friendly Public Health Officials Launch New Project to ‘Shore Up U.S. Vaccination Policy’
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