The CDC's ACIP vaccines advisory committee, with newly appointed membership led by anti-vaxers and vaccine skeptics appointed by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is meeting this week to consider federal policies for several currently used vaccines, including the Hepatitis B vaccine for newborns and children.

 

There have been news reports that anti-vaxer Kennedy's panel may look to try to remove or delay the Hep B vaccine from the CDC's standard list of recommended childhood vaccines.

 

Ahead of the meeting, the CDC staff prepared a 17-page briefing paper on the Hep B vaccine that has the following highlights:

 

https://www.cdc.gov/acip/downloads/slides-2025-09-18-19/hep-b-birth-dose-briefing-508.pdf

 

ACIP Meeting Materials for Public Posting: Hepatitis B Birth Dose Briefing Document

 

"Hepatitis B vaccination is the cornerstone of hepatitis B prevention and control. The hepatitis B vaccine is the first anti-cancer vaccine and has been available in the United States for more than 40 years. [emphasis added]  ... When administered shortly after birth to infants born to HBsAg-positive women, hepatitis B vaccination and HBIG reduce mother-to-child transmission by 94%.

...

In the context of these evolving hepatitis B vaccination recommendations among newborns and children, the number of reported US cases of acute hepatitis B has dropped 88% from 1991 (18,003 cases) to 2023 (2,214 cases). The United States’ comprehensive strategy to prevent hepatitis B is based on: 1) routine testing of all pregnant women for HBsAg; 2) postexposure prophylaxis within 12 hours of birth with hepatitis B vaccine and HBIG of all infants born to women who are HBsAg-positive or HBsAg-status unknown; 3) universal vaccination of all infants beginning at birth; 4) routine vaccination of previously unvaccinated children, adolescents, and adults aged 19-59 years; and 5) vaccination of all adults at risk for HBV infection or who request vaccination.

...

Prior to the widespread availability of postexposure prophylaxis (i.e., vaccine and HBIG within 12 hours of birth), the proportion of infants born to HBsAg-positive women who acquired HBV infection was as high as 85%. Children living with a person with chronic HBV infection in a household or community setting are also at risk and transmission rates have ranged to up to 11% in US settings. [emphasis added]

...

Hepatitis B Birth Dose Provides a Critical Safety Net in the Prevention of Perinatal and Early Childhood Transmission

 

And as for the issue of safety, the CDC briefing paper concluded:

 

"Across intervention study types (timing of vaccination (birth vs 18 months); efficacy trials; product and formulation; dose of vaccine and schedule) meeting the rapid systematic review inclusion criteria can be summarized as:

...

Hepatitis B birth dose vaccine is safe and resulted in few local and systemic adverse effects, including infants born to HBsAg-negative mothers;  [emphasis added]

 

 

The CDC chart below shows how the gradually expanded use of the Hep B vaccine in the past 43 years has steadily driven down the country's numbers of infant Hepatitis B cases:

 

 

And comparable findings on the safety front from a companion report:

 

A Review of the Safety of Hepatitis B Birth Dose Vaccination

 

Immunization Safety Office
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

...

Request to CDC from ACIP Chair
"Safety data for HepB administration within 24 hours of birth from CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink and from FDA’s Biologics Effectiveness and Safety System. Include (i) mild and serious adverse events; (ii) all cause morbidity and mortality; (iii) short term and long-term safety; (iv) both specific outcomes of pre-determined concern as well as results from data
mining where large numbers of potential adverse events are evaluated; and (v) both combined results and results stratified by sex. If some of these types of safety studies are unavailable, please mention that."

...

 

Summary of evidence

• The safety data available for hepatitis B vaccine administered at birth did not identify an increased risk:
- Allergic reaction
- All-cause mortality
- Expected, or unexpected deaths or deaths due to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
- Seizures or neurologic disease other than seizures

 

• Compared to those who did not receive a hepatitis B vaccine administered at birth, there was a reduction in risk among those who received hepatitis B vaccine for:
- An invasive diagnostic procedure (blood and CSF cultures) and a reduction in positive cultures
- Bronchopulmonary dysplasia

• Reactogenicity within 1 week of vaccination varied by study."

