When I graduated from medical school in 1992, I took an oath to benefit my patients to my greatest ability and judgement, and to do no harm to them. So today, I feel that I have a duty to share my alarm that recent changes in vaccine policy will harm children.
As an intern in pediatrics in the ‘90’s, I cared for a toddler whose story haunts me, especially these days. He suffered from Haemophilus influenzae type B (HiB) infection, a then-common bacterial illness that could ravage otherwise healthy children whose natural immunity alone could not protect them. Over months in the ICU, he developed sepsis, required powerful medications to keep up his blood pressure and ultimately lost multiple limbs to gangrene because of damage to his circulation from the infection.
His mother cried beside him for weeks. His father was silent, unable to speak as the infection robbed his son’s future. His nurses were shaken. So was I.
I remember vividly how the HiB infection crippled and killed children who had been thriving just days before. It took hearing, sight, speech and mobility. It damaged brains, and it caused seizures and lifelong intellectual disability. For thousands of families, it took their children’s lives.
Then came the vaccine. In 1993, after careful review of the safety and effectiveness of the conjugate HiB vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (CDC ACIP) recommended routine use of the HiB vaccine. In 1994, with the start of the Vaccines for Children Program to reduce the cost to families for vaccinating their kids, children across the country started receiving the HiB vaccine in large numbers. This changed everything for our nation’s children, all for the better.
Before the vaccine, HiB caused 20,000 serious infections each year in the U.S., mainly in children under 5. About 1,000 of those children died annually, and many more suffered permanent brain damage. HiB was once the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in young children. I watched it take limbs, lives and futures. I’ve seen the miracles of modern medicine. I’ve also seen the horror of preventable disease.
Thanks to ACIP members' guidance and support of widespread immunization, HiB infection is now nearly unheard of in this country. Thousands of deaths and severe neurological injuries have been prevented by the HiB vaccine alone. Children in the U.S. and around the world are vulnerable to many severe infections. Our country’s vaccines, evaluation processes and policies dramatically cut severe infection rates for our children. If we disrupt the parts of our system that have been working well to keep us all safe, our children and families will suffer. If we lose trust in the institutions that protect our children through vaccination, we risk reliving dark days.
I’m alarmed—deeply alarmed—by Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision this June to fire all 17 members of ACIP. These scientists and physicians, once a trusted and transparent source of evidence-based vaccine recommendations, were replaced with individuals who lack the needed scientific training and whose records include adherence to widely discredited, anti-vaccine claims.
This change in the ACIP members is not a reshuffling of equally qualified experts. It is a change from a panel of 17 experts to a group of seven or eight people with an agenda that has no basis in best understanding how to protect children. This change in ACIP membership will not benefit children. Instead, it may seriously harm many of them.
Last month, I joined other pediatricians on Capitol Hill to urge lawmakers to step in and require that the people making recommendations about the health of our nation’s children have public health expertise and make it essential that recommendations are made with careful review by pediatricians. I asked that our elected officials support the Family Vaccine Protection Act to assure that vaccine recommendations continue to be based on the best available scientific evidence, that they are timely and that recommended vaccines continue to be provided to children under the Vaccines for Children Program.
As healthcare providers, we have a duty to fight for our patients in each and every way. That means advocating for children and families inside and outside of the exam room. I’m urging mothers and fathers to call on Congress to protect children by safeguarding the integrity of vaccine policy and the ACIP. I am calling on parents to make vaccine decisions with their child’s healthcare provider, who has taken an oath like mine. And finally, I am calling on my fellow healthcare professionals to stay committed to following the science—and supporting our patients and their families with kindness and empathy, but most importantly, facts.
Our kids deserve science-based decisions, and nothing less. Families deserve to know that recommended vaccines have been considered by the best qualified scientists, who make recommendations to benefit all children to their greatest ability and judgement, and to not do harm to them.
Geoffrey Rosenthal, M.D., is a retired pediatric cardiologist and epidemiologist. He is the current chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on Federal Government Affairs.