The Battle Over Injecting Hepatitis B Vaccine Into Babies on the First Day After Birth

Last week, a very public battle over the wisdom of the at-birth hepatitis B vaccination policy started playing out at a Sept. 18-19, 2025 meeting of U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) when a majority of the newly appointed members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)¹ went head to head with pharmaceutical industry and Pharma-funded medical trade and non-governmental organization advocates fiercely defending the 34-year old birth dose recommendation firmly embedded in the government’s early childhood vaccination schedule.² At the end of deliberations on Sept. 18, the committee voted to delay their vote on whether or not to abandon the long-standing recommendation that every baby born in America, including babies of hepatitis B negative mothers—who are at almost no risk of becoming chronically infected with hepatitis B—be injected with hepatitis B vaccine within 12 to 24 hours of birth.

Injecting babies with hepatitis B vaccine on the first day after birth has been a controversial public health policy ever since it was instituted by CDC officials in 1991 at a time when there was a very low rate of hepatitis B infection in the U.S. population and most of the infections were in adults using illegal IV drugs and those with multiple sexual partners.³ Just like today, in 1991 women already were being screened for hepatitis B infection during every pregnancy to help prevent transmission of hepatitis B from mother to baby,⁴ so the main justification by federal health officials for injecting a baby with hepatitis vaccine shortly after emerging from the womb was the refusal of high risk adults to take the vaccine.⁵

The contentious two-day ACIP meeting was live streamed on YouTube⁶ and heavily covered by the legacy media, which often focused their articles on criticizing the new ACIP members appointed by DHHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr over the past five months, including NVIC board member and director of research and patient safety Vicky Pebsworth, OP, PhD, RN.⁷ CDC officials gave presentations strongly advocating that there be no policy change and that all newborns—regardless of their risk of contracting hepatitis B—continue to be given a hepatitis B shot on the first day of life instead of waiting until they are at least one month old as was being proposed by a number of the new ACIP members.

Adam Langer, a doctor of veterinary medicine and CDC’s Associate Director for Science, told the ACIP Committee, “I have not seen any data that says that there is any benefit to the infant of waiting a month, but there are a number of potential harms to the infants of waiting.”⁸ He added that there is “no evidence that the risk of already rare adverse events is any greater among newborns than among older infants,” and that “When they do occur, these adverse events tend to be mild. The worst adverse event you could imagine, anaphylaxis has been very rarely reported at only 1.1 cases per 1 million vaccine doses administered.”⁹

ACIP Member Highlights Hepatitis B Vaccine Reactions in Children

However, Dr. Vicky Pebsworth took issue with the characterization by CDC officials that adverse events reported after hepatitis B vaccinations were “mild” and that the worst reaction associated with the vaccine is anaphylaxis. On the morning of Sept. 19, she cited studies that found hepatitis B vaccine reactions in children were quite common and said that researchers have “presented data showing that systemic reactions in hepatitis B vaccinated children were not rare. In fact, up to 5% had fever, 32% were drowsy and sleepy (3% of these were categorized as severe), and irritability, fussiness, and crying was reported in 11% in the first 24 hours of life and 22% in the first five days of life. These are not trivial reactions in up to one-third of births.”

Pebsworth added that a 2013 study published in the European Journal of Pediatrics titled, “Inflammatory Responses to Hepatitis B Vaccine in Healthy Term Infants,”¹⁰ showed that 30% of infants developed significant elevations of c-reactive protein without clinical signs of sepsis and with negative blood cultures.  This suggests a robust inflammatory response is occurring during critical windows of neurodevelopment involving neurogenesis and synaptic development.” She took the position that the ACIP Committee should “err on the side of caution and adopt a more prudent vaccination policy” similar to Europe, which does not routinely give hepatitis B vaccines to low-risk newborns.

