health – Page 6

Childhood vaccines safe for a little longer as CDC cancels advisory meeting

ACIP, anti-vaccine, CDC, health, rfk jr, vaccines / Kris Guyer / October 11, 2025

An October meeting of a key federal vaccine advisory committee has been canceled without explanation, sparing the evidence-based childhood vaccination schedule from more erosion—at least for now.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was planning to meet on October 22 and 23, which would have been the committee’s fourth meeting this year. But the meeting schedule was updated in the past week to remove those dates and replace them with “2025 meeting, TBD.”

Ars Technica contacted the Department of Health and Human Services to ask why the meeting was canceled. HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard offered no explanation, only saying that the “official meeting dates and agenda items will be posted on the website once finalized.”

ACIP is tasked with publicly reviewing and evaluating the wealth of safety and efficacy data on vaccines and then offering evidence-based recommendations for their use. Once the committee’s recommendations are adopted by the CDC, they set national vaccination standards for children and establish which shots federal programs and private insurance companies are required to fully cover.

In the past, the committee has been stacked with highly esteemed, thoroughly vetted medical experts, who diligently conducted their somewhat esoteric work on immunization policy with little fanfare. That changed when ardent anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became health secretary. In June, Kennedy abruptly and unilaterally fired all 17 ACIP members, falsely accusing them of being riddled with conflicts of interest. He then installed his own hand-selected members. With the exception of one advisor—pediatrician and veteran ACIP member Cody Meissner—the members are poorly qualified, have gone through little vetting, and embrace the same anti-vaccine and dangerous fringe ideas as Kennedy.

Corrupted committee

So far this year, Kennedy’s advisors have met twice, producing chaotic meetings during which members revealed a clear lack of understanding of the data at hand and the process of setting vaccine recommendations, all while setting policy decisions long sought by anti-vaccine activists. The first meeting, in June, included seven members selected by Kennedy. In that meeting, the committee rescinded the recommendation for flu vaccines containing a preservative called thimerosal based on false claims from anti-vaccine groups that it causes autism. The panel also ominously said it would re-evaluate the entire childhood vaccination schedule, putting life-saving shots at risk.

Childhood vaccines safe for a little longer as CDC cancels advisory meeting Read More »

Trump admin fires more health employees amid government shutdown

health, HHS, lay off, Russ Vought / Paul Patrick / October 10, 2025

Questionable cull

Today’s layoffs are the work of White House Budget Director Russell Vought, a lead creator of the Project 2025 playbook, which planned a massive reduction in the federal workforce. In a post on X earlier today, Vought announced that the terminations “have begun.”

But as The Washington Post has previously reported, senior government officials have warned that Vought’s layoffs amid a shutdown are likely illegal, running afoul of the Antideficiency Act. The law forbids the government from incurring new expenses during a shutdown, and the process of laying employees off—which includes severance packages—does just that.

Federal employment lawyers told the Post that the move is almost certainly illegal for a second reason: Under federal regulations, a shutdown-driven lapse in funding does not count as one of the reasons federal employees can be terminated.

Last week, the American Federation of Government Employees and other unions representing federal workers filed a lawsuit over threats that the Trump administration would try to lay off workers during the shutdown.

In a statement today, AFGE National President Everett Kelley said, “It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country.”

“AFGE is currently challenging President Trump’s illegal, unprecedented abuse of power, and we will not stop fighting until every reduction-in-force notice is rescinded,” Kelley said.

Trump admin fires more health employees amid government shutdown Read More »

After RFK Jr.’s shenanigans, COVID shot access will be a lot like last year

ACIP, CDC, COVID-19 vaccines, cvs, health, vaccines, Walgreens / Rejus Almole / October 7, 2025

In an interview with Ars Technica in August, Brigid Groves, vice president of professional affairs for the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) signaled that efforts to limit access to COVID-19 vaccines is concerning to APhA, which is the leading organization representing pharmacists.