 

https://www.cdc.gov/acip/downloads/slides-2025-09-18-19/02-su-hep-b-508.pdf

 

 

And from a third report prepared by CDC for the ACIP meeting:

 

Hepatitis B Birth Dose Vaccination
CDC Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices Meeting
September 18, 2025

...

Safety
- The Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review and the WHO's Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety concluded that hepatitis B vaccine is both safe and effective."

 

 

Conclusion
• Based on the included body of evidence:
- Hepatitis B birth dose induces high seroprotection and efficacy
- Hepatitis B birth dose vaccine is safe
- Head-to-head comparisons of various hepatitis B recombinant vaccine products,
doses, and schedule show no meaningful differences in reported outcomes in
efficacy and safety"

 

https://www.cdc.gov/acip/downloads/slides-2025-09-18-19/02-langer-hep-b-508.pdf

 

 

Posting here instead of on the Hep B topic on the Off the Beaten track forum, ensures that you will not be confronted with some inconvenient facts, data and studies.  

> https://aseannow.com/topic/1373425-all-newborns-are-forced-to-get-dangerous-hepatitis-b-vaccine/

 

20 minutes ago, Red Phoenix said:

Posting here instead of on the Hep B topic on the Off the Beaten track forum, ensures that you will not be confronted with some inconvenient facts, data and studies.  

> https://aseannow.com/topic/1373425-all-newborns-are-forced-to-get-dangerous-hepatitis-b-vaccine/

 

 

You mean a nonsense anti-vaxer blog post by some anonymous who knows who making claims that aren't supported by any credible research.  Ya, I won't be confronted by abject debunked nonsense.  There's a good reason it's in Off the Beaten Track where no credibility, or even identity, is required.

 

 

Here's the member of Kennedy's anti-vaxer advisory group who's listed on the CDC's ACIP meeting agenda as slated to lead the panel's discussion on Hep B vaccine  policy:

 

Martin Kulldorff

 

"Martin Kulldorff (born 1962) is a Swedish biostatistician. He was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School from 2003 until his dismissal in 2024.

...

In 2020, Kulldorff was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated lifting COVID-19 restrictions on lower-risk groups to develop herd immunity through infection before vaccines became available, while promoting the fringe notion that vulnerable people could be simultaneously protected from the virus.[6][7][8][9] The declaration was widely rejected, and was criticized as being unethical and infeasible by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization.[10] Francis S. Collins, N.I.H. director, called him a "fringe epidemiologist". [emphasis added]

 

During the pandemic, Kulldorff opposed disease control measures such as vaccination of children, lockdowns, contact tracing, and mask mandates.

,,,

In March 2024, Kulldorff announced that Harvard had dismissed him.^[3][26] Kulldorff had refused a COVID vaccination that was required by Mass General Brigham, the hospital through which Harvard employed him as Medical School faculty.

 

(more)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff

 

 

 

Considering the current makeup of the new ACIP panel appointed by RFK Jr., it probably wont matter how much evidence the CDC staff produce showing how the vaccine at birth has had a dramatic effect in reducing Hep B infections among children, or how many analysis they produce showing the vaccine itself is very safe for the children who receive it.

 

My guess is, the anti-vaxers on the ACIP panel are going to do just what the anti-vaxer who appointed them wants them to do, facts and evidence notwithstanding.

 

Fired CDC director describes pressure from Kennedy over vaccines

"Two former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials told Senate lawmakers today that agency has been politicized, and its career scientists sidelined, under Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

 

In a hearing before the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor & Pensions) Committee, former CDC Director Susan Monarez, PhD, and former Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, MD, MPH, testified that the agency has been "reduced to a rubber stamp" under Kennedy. They also described an atmosphere in which political appointees are playing a significant role in agency decisions. 

...

Among the revelations in the hearing was that plans to change the childhood vaccine scheduled were already in place ahead of tomorrow's meeting of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

...

Houry said that an HHS political appointee indicated to her that ACIP was planning to move away from the recommendation that children receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth and that any data presented by career CDC scientists might bias ACIP members, several of whom are vaccine critics, against that decision.

