The Kennedy-led HHS moves to reopen settled questions without new scientific justification. Chris Comp, director of Medicare; Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in the Oval Office at the White House on Nov. 6, 2025. (Andrew Harnik \/ Getty Images) <\/p>\n
Originally published<\/a> by The Conversation.<\/p>\n The U.S.\u00a0childhood immunization schedule<\/a>, the grid of colored bars pediatricians share with parents, recommends a set of vaccines given from birth through adolescence to prevent a range of serious infections. The basic structure has been in place since 1995, when federal health officials and medical organizations first issued a unified national standard, though new vaccines have been added regularly as science advanced.<\/p>\n Vaccines on the childhood schedule have been\u00a0tested in controlled trials<\/a>\u00a0involving millions of participants, and they are\u00a0continuously monitored for safety<\/a>\u00a0after being rolled out. The schedule represents the accumulated knowledge of decades of research. It has made the diseases it targets so rare that many parents have never seen them.<\/p>\n But the schedule is now under scrutiny.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Dec. 16, 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u00a0adopted its first major change to the childhood immunization schedule<\/a>, under Kennedy\u2019s leadership<\/a>. The agency accepted an advisory committee\u2019s vote to drop a long-held recommendation that all newborns be vaccinated against hepatitis B, despite no new evidence that questions the vaccine\u2019s long-standing safety record.\u00a0<\/p>\n Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has\u00a0cast doubt on vaccine safety for decades<\/a>, has said he plans to\u00a0further scrutinize the vaccines children receive<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m an\u00a0infectious disease physician<\/a>\u00a0who treats vaccine-preventable diseases and\u00a0reviews the clinical trial evidence<\/a> behind immunization recommendations. The vaccine schedule wasn\u2019t designed in a single stroke. It was built gradually over decades, shaped by disease outbreaks, technological breakthroughs and hard-won lessons about reducing childhood illness and death.<\/p>\n With federal officials now casting doubt on its foundations, it\u2019s helpful to know how it came about.<\/p>\n The Early Years <\/p>\n For the first half of the 20th century,\u00a0smallpox vaccination was common<\/a>, required by most states for school entry. But there was no unified national schedule. The combination vaccine against\u00a0diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis<\/a>, known as the DTP vaccine, emerged in 1948, and the\u00a0Salk polio vaccine arrived in 1955<\/a>, but recommendations for when and how to give them varied by state, by physician and even by neighborhood.<\/p>\n The federal government stepped in after tragedy struck. In 1955, a\u00a0manufacturing failure at Cutter Laboratories<\/a>\u00a0in Berkeley, Calif., produced batches of polio vaccine containing live virus, causing paralysis in dozens of children. The incident made clear that vaccination couldn\u2019t remain a patchwork affair. It required federal oversight.<\/p>\n In 1964, the U.S. surgeon general\u00a0established the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP<\/a>, to provide expert guidance and recommendations to the CDC on vaccine use. For the first time, a single body would evaluate the evidence and issue national recommendations.<\/p>\n New Viral Vaccines <\/p>\n Through the 1960s, vaccines against measles (1963), mumps (1967) and rubella (1969) were licensed and eventually\u00a0combined into what\u2019s known as the MMR shot in 1971<\/a>. Each addition followed a similar pattern: a disease that killed or disabled thousands of children annually, a vaccine that proved safe and effective in trials and a recommendation that transformed a seemingly inevitable childhood illness into something preventable.\u00a0<\/p>\n The rubella vaccine went beyond protecting the children who received it. Rubella, also called German measles, is mild in children but\u00a0devastating to fetuses<\/a>, causing deafness, heart defects and intellectual disabilities when pregnant women are infected.\u00a0<\/p>\n A rubella epidemic in 1964 and 1965<\/a>\u00a0drove this point home: 12.5 million infections and 20,000 cases of congenital rubella syndrome left thousands of children deaf or blind. Vaccinating children also helped protect pregnant women by curbing the spread of infection. By 2015,\u00a0rubella had been eliminated<\/a>\u00a0from the Americas.<\/p>\n Technology Opens New Doors <\/p>\n One limitation of some early bacterial vaccines was that they didn\u2019t work well in infants. Young children\u2019s immune systems couldn\u2019t mount a strong response to the sugar coating on certain bacteria. In the 1980s, scientists developed a method called\u00a0conjugate vaccine technology<\/a>, in which sugars on bacterial pathogens are linked to proteins that the immune system\u2014even in infants\u2014can more easily respond to.<\/p>\n The first target of this innovation was a bacterium called\u00a0Haemophilus influenzae Type b, or Hib<\/a>. Before vaccination, Hib was the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in American children, causing roughly 20,000 cases of the disease annually and killing hundreds.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Hib conjugate vaccine was\u00a0licensed for use in infants in 1990<\/a>, and within five years Hib disease in young children\u00a0dropped by more than 99 percent<\/a>. Most pediatricians practicing today have never seen a case.<\/p>\n Hepatitis B and the Safety Net <\/p>\n In 1991, the CDC added\u00a0hepatitis B vaccination at birth<\/a>\u00a0to the schedule. Before then, around\u00a018,000 children every year contracted the virus before their 10th birthday<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many parents wonder why newborns need this vaccine. The answer lies in biology and the limitations of screening.