“We are concerned about that because the data and evidence point to the fact that this vaccine is safe and effective for [young, otherwise healthy] patients,” Groves said. “So, to suddenly arbitrarily limit that is very concerning to us.”

And, with the CDC’s permissive recommendations, pharmacies are not limiting them. Representatives for both CVS and Walgreens told The Washington Post that they would not require patients under 65 to prove they have an underlying condition to get a COVID-19 vaccine. CVS won’t ask you to self-attest to having a condition, and Walgreens also said that it won’t require any proof.

“In simplest terms, if a patient wants to get the vaccine, they’ll get it,” Amy Thibault, a CVS spokesperson, told the Post.

With the shared decision-making, there may be extra forms about risks and benefits that might take an extra few minutes, but it should otherwise be just like past years.

On Tuesday, this reporter was able to easily book same-day appointments for an updated COVID-19 vaccine at local CVS and Walgreens pharmacies in North Carolina, without attesting to any medical conditions.

Children

Shots for younger children could be trickier: While adults and older children can visit their pharmacy and get vaccinated relatively easily, younger children (particularly those under age 5) may have a harder time. Pharmacists typically do not vaccinate those younger children—which has always been the case—and parents will have to visit the pediatrician.

Pediatricians, like pharmacists, are likely to be supportive of broad access to the shots. The American Academy of Pediatrics has said that all children should have access. The AAP also specifically encourages children under age 2 and children with underlying conditions to get vaccinated, because those children are at higher risk of severe disease.

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Nearly 80% of Americans want Congress to extend ACA tax credits, poll finds

ACA, health, health care / Paul Patrick / October 4, 2025

According to new polling data, nearly 80 percent of Americans support extending Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of this year—and are at the center of a funding dispute that led to a shutdown of the federal government this week.

The poll, conducted by KFF and released Friday, found that 78 percent of Americans want the tax credits extended, including 92 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of Republicans—and even a majority (57 percent) of Republicans who identify as Donald Trump-aligned MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters.

A separate analysis published by KFF earlier this week found that if the credits are not extended, monthly premiums for ACA Marketplace plans would more than double on average. Specifically, the current average premium of $888 would jump to $1,904 in 2026, a 114 percent increase.

Consequences

The polling released today found that, in addition to broad support for the credits, many Americans are unaware that they are in peril. About six in ten adults say they have heard “a little” (30 percent) or “nothing at all” (31 percent) about the credits expiring.

“There is a hot debate in Washington about the looming ACA premium hikes, but our poll shows that most people in the marketplaces don’t know about them yet and are in for a shock when they learn about them in November,” KFF President and CEO Drew Altman said in a statement.

Yet more concerning, the poll found that among people who buy their own insurance plans, 70 percent said they would face a significant disruption to their household finances if their premiums were to double. Furthermore, 42 percent said they would ultimately go without health insurance in such a case. Currently, over 24 million Americans get their insurance through the ACA Marketplace.

Nearly 80% of Americans want Congress to extend ACA tax credits, poll finds Read More »

RFK Jr. drags feet on COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, delaying shots for kids

ACIP, CDC, COVID-19 vaccines, health, robert f kennedy jr, vaccines / Mike M. / October 2, 2025

Previously, the FDA narrowed the shots’ labels to include only people age 65 and older, and those 6 months and older at higher risk. But the ACIP recommended that all people age 6 months and older could get the shot based on shared decision-making with a health care provider. Although the shared decision-making adds a new requirement for getting the vaccine, that decision-making does not require a prescription and can be done not only with doctors, but also with nurses and pharmacists. Most people in the US get their seasonal COVID-19 vaccines at their local pharmacy.

Ars Technica reached out to the HHS on Thursday about whether there was a determination on the COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and, if not, when that is expected to happen and why there is a delay. The HHS responded, confirming that no determination had been made yet, but did not answer any of the other questions and did not provide a comment for the record.

