Panel drops newborn shot for hep B

Over objections, a CDC committee votes to stop recommending vaccination at birth.

- SONJA SHARP AND CORINNE PURTILL

AFTER A months-long fight, the CDC is poised to scrap a hepatitis B vaccine recommendation for newborns.

A key vaccine advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted Friday to drop a decades-old recommendation to vaccinate all newborns against hepatitis B, the committee's most controversial decision since its overhaul by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in June.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 8 to 3 to adopt "individual-based decision making" for the newborn hep B vaccine dose for babies born to women who test negative, as are more than 99% of babies born in the U.S.

The move was met with condemnation by physicians and public health officials, including some on the committee. The CDC has recommended the shot since 1991, resulting in a 99% decline in rates of chronic hepatitis B infections in children and teens.

"'Do no harm' is a moral imperative. We are doing harm by changing this wording," said Dr. Cody Meissner, an expert in pediatric infectious diseases at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, who cast one of the few dissenting votes.

"This has a great potential to cause harm, and I simply hope the committee will accept this responsibility when that harm is caused," said fellow no-vote Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist formerly with the National Institutes of Health.

The committee spent the rest of Friday discussing the childhood and adolescent vaccination schedule. Comments from invited speakers and some committee members suggested that further revisions to the nation's inoculation practices could be in store.