 

(more)

 

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/public-health/fired-cdc-director-describes-pressure-kennedy-over-vaccines

 

 

 

 

Back from June 2025 after RFK Jt. fired the entire ACIP vaccine advisory panel of vetted professionals, and replaced them with an original new group led by multiple anti-vaxers and vaccine skeptics, followed by a similar second group of new members just added recently:

 

RFK Jr.’s New Vaccine Panel Casts Doubt on Hepatitis B Shot at Birth

June 26, 2025

 

"The chair of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s newly constituted vaccine advisory committee announced in his first meeting that the panel will revisit the longstanding practice of vaccinating all babies against hepatitis B, questioning whether it was “wise” to administer shots “to every newborn before leaving the hospital.” Experts, however, say there are valid reasons to vaccinate babies against hepatitis B, and that it has proven to be safe and very effective. [emphasis added]

...

Martin Kulldorff, the chair and one of seven new members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, is a former Harvard Medical School professor who became known for opposing various public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. ... Some remaining panelists have past ties to vaccine-related litigation, including Kulldorff, who served as an expert witness for plaintiffs alleging harm from HPV vaccination. 

...

Kulldorff’s line of inquiry also ignores the history of hepatitis B vaccination in the U.S. When the vaccine was first approved in the 1980s, the U.S. tried a risk-based vaccination approach that included infants born to mothers with the virus.  “It didn’t work,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told us.  It was only after 1991, when the U.S. switched to a universal recommendation, that hepatitis B infections in children began to dramatically decline.

...

“Hepatitis B can be passed from parent to baby at birth – and when that happens, the consequences can be deadly. It is unscientific and dangerous to intentionally ignore the success of U.S. vaccination programs or argue that the U.S. should not vaccinate babies for hepatitis B at birth,” the American Academy of Pediatrics said in a post on social media shortly after Kulldorff’s remarks." [emphasis added]

 

(more)

 

https://www.factcheck.org/2025/06/rfk-jr-s-new-vaccine-panel-casts-doubt-on-hepatitis-b-shot-at-birth/

 

 

Update on the Hep B vaccine from a private insurance coverage perspective -- the latest in a growing list of instances where mostly Democrat-led states, medical groups, private insurers and others are beginning to disregard the coming anti-vax guidance from Kennedy's anti-vax dominated ACIP panel:

 

Why doctors say the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine is still necessary

...

"On Tuesday, American health insurers pledged to cover the cost of all vaccines based on previous recommendations by the ACIP that were in place as of Sept. 1. While this may protect access for many kids with private health insurance, it may leave a critical gap for kids who rely on no-cost vaccines through the [government's] Vaccines for Children Program (VFC), if the recommendation is reversed.

 

The CDC said over half of all American kids were eligible for shots through the VFC program in 2023. If ACIP no longer recommends a hepatitis B shot at birth, a majority of these kids may lose access.

 

"Fifty percent of newborns who are going to be eligible for Vaccines for Children may not have the vaccine any longer available to them," Michaela Jackson, MS, program director of prevention policy for the Hepatitis B Foundation, told ABC News. "Policy changes can seem very, very small on the surface, but they have long-reaching impacts on the ground."

 

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/doctors-birth-dose-hepatitis-vaccine/story?id=125627484

 

 

AHIP Statement on Vaccine Coverage

Published Sep 16, 2025

 

"WASHINGTON – AHIP released the following statement today regarding vaccine coverage.

“Health plans are committed to maintaining and ensuring affordable access to vaccines. Health plan coverage decisions for immunizations are grounded in each plan’s ongoing, rigorous review of scientific and clinical evidence, and continual evaluation of multiple sources of data.

 

“Health plans will continue to cover all ACIP-recommended immunizations that were recommended as of September 1, 2025, including updated formulations of the COVID-19 and influenza vaccines, with no cost-sharing for patients through the end of 2026.

 

“While health plans continue to operate in an environment shaped by federal and state laws, as well as program and customer requirements, the evidence-based approach to coverage of immunizations will remain consistent.”

