The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 8-3 on Friday to put a halt to the quarter-century-old practice of inoculating newborns for an infection associated with high-risk sexual practices and intravenous drug use. The hepatitis B vaccine was mandated in 1991, and, under CDC guidelines, infants receive three doses: usually one at birth, a second shot 1 to 3 months later, and a third at 6 to 15 months of age.
To be clear, hepatitis is a potentially serious infection that can cause severe liver damage. It is also easily avoidable, but we’d be bad people to bring that up. There is no clear reason why infants are subjected to this vaccination. Hepatitis B can be passed from mother to child at delivery. According to NIH, the prevalence rate of hepatitis B among pregnant women is extraordinarily low. In Pregnancy and Viral Hepatitis – StatPearls – NCBI Bookshelf, it says, “A 0.7% to 0.9% prevalence of chronic HBV infection among pregnant women in the United States has been noted.” That equates to about 17,000 babies per year, as of 2021. Keep in mind, this is in the context of about 3.7 million births per year. In short, even though about 3.68 million of the approximately 3.7 million babies born will not be at risk for hepatitis B, all of them will get it. That said, every expectant mother is tested for the virus when she is admitted for delivery and, if she is positive, the infant can be vaccinated then. Department of Health and Human Services guidelines are very specific.
Hepatitis B testing should be done at the time of admission to the hospital for delivery for women who:
- Were not tested earlier in pregnancy
- Participated in injection drug use
- Had more than one sex partner in the previous six months
- Had a hepatitis B-positive sex partner
- Had an evaluation or treatment for a sexually transmitted diseases
- Have clinical hepatitis (symptoms or blood results that indicate liver damage)
BACKGROUND:
The Battle Lines Form As RFK Jr. Prepares to Take on Big Pharma Over Childhood Vaccines – RedState
‘Clean Sweep’: RFK Jr. Sends Entire 17-Member CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee Packing – RedState
MAHA: RFK Jr. Makes Good on COVID Vaccine Promise – RedState
The dissenters from the vote framed their decision as one of child safety. “Do no harm is a moral imperative. We are doing harm by changing this wording.” pronounced Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the only current member who has served on the committee in previous years. A search for Dr. Meissner’s opposition to running a large-scale, unmonitored clinical trial on the entire U.S. population during COVID was sadly missing.
In my view, there were four agendas at work here.
First, the new ACIP is wary of the number of vaccines mandated for children. By the time your child is 18 months old, they will probably have received a minimum of 26 vaccines, more if they’ve had the jabs for influenza, COVID, and some others. There is a growing concern about the effects of these successive assaults on the child’s very immature immune system and the downstream effects. Just because each shot is “safe,” doesn’t imply that 25 “safe” shots are harmless. Pulling the plug on a low-payoff vaccination series is just the first step in reining in the whole barrage of vaccinations children receive.
Second, some of the members of the ACIP held the belief that by vaccinating all children, we could eradicate hepatitis B. That is the same strategy currently pursued in vaccinating kids for the human papillomavirus (HPV). The idea is that inoculating the entire population will, by necessity, eliminate the disease.
Another thread was very similar to what we encountered during COVID. It was the idea that the medical profession calls the shots and your autonomy be damned. During the 1980s, when the hepatitis B vaccine first appeared, it was administered on a risk-based basis, much as the ACIP recommends for the future. It wasn’t very successful. It led to some doctors “saying the quiet part out loud.”
1991 Rationale for Hep B Vaccine For All American Babies
“If [sexually promiscuous] adults won’t get the shots, then give them to babies.” Now finally after 34 years of faulty reasoning ACIP has dropped universal hepatitis B vaccination of healthy babies born to seronegative… pic.twitter.com/HGDU5j3T32
— Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH® (@P_McCulloughMD) December 5, 2025
In my view, the 800-pound gorilla lolling in the corner was the Almighty Greenback (this is slang for the dollar, not for an illegal from Greenland). It is a bit hard to pin down the cost of the hepatitis B vaccine. This is a Grok-generated response, but I have verified its source and provided links.
The cost of a single dose of the hepatitis B infant vaccine varies depending on location, healthcare system, and whether it’s purchased through public or private channels. Based on available data:
- Private Sector (U.S.): A single dose of the hepatitis B vaccine for infants (e.g., Engerix-B or Recombivax HB) typically costs $40 to $110 without insurance.
- Public Sector (U.S.): Through CDC contracts for programs like Vaccines for Children (VFC), the cost per dose is lower, around $13 to $25, but these prices are not directly available to private providers or individuals.
I couldn’t find average insurance costs, but if we split the difference between the highest public sector cost and the lowest non-insured cost, we come up with about $30. The current CDC recommendation is that infants receive three hepatitis B doses. That comes to $90 per child. Making that vaccination mandatory means the $1.5 million cost of vaccinating 17,000 children at risk of infection balloons to $333 million. It is doubtful that manufacturing the vaccine is sustainable if it is only given to people who need it; hence, the drive to give it to people who don’t.
The most unfortunate outcome of the meeting was the effort of the dissenters to summarily dismiss valid public health and ethical questions about mandatory vaccination, and to paint everyone opposed to the status quo as anti-vax nutters. It appears the only debate recognized by Pharma-backed doctors is how many more shots we can add to the childhood vaccination schedule, with no acknowledgment of the growing body of evidence that has the potential to make the thalidomide scandal look like a fender-bender on the expressway.
The recommendation now heads to the desk of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for final action.
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