Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s panel of federal vaccine advisors is set to discuss and potentially vote on changing the hepatitis B vaccine schedule for infants when they next meet on Dec. 4.
According to a Federal Register notice, the agenda for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will include “discussions on vaccine safety, the childhood and adolescent immunization schedule, and hepatitis B vaccines.”
Recommendation votes may be scheduled for hepatitis B vaccines, the notice stated.
The panel’s recommendations carry enormous importance. Most private insurers are required to cover the shots ACIP recommends, and many state policies on vaccines are tied to the committee’s guidelines.
The panel had been relatively unknown outside health policy circles, but under Kennedy it has been mired in controversy after the secretary fired the previous members and replaced them with his own hand-selected picks, including some who have expressed vaccine-skeptical views.
Panelists have said they want to focus on the childhood vaccine schedule, and during the last meeting in September they voted to recommend delaying the use of the combined measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox vaccine. The shot is given to about 15 percent of children nationwide. It carries a slightly elevated risk of febrile seizures.
On hepatitis B, the panel will likely return to a discussion from September about delaying the shot for newborns. The panel seemed poised to vote on eliminating the 34-year-old recommendation to provide hepatitis B vaccination to babies upon birth, but then tabled the discussion at the last minute.
The hepatitis B vaccine has been credited with saving tens of thousands of lives since physicians began administering it at birth, but panel members have said they want to change the recommendation.
Such a delay has drawn condemnation from major medical groups and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and it was not universally supported by ACIP members. But it’s a move backed by Kennedy and President Trump, who has said children should be at least 12 years old to receive the vaccine.
Robert Malone, the ACIP panelist who suggested tabling the discussion in September, said afterward that he didn’t think the recommendation went far enough. Malone told supporters of the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement he wants to bring the issue up again and recommend a much longer delay.
Aside from hepatitis B, it’s not clear what other changes the panel could discuss. However, the Trump administration has been advocating to break up the combined measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) shot given to children into three shots, arguing without evidence that it’s more beneficial and safer to space them out.
Last month, acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Jim O’Neil endorsed Trump’s push to separate the shots. He posted on social media a call for vaccine makers to develop three totally separate shots to replace the MMR.
ACIP also recently established a new working group to consider the safety of vaccine ingredients such as aluminum. The ingredient has been used in vaccines for several decades and has been repeatedly proven to be safe, but vaccine skeptics like Kennedy have long focused on its inclusion.
Removing aluminum, or even issuing a warning about its use, would affect some of the most important childhood shots including DTaP, hepatitis A and B, HPV, pneumococcal and meningitis vaccines.
