CDC panel postpones vote on hepatitis vaccine changes

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s handpicked vaccine advisers postponed a Thursday vote on scrapping the government's recommendation that newborns get a hepatitis B shot amid confusion over what they were voting on.

Why it matters: The proposal would overhaul the decades-old federal childhood vaccination schedule and further seal Kennedy's criticism of vaccines as official government policy.

Driving the news: Some members of the Centers for Disease Control's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices complained on Thursday that they hadn't been given enough time to consider the proposed change before voting.

• The vote will now take place on Friday, during the second day of a committee meeting in Atlanta on childhood immunizations.
• The 8-3 vote came over the objections of ACIP vice chair Robert Malone, who was presiding over the discussion. New ACIP chair Kirk Milhoan did not vote.
• ACIP members debated limits to hepatitis B vaccines during a September meeting but postponed a vote then, saying they needed more time and information to consider the issue.

State of play: The committee now is considering recommending that parents should consult with a doctor about whether to give their infant the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine if a test shows the mother doesn't have the liver illness.

• Language presented at the meeting would continue to recommend the vaccine for infants born to mothers that test positive or whose status is unknown.
• Malone read the language up for a vote, but a slide showed contradictory recommendations, causing confusion among panel members.
• Under the recommendations read by Malone, every infant will still have access to no-cost hepatitis B vaccines, a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services representative said at the meeting.

Context: Doctors and scientists outside of the administration say changing the recommendation would still limit access to the hepatitis B vaccine, which has helped decrease infections among youths by 99% since 1991.

• CDC currently recommends that all infants get the vaccine to protect against mother-to-child transmission and environmental exposure to the virus, which can cause serious illness and even death.

Zoom out: Medical professionals pushed back strongly on presentations made to the committee about the hepatitis B vaccine on Thursday.

• "For an administration that wants to avoid fraud waste and abuse, you are wasting taxpayer dollars by not having scientific, rigorous discussion on issues that truly matter," said Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians.
• "Your data is questionable. You do not present things in an honest, fair, equitable manner," he added.