 

https://www.ahip.org/news/press-releases/ahip-statement-on-vaccine-coverage

 

About AHIP

"AHIP is the national trade association representing the health insurance industry. AHIP’s members provide health care coverage, services and solutions to more than 200 million Americans."

 

Who's telling the truth here?  I think I know:

 

RFK Jr.-appointed ACIP chair Martin Kulldorff opened today's meeting attacking pretty much everyone outside his own panel and the RFK Jr. HHS Department, including making dubious claims against the American Academy of Pediatrics:

 

"Kulldorff also said the American Academy of Pediatrics ended its participation with the [ACIP] committee and ignored invitations for open discussion about vaccines." [emphasis added]

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/cdc-vaccine-advisory-committee-rfk-jr-vote-measles-hepatitis-b/

 

However, an entirely different version was reported by news outlets last month, as follows:

 

 Top medical organizations kicked out of CDC vaccine recommendations process call decision "dangerous"

August 4, 2025

 

"The nation's top medical organizations are speaking out after U.S. health officials told them they will no longer have a role in helping establish vaccination recommendations.

 

The organizations were notified via an email Thursday that their experts are being disinvited from the workgroups that have been the backbone of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, known as ACIP. [emphasis added]

 

In response, the impacted organizations — including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases Society of America — released a joint statement about being excluded from the vaccine recommendation review process.

 

"We are deeply disappointed and alarmed that our organizations are being characterized as 'biased' and therefore barred from reviewing scientific data and informing the development of vaccine recommendations that have long helped ensure our nation's vaccine program is safe, effective, and free from bias," the statement said. 

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/medical-organizations-kicked-out-cdc-vaccine-workgroups-acip/

 

 

Federal vaccine adviser says former CDC officials can’t be trusted unless they agree to ‘public debate’

Comments kick off closely watched ACIP meeting on immunizations against hepatitis B, Covid, and more

"The chair of a key vaccine committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention struck a confrontational tone Thursday in his prepared opening remarks, challenging nine former heads of the CDC to “a live public debate with me concerning vaccines.”  If they refuse, he said, don’t trust them. 

 

Martin Kulldorff, a statistician and former Harvard professor who chairs the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, was set to make the remarks at the start of a two-day meeting where members will consider recommendations related to Covid-19 vaccines and shots on the pediatric vaccine schedule, including hepatitis B. He planed to level similar criticism against the American Academy of Pediatrics, the recently fired director of the CDC, and several former CDC officials, implying they are unwilling to engage in open scientific debate.

 

“We are currently experiencing heated controversies about vaccines, and a key question is: Who can you trust?” Kulldorff said, according to prepared remarks shared ahead of his speech.

...

Paul Offit, a vaccine researcher at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who is a former member of ACIP and another advisory committee on vaccines convened by the Food and Drug Administration, said he was disappointed that Kulldorff called for open debate without mentioning [recent vaccine] decisions made by Kennedy that had been made without debate."

 

(more)

 

STAT

https://archive.ph/F4p1m

 

 

After hearing staff presentations, medical association groups and public comment presentations, the ACIP adjourned its Thursday meeting at the end of the day and rescheduled its vote on proposed Hep. B vaccine policy recommendations to Friday.

 

The proposal being considered by ACIP would weaken the current so-called universal Hep B vaccine policy for newborns, meaning they currently get the first of 3 vaccine doses at birth, to instead the following language that would allow mothers who test negative for Hep. B to postpone the first dose until their infant is at least one month old -- a proposed change that was widely criticized and rebuffed by numerous medical association groups and likewise not supported by CDC staff.

 

Per CBS News:

Committee shares proposed hepatitis B vaccine recommendation changes ahead of vote

"On the topic of hepatitis B, there will be votes on two different recommendation changes.  The language for the first proposed change was presented as: "All pregnant women should be tested for hepatitis B infection."

 

The second proposed change was presented as follows: 

"The pediatric vaccine schedule should be updated to reflect the following change:

 

• If a mother tests HBsAG-negative:
  • The first dose of the Hepatitis B vaccine is not given until the child is at least one month old.
  • Infants may receive a dose of hepatitis B vaccine before one month according to individual based decision-making.*

*Also referred to as shared clinical decision-making."

