WAR ON VACCINESStates, Health Organizations Reject New CDC Vaccine Guidance
“The decision to change CDC’s childhood immunization schedule is reckless and deeply dangerous,” said Massachusetts Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein, MD, PhD. CDC “abandons decades of rigorous, evidence-based science and replaces clear public health guidance with confusion and doubt.”
A growing number of states are pushing back against sweeping changes to the US childhood vaccine schedule.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced an overhaul of the immunization schedule January 5, paring the number of universally recommended immunizations from 17 to 11.
Since then, at least 17 states have announced that they won’t follow new CDC vaccine schedule: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Instead, these states say they plan to follow vaccine guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which continues to recommend immunization plans approved by the CDC prior to the Trump administration.
Choosing Evidenced-Based Vaccine Advice
“The decision to change CDC’s childhood immunization schedule is reckless and deeply dangerous,” said Massachusetts Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein, MD, PhD, in a statement announcing the state’s rejection of the new vaccine schedule.
The new CDC vaccine schedule, based on immunization policy in Denmark, “abandons decades of rigorous, evidence-based science and replaces clear public health guidance with confusion and doubt,” Goldstein said. “At a moment when we are seeing measles outbreaks, the resurgence of whooping cough, and a flu season that has already taken the lives of children in our state, this ill-advised federal action puts families in an impossible position and puts infants, children, and communities at risk.”
Minnesota health officials said they want to help alleviate confusion over vaccines.
“Aligning our recommendations with professional medical associations helps provide clarity and stability for families and providers by using a proven set of recommendations that doctors, and other clinicians, already know and trust,” Minnesota Commissioner of Health Brooke Cunningham, MD, PhD, said in a Minnesota Department of Health news release.