In past years, ACIP recommendations and CDC sign-offs have happened earlier in the year to provide adequate time for a rollout. In 2024, ACIP voted on COVID-19 vaccinations in June, for instance, and then-CDC Director Mandy Cohen signed off that day. Now that we’re into October, it remains unclear when or even if the CDC will sign off on the recommendation and then, if the recommendation is adopted by the CDC, how much longer after that it would take for states to roll out the vaccines to children in the VFC program.

“Children who depend on this program, including children with chronic conditions, are still waiting unprotected. The delay in adopting COVID-19 vaccine recommendations puts their health at risk, reduces access and choice for families, and puts a strain on providers who want to deliver the best care for their youngest patients,” Susan Kansagra, the chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said in a statement to Stat.

For now, children and adults with private insurance have access to the shots without the final sign-off, and health insurance companies have said that they will continue to maintain coverage for the vaccines without the final federal approval.

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Woman hospitalized with pain and vomiting—diet soda cured her

bezoar, coca-cola, health, New England Journal of Medicine / Paul Patrick / September 27, 2025

A 63-year-old woman showed up at the emergency department of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston with severe stomach pain, nausea, and vomiting.

She told doctors that for the past month she had developed severe nausea, non-bloody vomiting, and pain she described as a burning feeling that spread from her upper abdomen, through her right side, and around to her back. Nothing she did made it better.

The doctors started collecting her medical history, which was lengthy. The woman had Type 2 diabetes, Stage 2 chronic kidney disease, opioid use disorder, and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), among other conditions. While she was taking many medications, she noted that for the past year she had also been taking semaglutide, a GLP-1 weight-loss drug, and had lost about 40 pounds (over 19 percent of her body weight).

In an interactive case report published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the doctors laid out how they figured out what was going on and treated it—with a surprisingly simple solution.

Possibilities

The doctors started doing lab tests and imaging, and they admitted her to the hospital. A computed tomography (CT) scan of her abdomen revealed bile-duct enlargement and a swollen stomach that seemed to be full of a semi-solid mass. Similarly, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) also picked up a mass in her stomach, one with mottling that doctors assumed were air bubbles. The imaging also found bile duct enlargement, which could be linked to her history of opioid use—or to a gastric bezoar.

Gastric bezoars are masses that form in the stomach. There are different kinds depending on what the masses are made of. The most common is a phytobezoar, which is made from clumped fruit and vegetable components, particularly non-digestible materials such as cellulose. A notable subtype of phytobezoar is the diospyrobezoar, which is formed from eating an excessive amount of persimmons. The fruit’s skin is brimming with tannins that form a glue-like substance when they hit gastric acid, aiding the formation of a mass that is notoriously hard and difficult to treat.

Woman hospitalized with pain and vomiting—diet soda cured her Read More »

Ebola outbreak in DR Congo rages, with 61% death rate and funding running dry

Congo, ebola, health, USAID, WHO / Tim Belzer / September 26, 2025

Jeopardized efforts

This week, the IFRC requested $25 million to contain the outbreak, but it has only $2.2 million in emergency funds for its outbreak response so far. The WHO likewise estimated the cost of responding to the outbreak over the next three months to be $20 million. But WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic told the AP on Thursday that it only had $4.3 million in funding to draw from—a $2 million emergency fund and $2.3 million in funding from the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Gavi vaccine alliance.

“Without immediate support, gaps in operations will persist, jeopardizing efforts to contain the outbreak and protect vulnerable communities,” Jasarevic said.

In the past, the US Agency for International Development, USAID, has provided critical support to respond to such outbreaks. But, with funding cuts and a dismantling of the agency by the Trump administration, the US is notably absent, and health officials fear it will be difficult to compensate for the loss.

Mathias Mossoko, the Ebola Response Coordinator in Bulape, told the AP that the US has provided “some small support” but declined to elaborate.

Amitié Bukidi, chief medical officer of the Mweka health zone—another health zone in the Kasai province—told the outlet that there was still much work to do to contain the outbreak. “The need is still very great,” he said. “If USAID were to be involved, that would be good.”

