Health
CDC Vaccine Guidance for Children Could Soon Change. Here’s What Illinois Doctors Are Saying
Longstanding guidance on vaccines for children could soon be upended.
An advisory committee overseen by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine advisory board will meet Thursday to discuss the medical guidance of the hepatitis B vaccine, which is currently given at birth.
This comes on the heels of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changing its stance on the link between vaccines and autism. The updated language reads: “...the statement ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim. Scientific studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines contribute to the development of autism. However, this statement has historically been disseminated by the CDC and other federal health agencies within HHS to prevent vaccine hesitancy.”
Health professionals have been sounding the alarm over the new guidance and its long-term impact. It’s something Dr. Max Brito, professor of infectious diseases at UIC and vice president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, finds alarming.
“Vaccines do not cause autism, so the initial statement is right,” Brito said. “There have been 16 epidemiological large-scale studies that have proven or have failed to prove that there is a link between autism and vaccines.”
Since 1991, the recommendation for the hepatitis B vaccine is that it should be administered first within 24 hours of birth, with a second dose given at 1 to 2 months of age, and then finally another between 6 to 18 months.
If the vaccine schedule were to be delayed, Brito said, there will be more cases of chronic hepatitis B in kids and infants.
“What that does to kids is increase their risk of developing cirrhosis, which is scarring of the liver or liver cancer later in life,” Brito said. “Why would you want that for your kid if you can prevent it with a shot at birth? There is absolutely no evidence that that causes any harm, and it prevents a lot of morbidity.”
The CDC guidelines for pediatric vaccine schedules have historically been in lockstep with other medical and public health organizations, like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) — but the shift from the federal government is not echoed by independent groups.
According to AAP’s website, “Some individuals wrongly assert there is a link between vaccines and autism. Before the claim was discredited, researchers took it seriously, investigated it thoroughly, and found no link. This research, in many countries, involving thousands of individuals, has spanned multiple decades. Any effort to misrepresent sound, strong science poses a threat to the health of children and does a disservice to our autistic community.”
Dr. Michelle Barnes, president of the Illinois chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, has noticed a growing number of vaccine-hesitant parents and caregivers.
“We see it as an opportunity for us as pediatricians to be the trusted health care provider that we are for children,” Barnes said. “Vaccines save lives. They help children to stay in school and to be healthy, and that’s what we want for our patients, just as we know that that’s what parents want for their kids.”
It’s not yet clear how a delayed vaccine schedule would affect insurance coverage, particularly for families who utilize the Vaccines for Children program — which provides many vaccines for children who are on Medicaid — as those vaccines are tied to the recommendations of the Advisory Council on Immunization Practices, a CDC committee.
If the advisory committee recommends a change in the hepatitis B vaccine schedule, some of the impact will be tied to the language used. For instance, if a delay is a recommendation versus an option, or if there’s an age minimum, that will dictate whether it’s covered by insurance.
“In Illinois, Gov. (JB) Pritzker has really tried to ensure that we, our patients and our children, our families, will be able to continue to get the vaccine regardless of what the changes are to the federal guidelines,” Barnes said.
Pritzker signed a bill Tuesday to safeguard against federal anti-vaccine guidelines.
The federal government is also questioning the prevalence of aluminum in vaccines and whether that’s the culprit behind rising rates of autism.
Small amounts of aluminum can be found in some vaccines, like the diphtheria or tetanus vaccines. Aluminum acts as an adjuvant, boosting the body’s immune response.
“It actually is 9% of all the metal on the entire earth, the whole planet earth, it’s everywhere,” said Dr. Robert Murphy, executive director of the Havey Institute for Global Health. “It actually makes the vaccine work 10, 100 or 1,000 times better than without it. So you can give less of the vaccine if you have just a little bit of aluminum. We’re talking about one milligram to one in a thousand of a gram or even less than that.”
