The committee advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy voted on Dec. 5, 2025, to stop recommending that all newborns be routinely vaccinated against the hepatitis B virus ' undoing a 34-year prevention strategy that has nearly eliminated early childhood hepatitis B infections in the United States. Before the U.S. began vaccinating all infants at birth with the hepatitis B vaccine in 1991, around 18,000 children every year contracted the virus before their 10th birthday ' about half of them at birth. About 90% of that subset developed a chronic infection. I am a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist who studies vaccine delivery and policy. Vaccinating babies for hepatitis B at birth remains one of the clearest, most evidence-based ways to keep American children free of this lifelong, deadly infection. In September 2025, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, an independent panel of experts that advises the CDC, debated changing the recommendation for a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine at birth, but ultimately delayed the vote....

In case there was any doubt before, it's now undeniable that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s allies are in charge of the country's vaccine policy. The latest evidence: His handpicked vaccine advisory committee voted today to scrap the decades-old guidance that all babies receive the hepatitis-B vaccine shortly after birth. Now the panel recommends that only children born to mothers who test positive for the infection or have unknown status automatically receive a shot at birth. Everyone else has the option of a shot at birth or'as the committee recommends'waiting until at least two months after birth. Those who favor the change argue that other countries, such as Denmark and Finland, vaccinate only newborns of mothers who test positive, and that rates of infection are relatively low in the United States. All of this is true. But in the U.S., many expectant mothers don't get tested for hepatitis B, and even if they do, those tests sometimes fail to pick up the virus. The rationale for giving the vaccine right away is to wipe out an infection that will afflict the majority of people who contract it as babies for the rest of their life (and, for as many as a quarter of those chronically infected, result in their death from cirrhosis or liver cancer). The World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics both endorse the universal birth dose. 'When you remove that foundation, you essentially cause the whole prevention process to collapse,' Noele Nelson, a former CDC researcher who has published multiple papers on hepatitis B, told me....

Members of a top US vaccine advisory panel voted today to roll back a decades-old recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine shortly after birth ' a measure that has been associated with a sharp decline in mother-to-child transmission of the hepatitis B virus, which causes liver disease. Newborn vaccination is still recommended for babies born to mothers who have tested positive for the virus, or whose mothers' infection status is unknown. But for babies born to mothers who have tested negative for the hepatitis B virus, the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) now recommends that decisions be made individually ' and suggests that babies who do not receive a 'birth dose' of the vaccine be vaccinated no earlier than the age of two months. The vote came after more than a day of discussion that was at times confused and contentious. Several members of the panel have previously expressed broad criticism of vaccines, and continued to do so at this week's meeting....

The Food and Drug Administration is seeking to drastically change procedures for testing vaccine safety and approving vaccines, based on unproven claims that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines caused the death of at least 10 children. Citing an internal, unpublished review, the memo, written by the agency's top vaccine regulator, Vinay Prasad, attributes the children's deaths to myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle. And it says the deaths were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, but provides no evidence that the vaccines caused the deaths. The death of children due to an unsafe vaccine is a serious allegation. I am a pediatric cardiologist who has studied the link between COVID-19 vaccines and heart-related side effects such as myocarditis in children. To my knowledge, studies to date have shown such side effects are rare, and severe outcomes even more so. However, I am open to new evidence that could change my mind. But without sufficient justification and solid evidence, restricting access to an approved vaccine and changing well-established procedures for testing vaccines would carry serious consequences. These moves would limit access for patients, create roadblocks for companies and worsen distrust in vaccines and public health....