Hepatitis B vaccine appeared as the latest flash point, as Health Minister Robert F. continues. Kennedy Junior doubts about the safety of vaccines.
The vaccine is routinely given to children after birth because hepatitis B – an infection is not healing It can lead to liver diseaseCancer and death – can be transmitted from mother to child during childbirth.
In the Senate Financial Committee’s listening session with Kennedy on Thursday, Senator Roger Marshall, R. Kan, said that the provision of hepatitis B vaccine for all births is “meaningless”, especially if the mother is testing a negative of the virus.
Marshall, OB-Gann, who said he delivered 5,000 children, said that he supports the vaccination of newborns who have not received prenatal care or was not tested due to hepatitis B. But he asked about the need for global vaccination.
It is not the only Republican Senator to criticize the vaccine.
“There is no medical reason for giving newborns the Hep B vaccine if the mother is not infected. All mothers who teach in the hospital are tested,” Rand Paul from Kentucky Books on x Last week.
This prompted Senator Bill Cassidy, R. La. , To respond.
“From an experimental point of view, this is not true. Not all mothers have prenatal care,” Cassidy wrote. “Some people get between the test in the first trimester of pregnancy. In some cases, the test is ignored.”
Both Paul and Kasidi doctors. Paul is an ophthalmologist and a gastroenterologist who has treated hepatitis patients.
The issue is unlikely to fade any time soon: next week, it is a committee that recommends the centers of control over diseases and prevention of vaccines. Hepatitis B vaccine is scheduled to discuss. Kennedy launched all the members of the 17th previous committee in June, and they obtained seven alternatives, and many of them expressed the views of Al -Qazam.
The new committee chairman, Martin Coldorf – a vital scientist who said that he was expelled from Harvard University for refusing to obtain a Kofid vaccination – doubts about the hepatitis B vaccine at the first group meeting in June.
“Unless the mother is a positive hepatitis B, an argument can be made to delay the vaccine for this infection,” said Coldorf.
Shari Cohen, head of hepatitis B Foundation, said this argument includes serious assumptions. The 2019 report found that only 84 % is tested to 88 % of pregnant women of the virus.
Cohen said that hepatitis is not perfect and sometimes produces wrong results. Pregnant women may not tell their doctors about their past or current behavior for fear of stigma. The virus can spread through sexual contact or need needles to inject medications.
Cohen said 90 % of children exposed to hepatitis B virus during birth develop chronic hepatitis, a non -curable disease that destroys the liver. Many of these children eventually need liver transplants. In rare cases, children It can die from overwhelming infections.
Why do newborns get hepatitis B vaccine?
Pediatrics vaccinating the first day of life because this is when the vaccine is more effective, Dr. Raveri, head of infectious diseases at Lori Children’s Hospital in Chicago.
When infants are infected during childbirth, hepatitis B virus enters the course of their blood and heads to the liver, where it can create a lifelong infection. The vaccination of newborns after birth gives them the immune system have an opportunity to quickly combat infection, instead of allowing the virus to multiply and gain a foothold. He said that studies indicate that the vaccination of older children exposed to hepatitis B is not effective.
Hepatitis B. By touching infected blood and physical fluids – Even microscopic quantities – and Incredibly meant.
Cohen said that children can be at home by people with the virus, especially if they share a toothbrush, shaving and earrings. Newborn vaccination before leaving the hospital protects them from infection throughout childhood.
Dr. Soo Wang, an internal medicine doctor, learned that she suffers from hepatitis B after donating blood when she was in the kidney. Although her mother did not suffer from illness, other family members did so.
Wang takes antiviral medicine for hepatitis B and is still in good health. She said she was confirmed that her four children got the vaccine when they were born, along with a dose of hepatitis B vulnevinum, which provides the body with additional antibodies. Wang said that although vaccines can take a week or two for their full implementation, immunoglobulin provides immediate protection from the virus.
“It is so reliable that I don’t have to worry about my four children suffering from hepatitis,” Wang said.
When the hepatitis B vaccine was It was first presented in 1982Doctors only provided adults at a high risk. Two years later, the Center for Disease Control recommended the vaccine for the new iron at risk. The number of infections surrounding childbirth remained stubbornly.
But hepatitis B decreased after the Center for Disease Control The recommendation began with a global dose Hepatitis B vaccine at birth in 1991. Acute hepatitis cases among children 99 % decreased from 1990 to 2019. Infection rates have been the same as or increased among adults over the age of 40 years from 2010 to 2019.
Jafiri said that the vaccination of children appears to protect them for at least several decades.
Although people who pump drugs are at great risk of hepatitis B, doctors do not see many infections in adolescence, twenties and thirties, and small generations enough to be vaccinated at birth, Jhaveri said. As the generations of children who were immunized at birth advanced, doctors will learn whether these shots prevent injuries to middle age or more.
“It is a truly terrible disease,” Dr. James Campbell, Vice -Chairman of the American Academy for Children’s Children’s Academy. “For a very cheap vaccine known to be safe and effective, we can eliminate hepatitis in the period surrounding birth.”
If the upcoming vaccine committee recommends at the Center for Disease Control against Hepat Inflammation B vacation at birth, obtaining the vaccine may make more difficult. Recommendations of the Dispond to Disease Control Center affect the vaccinations covered by insurance, and all the recommended vaccines from CDC It is included in the Federal Vaccine Program for ChildrenWhich makes immunization available for free. About half of children in the United States are qualified to obtain free vaccines through the program.
Last month, Kennedy had recently confirmed the director of the Disease Control Center Susan Monarerez because she, as she said in an editorial in Wall Street Journal, would not have “not” the recommendations of the vaccine committee.
What do you know about hepatitis B
Campbell said that when adults are infected with hepatitis B, the immune system often overcomes the virus, so it is no longer a threat. Children, whose immune systems are not developed, usually develop a chronic infection for the rest of their lives.
Cohen said that the more people live with chronic infection caused by infection, the high risk of liver damage and cancer. She said that no child should have cancer from a preventive infection.
“We want to give every child born in the United States the absolute right to a long healthy life,” she said, “It is not a growing risk of cancer from the day they are born.”
Cassidy, Senate member of Louisiana, was a vocal supporter of hepatitis B vaccine.
In Louisiana, his hometown, he created a partnership between the public and private sectors To vaccinate 36,000 children From Baton Rouge against hepatitis B at no cost.
During the Kennedy confirmation session in January, Cassidy told a story about “The worst day in my medical career”, while recounted his experience in treating a young woman with hepatitis B on her way to liver transplant. “This was a turning point in my career,” he said. “Since then, I have tried to do everything I could to make sure that I have never had to talk to another father about the death of their child due to an unimaginable disease on the vaccine.”
Preventing the disease is always cheaper than its treatment. Hepatitis B shots are some less expensive vaccines. Liver transplant in 2020 It costs $ 878,400. Treating liver cancer cost $ 93228, According to the 2024 study.
A 2015 study found that the United States I spent more than a billion dollars per year In hospitals for hepatitis B.
“There are teenagers and their twenties who may die of liver cancer B due to hepatitis B, when they are in good health and flourish,” said Jhaveri. “These are risks we will face if we stop using this safe and effective vaccine.”