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/cdc-vaccine-advisory-committee-rfk-jr-vote-measles-hepatitis-b/#post-update-33418125

 

 

Changing hep B recommendation could put more infants at risk of infection, presenter says

In the first presentation for the hepatitis B vaccine, presenter Dr. Adam Langer with the CDC outlined how changing the current recommendation for a first dose within 24 hours of birth could put more children at risk, even those born to mothers who test negative for the disease. 

 

Langer gave examples of situations where unvaccinated infants are at risk of HBV infection, including:

• They live with a person who has chronic hepatitis B, not necessarily their mother
• People who have an HBV infection come to visit their homes
• They go to daycare or other places where even "minuscule amounts of infectious blood or fluids might be present."
•  

"About half of people with HBV infection are unaware of their infection so they could unknowingly expose infants that are in their care," he said.

Additionally, he said there is "no evidence that the risk of already rare adverse events is any greater among newborns than among older infants."

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/cdc-vaccine-advisory-committee-rfk-jr-vote-measles-hepatitis-b/#post-update-f7a2d07b

 

Why doctors say the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine is still necessary

The ACIP is scheduled to discuss the hepatitis B vaccine recommended at birth.

 

"Ahead of a key meeting amongst the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisors -- now with 12 members hand-picked by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. -- doctors, health officials and advocates are raising alarms that the panel could reverse a decadeslong guideline of vaccinating infants against hepatitis B at birth.

...

Doctors and advocates told ABC News that the hepatitis B birth dose is still an essential recommendation and delaying it may lead to gaps in insurance coverage, growing health disparities, confusion and an increase in preventable hepatitis B infections.

 

In a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy praised the success of the recommendation to give babies a hepatitis B vaccine at birth. "Before 1991, as many as 20,000 babies, babies, were infected with hepatitis B in the United States of America, and that changed when the hepatitis B vaccine was approved for newborns," Cassidy said.

 

"Now fewer than 20 babies per year get hepatitis B from their mother. That is an accomplishment to make America healthy again, and we should stand up and salute the people that made that decision, because there's people who would otherwise be dead if those mothers were not given that option to have their child vaccinated."

 

(more)

 

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/doctors-birth-dose-hepatitis-vaccine/story?id=125627484

 

 

 

"Current ACIP guidance recommends all infants receive the hepatitis B vaccine in three doses. The first dose is given within 24 hours of birth, the second is given one to two months after and the third dose is given between 6 and 18 months of age.

 

ACIP members will vote on whether the first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine should not be given until a child is at least one month old, if the mother tested negative for the virus, according to proposed recommendations on the agency's website.

...

“With the hepatitis B vaccine, we can effectively prevent a lifelong infection with no known cure," said Dr. Ravi Jhaveri, professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine who also heads the pediatric infectious diseases division at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.

 

"Infants are particularly vulnerable to getting the chronic form of Hepatitis B, which is precisely why we vaccinate infants at birth," he said. "This is one of two vaccines we have that prevents cancer."

 

(more)

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2025/09/18/rfk-vaccine-panel-hepatitis-b-mmrv-babies/86199355007/

 

 

Dear me. Post after post of Big Pharma, compromised, white-coat nonsense.

 

"Infants are particularly vulnerable to getting the chronic form of Hepatitis B, which is precisely why we vaccinate infants at birth," he** said. "This is one of two vaccines we have that prevents cancer."

 

Let's see the evidence.

 

** Dr. Ravi Jhaveri, professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

3 hours ago, Stiddle Mump said:

Dear me. Post after post of Big Pharma, compromised, white-coat nonsense.

 

"Infants are particularly vulnerable to getting the chronic form of Hepatitis B, which is precisely why we vaccinate infants at birth," he** said. "This is one of two vaccines we have that prevents cancer."

 

Let's see the evidence.

 

** Dr. Ravi Jhaveri, professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

Dear me... post after post consisting of only fetid opinion based on 19th century thought..... Your peephole perspective of the real universe has created a simpleton's interpretation.