Hospitals Giving Flu Shots to Unconscious Children Under Anesthesia

Hospitals are now giving children flu shots after they have been given anesthesia and are unconscious. At Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, it is standard protocol for a nurse to ask the health care provider on the day of the procedure whether the child can be vaccinated while under anesthesia.¹ The shot has nothing to do with the reason the child is having surgery or other medical procedure.²

Other hospitals running similar programs include the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), UNC Children’s Hospital, Seattle Children’s, and Akron Children’s Hospital.³

CHOP Gives Flu Shots to Sedated Children

CHOP launched a program in 2023 called Close Your Eyes, We’ll Immunize that encourages children who are sedated or under anesthesia for surgery of another medical procedure to be given an influenza vaccination while they are unconscious. Parents are approached in their preoperative communications with hospital staff and again on the day of the procedure.⁴

CHOP’s newsletter says staff gave 2,054 influenza vaccine doses to sedated or anesthetized children during the 2025-2026 flu season.⁵

The only children exempt from automatic inclusion in this controversial program are those who have a documented severe allergy to the influenza vaccine; a history of Guillain-Barré syndrome (a rare disorder in which the immune system attacks the nerves); and have undergone certain medical procedures, including bone marrow transplants.⁶

Lurie Children’s Hospital gives the vaccine to unconscious children as young as six months old.⁷

CHOP’s newsletter says children from six months through eight years old who are getting their first flu shot will need a second dose, so first-time recipients are being vaccinated under anesthesia.⁸

A child who is allergic to influenza vaccine but has not yet been identified as allergic runs the risk of being placed in a life-at life-threatening situation while under anesthesia. NVIC co-founder and president Barbara Loe Fisher commented:

Vaccinating sedated unconscious infants and children is not only dangerous medical policy, it is a gross violation of informed consent rights and a fundamental betrayal of public trust. There could well be confusion about the cause of brain injury or death if it occurs after an anaphylactic or brain inflammation reaction to influenza vaccine while the child is unconscious and undergoing a medical procedure with sedation, which in itself is a stress on the body. No competent doctor committed to the ethical practice of medicine would take that kind of risk with a child’s life.

The hospitals already participating in Close Your Eyes, We’ll Immunize type programs are indicating they plan to expand their programs to inject unconscious children with other vaccines in addition to influenza vaccine. CHOP’s vaccine program’s leaders, Logan Grimes, MD, Elizabeth O’Brien, MD, Ari Weintraub, MD, Carol Pasquariello, MD, and Beth Hansell, want to add COVID-19, RSV, and other “catch-up”shots, if the child has missed any vaccines on the recommended schedule.⁹

CHOP also hopes to target children for vaccination, who are sedated for any reason in the hospital system.¹⁰

CHOP Reports More Than $60,000 in Revenue

A CHOP presentation on the program announced that in 2024-2025,

Not only did no families pay out of pocket for the flu shot, but we also generated >$60,000 in revenue!¹¹

The fact that CHOP is bragging about revenue from vaccinating unconscious children makes it clear that making money may well be the true motive behind this program.

Oe of these Close Your Eyes, We’ll Immunize programs is run out of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where pediatrician Paul Offit directs the Vaccine Education Center.¹² In 2002, Dr. Offit and his co-authors published a study in the journal Pediatrics on how many vaccines an infant’s immune system can handle if given simultaneously. Offit opined, “Our analysis shows that infants have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at once.”¹³

Colorado Hospital Reports Thousands of Vaccinations Under Anesthesia

Children’s Hospital Colorado began their program in October 2020 with a best practice alert, an electronic prompt triggered when a child is checked in for surgery that reminds staff to offer the influenza vaccine. This alert was associated with an approximately 3,500% increase in the number of young patients being given a flu shot..¹⁴ By February 2024, the hospital had given more than 7,000 doses of influenza vaccine to children under anesthesia.¹⁵

A March 2026 American Academy of Pediatrics publication reported that Children’s Hospital Colorado gave vaccines to more than 18,000 pediatric patients under deep sedation or general anesthesia, without specifying which vaccines were included.¹⁶

Madhava Setty, a board-certified anesthesiologist of 24 years who trained at CHOP, called the program “stunningly irresponsible.” He said adding a vaccine during surgery contributes nothing to the success of the operation and makes it harder to identify the cause of a reaction such as a fever or rash.¹⁷

Dr. Setty warned, “We simply cannot know how an individual child will respond to these drugs for the first time.”

Pediatrician Michelle Perro said, “A slogan celebrating the vaccination of an unconscious child is precisely the wrong message.”¹⁸

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says anesthesia and surgery are not contraindications to vaccination, meaning they are not conditions that rule vaccination out, but its web page does not address vaccinating a child while under general anesthesia.¹⁹

A 2006 review of 277 papers found none that directly studied how anesthesia and surgery affect vaccine responses. In fact, a 2017 review suggested delaying elective surgery after vaccination and vaccinating after surgery when possible.²⁰

The Association of Paediatric Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland states that “in general vaccination should not be administered during anaesthesia.” It also recommends delaying elective surgery 48 hours after an inactivated vaccine to avoid post-vaccination symptoms causing diagnostic concern during surgery, meaning a reaction could be mistaken for a surgical problem.²¹

Parents Asked to Consent While Stressed

CHOP leaders acknowledged in a May newsletter that “time constraints in the perioperative setting can limit the opportunity for detailed discussions.” Perioperative describes the period surrounding surgery. The newsletter does not mention discussing vaccine risks with parents.²² Pediatrician Larry Palevsky questioned “how well parents will understand the pros and cons of vaccinating their children while they are already stressed.”²³

CHOP’s own team lists parents saying no as the program’s main barrier. Some families decline because of safety concerns or because they do not want the vaccine given during the procedure.²⁴

The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act requires vaccine administrators to give parents or legal representatives a current Vaccine Information Statement (VIS) before vaccination, and before each dose of a multi-dose series, regardless of the age of the person receiving the vaccine. The VIS was among the vaccine safety provisions secured by parents of vaccine injured children in the 1986 Act and is a handout published by the CDC that explains the benefits and risks of each federally recommended childhood vaccines. VIS covered vaccines include inactivated injectable and live intranasal influenza vaccines.²⁵ The VIS must be provided before vaccination takes place as near to the time of vaccination as possible and reasonable, according to the CDC.²⁶

Parents are asked to decide on whether their child should be injected with a vaccine that is not required for surgery or another medical procedure to be performed, on one of the most stressful days of their lives. Meanwhile, the young child does not know what is happening and is unconscious and, if old enough to talk, cannot ask a question, say no, or understand what kinds of vaccine reaction symptoms are important to verbalize after (hopefully) regaining consciousness.

This is not informed consent. It is a callous disregard for human life and medical abuse.

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