Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana expressed his “concern” for the potential change to the hepatitis B vaccine schedule for infants in the United States.
The lawmaker’s concern comes as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s panel of federal vaccine advisers will come together to talk about and potentially vote on a change to the vaccine schedule when they meet for the next time on Dec. 4.
Bill Cassidy on Hepatitis B Vaccine Schedule
Cassidy said that his skepticism of the change is because the hepatitis B vaccine and its ingredients, which include aluminum, have been “shown to be safe.” He argued that this is a policy made by people who do not understand the epidemiology of hepatitis B or who have become comfortable with long-term success with the current recommendation.
A Federal Register notice showed that the agenda for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will include talks on “vaccine safety, the childhood and adolescent immunization schedule, and hepatitis B vaccines, according to The Hill.
The idea of removing aluminum, or even issuing a warning about its use, would significantly affect some of the most important childhood shots across the United States. These include those for DTaP, hepatitis A and B, HPV, pneumococcal, and meningitis.
Other than hepatitis B, it is not yet clear what other possible changes the panel could talk about in the upcoming meeting. However, United States President Donald Trump’s administration has long been advocating for breaking up the combined measles-mumps-rubella shot that is given to children and turning it into three shots.
The Benefits of Current Recommendations
Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said that, as a doctor, he has seen people die from vaccine-preventable diseases. He added that he wants to make America healthy, and argued that this does not start by stopping recommendations that have made people “substantially healthier,” CBS News reported.
The Republican senator, who is a physician whose medical practice focused on hepatitis B, noted that the recommended vaccine, which is given at birth, has decreased the incidence of chronic hepatitis B by 20,000 people over the last two decades.
Data showed that since the recommendation that infants receive their first hepatitis B vaccine dose within 24 hours after being born, which was implemented in 1991, it has given various benefits. These include the prevention of more than 500,000 childhood infections and the reduction of infant hepatitis B cases by 95 percent, among other things, as per NFID.
Originally published on parentherald.com
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