President Trump ordered his top health officials Friday night to review all U.S. childhood vaccination recommendations and align them with the "best practices" from other developed countries.
Why it matters: It's a vote of confidence in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s handpicked advisory panel on vaccines, which voted earlier Friday to to drop the decades-old federal recommendation that all infants receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth.
The Centers for Disease Control panel "made a very good decision to END their Hepatitis B Vaccine Recommendation for babies, the vast majority of whom are at NO RISK of Hepatitis B," Trump wrote in a
Truth Social post.
The big picture: Kennedy and his allies have gained the power to pursue sweeping changes in U.S. vaccine policies, driven by their embrace of discredited theories about vaccines' link to autism and other diseases.
What's inside: Trump's memorandum orders Kennedy and the CDC director to "review best practices from peer, developed countries for core childhood vaccination recommendations — vaccines recommended for all children — and the scientific evidence that informs those best practices."
If they determine that other countries' practices are better, Trump ordered them to "update the United States core childhood vaccine schedule to align with such scientific evidence and best practices from peer, developed countries while preserving access to vaccines currently available to Americans."Kennedy responded in an
X post: "Thank you, Mr. President. We're on it."
Between the lines: Trump's order suggests he's not trying to distance himself from Kennedy's vaccine agenda — at least for now — despite the outcry from medical groups over his agenda, and especially over the CDC panel's recommendation Friday to change federal policy on the hepatitis B vaccine.
In fact, it appears to fast track a comprehensive review of all childhood immunizations, which Trump has claimed is too much at once, even comparing the volume of doses to what would be given
to a horse.The U.S. immunization schedule is more comprehensive than what's found in many European countries, which sometimes use different strategies.
Medical associations on Friday assailed the CDC panel's moves on hepatitis shots.
In a statement, the American Medical Association's Sandra Adamson Fryhofer called the CDC panel's vote "reckless" and said it "undermines decades of public confidence in a proven, lifesaving vaccine.""Today's action is not based on scientific evidence, disregards data supporting the effectiveness of the Hepatitis B vaccine, and creates confusion for parents about how best to protect their newborns."
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