A federal committee on Thursday voted to postpone a decision on whether newborns should still get the hepatitis B vaccine on the day they are born.
By Catholics for Catholics
A federal advisory committee deferred a vote regarding Hepatitis B shots for newborns to Friday because some members wanted more time to settle points of a heated disagreement.
The panel had postponed the vote twice before, for similar reasons.
At one instance in Thursday’s meeting, Dr. Jason Goldman, a liaison to the committee from the American College of Physicians, irritably told the panelists that they were “promoting this anti-vaccine agenda without the data and evidence necessary to make those informed decisions,” according to Newsmax.
Meeting in Atlanta, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to reschedule the decision after committee members said they were uncertain about the voting language, while others said they were worried about taking such a decision.
For decades, the government has advised that all babies be vaccinated against liver infection right after birth. The shots are commonly considered to be a public health success for preventing thousands of illnesses.
Nevertheless, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s U.S. Health Secretary committee is pondering whether to recommend the birth dose only for babies whose mothers test positive, which would mark a return to a public health strategy that was ended more than three decades ago. For other infants, it will be up to the parents and their doctors to choose if a birth dose is suitable.
Vicky Pebsworth, a committee member, said a work group was given the task in September to evaluate whether a birth dose is required when mothers tested negative for hepatitis B.
“We need to address stakeholder and parent dissatisfaction” with the current recommendation, she said.
According to Newsmax, the advisory committee makes recommendations to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how already approved vaccines should be employed. CDC directors almost always approved the committee’s recommendations, which were widely heeded by doctors and guide vaccination programs.
But now, the agency presently has no director, leaving acting director Jim O’Neill to decide.
Kennedy fired the entire 17-member panel earlier this year and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices. Kennedy was a leading anti-vaccine activist before he became the nation’s top health official.
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