WASHINGTON — On Thursday, a federal vaccine advisory committee convened to evaluate whether newborns should continue to receive the hepatitis B vaccine, which is notable as the first inoculation proven to prevent cancer.

The vaccination of newborns against hepatitis B is heralded as a triumph in public health, significantly reducing the number of cases in children from approximately 18,000 annually to around 2,200 over the past three decades.

However, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s committee is now considering recommending the birth dose solely for infants whose mothers test positive for the virus. This potential shift would revert to a public health strategy discontinued more than thirty years ago. For other infants, the decision to administer the birth dose would rest with parents in consultation with their healthcare providers.

Hepatitis B is a serious liver infection that, for most people, lasts less than six months. But for some — especially infants and children — it can become a long-lasting problem that can lead to liver failure, liver cancer and scarring called cirrhosis.

In adults, the virus is spread through sex or through sharing needles during injection-drug use.

But it can also be passed from an infected mother to a baby. As many as 90% of infants who contract hepatitis B go on to have chronic infections, meaning their immune systems don’t completely clear the virus.

For decades, the nation’s vaccine guidance has been influenced by a government-appointed panel of experts, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Its recommendations have usually been adopted as national guidance that is widely heeded by doctors.

In 1991, the committee recommended an initial dose of hepatitis B vaccine at birth. The guidance was modified a little over the years and currently suggests a dose within 24 hours of birth for all medically stable infants who weigh at least 4.4 pounds, plus follow-up shots to be given at about 1 month and 6 months.

Why a dose right at birth? Health officials used to rely on screening expectant mothers to find babies that might have been exposed to the virus. But many cases were missed, experts say, because some women weren’t tested or test results were incorrect. Also, the virus can live on surfaces for more than seven days at room temperature, so unvaccinated children living with a person with a chronic infection can catch it.

A collaboration of public health researchers, the Vaccine Integrity Project, this week released its analysis of more than 400 studies and reports spanning 40 years. The group concluded that the birth dose is safe and is an important reason U.S. pediatric hepatitis B infections have fallen.

The committee makes recommendations to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how already approved vaccines should be used. CDC directors almost always adopted the committee’s recommendations, which were widely heeded by doctors and guide vaccination programs. But the agency currently has no director, leaving acting director Jim O’Neill to make the decision.

Kennedy, a leading anti-vaccine activist before he became the nation’s top health official, fired the entire 17-member panel earlier this year and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices.

At least one Republican senator is raising concerns about Kennedy’s vaccine committee and the anti-vaccine voices it has platformed.

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a liver doctor who’s been outspoken in support of the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, took to X to post the agenda of the committee, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. He noted one of the presenters scheduled for Friday is a trial attorney who’s worked with Kennedy to sue vaccine makers.

“He is presenting as if an expert on childhood vaccines,” Cassidy wrote. “The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children.”

Cassidy voted to confirm Kennedy as health secretary earlier this year, but the two have repeatedly clashed over vaccine policy.

Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.