Commentary: It's not just vaccines from infancy to adolescence, Republicans are waging war on children's health

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Set us as preferred In the old days, before accepted medical protocols came under partisan assault, infants typically received a vitamin K shot to enhance blood-clotting capability and a few drops of an antibiotic to stave off eye infections before leaving the hospital, followed by a thorough round of vaccines against life-threatening diseases.Americans assumed that “whatever a family could afford, the country had already decided this child was worth protecting,” Robert B.Shpiner, a critical care expert at UCLA medical school, wrote recently.

“I have seen children harmed by disease, poverty, by bad luck.I had not, until now, seen them harmed so methodically by their own government.”Shpiner’s targets were the changes in healthcare policies instituted by the Trump administration generally and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr., as well as the mistrust in medical authority that Kennedy and his followers have helped to foment.We’re going to be paying this bill for years to come, because the lack of proper nutrition has profound effects on learning and disability.— Robert B.Shpiner, UCLAAs Shpiner wrote in the Guardian, the administration’s assault on child health begins with its anti-vaccination policies.

In January, Kennedy’s agency reduced the list of recommended childhood immunizations to 11 from 17, removing shots for COVID-19, hepatitis and meningitis, among other diseases.The agency made the changes without the customary professional consultations, KFF has reported.But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

“It’s just one thing after another,” Shpiner told me.Commentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize winner.

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