Washington D.C. – During an event in Ohio last night, Trump health secretary RFK Jr. was confronted by a local longtime family physician over his baseless and dangerous move to end the CDC’s recommendation that all newborns be immunized at birth against hepatitis B, a highly infectious virus that leads to chronic liver disease and cancer.
In response, Secretary Kennedy – a prolific anti-vax propagandist and obstructionist — doubled down on debunked misinformation and went to new extremes to defend tearing up longstanding CDC policy. Per reports: Kennedy defended the policy change, arguing it was driven by concerns about inadequate safety testing … adding “The death rate among kids from hepatitis B, I think, is one in 16 million, which means you have to get 15,990,000 vaccines to prevent one death.”
RFK Jr.’s contempt for peer-reviewed science, rejection of basic facts about vaccine safety and efficacy, and his willingness to let some American children die rather than maintain near-universal immunity with vaccines underscore why Trump’s health secretary is a very real threat to public health:
- FACT: Study after study have unequivocally shown the HBV vaccine to be extremely safe.
- FACT: Since 1991, the universal HBV birth dose has prevented more than 500,000 childhood infections and prevented an estimated 90,100 childhood deaths.
- FACT: The hepatitis B vaccine has been administered to newborns for more than three decades, helping reduce infections among infants and children by 99%.
- FACT: Hepatitis B is a deadly, incurable viral infection that can lead to liver disease and cancer, and left untreated, 25% of infants with perinatal hepatitis B die prematurely.
“Donald Trump’s unpopular and unhinged health secretary is now openly discussing acceptable numbers of kids dying of a preventable disease as a twisted tradeoff for his unfounded anti-vax agenda,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project. “While Kennedy himself even acknowledges his policies will get kids killed, he grossly underestimates the real potential death toll of suppressing the hepatitis B shot credited with saving over 90,000 American kids’ lives. Not one child should be sacrificed in service to the Trump administration’s war on science and public health. So long as RFK Jr. remains in power, he will keep on traveling town to town, spreading dangerous lies that fuel a further decline in vaccination rates, followed by more costly and harmful outbreaks.”
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