Ebola outbreak in DR Congo rages, with 61% death rate and funding running dry Read More »

Anti-vaccine allies cheer as Trump claims shots have “too much liquid”

anti-vaccine, antigens, health, Trump, tylenol, vaccines / Mike M. / September 24, 2025

Why babies don’t pop like water balloons when they get vaccines—and other info for Trump.

President Donald Trump, flanked by senior health officials, speaks during a news conference on September 22, 2025 inside the Roosevelt Room at The White House in Washington. Credit: Getty | Tom Brenner

When the bar is set at suggesting that people inject bleach into their veins, it’s hard to reach a new low. But in a deranged press event on autism Monday evening, President Trump seemed to go for it—sharing “rumors” and his “strong feelings” not just on Tylenol but also his bonkers views on childhood vaccines.

Trump was there with his health secretary, anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to link autism to the use of Tylenol (acetaminophen) during pregnancy. While medical experts condemn the claim as unproven and dangerous (which it is), Kennedy’s anti-vaccine followers decried it as a distraction from their favored false and dangerous explanation—that vaccines cause autism (which they don’t).

Pinning the blame on Tylenol instead of vaccines enraged Kennedy’s own anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense. In the run-up to the event Monday evening, CHD retweeted an all-caps defense of Tylenol, and CHD President Mary Holland called the announcement a “sideshow” in an interview with Steve Bannon.

But fear not. The rift was short-lived, as their big feelings were soothed mere minutes into Monday’s event. After smearing Tylenol, the president’s unscripted remarks quickly veered into an incoherent rant linking vaccines to autism as well.

At one point in his comments, he rattled off a list of anti-vaccine activists’ most vilified vaccine components (mercury and aluminum). But his attack largely ignored the content of vaccines and instead surprisingly focused on volume. Overall, his comments were incoherent, but again and again, he seemed to swirl back to this bizarre concern.

Wut?

If you piece together Trump’s sentence- and thought-fragments, his comments created a horrifying picture of what he thinks childhood vaccinations look like:

They pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies. It’s a disgrace. I don’t see it. I think it is very bad. They’re pumping. It looks like they’re pumping into a horse. You have a little child, little fragile child, and you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess, 80 different blends and they pump it in.

It seemed that Trump’s personal solution to this imagined problem is to space out and delay vaccines so they are not given at one time:

Break it up because it’s too much liquid. Too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number. The size of this thing, when you look at it, it’s like 80 different vaccines and beyond vaccines and 80. Then you give that to a little kid.

From Trump’s loony descriptions, you might be imagining an evil cartoon doctor wielding a bazooka-sized syringe and cackling maniacally while injecting a baby with a vat’s worth of 80 different vaccines until it inflates like a water balloon ready to burst.

But this cuckoo take is not how childhood vaccinations go in routine well-baby doctor’s visits. First, most vaccines have a volume of 0.5 milliliters, which is about a tenth of a teaspoon. And babies and children do not get 80 different vaccines ever, let alone at one time. In fact, no recommendations would see anyone get 80 different types of vaccines cumulatively.

By age 18, it’s recommended that people get vaccinated against 17 diseases, including seasonal flu and COVID-19. And some vaccines are combination shots, knocking out three or four diseases with one injection, such as the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine or the Diphtheria, tetanus, & acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccine. And again, even those combination shots are 0.5 mL total.

Modern vaccines

Trump’s claim of 80 vaccines doesn’t even stand up when you count vaccine doses rather than different vaccines. Some childhood vaccines require multiple doses—MMR is given in two doses, and DTaP is a five-dose series, for example. According to current recommendations, by age 18, kids should have 36 vaccine doses against childhood diseases. If you add in a flu shot every year, that’s 54 doses. If you add in a COVID-19 vaccine every year, that’s 72.

