Dec. 5 (UPI) -- The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices on Friday morning voted to delay giving most children their first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, if they receive it all.
After delaying the vote by one day over the committee's confusion about the vote, the ACIP voted 8-2 to recommend that babies whose mothers have tested negative for hepatitis B do not receive the shot until they are two months old.
Not only would doctors be advised to delay the vaccine, which has been given to newborns within 24 hours of birth since 1991, for mothers without the infection, but the new recommendation suggests individual decision-making as to whether the child would ever start the three-shot vaccine series.
"This irresponsible and purposely misleading guidance will lead to more hepatitis B infections in infants and children," Susan J. Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in a press release.
"There is no new or concerning information about the hepatitis B vaccine that is prompting this change, nor has children's risk of contracting hepatitis B changed. Instead, this is the result of a deliberate strategy to sow fear and distrust among families," Kressly said.
