CSPAN - Washington Journal Lauren Gardner
Aired: 2025-12-06
Duration: 04:55


=== Vaccination Committees Decide (04:54) ===

[00:00:00]  And show us what real grit and determination look like.
[00:00:04]  And lastly, thank you and thank you to David Trullio and the rest of the Reagan Foundation for having me here.
[00:00:10]  It's been an honor to be with you.
[00:00:12]  General Dan Reason King, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
[00:00:15]  It's an honor and privilege.
[00:00:17]  Thank you so much.
[00:00:26]  And we're live from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, for a conference hosted by the Reagan National Defense Forum.
[00:00:34]  We'll have more when the program resumes here on C-SPAN.
[00:00:38]  Proceed to the Air Force One Pavilion for panels.
[00:00:56]  It seems obvious, but what does it do?
[00:00:58]  What's it responsible for?
[00:01:00]  Yeah, it's a federal advisory committee.
[00:01:02]  So their purpose is to just offer advice to the CDC on who should get certain vaccines, when, how, just kind of provide that general guidance.
[00:01:12]  And then the CDC can accept or reject their recommendations.
[00:01:16]  And then once that becomes official CDC policy, it is up to the states to decide how they incorporate that into their various requirements for school and daycare entry and their own kind of tailored guidance for their populations.
[00:01:34]  Who comprises the board?
[00:01:35]  Who's on it?
[00:01:36]  So historically, it's been a range of scientists and experts in vaccination.
[00:01:42]  So, you know, they've had vaccine inventors, epidemiologists, pediatricians, doctors who specialize in infectious disease.
[00:01:51]  Those are the types of figures you typically see on these committees.
[00:01:55]  And these are volunteer positions, too.
[00:02:00]  In this iteration, under the second Trump administration, there are a handful that are pediatricians or pediatric specialists, but the new chair is a pediatric cardiologist.
[00:02:13]  There is a longtime board member of the National Vaccine Information Center, which sounds straightforward, but is historically an anti-vaccine group.
[00:02:26]  All told, the collection of people who are on this committee now, the majority of them have a history of vaccine skepticism.
[00:02:32]  So they meet this week.
[00:02:34]  One of the topics on the consideration was hepatitis B, if it should be administered to babies.
[00:02:40]  Put some context to that.
[00:02:41]  What was the question there?
[00:02:43]  Yeah, so this has been a major target of anti-vaccine activists and also some figures in the so-called Maha movement, the Make America Healthy Again movement.
[00:02:52]  And they've been arguing, so to back up, the hepatitis B birth dose, it's been recommended in the U.S. since the early 90s.
[00:03:02]  Over the years, it's become a universal recommendation.
[00:03:04]  So anyone who goes to the hospital and has a baby within the first 24 hours of life, most doctors will come to you and ask, you know, we recommend that you get this vaccine, that you start this series here in the hospital before you leave.
[00:03:19]  Do you consent to that?
[00:03:21]  And then typically babies receive second and third doses at starting, usually around two months.
[00:03:26]  And then I believe my daughter got it around six months.
[00:03:30]  It goes, you know, first year of life.
[00:03:34]  That some, even some public health experts say that this is kind of the, this can be the gateway for vaccine hesitancy because it's a vulnerable time.
[00:03:44]  You're a new parent, you're in the hospital, you've just had a baby, and they're asking you all these questions about medical interventions.
[00:03:50]  Can we do this?
[00:03:51]  Can we do that to the baby?
[00:03:53]  And some people want to wait.
[00:03:55]  So some of these activists have really seized on this and they're saying, well, hepatitis B is largely a sexually transmitted infection or it's acquired through intravenous drug use.
[00:04:06]  Why is a little tiny baby getting this?
[00:04:09]  Which kind of belies the whole reason behind why the CDC adopted in the 90s a universal recommendation.
[00:04:15]  It's not that cut and dry.
[00:04:17]  There are lots of other ways you can acquire hepatitis B.
[00:04:20]  So the committee hears from everybody or those who present, made presentations.
[00:04:25]  What do they decide ultimately when it comes to the shot and when it's administered?
[00:04:30]  So the vote they took yesterday centered on mothers who are hepatitis B negative.
[00:04:36]  And their recommendation for those mothers was to essentially you don't have to get the birth dose.
[00:04:45]  We suggest that you don't get it before two months of age.
[00:04:48]  So by having that language in place, it essentially leaves the status quo.