BREAKING NEWS: CDC Advisory Committee Votes to End Recommending Hepatitis B Vaccines for New Borns

By Adam Garrie, Breaking News Reporter, The MAHA Report

In a vote of 8-3, the independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to end universal recommendations for infants to receive the hepatitis B vaccine.

The committee found that in place of a universal recommendation, “Parents and health care providers should consider vaccine benefits, vaccine risks, and infection risks.” This means that parents will be able to exercise informed consent when looking out for the best interests of their children.

The United States is the only major industrialized nation to recommend that infants take a vaccine intended to inoculate against a sexually transmitted disease. There is virtually no way a child can contract the illness unless born to a mother who already has hepatitis B.

Before it becomes official CDC policy, ACIP’s recommendation needs to be approved by acting CDC Director and HHS Deputy Secretary, Jim O’Neill.

The new recommendation says that “individual-based decision-making,” for parents deciding when or if to give the HBV vaccine, is paramount when dealing with a vaccine whose risk profile was found to outweigh any potential benefits to children born to healthy mothers.

In a second vote, ACIP recommended that all children should take Hepatitis B immunity tests before receiving the vaccine.

“I think that one of the slides that we saw earlier today suggests that the policy in the US is completely misaligned with many, many countries that I want to assume care about their children just as much as we do,” said ACIP member, Dr. Retsef Levi, during lengthy deliberations over the past several days.

Dr. Levi later added, “If you are a baby that was born to a mother that was tested negative for Hep B, you need to realize, as a parent, that your risk of infection throughout your early stage of life and probably throughout most of your childhood, is extremely low.”

During an impassioned defense of medical freedom and constitutionalism, ACIP member Dr. Malone said, “A core issue here that we’re not discussing, I believe, except perhaps Dr. Levy to some extent, is the right of self-determination, and by extension, the right of self-determination for the dependent from their caregivers . . . my personal bias is to err on the side of enabling individual decision making and individual rights over the right to the collective.”

ACIP’s decision helps to realign the U.S. with the rest of the developed world, while restoring America’s tradition of medical freedom.