Hello,

As this week wraps up, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory panel is meeting to discuss and vote on the hepatitis B birth dose recommendation, among other items. 

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was overhauled this year by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has repeated the scientifically debunked notion that childhood vaccines cause autism.

Our KFF Health News colleague Jackie Fortiér reported that in June, in an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Kennedy falsely claimed that the hepatitis B birth dose is a “likely culprit” of autism. 

Fortiér interviewed Brian McMahon, a liver specialist at a tribal-owned hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, who saw firsthand the devastation hepatitis B caused to children before a vaccine became available in the 1980s. 

He said one patient, set to graduate from high school as valedictorian, arrived with stomach pain. McMahon said he found liver cancer caused by hepatitis B. She died before graduation. 

He recalled an 8-year-old boy who died soon after a fast-growing liver tumor was discovered. “He was moaning in pain,” McMahon said.

The virus is incurable. Yet today, McMahon said, such deaths are preventable. A birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine, recommended for newborns since 1991, is up to 90% effective in preventing infection if given in the first 24 hours of life. And 98% of babies who receive all three doses gain immunity from the virus, with protection that lasts at least 30 years.

In western Alaska, McMahon said: “Liver cancer has disappeared in children. We haven’t seen a case since 1995.”

ACIP’s vote could limit access to the vaccine, Fortiér wrote. Its recommendations guide what insurers cover and help shape state vaccination policies. While states decide which immunizations to mandate — not ACIP or the CDC — public health advocates worry misinformation could lead people to ignore or downplay the risk. 

On that Carlson podcast, RFK Jr. said hepatitis B is not “casually contagious.” Extensive research shows the virus is highly contagious and can be transmitted through indirect contact, from trace amounts of blood on a surface. Infected people can show no symptoms. It’s far more infectious than HIV. 

“It’s a very infectious virus,” McMahon said. “That’s why giving everybody the birth dose is the best way to prevent it.” 

We’ll see if the ACIP panel agrees. 

In other vaccine news, Lauren Sausser of KFF Health News reports from Boiling Springs, South Carolina, which has battled a measles outbreak since early October. Nearly 6,000 children in Spartanburg County schools last year — 10% of the total enrollment — received an exemption allowing them to forgo vaccinations or did not meet vaccine requirements, according to state data. 

Josh Michaud, associate director for global and public health policy at KFF, said fear and misinformation around Covid vaccines “threw gasoline on the fire of people’s vaccine skepticism.” 

Now, for the first time in more than 20 years, the United States is poised to lose its measles-free status, designating that outbreaks are rare and rapidly contained.

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