RFK Jr., CDC Alter Childhood Vaccine Schedule To Mimic Denmark’s
The Trump administration's war on vaccines continues, it seems. We've already written extensively about all the bullshit RFK Jr. is pulling when it comes to public health around vaccines. From his dismantling the CDC's ACIP committee and rebuilding it full of anti-vaxxer allies, pulling public funding for research on new and better RNA vaccines, to rescinding the recommendation for vaccine schedules for diseases such as COVID and hepatitis B, it's an absolute nightmare. And what is particularly cruel about the nightmare is how it will be chiefly visited upon the most vulnerable possible population: children.
I can't say for sure that Kennedy is purposefully endangering children, but it's difficult to think of what he'd do differently if that were his intention. The latest example is the CDC changing the childhood vaccination schedule recommendations out of the blue to mimic Denmark's, for some reason.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday announced an unprecedented overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule that recommends fewer shots to all children.
Under the change - effective immediately - the vaccine schedule will more closely resemble Denmark's, recommending all children get vaccines for 11 diseases, compared with the 18 previously on the schedule.
From all the reporting, this wasn't something that came out of the current iteration of ACIP. There was no meeting between the CDC and FDA to discuss changes to the schedule. There were no public hearings in which experts could weigh in and the public could get a glimpse into any reasoning for the changes. Instead, there was just the announcement, as though Kennedy himself wrote up the press release after finishing off some half pullups in his Levi's.
The changes are significant and may have a downstream impact on what is covered by insurance and what is not. Vaccines that used to be universally recommended for children, but which will now be recommended only for high risk" individuals and/or be recommended based on shared clinical decision-making" are extensive.
Vaccines recommended for high-risk groups are shots for RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, dengue and two types of bacterial meningitis.
The vaccines that are recommended based on shared clinical decision-making are for rotavirus, the flu, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and bacterial meningitis. The Covid vaccine was moved to shared decision-making last year.
So what is the problem Kennedy is ostensibly trying to solve for by reducing the total number of childhood vaccinations? It's nothing new, as it turns out. Instead, this is all about reducing exposure to aluminum, which is a common ingredient in vaccines used to produce a better immune response to the shots themselves, thereby increasing the protective response to the vaccines. Kennedy and other anti-vaxxers have long blamed aluminum in vaccines for all sorts of ailments, autism being but one of them.
Interestingly, a recent study out of Denmark itself indicated there was no risk from exposure to the aluminum in vaccines.
A major study from Denmark,published in July, found that aluminum exposure from vaccines isn't harmful. Kennedydemanded the journal retract the study, calling it a deceitful propaganda stunt by the pharmaceutical industry"; the journal didn't issue a retraction.
As per usual, Kennedy is absolutely all over the place with this sort of thing.
There is something else that everyone should keep in mind when you hear that we are modeling the vaccination schedule after Denmark, which has admittedly good health outcomes generally for its population: America isn't Denmark. And while that may sound flippant, it isn't and it really, really matters.
Anders Peter Hviid, the senior author of the Danish study on aluminum in vaccines and a professor in the department of epidemiology research at Statens Serum Institut in Denmark - that country's equivalent of the CDC - wrote in an email in December that Denmark has a more homogeneous population than the U.S., with greater trust in public health institutions, universal and free health care and lower rates of serious outcomes from infectious diseases that it doesn't vaccinate against but the U.S. does.
Denmark's robust public health system, for example, makes it much easier for the country to test pregnant women for hepatitis B and ensure that babies born to women who test positive are vaccinated against it. A similar approach, now endorsed by the CDC, hadn't been successful in the U.S. at cutting infection rates in children.
There's a reason why public health experts are suggesting the changes Kennedy has made are dangerous. Context-free claims that we're just modeling the vaccine schedule after another successful industrialized European nation entirely miss the point. The state of healthcare and the complexity of the population in each country are wildly different. And smart healthcare professionals understand the implications of those differences.
Kennedy understands none of this. Nor does he seem particularly interested in becoming educated on the matter. He's an anti-vaxxer who has been given enormous power to foist his misguided personal conspiracy theories onto the American people.
There can be no doubt that there will be unhappy consequences to this.