Dropping hepatitis B shots for newborns would ignore history and endanger children, scientists warn
"It was the late 1980s and the American plan to combat hepatitis B wasn’t working. A vaccine had been available since 1982 and recommended for those deemed to be at highest risk, such as health care workers and men who have sex with men. But the infection rates had gone up, not down. When epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dug into the data, they noticed one figure that had stayed alarmingly stable: Between 30% and 40% of hepatitis B patients had no identifiable risk factors at all.
When they published their paper in 1990, it was subtitled, “Need for Alternative Vaccination Strategies.” The next year, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — the CDC body that sets such guidelines — recommended vaccinating all infants. Over the next two decades, case numbers plummeted by 99% among children and teens.
Now, under the Trump administration, some members of the ACIP have hinted at a desire to reverse course when the committee next convenes on Sept. 18 and 19, as part of a broader review of childhood vaccines.
At the last meeting in June, after health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly fired all 17 experts who sat on the committee and replaced them with his own picks, the new chair, Martin Kulldorff, expressed doubts about the current advice. “Is it wise to administer a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine to every newborn before leaving the hospital? That’s the question,” he said. “Unless the mother is hepatitis B positive, an argument could be made to delay the vaccine for this infection, which is primarily spread by sexual activity and intravenous drug use.”
To people who study, treat, or have hepatitis B, that argument is dangerously misguided, and if adopted, they warn it could lead to a resurgence of the virus as well as the liver disease and cancer it causes.
https://www.statnews.com/2025/09/11/newborn-hep-b-vaccine-debate-how-it-started/