WASHINGTON — Vaccine policy has become a key issue for the Trump administration, especially under the leadership of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who himself once led an anti-vaccine group. In less than a year, Kennedy has bulldozed vaccine policy precedent and government personnel. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food…
WASHINGTON — A possible Trump administration effort to change the childhood vaccine schedule left hospital leaders, health policymakers, and pediatricians scrambling to navigate what could be the most significant changes to the American vaccine program in decades. The administration had planned to announce on Friday moves to pare down the number of shots on the…
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Tuesday adopted its vaccine advisory committee’s recommendation to end the decades-old policy that every newborn be offered a hepatitis B shot, despite an outcry from health experts that the decision ignored key evidence around the shots. Instead, parents should discuss with their doctors whether to vaccinate infants at birth…
WASHINGTON — Federal vaccine advisers, through a freewheeling, and at times combative two-day meeting, recommended a major change to childhood vaccinations that runs counter to the medical consensus — and began setting the stage for a larger rethink in the future. The new recommendations and many of the arguments about U.S.vaccination strategies overlook vast bodies…
A panel that advises on U.S. vaccine policy voted on Friday to recommend a delay in when most babies begin to be vaccinated against hepatitis B, overturning a 30-year-old policy that has contributed to a massive decline in cases of the virus. The vote, which followed a day of contentious discussion, was 8-3. Specifically, the…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — once the gold standard of public health science — has just undone years of trust and replaced facts with ideology. The CDC’s vaccine-safety page has been rewritten to question the long-settled conclusion: vaccines do not cause autism. This isn’t a small edit. It’s not a caveat or a…
WASHINGTON — As the Trump administration moves ahead on what could be its most wide-reaching vaccine changes yet, the makers of the shots are weighing their options — and privately warning that officials could severely limit access to key vaccines and upend the childhood vaccine schedule for years to come. U.S. health authorities, under the…
You’re reading the web edition of D.C. Diagnosis, STAT’s twice-weekly newsletter about the politics and policy of health and medicine. Sign up here to receive it in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The administration is making a lot of promises about TrumpRx. I invite help sorting out the difference between that website and others that already…
The news late last week that thousands of HHS workers were told they would be placed on administrative leave has been followed by reports that at least some of those notices have been rescinded. The reduction in force (RIF) layoffs have affected employees across “multiple HHS divisions” and follow the shutdown of the federal government…
The acting director of the CDC – Jim O’Neill – has added to the unscientific messaging coming out from the agency on childhood vaccinations by suggesting the MMR vaccine should be separated into three individual shots. In a social media post that cited comments made by President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform, O’Neill…