While 72 might seem like a big number, again, that’s spread out over 18 years and includes seasonal shots. And medical experts point to another key fact—the vaccines that children get today are much more streamlined and efficient than vaccines of yore. A helpful myth-busting info sheet from experts with Yale’s School of Public Health points out that in the mid-1980s, children under age 2 were vaccinated against seven diseases, but those old-school vaccines included more than 3,000 germ components that can spur immune responses (aka antigens). Today, children under age 2 get vaccinated against 15 diseases, but today’s more sophisticated vaccine designs include just 180 antigens, making the protection more targeted and reducing the risk of errant immune responses.

In all, the facts should dash any worries of nefarious doctors inflating children with vast volumes of noxious concoctions. But for those who may hew closely to the cautionary principle, Trump’s “space the shots out” plan may still seem reasonable. It’s not.

At most, children might get five or six vaccines at one time. But again, the number of antigens in those shots is far lower than those in vaccines children received decades ago. And the number of antigens in those vaccines is just a fraction of the number kids are exposed to every day just from their environments. If you’ve ever watched a kindergartener touch every surface and object in a classroom and then shove their fingers in their nose and mouth, you understand the point.

Vaccinations don’t overwhelm children’s immune systems. And there’s no evidence that spacing them out avoids any of the very small risks they pose.

Data against dogma

After Trump shared his personal feelings about vaccines, the American Academy of Pediatrics rushed to release a statement, first refuting any link between vaccines and autism and then warning against spacing out vaccine doses.

“Pediatricians know firsthand that children’s immune systems perform better after vaccination against serious, contagious diseases like polio, measles, whooping cough, and hepatitis B,” the AAP said. “Spacing out or delaying vaccines means children will not have immunity against these diseases at times when they are most at risk.”

Such messages make no impact on the impervious dogma of anti-vaccine activists, of course. While medical experts and organizations like AAP scrambled to combat the misinformation and assure pregnant people and parents that Tylenol was still safe and vaccines don’t cause autism, anti-vaccine activists cheered Trump’s comments.

“We knew today was going to be about acetaminophen,” CHD President Mary Holland said, speaking on Bannon’s podcast again after the event. “We didn’t know if he’d touch on vaccines—and he was all over it. It was an amazing, amazing speech.

“I’m happy to say he basically gave parents permission not to vaccinate their kids—and definitely not to take Tylenol.”

In a new pop-up message on Tylenol’s website, the maker of the common pain reliever and fever reducer pushed back on Trump’s feelings.

Tylenol is one of the most studied medications in history–and is safe when used as directed by expecting mothers, infants, and children.

The facts remain unchanged: over a decade of rigorous research, endorsed by leading medical professionals, confirm there is no credible evidence linking acetaminophen to autism.

The same is true for vaccines.

Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.

Anti-vaccine allies cheer as Trump claims shots have “too much liquid” Read More »

Anti-vaccine groups melt down over reports RFK Jr. to link autism to Tylenol

anti-vaccine, autism, children's health defense, health, robert f kennedy jr, tylenol, vaccines / Mike M. / September 22, 2025

Results of this study indicate that the association between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental disorders is a noncausal association. Birthing parents with higher acetaminophen use differed in many aspects from those with lower use or no use. Results suggested that there was not one single “smoking gun” confounder, but rather that multiple birthing parents’ health and sociodemographic characteristics each explained at least part of the apparent association. The null results of the sibling control analyses indicate that shared familial confounders were involved, but do not identify the specific confounding factors.

Critical factors

Another factor to consider is that untreated fevers, and/or prolonged fevers during pregnancy—reasons to take Tylenol in the first place—are linked to increased risks of autism. And, as the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine pointed out earlier this month, untreated fever and pain during pregnancy carry other significant risks for both the mother and the pregnancy.

“Untreated fever, particularly in the first trimester, increases the risk of miscarriage, birth defects, and premature birth, and untreated pain can lead to maternal depression, anxiety, and high blood pressure,” SMFM noted.

With no clear evidence supporting a link between acetaminophen and autism, doctors highlight another fold in the issue: Acetaminophen is considered the safest pain reliever/fever-reducer during pregnancy. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications (also called NSAIDS), such as ibuprofen (Advil) and aspirin, can cause reduced blood flow, heart problems, and kidney problems in a fetus.

