Letters to the Editor: A ‘wayward’ committee puts children at risk by dropping hep B vaccine recommendation
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To the editor: I was walking into Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in South Los Angeles to see newborns when the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to remove the recommendation for a universal hepatitis B birth dose that had been in place since 1991 (“CDC committee drops hep B vaccine for all newborns over objections from health officials,” Dec. 4).
The decision was made by an ACIP stacked with vaccine skeptics appointed by vaccine skeptic-in-chief, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. There was no clear evidence presented as to the benefits versus the harms of the decision. They followed no clear scientific process to come to such a decision and not one liaison organization spoke in favor of it, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. Amy B. Middleman, liaison for the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, said in her 21 years as a hepatitis researcher this is the first time that an ACIP vote puts children at higher risk vs. lower risk of disease and death.
As I walked out of the hospital, I felt good that I had protected my vaccinated newborns from a deadly virus and a wayward ACIP — at least until they need their next vaccine, or until the next ACIP meeting.
Oliver T. Brooks, Lakewood
This writer is clinical professor of pediatrics at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science and a former member of the ACIP.
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To the editor: The ACIP, newly reconstituted by Kennedy, defends its decision to rescind the universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendation for newborns by touting “individual-based decision making.”
However, conservative politicians have already stifled “individual-based decision making” by removing the rights of many parents of transgender children to make medical decisions they deem appropriate, as well as blocking the rights of many women to make their own reproductive choices and threatening to remove contraceptive options. These contradictions are deeply ironic and will ultimately harm many children and women for a very long time.
David E. Dassey, Pasadena
