Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) on Sunday said he is “very concerned” about the possibility of changing the hepatitis B vaccine schedule for infants in the United States.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s panel of federal vaccine advisers is set to discuss and potentially vote on changing that vaccine schedule when they next meet on Dec. 4.
On Sunday, Cassidy said he “was concerned” and that the vaccine and its ingredients, such as aluminum, which the panel is set to discuss, “have been shown to be safe.”
“This is policy by people who don’t understand the epidemiology of hepatitis B, or who have grown comfortable with the fact that we’ve been so successful with our recommendation that now the incidence of hepatitis B is so low, they feel like we can rest on our laurels,” he told Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”
According to a Federal Register notice, the agenda for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will include “discussions on vaccine safety, the childhood and adolescent immunization schedule, and hepatitis B vaccines.”
Removing aluminum, or even issuing a warning about its use, would affect some of the most important childhood shots, including those for DTaP, hepatitis A and B, HPV, pneumococcal and meningitis.
Aside from hepatitis B, it’s not clear what other changes the panel could discuss. However, the Trump administration has been advocating for breaking up the combined measles-mumps-rubella shot given to children into three shots, arguing without evidence that it’s more beneficial and safer to space them out.
Cassidy, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, has previously spoken out against a recommendation to no longer vaccinate newborns against hepatitis B.
He has also noted how newborn hepatitis B infections dropped by nearly 70 percent after the vaccine was approved.
“I’m a doctor. I have seen people die from vaccine-preventable disease,” Cassidy told Brennan on Sunday. “I want people to be healthy. I want to make America healthy, and you don’t start by stopping recommendations that have made us substantially healthier.”
