RFK Jr.'s vaccine panel to vote on changing hepatitis B shot recommendation for babies

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s hand-picked vaccine committee is scheduled to vote Thursday connected whether to alteration a longstanding recommendation that each babe get vaccinated against hepatitis B wrong 24 hours of birth. 

It's unclear if the panel, called the Advisory Committee connected Immunization Practices, oregon ACIP, volition importantly hold oregon destruct that alleged commencement dose of the changeable entirely. The group tabled a ballot on the vaccine successful September due to the fact that immoderate members called for a much robust treatment first.

But either alteration could person wide-ranging consequences: Some nationalist wellness experts accidental that having less newborns vaccinated against the microorganism could hazard an summation successful chronic infections among children. 

Hepatitis B, which tin beryllium passed from parent to babe during childbirth, tin pb to liver illness and aboriginal death. There is nary cure. 

"We person a vaccine that is highly effectual astatine preventing an incurable disease. We should instrumentality afloat vantage of that," Neil Maniar, a nationalist wellness prof astatine Northeastern University, told CNBC. 

The commencement dose proposal was introduced successful 1991 and is credited with driving down infections successful kids by 99% since then. Maniar called that a "remarkable occurrence communicative that we tally the hazard of reversing" if the committee changes the recommendation. 

Decisions by the sheet are not legally binding, arsenic it is up to states to mandate immunizations. But ACIP's recommendations person important implications for whether backstage security plans and authorities assistance programs screen the vaccines astatine nary outgo for eligible children. 

The panel's upcoming two-day gathering successful Atlanta comes aft Kennedy earlier this twelvemonth gutted the committee and appointed 12 caller members, including immoderate well-known vaccine critics. During the gathering successful September, immoderate advisors raised questions astir whether the benefits of the changeable outweigh imaginable information risks. 

But the jab is "an incredibly harmless vaccine with minimal risks," Dr. Sean O'Leary, seat of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee connected Infectious Diseases, said during a media briefing Tuesday. 

"I ne'er erstwhile saw a fever really associated with hepatitis B vaccine," said O'Leary, who practiced for 8 years arsenic a wide pediatrician and worked successful a newborn nursery. 

The AAP, which publishes its ain vaccine schedule, still recommends the cosmopolitan commencement dose of the hepatitis B vaccine due to the fact that "it saves lives," helium added.

A caller review, published Tuesday, of much than 400 studies spanning 4 decades besides recovered nary grounds that delaying the cosmopolitan hepatitis B vaccine commencement dose improves information oregon effectiveness. The reappraisal besides recovered that the commencement dose does not origin immoderate short- oregon semipermanent superior adverse events oregon deaths.

A 2024 CDC study showed that the existent vaccination docket has helped forestall much than 6 cardinal hepatitis B infections and astir 1 cardinal hepatitis B-related hospitalizations.

Merck and GSK manufacture the hepatitis B vaccines utilized starting astatine birth. Neither of the shots are important gross drivers for the companies. 

Still, Merck during the panel's September gathering pushed backmost connected changing the recommendation. 

"The reconsideration of the newborn Hepatitis B vaccination connected the established docket poses a sedate hazard to the wellness of children and to the public, which could pb to a resurgence of preventable infectious diseases," Dr. Richard Haupt, Merck's caput of planetary aesculapian and technological affairs for vaccines and infectious diseases, said astatine the time.