Editorial: As CDC fades, others must provide vaccine advice

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, December 9, 2025

By The Herald Editorial Board

Continuing what may now have to be a regular response to such decisions, a health alliance of West Coast states, including Washington state, announced Friday it was refuting the advice of what had once been a trusted source of health advice: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, specifically the agency’s vaccine advisory panel.

Last week, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, voted 8-3 to end the agency’s 34-year recommendation to parents to inoculate newborns against hepatitis B, a virus that attacks the liver and risks liver failure, liver cancer and cirrhosis. While most adults who contract hepatitis B recovery fully, infants and children are more likely to develop a chronic and long-lasting infection if not inoculated at birth.

The panel’s advice, forwarded to the CDC director for final approval — now an acting director following the White House’s firing of the Senate-confirmed director, Susan Monarez, in late August — is that the vaccine should be given at birth only to infants born to women who test positive for the virus.

The West Coast Health Alliance, which was formed in September in response to similar questionable CDC guidance on access to vaccines for covid-19 and other diseases, said it recommended hepatitis B vaccines for newborns, with a first dose given within 24 hours of birth, followed by completion of the series. The alliance said its recommendation was aligned with guidance from national medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Infections Diseases Society of America.

The reversal of the long-standing guidance followed the dismissal by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy — long a critic of vaccination — of all members of the previous ACIP panel and their replacement with skeptics and outright opponents of many vaccines, with many questioning the safety of vaccines despite long histories of safe and effective use.

In reversing the advice on the hepatitis B vaccine, members of the panel pointed to no data or evidence showing harm to infants, although Kennedy in June continued his history of falsely linking the hepatitis vaccine and other vaccines given during childhood as a “likely culprit” of autism.

Instead, Kennedy and the panel claim that the vaccine is unnecessary unless the infant’s mother has hepatitis B.

The ACIP Committee, however, had recommended the vaccine at birth since 1991 because screening of mothers for hepatitis sometimes isn’t performed or provides incorrect test results. Currently more than 17,000 infants are born to women with hepatitis B; 18 percent of pregnant women aren’t screened for the disease and 35 percent of women who test positive don’t complete recommended follow-up care, according to the Vaccine Integrity Project, a collaboration of public health researchers

Because of the vaccinations, cases of hepatitis among children dropped from about 18,000 a year prior to 1991 to 2,200.

Just prior to the ACIP’s decision, the Vaccine Integrity Project released an analysis of more than 400 studies and reports that concluded the vaccine is safe for infants and credited the vaccinations with a 99 percent decrease in childhood hepatitis since 1991 and key to reducing hepatitis transmission, disease and death.

Opponents of the vaccine also have incorrectly stated that hepatitis B is, as President Donald Trump claimed on Truth Social, “a disease that is mostly transmitted sexually, or through dirty needles.”

While that’s true for adults, an average of 18,000 annual childhood hepatitis cases prior to 1991 would seem to argue against that statement.

Hepatitis B can be transmitted from casual contact with someone who has a chronic case of the disease, as the virus can live on surfaces such as towels, clothing or other items for up to a week at room temperatures. About 2.4 million people in the U.S. are estimated to have the disease and as many as half are unaware they are infected, according to the CDC’s own figures.

Along with the West Coast Health Alliance and other public health experts and advocates, the ACIP recommendation has drawn bipartisan criticism in Congress, specifically from Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., chair of the Senate’s health committee, and from the committee’s former chair, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

The ACIP, Cassidy said in a social media post, was not protecting children. (Cassidy, a physician and the deciding vote in the Senate’s confirmation of Kennedy, should have healed himself, regarding his misplaced trust in Kennedy’s promise to limit his ability to impose his anti-vaccine views on the agency.)

Murray, repeating her call for Kennedy to resign his post, said in a statement that the “hand-picked anti-vax panel has removed any doubt about their obvious bias, and destroyed any shred of credibility for their decision-making process.”

Kennedy, she said, has been clear from the start that he would use his power as secretary of Health and Human Services to continue his anti-vaccine campaign.

“In this case, a mere recommendation — not a mandate — that parents get newborns a lifesaving vaccine, was too much for RFK Jr. and his anti-vax cronies to stomach,” she said.

While the hepatitis B vaccine is likely to remain available for parents to have given to their children, the ACIP’s decision and the CDC acting director’s likely rubber stamp of it as policy will only drive further distrust of the CDC and fragment public confidence in sound health advice, no matter the source.

Again, the CDC’s own data — should its vaccine panel bother to look it up — shows that childhood vaccination rates are continuing their decline. During the most recent school year, coverage for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP), polio and varicella vaccinations for kindergarteners had all fallen; including to 92.5 percent for the MMR vaccine, for which a 95 percent threshold is necessary for full community immunity.

Until such time as Kennedy resigns or is forced out of office and the CDC and Food and Drug Administration are again set on science-based paths, parents and others concerned about infections diseases should seek out more trusted sources for guidance, such as the West Coast Health Alliance, professional medical and public health associations and their own physicians.