NVIC’s Written Public Comment Details Hepatitis B Vaccine Risks, Opposes Birth Dose Recommendation for All Infants

In a referenced written public comment submitted Sept 13 to the CDC on behalf of NVIC, I reviewed the history of low hepatitis B disease incidence in the U.S. and pointed out that the CDC admits that hepatitis B is “not spread through kissing or sharing utensils” or “through sneezing, coughing, hugging, breastfeeding, or food or water.”¹¹ I said that most parents were not questioning the federally recommended childhood vaccine schedule until 1991 when the CDC added the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine for all healthy newborns born to healthy mothers to the schedule.

Hepatitis B vaccine was the first genetically engineered vaccine using recombinant DNA technology with Merck’s RECOMBIVAX HB vaccine licensed by the FDA in 1986 and GlaxoSmithKline’s ENGERIX-B vaccine license in 1989 provoking a strong inflammatory response to recombinant proteins and ingredients like yeast protein, a neurotoxic aluminum hydroxide adjuvant, and a neurotoxic mercury preservative (Thimerosal) which was replaced by 2002 with another toxin—formaldehyde.^{12 13}

Adverse reactions reported by Merck and GlaxoSmithKline in their prescribing information product inserts, which occurred in up to 22 percent of recipients in clinical trials included injection site soreness, fatigue/weakens, irritability, fever over 100 F, headache, arthralgia and back, neck and shoulder pain and in post-marketing surveillance included reports of Guillain Barre syndrome (GBS), multiple sclerosis, transverse myelitis, seizures, peripheral neuropathy, Bell’s Palsy, encephalitis, tinn5tus, alopecia, eczema, arthritis, thrombocytopenia, optic neuritis, syncope, vasculitis, tachycardia and other serious adverse events.

In 1994¹⁴ and 2011,¹⁵ the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, published reports that admitted that there are too few studies in the medical literature to make a determination about whether or not there is a causal relationship between hepatitis B vaccine and reported serious adverse health conditions marked by immune and brain dysfunction including:

• encephalitis
• encephalopathy
• seizures
• acute disseminated encephalomyelitis
• transverse myelitis
• optic neuritis
• neuromyelitis optica
• multiple sclerosis onset or relapse in children or adults
• first demyelinating event in children or adults
• Guillain Barre syndrome
• chronic inflammatory disseminated polyneuropathy
• brachial neuritis
• erythema nodosum
• onset or exacerbation of systemic lupus erythematosus or vasculitis or polyarteritis nodosa or psoriatic arthritis or reactive arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis or juvenile idiopathic neuritis
• type 1 diabetes

I concluded that the 1991 ACIP recommendation to give all infants a hepatitis B shot, regardless of whether the mother is infected with hepatitis B, was misguided and it was “a classic case of public health policy preceding the science.”

Read NVIC’s full public comment here.

ACIP Committee Postpones Vote on Hepatitis B Vaccine Recommendation Change

After a spirited debate, with representatives from medical trade organizations voicing strong opposition to doing away with the universal hepatitis B vaccine on day-of-birth recommendation, the majority of the ACIP Committee elected to delay the vote on whether or not to make a change in the recommended age for the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine, although the committee did vote to reaffirm the recommendation for all pregnant women to be screened for hepatitis B vaccine infection. One sticking point for proceeding with a vote to change the age at which the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine is recommended by ACIP was a question about whether the birth dose would continue to be paid for by the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program for children who are uninsured or receive Medicaid.¹⁶

President Trump Urges Parents to Delay Giving Hepatitis B Shot to Newborns

A few days after the ACIP meeting, on Sept. 23, President Donald Trump held a press conference at the White House with DHHS Secretary Kennedy to discuss the causes of autism, which included discussion of the childhood vaccine schedule. He made the statement that “Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted. There’s no reason to give a baby that’s almost just born, hepatitis B. So I would say, wait till the baby is 12 years old and formed and take hepatitis B [vaccine].”

Trump also recommended that parents give the babies fewer vaccines at one time. He said, “They pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies, it’s a disgrace.”

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