The Vaccine Guardrails Are Gone

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