Vaccines are in more danger than ever before. Over the weekend, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. nearly succeeded at shrinking down the childhood vaccine schedule.
On Saturday, Politico reported that Kennedy canceled a press conference set for Friday afternoon where he would have formally advised that parents follow the vaccine schedule implemented in Denmark—a system with several fewer vaccine recommendations. Experts have largely opposed the proposed change, noting that the two countries are vastly different from each other. RFK Jr. reportedly balked at the last second due to concerns the decision would face political and legal challenges.
A near miss
RFK Jr. and his allies have been signaling this potential change for quite some time.
At the last meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in early December, Tracy Beth Høeg, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), gave a presentation about Denmark’s vaccine schedule. Høeg and others have argued that the U.S. should consider adopting Denmark’s schedule. Denmark universally recommends childhood vaccines for 10 diseases, whereas the U.S. universally recommends vaccines for 16 diseases (that number was 17 until the recent ACIP-led change to revoke its recommendation for the hepatitis B vaccine).
Soon after, President Donald Trump stated that he would push to change the U.S. vaccine schedule to match that of other “peer countries” and issued an executive order on December 5 to that effect. This set the stage for HHS last Thursday to announce a press conference for the next day, where RFK Jr. was expected to officially recommend the Danish vaccine schedule as an alternative for parents in the U.S. to follow.
But it seems the administration grew cold feet mere hours after it announced the press conference. An anonymous senior HHS official told Politico that the HHS Office of the General Counsel deemed that the abrupt change would likely result in a successful lawsuit against the agency. A second official added that the decision would be “politically risky.”
An HHS spokesperson told Gizmodo that any reasons for the press conference’s cancellation not provided by HHS are “pure speculation.”
A lack of reason
To be clear, Kennedy and others have never presented a reasonable case for such a sweeping change to the vaccine schedule.
There is no credible evidence that the amount or timing of vaccines currently recommended in the U.S. poses a health risk to children—a reality still acknowledged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (for now). Some anti-vaccination proponents have also argued that specific ingredients commonly included in vaccines, such as aluminum, could be dangerous if given repeatedly, but the majority of studies have not found any such risk, including one published just this past summer.
Experts have also pointed out that while Denmark does recommend fewer vaccines in general than the U.S., there are important reasons why this schedule isn’t easily transferable to the latter. For one, Denmark has a universal health care system that’s much more robust than the U.S.’s fragmented system. This includes improved screening for vaccine-preventable diseases like hepatitis B. Notably, the U.S. once tried to vaccinate only high-risk groups for hepatitis B but eventually switched to a universal system after cases failed to significantly decline; this approach then helped dramatically reduce new infections, particularly among newborns.
Leaving that aside, plenty of other high-income countries are much closer to the U.S. in the number of vaccines they recommend to their residents, including Canada, Germany, and Japan, to name a few. Some countries are also following the U.S.’s example and adding more vaccines to their schedule, such as the U.K., which will introduce the chickenpox vaccine to its routine starting next year.
Even health officials in Denmark are baffled by the attempt to use the country as justification for Kennedy’s trimming of the U.S. schedule.
“It’s not at all fair to say look at Denmark unless you can match the other characteristics of Denmark,” Anders Hviid, the lead researcher on vaccine safety and effectiveness at the Statens Serum Institut (Denmark’s equivalent to the CDC), told the New York Times Friday. “It is surreal, and it is difficult, from a Danish perspective, to understand what’s going on.”
It’s certainly possible that some vaccines aren’t or will eventually not be worthwhile for children in the U.S. to routinely receive. But any changes should be carefully weighed and discussed by actual health experts and researchers, not abruptly implemented under the radar on a Friday afternoon by politicians who have a clear anti-vaccine bias like RFK Jr.
Unfortunately, while Kennedy may have been stymied this time, it’s almost certain that this won’t be his last such attempt.
English (US) ·