ACIP Officially Ends Universal Hepatitis B Vaccine Recommendation for Newborns

Infants relieved to learn they’re no longer presumed promiscuous IV drug users.

In a year filled with healthcare wins, the medical freedom fairy outdid herself this week, fluttering into an ACIP meeting waving a wand labeled “common sense” and daintily dismantling a policy that has survived on autopilot since the early Clinton administration.

By an 8–3 vote, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices finally retired its decades-old, one-size-fits-all recommendation that every newborn receive a hepatitis B vaccine at birth, regardless of risk, context, or the minor detail that newborns are famously not engaging in high-risk behaviors. Gone is the blanket “everyone, everywhere, promptly on Day One” directive. In its place: the radical, apparently daring concept that parents might participate in medical decisions about their own babies.

Under the new guidance, if a mother tests negative for hepatitis B, vaccination timing is now a shared decision between parents and their caregivers. No sirens. No mandates. No accusatory side-eye from a laminated hospital poster. If parents choose to vaccinate, they can. If they choose to wait, they can. If they decide the first dose makes more sense at two months instead of two hours after birth, ACIP now agrees that this is not an act of biological terrorism.

For infants born to mothers who test positive for hepatitis B—or whose status is unknown—the previous recommendation remains. Those babies should still receive the birth dose. In other words, the committee managed to thread a needle public health has pretended didn’t exist: protecting infants at actual risk without treating every newborn like a future patient-in-waiting.

Nevertheless, posts like this get lots of hearts.

The committee even acknowledged that antibody testing might be useful when deciding on additional doses, which is public health–speak for, “Maybe we should occasionally check whether the thing we already did worked before reflexively doing it again.” A bold move.

The internet briefly—and predictably—caught fire. Headlines screamed that the hepatitis B vaccine had been “removed,” “axed,” or “rolled back,” as if ACIP had marched into delivery rooms confiscating syringes and shredding consent forms. In reality, the vaccine is still available. Insurance coverage still applies. Medicaid isn’t going anywhere. Doctors can still recommend it. Parents who want it at birth can still say yes with gusto. The only thing that disappeared was the assumption that every baby must receive it by default, no questions allowed.

Still, folks like liberal House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries were going off on X, accusing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. specifically of sweeping child endangerment.

Naturally, the always-ready-to-rumble peanut gallery let Jeffries have it.

Vaccinating every newborn against a virus spread largely through sex and shared needles has always required a level of imaginative gymnastics that should qualify as CrossFit. The only thing that changed this week was the quiet, overdue admission that hepatitis B is transmitted through specific adult behaviors—not ambient nursery exposure.

And because it’s 2025 and nothing good can happen without POTUS somersaulting through it in a cape, the president promptly claimed partial custody of the moment. Trump praised ACIP’s vote as “a very good decision,” correctly noting that healthy newborns are largely not at risk. He then signed a presidential memorandum directing HHS to fast-track a comparison of U.S. vaccine schedules with those of other countries, confidently announcing that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the CDC would handle it “quickly and correctly,” which is either a promise or a threat depending on your blood pressure.

*Pauses to ponder the mental health of the many folks who will undoubtedly find this a threat.*

Imagine medicine offered a vaccine to protect your newborn from losing a hand in a knife fight. Doctors would assure you it’s very safe and very effective (*minus a few mild, rare, and temporary side-effects like paralysis, anaphylaxis, myocarditis, thrombosis, and death). There’s just one catch: the odds your baby will actually benefit from the thing are about one in eight billion, seeing as nearly all knife fights involve adults who actively choose to engage in knife fights. You’d probably ask a reasonable question. Not an anti-science question. Not a disinformation question. Just a normal, human one: Why are we vaccinating babies against a risk that mostly applies to consenting (if not altogether bright) adults decades later?

There’s honestly no end to the ridiculous analogies I could spin. Take armadillo bites. Yes, armadillos exist. Yes, they occasionally transmit disease. But if public health announced a universal newborn armadillo-bite vaccine “just in case,” most people would blink, pause, and ask whether this was about risk—or ritual. You know what else would be absurd? Outfitting every infant with a lifelong parachute because technically they could one day jump out of a plane. Not because they’re scheduled to fly or because planes are crashing, but simply because parachutes exist, and someone once jumped.

When the risk is vanishingly small, behavior-dependent, and decades away, universal intervention deserves a discussion. Apologies to the people losing their minds over peeking under the vaccine-schedule hood, but if a policy can’t survive inspection, it certainly shouldn’t be running on cruise control.

Did you realize there are only TWO shopping weekends between now and Christmas? Knock something off your list today!