Who's Calling the Shots?

Susan Estrich on Dec 6, 2025

The news on Friday morning that a CDC panel is now recommending that newborns not be vaccinated for Hepatitis B is frightening. As The New York Times put it, "the divisiveness and dysfunction surrounding the decision raised questions about the reliability of that process -- and the future of the C.D.C." Not to mention questions about the result of that process, and how many children will pay for this political theatre.

The shots for newborns have been recommended for thirty years now. No new scientific breakthroughs since then have come along to replace them, or changed the calculus in favor of them. Hepatitis B has been eliminated in newborns. Half the cases in children before 1991 were not due to an infected mother; hepatitis B can also be spread by the use of the same household objects -- like combs or toothbrushes -- of infected persons. "We know it's safe, and we know it's very effective," Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, and one of the panelists, said on Friday, warning that if the vote passed, "we will see more children and adolescents and adults infected with hepatitis B."

But the panel was stacked with the anti-vaxxers whom RFK Jr. has brought to the table and empowered; he fired and replaced all the prior members of the panel, and I suppose we should be impressed that there were any dissenting votes. Or maybe it should scare us even more.

In another divided vote, the panel also recommended that parents who choose to have the three-shot series of vaccinations be advised to have an antibody test after the first shot to see if it is effective -- even though there is no scientific evidence that antibodies show up that early. According to Dr. Meissner, it was "kind of making things up, I mean, it's like Never Never Land."

Except there are real lives on the line. Public health reports suggest that as many as 70% of the adults with hepatitis B in this country don't know they have it and could be exposing loved ones through shared objects in the house. If those loved ones are unvaccinated.

In the hours after the vote was made public, the panel was roundly denounced by public health experts. A number made the point that this marks the end of the day when you can rely on the government for public health information. And raises questions as to insurance coverage, particularly for the unnecessary antibody test, much less for the vaccines themselves.

One of the authors of the prior guidelines, Dr. Noele Nelson, a hepatitis expert at Cornell, said the panel did not "follow the scientific evidence, and risk undoing decades of progress in hepatitis B prevention, eroding vaccine confidence, and causing confusion among parents and health care providers."

Secretary Kennedy made some kind of commitment to Senator Bill Cassidy, himself a doctor and supporter of vaccines, to win his deciding vote for confirmation. Whatever commitment it was, if it included a promise to rein in the anti-vaxxers and protect America's children, it is not being kept. We look to the government to protect our public health. Robert Kennedy Jr. is not doing that. I don't care if he had an affair with a Vanity Fair editor. I care that he is cutting clinical trials and scientific research and pandemic preparation, that I can't trust him to cure any diseases or advance any research because he's too busy playing politics with kids' lives.

It's time for Senator Cassidy to call in the chit. It's time for him to start drawing the line. This is not what we want or need, and Dr. Cassidy knows that. Someone else needs to be calling the shots here -- or at least exercising clear oversight over the ones who are.

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