{"id":50897,"date":"2025-12-07T16:34:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T22:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=50897"},"modified":"2025-12-07T21:38:35","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T03:38:35","slug":"former-fda-commissioner-trump-claims-about-hepatitis-b-transmission-simply-not-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=50897","title":{"rendered":"Former FDA commissioner: Trump claims about hepatitis B transmission \u2018simply not true\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb\u2002<\/u><\/a>said Sunday that President Trump\u2019s\u2002<\/u><\/a>assertions about hepatitis B transmission are \u201csimply not true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump said earlier this week<\/u><\/a> that the disease is \u201cmostly\u201d transmitted sexually or via dirty needles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the problem. That\u2019s simply not true,\u201d Gottlieb told host Margaret Brennan\u2002<\/u><\/a>on CBS News\u2019s \u201cFace the Nation<\/u><\/a>.\u201d \u201cThe fact is, there\u2019s a refrain that if you just test the moms while they\u2019re pregnant, you can detect whether they have hepatitis B, and if they have hepatitis B, you continue to give that birth dose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut the reality is, many moms don\u2019t get tested, even though they intend to, many times, those test results aren\u2019t checked, and the tests themselves have a false negative rate, meaning they\u2019re going to say you don\u2019t have hepatitis B, when in fact, you do, of about 2 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, the president praised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s (CDC) vaccine advisory panel for changing its guidance<\/u><\/a> on hepatitis B vaccinations, calling it a \u201cvery good decision\u201d on his Truth Social platform<\/u><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 8-3 in favor of lifting its recommendation<\/u><\/a> that newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth earlier Friday. Acting CDC Director Jim O\u2019Neill must endorse the new guidelines, which now call for infants whose mothers test positive for hepatitis B to be vaccinated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2002<\/u><\/a>dismissed the entire panel over the summer and handpicked new appointees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gottlieb said Sunday that the new members of the panel \u201cwere put there to carry out a specific agenda\u201d on behalf of Kennedy, which will damage the group\u2019s credibility going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think in time, ACIP is going to be fully degraded as a decisionmaking body, and it\u2019s going to be more symbolic,\u201d the former FDA head added. \u201cThere will be certain states that adhere to it, but it will be more symbolic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hepatitis B is primarily spread when blood, semen or other bodily fluids from a person with the disease enters the body of someone who is not infected, according to the CDC<\/u><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agency also notes that infants born to people with hepatitis B and those who were not vaccinated as infants and whose parents were born in countries with high rates of the disease are at a higher risk for the disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

thehill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb\u2002said Sunday that President Trump\u2019s\u2002assertions about hepatitis B transmission are \u201csimply not true.\u201d Trump said earlier this week that the disease is \u201cmostly\u201d transmitted sexually or via dirty needles. \u201cThat\u2019s the problem. That\u2019s simply not true,\u201d Gottlieb told host Margaret Brennan\u2002on CBS News\u2019s \u201cFace the Nation.\u201d \u201cThe fact is, there\u2019s a refrain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":50898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5784],"tags":[3043,35296,1230],"class_list":["post-50897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-fda","tag-hepatitis-b","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50899,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50897\/revisions\/50899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}