<\/p>\n An adult who contracts hepatitis B has a 95 percent chance of clearing the virus. An infant infected in the first months of life has a\u00a090 percent chance of developing chronic infection<\/a>, and\u00a0one in four will eventually die<\/a>\u00a0from liver failure or cancer.\u00a0Infants can acquire the virus<\/a> from their mothers during birth, from infected household members or through casual contact in childcare settings. The virus survives on surfaces for days and is highly contagious.<\/p>\n Early strategies that targeted only high-risk groups failed because screening missed too many infected mothers. Even today, roughly 12 percent to 18 percent of pregnant women in the U.S. are never screened for hepatitis B. Until ACIP\u00a0dropped the recommendation in early December 2025<\/a>, a first dose of this vaccine at birth served as a safety net, protecting all infants regardless of whether their mothers\u2019 infection status was accurately known.<\/p>\n This safety net worked:\u00a0Hepatitis B infections in American children fell by 99 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n Access Becomes a Right <\/p>\n The schedule\u2019s expansion was enabled by a crucial policy change.\u00a0From 1989 to 1991<\/a>, a measles outbreak\u00a0swept through American cities, causing more than 55,000 cases and over 120 deaths. Investigators found that many infected children had seen doctors but never been vaccinated. Their families couldn\u2019t afford the shots, and the system had failed to catch them.<\/p>\n Congress responded by\u00a0creating the Vaccines for Children program in 1994<\/a>, which provides free vaccines to children who are uninsured, underinsured or on Medicaid. With cost no longer a barrier, ACIP could recommend vaccines based on science rather than worrying about who could afford them.<\/p>\n A Unified Standard <\/p>\n For decades, different medical organizations issued their own, sometimes conflicting, recommendations. In 1995, ACIP, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians jointly released the\u00a0first unified childhood immunization schedule<\/a>, the ancestor of today\u2019s familiar grid. For the first time, parents and physicians had a single national standard.\u00a0<\/p>\n The schedule continued to evolve. ACIP recommended vaccinations for\u00a0chickenpox<\/a>\u00a0in 1996;\u00a0rotavirus in 2006<\/a>, replacing an\u00a0earlier version withdrawn<\/a>\u00a0after safety monitoring detected a rare side effect; and\u00a0HPV, also in 2006<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Each addition\u00a0followed the same rigorous process<\/a>: evidence review, risk-benefit analysis and a public vote by the advisory committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n More Vaccines, Less Burden <\/p>\n One fact often surprises parents: Despite the increase in recommended vaccines, the number of immune-stimulating molecules in those vaccines, called antigens, has dropped dramatically since the 1980s, which means they are less demanding on a child\u2019s immune system.\u00a0<\/p>\n The whole-cell pertussis vaccine used in the 1980s alone\u00a0contained roughly 3,000 antigens<\/a>. Today\u2019s entire schedule\u00a0contains fewer than 160 antigens<\/a>, thanks to advances in vaccine technology that allow precise targeting of only the components needed for protection.<\/p>\n What Lies Ahead <\/p>\n For decades, ACIP recommended changes to the childhood schedule only when new evidence or clear shifts in disease risk demanded it. Rolling back a long-standing recommendation with no new safety data represents a significant break from that norm.\u00a0<\/p>\n In June 2025, Kennedy\u00a0fired all 17 members of ACIP and replaced them<\/a>\u00a0with his own choices, many of whom had a history of anti-vaccine views.<\/p>\n Given this and other\u00a0unprecedented changes Kennedy has made to vaccine policy<\/a>\u00a0in his first year as health secretary, this is unlikely to be the last such reversal.<\/p>\n Kennedy, his newly appointed ACIP panel and others within HHS have pushed to\u00a0align the U.S. vaccine schedule with European countries<\/a>\u00a0such as Denmark, which recommends fewer vaccines. But\u00a0every country\u2019s schedule<\/a>\u00a0reflects its specific disease burden, health care infrastructure and access to care.<\/p>\n Denmark\u2019s more targeted approach works in a small, wealthy country with universal public health care, equitable access and a\u00a0national registry that tracks every patient<\/a>. The U.S. health care system is fragmented: Millions are uninsured, many families move between providers and screening systems have significant gaps.<\/p>\n Major medical organizations<\/a>, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have rejected the reversal on hepatitis B\u2019s routine use at birth. More broadly,\u00a0these organizations<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0several states<\/a>, including California, New York and Illinois, have indicated they will continue following established, evidence-based guidelines if federal recommendations diverge on other vaccines in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kennedy-led HHS moves to reopen settled questions without new scientific justification. Chris Comp, director of Medicare; Health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-391267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Supporters of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rally outside the CDC\u2019s global headquarters during a meeting of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on Dec. 4, 2025, in Atlanta. The ACIP is meeting to vote on changes to the childhood vaccination schedule and delay hepatitis B shots. (Elijah Nouvelage \/ Getty Images) <\/p>\n