The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) team brought into the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is continuing to work hard in reviewing American vaccination policies, and with an aim to make adjustments in their scheduling and usage, especially among children.
We noted recently that the FDA’s Chief Medical and Science Officers issued a memo indicating that COVID-19 vaccinations were responsible for at least 10 pediatric deaths and questioned whether there was enough data available to clearly demonstrate that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed its risks when it comes to the young and healthy.
The HHS is investigating a school for vaccinating children without parental consent.
Now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has just voted to end the universal recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine dose within 24 hours of birth. The new approach will link that particular vaccination decision to the mother’s hepatitis B status and “individual-based” decision-making by parents and clinicians.
The recommendations state that if a mother tests negative for hepatitis B, parents should decide, with the guidance of their health care provider, whether the shot is right for their newborn — referred to as “individual-based decision-making,” according to a document with the ACIP voting language.The vote includes that newborns who do not receive the hepatitis B birth dose get an initial dose no earlier than 2 months old.The voting language document emphasized there is no change to the recommendation that infants born to women who test positive or have unknown status to be vaccinated.The language document also included a footnote that parents and health care providers should consider whether the newborn faces risks, such as a hepatitis B-positive household member or frequent contact with people who have emigrated from areas where hepatitis B is common.
Hepatitis B is a bloodborne pathogen that tends to be transmitted in ways not commonly associated with newborn activity (unless, as noted above, the mother tests positive for the liver-impacting disease). I have always viewed the blanket guidelines as questionable and nixed this vaccine for my own son until he was older.
Giving parents the choice to opt out after reviewing the nature of the disease and how it spreads was at the crux of this new guidance.
Robert Malone, the committee’s vice chairman, characterized the vote to no longer universally recommend a birth dose vaccine as one that pitted individual rights against societal obligations.”We’re torn by these two conflicting points of views,” Malone said. “There are these two fundamental differences of opinion about the rights of individuals versus the rights of society.”
Many parents seem pretty pleased with this direction:
The panel’s review was inspired by surveys indicating the American public has grown distrustful of the enormous reliance on vaccinations in today’s practice of medicine. The new guidelines are also in accordance with those of other developed countries, which do not universally vaccinate newborns with the Hepatitis B vaccine.
The ACIP routinely revisits its recommendations in light of new evidence. This re-evaluation was prompted by concerns about public dissatisfaction with US vaccination policy, according to ACIP member Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse and health-policy analyst at the National Vaccine Information Center in Sterling, Virginia. During the meeting on Thursday, Pebsworth cited two surveys, including one in which 16% of parents reported skipping or delaying childhood vaccines in part because of concerns about side effects and safety. “This level of dissatisfaction is of societal significance and poses challenges for vaccination policy making,” she said.The same survey also found that 90% of parents said it is important for children to receive the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, and 88% said the same for the polio vaccine.Pebsworth also noted that the US policy is “misaligned relative to existing recommendations in most other developed countries” where universal birth-dose vaccination is not the standard practice. Walensky responded at the briefing that “the United States has access issues and insurance issues that don’t mirror access and insurance issues of other countries”.
This recommendation is not yet in effect; it must still be accepted or rejected by the CDC’s acting director or the HHS secretary before it becomes part of the official immunization schedule.
Image by perplexity.ai.
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