After The Wall Street Journal’s report of Kennedy’s plans, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) reiterated its guidance for acetaminophen during pregnancy, writing on social media:

Acetaminophen remains a safe, trusted option for pain relief during pregnancy. Despite recent unfounded claims, there’s no clear evidence linking prudent use to issues with fetal development. ACOG’s guidance remains the same. When pain relief is needed during pregnancy, acetaminophen should be used in moderation, and after consulting your doctor.

Christopher Zahn, ACOG’s chief of clinical practice, put it more plainly, saying: “Pregnant patients should not be frightened away from the many benefits of acetaminophen, which is safe and one of the few options pregnant people have for pain relief.”

Anti-vaccine groups melt down over reports RFK Jr. to link autism to Tylenol Read More »

Bonkers CDC vaccine meeting ends with vote to keep COVID shot access

ACIP, COVID-19, health, vaccines / Paul Patrick / September 20, 2025

At one point, Hillary Blackburn, a pharmacist and daughter-in-law of Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), noted that her mother developed lung cancer two years after getting a COVID-19 vaccine, suggesting, without any evidence, that there could be a link. Evelyn Griffin, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Louisiana who reportedly lost her job for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, meanwhile, did her own research and tried to suggest that the mRNA in mRNA vaccines could be turned into DNA inside human cells and integrate into our genetic material. She made this assertion to a scientist at Pfizer (a maker of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine), asking him to respond.

With admirable composure, the Pfizer scientist explained that it was not biologically plausible: “RNA cannot reverse transcribe to DNA and transport from the cytoplasm to the nucleus and then integrate. That requires a set of molecules and enzymes that don’t exist in humans and are largely reserved for retroviruses.”

At the very start of the meeting, liaisons from mainstream medical organizations pressed that the ACIP committee needs to ditch such anecdotal nonsense and unvetted data, and return to the high-quality framework for evidence-based decision-making that ACIP has used in the past, which involves comprehensive, methodical evaluations.

Retsef Levi, who works on operations management and has publicly said that COVID-19 vaccines should be removed from the market, responded by falsely claiming that there are no high-quality clinical trials to show vaccine safety, so calls to return to methodological rigor for policy making are hypocritical. “With all due respect, I just encourage all of us to be a little bit more humble,” Levi, who was the head of the ACIP’s COVID-19 working group, said.

During his response, a hot mic picked up someone saying, “You’re an idiot.” It’s unclear who the speaker was—or how many other people they were speaking for.

This post was updated to include the adoption of the recommendation by the CDC.

Bonkers CDC vaccine meeting ends with vote to keep COVID shot access Read More »

RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine panel realizes it has no idea what it’s doing, skips vote

ACIP, CDC, health, hepatitis B, Rober F. Kennedy Jr., vaccine / Tim Belzer / September 19, 2025

With a lack of data and confusing language, the panel tabled the vote indefinitely.

Catherine Stein, far right, speaks during a meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on September 18, 2025 in Chamblee, Georgia. Credit: Getty | Elijah Nouvelage

The second day of a two-day meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices—a panel currently made up of federal vaccine advisors hand-selected by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—is off to a dramatic start, with the advisors seemingly realizing they have no idea what they’re doing.

The inexperienced, questionably qualified group that has espoused anti-vaccine rhetoric started its second day of deliberations by reversing a vote taken the previous day on federal coverage for the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) vaccine. Yesterday, the group voted to restrict access to MMRV, stripping recommendations for its use in children under age 4. While that decision was based on no new data, it passed with majority support of 8–3 (with one abstention). (For an explanation of that, see our coverage of yesterday’s part of the meeting here.)

But puzzlingly, they then voted to uphold access and coverage of MMRV vaccines for children under age 4 if they receive free vaccines through the federal Vaccines for Children program, which covers about half of American children, mostly low-income. The discrepancy projected the idea that the alleged safety concerns that led the panel to rescind the recommendation for MMRV generally, somehow did not apply to low-income, vulnerable children. The vote also created significant confusion for VFC coverage, which typically aligns with recommendations made by the panel.

