Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s influential vaccine advisory panel on Thursday delayed a vote for a second time on whether to change the timing of the first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns.
The advisory panel remade by Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, was scheduled to change the current recommendation that infants get the first of three hepatitis B vaccine doses within 24 hours of birth, alarming health experts who say there’s no evidence for the adjustments.
But during a contentious and confusing meeting on Thursday, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices members debated the wording of three questions they planned to vote on. In a 6-3 vote, the committee agreed to delay the hepatitis B vaccine vote until Friday to allow members time to study the wording of the questions.
When the committee met in September, it also tabled a vote that would’ve recommended the first vaccine dose be delayed at least one month after birth for babies who are born to mothers who test negative for hepatitis B.
At one point during Thursday’s meetings, a member said the wording of the questions had been changed three times within 24 hours.
“I would like to see all questions under consideration and have the opportunity to think a little bit more about the wording,” said Dr. Cody Meissner, a committee member.
During Thursday’s meeting, the panel was slated to vote on whether to recommend “individual-based decision making” for parents of babies who are born to mothers who test negative for hepatitis B. The language suggested the panel address whether to recommend the newborn get the first dose “no earlier than two months of age.”
A second question addressed whether to change recommendations for mothers whose hepatitis B testing status was unknown. A third question involved introducing post-vaccination antibody tests to measure whether some mothers had protection during the course of the three-dose immunization.
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Kennedy fired all previous members of the committee and replaced them with some individuals with a history of vaccine skepticism.
Public health experts have been critical of the committee’s decision to potentially change the hepatitis B immunization schedule in place for more than three decades.
Since the current three-dose regimen was adopted in 1991, hepatitis B infections among children and teens have dropped 99%, preventing thousands of chronic hepatitis cases that can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer, according to a 2023 study in the official journal of the U.S. Surgeon General.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: RFK vaccine panel delays hepatitis B vaccination vote
