Long-Awaited Vaccine Reversal Finally Arrives

After 34 long years, medical freedom wins.

A long-awaited vaccine reversal has just sent shockwaves through the US medical establishment after 34 long years.

ACIP, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, just voted 8–3 to end the universal Hepatitis B birth-dose recommendation and move instead to shared decision-making for infants born to hepatitis-B–negative mothers.

For the first time since 1991, parents (not a blanket federal recommendation) will decide whether their newborn receives this shot in the first hours or days of life.

Voting YES to end the universal mandate: Retsef Levi and seven other members.

Voting NO: Dr. H. Cody Meissner, Dr. Joseph R. Hibbeln, and Dr. Raymond Pollak. Two of the three issued grave warnings, insisting the decision to end the universal hepatitis B recommendation will “cause harm” and that the panel will have to “accept this responsibility when this harm is caused.”

The decision to end the universal hepatitis B vaccination recommendation is a huge deal because the three-shot series is required for public school attendance in nearly every state, and most states base their mandates directly on ACIP recommendations. Today’s decision instantly places the decades-old school requirement on unstable ground.

The debate leading up to the vote centered around a single primary question: why is every newborn vaccinated against a virus primarily transmitted through sexual contact, needle sharing, or from an infected mother during birth?

Every pregnant woman in the United States is screened for hepatitis B. Only 0.5% of births involve a mother who tests positive. Newborns do not engage in behaviors that spread the virus. And yet, for 34 years, every child in America has been expected to receive a Hepatitis B shot on the first day of life.

During yesterday’s meeting, CDC contractor Dr. Cynthia Nevison presented evidence that the universal birth-dose never meaningfully altered population-level Hepatitis B trends. Acute Hepatitis B cases were already plummeting years before the vaccine recommendation took effect in 1991.

As she showed, the sharp decline in cases during the 1980s and early 1990s was overwhelmingly due to other factors: improved blood screening, widespread adoption of safe-sex practices during the AIDS crisis, needle-exchange programs, and targeted (not universal) vaccination of infants actually at risk.

Her conclusion was blunt: “universal birth dose contribution to acute [Hepatitis B] case decline is likely very small.”

For decades, parents have questioned why a vaccine for a bloodborne, sexually transmitted virus is pushed on healthy newborns within hours of birth. Today’s vote shows those concerns are no longer being dismissed.

This vote does not end the Hepatitis B vaccine. It restores parental choice. And after three decades of unquestioned policy, that alone is historic.

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