Today, Kennedy’s ACIP retook the vote, deciding 9-0 (with three abstentions) to align VFC coverage with their vote yesterday to strip the recommendation for MMRV in young children.

Hepatitis B vaccine newborn dose

Next, they moved to a vote they failed to take yesterday as scheduled—a vote to strip a recommendation for a dose of hepatitis B vaccine that is currently recommended to be given universally on the first day of a baby’s life. Instead, the proposed recommendation would be to wait at least a month before the first dose—opening a window for a highly infectious disease that leads to chronic liver disease and cancer—unless the baby’s mother tested positive for the virus.

While it initially seemed that the panel was poised to approve the change, cracks in the plan began to appear quickly this morning, as some members of the panel noted that the proposed recommendation made no sense and was based on zero data.

Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist on the panel, raised the obvious concern yesterday, saying: “I’m unclear if we’ve been presented with any safety or data comparing before one month to after one month, and I’m wondering why one month was selected as our time point and if there are data to help to inform us if there’s greater risk of adverse effects before one month or after one month at all, let alone in negative mothers.”

There was no data comparing the risks and benefits of moving the first dose from the day of birth to any other time point. And there is no data suggesting that such a move would be more or less safe.

Adam Langer, Acting Principal Deputy Director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention, stressed in his presentation on the safety data yesterday, that the vaccine is safe—there are no safety concerns for giving a dose at birth. Adverse side effects are rare, he said, and when they do occur, they’re mild. “The worst adverse event you could imagine, anaphylaxis, has been very rarely reported at only 1.1 cases per 1 million vaccine doses administered.”

Langer gave a clear explanation for why newborns are vaccinated at day one. Hepatitis B, which primarily affects the liver, spreads via bodily fluids and can live on surfaces for up to seven days. It can spread easily; only a tiny microscopic amount of blood or fluid is enough for a child to be infected. For some, an infection can be short-lived, but for others it can become chronic, which leads to liver disease, cirrhosis, liver transplant, and liver cancer. The risk of the infection becoming chronic increases with the younger someone is when they’re infected.

Benefits and harms

Newborns who get hepatitis B from their mothers at birth have a 90 percent chance of developing a chronic infection, and 25 percent of those children will die prematurely from the disease. Up to 16 percent of pregnant women in the US are not tested for hepatitis B during pregnancy. Newborns and babies can also get infected from other people in their family or household, given hepatitis B’s infectiousness. Prior to the universal birth dose recommendation, a study of US-born children born to immigrant mothers found that 7 percent to 11 percent of them had hepatitis B while their mothers were negative. This highlights that unvaccinated babies and children can pick up the infection from family or the community.

Part of the reason for this is the elusiveness of the disease. While about 2.4 million people in the US are infected with hepatitis B, about 50 percent of those infected do not know that they’re infected.

In 1991, ACIP began recommending universal hepatitis B vaccination at birth; acute hepatitis B cases then fell from around 18,000 to about 5,500 in 2005 to about 2,200 in 2023. Since 2018, ACIP has recommended universal Hep B vaccination for all newborns within 24 hours of birth.

In the discussion, panel members pushed back on the universal birth dose, arguing that if mothers tested negative, there was little to no risk—downplaying the risk of other family or community exposure and assuming that test coverage could increase to 100 percent. There was a lot of discussion of why some women aren’t tested and if doctors can just try to assess whether there’s a risk that a family member might have the infection—even if those family members don’t know themselves that they’re infected.

Data and trust

Langer acknowledged there might be ways to assess risk from at least the mother in the 24-hour window after birth—”or,” he suggested, “you cannot have to worry about all of those different things that could go wrong, and you could simply give the vaccine because there is no data available that says that there is any harm that would come to a newborn compared to a one-month-old infant [getting the vaccine.]”

