CDC poised to decide on hep B vaccine for newborns amid pressure from Trump officials
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A vaccine advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was poised to vote Friday on whether to scrap the recommended birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, a move that would be the body’s most controversial decision since it was overhauled by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.Kennedy Jr in June.
The hep B shot has long been a top target for vaccine opponents.But changing the decades-old recommendation has proved thorny even for Kennedy’s hand-picked Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.A planned vote in September was tabled after fierce disagreement among members, whose bickering Thursday repeatedly devolved into shouting.
“We’re trying to evaluate a moving target,” Dr.Joseph R.
Hibbeln, one of the move’s strongest opponents, said during the meeting.Although a change in the current recommendation would not bar newborns from receiving the vaccine, Medicaid and other public insurance programs would no longer be required to cover it, putting a birth dose out of reach for millions of poor families and complicating access for many others.
Unlike most vaccine-preventable diseases, such as whooping cough and chickenpox, hepatitis B is typically asymptomatic, often spreading silently until midlife, when 1 in 4 infected people develop liver cancer or cirrhosis.“It’s one of the cancers with the highest mortality in the U.S.,” said Dr.
Su Wang, medical director of Viral Hepatitis Programs and the Center for Asian Health at the Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey, who lives with the disease.“The life expectancy we give people is six months on average.” Opponents of the current vaccine guidance — among them, Kennedy, surgeon general nominee Casey Means and President Trump — characterize the virus as the result of high-risk “adult” behavior, including sex and IV drug use.
“Hepatitis B is sexually transmit...