Commentary
The national press was overtaken with hullabaloo following the recent meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). This is a committee that serves under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), providing a check of outside expertise on what would otherwise be a bureaucratic edict.
It brings together outside experts from academia and medicine to provide guidance on how the CDC should advise doctors and parents on vaccines. As part of the new committee formed by Health and Human Services director Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., there are strict rules against conflict of interest.
The new committee has voted to make a small, common-sense change in the childhood vaccination schedule. It is seen as hugely significant because it has taken issue with a particular shot that has been on the schedule since 1991.
The shot concerns Hepatitis B. Instead of a universal recommendation, the committee suggested that it should not pertain in the first months of life provided the birthing mother has tested negative for the disease. After that time, the shot should only be given when there is informed consent.
Stated that way, it does not seem even slightly controversial. Indeed, one wonders why the shot was ever on the schedule, especially given the paltry data on effectiveness and safety. On March 1, 1991, the New York Times reported on its addition to the childhood schedule: “If adults won’t go for the shots, then give them to babies.”
As part of the childhood schedule, they are automatically granted immunity from liability, as legislated in 1986 on fear that lawsuits could bankrupt the whole industry. With such a shield in place, there was a gold rush to move shots from targeting adults to being given to children. Most kids in the United States since those days have taken the shot, even those at no risk of the disease in question.
That it should be removed from the schedule for mothers testing negative would seem entirely non-controversial. It certainly does not warrant panic that the entire schedule is being shredded or that the industry will collapse. The response of the industry is entirely disproportionate to the threat. In addition, the committee had open public debate for two full days. It was hardly ill-considered.