He summed up the discussion succinctly: “The only thing that we’re discussing here is if there’s some benefit or removal of harm that comes from waiting a month. And I have not seen any data that says that there is any benefit to the infant of waiting a month, but there are a number of potential harms to the infant of waiting a month.”

Panel member Robert Malone, who has falsely claimed that COVID-19 vaccines cause a form of AIDS, explained that the proposed change for the hep B vaccination was not due to any safety concern or evidence-based reason, but about trust among parents who have been exposed to vaccine misinformation.

“The signal that is prompting this is not one of safety, it is one of trust,” Malone said yesterday. “It is one of parents uncomfortable with this medical procedure being performed at birth in a rather unilateral fashion without significant informed consent at a time in particular when there has been a loss of trust in the public health enterprise and vaccines in general.”

Dashed decisions

But the questions and uncertainties of the proposed recommendation and the data behind it dogged the committee again this morning.

This morning, the voting language was put on a slide and immediately drew criticism. The language was:

If a mother tests [hepatitis B]-negative:

The first dose of the Hepatitis B vaccine is not given until the child is at least one month old.

Infants may receive a dose of Hepatitis B vaccine before one month according to individual based decision-making. *

*Also referred to as shared clinical decision-making.

Hibbeln, the psychiatrist, again pushed back, this time noting that the language of the change is confusing. “You can’t say don’t give it and then give an opportunity to give it,” he said, arguing that shared clinical decision-making is, essentially, all or nothing.

Discussion quickly spiraled, with another member questioning whether there was any data presented at all on the proposed recommendation. There was a fast motion to table the vote indefinitely, and the motion to table passed in a speedy vote of 11–1, with the ACIP chair, Martin Kulldorff, being the only holdout.

For the rest of the day, the panel is discussing COVID-19 vaccines. Stay tuned.

RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine panel realizes it has no idea what it’s doing, skips vote Read More »

AI medical tools found to downplay symptoms of women, ethnic minorities

AI, AI and health care, health, health care, syndication / Mike M. / September 19, 2025

Google said it took model bias “extremely seriously” and was developing privacy techniques that can sanitise sensitive datasets and develop safeguards against bias and discrimination.

Researchers have suggested that one way to reduce medical bias in AI is to identify what data sets should not be used for training in the first place and then train on diverse and more representative health data sets.

Zack said Open Evidence, which is used by 400,000 doctors in the US to summarize patient histories and retrieve information, trained its models on medical journals, the US Food and Drug Administration’s labels, health guidelines, and expert reviews. Every AI output is also backed up with a citation to a source.

Earlier this year, researchers at University College London and King’s College London partnered with the UK’s NHS to build a generative AI model, called Foresight.

The model was trained on anonymized patient data from 57 million people on medical events such as hospital admissions and COVID-19 vaccinations. Foresight was designed to predict probable health outcomes, such as hospitalization or heart attacks.

“Working with national-scale data allows us to represent the full kind of kaleidoscopic state of England in terms of demographics and diseases,” said Chris Tomlinson, honorary senior research fellow at UCL, who is the lead researcher of the Foresight team. Although not perfect, Tomlinson said it offered a better start than more general datasets.

European scientists have also trained an AI model called Delphi-2M that predicts susceptibility to diseases decades into the future, based on anonymized medical records from 400,000 participants in UK Biobank.

But with real patient data of this scale, privacy often becomes an issue. The NHS Foresight project was paused in June to allow the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office to consider a data protection complaint, filed by the British Medical Association and Royal College of General Practitioners, over its use of sensitive health data in the model’s training.

In addition, experts have warned that AI systems often “hallucinate”—or make up answers—which could be particularly harmful in a medical context.

But MIT’s Ghassemi said AI was bringing huge benefits to healthcare. “My hope is that we will start to refocus models in health on addressing crucial health gaps, not adding an extra percent to task performance that the doctors are honestly pretty good at anyway.”

AI medical tools found to downplay symptoms of women, ethnic minorities Read More »