Washington – The future of access to children’s criticism vaccines, including the injection of hepatitis B, became a point of inflammation at an audience of the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday, just one day before an influential vaccine panel met.
At the Hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Susan Monarch, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the final meeting with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. led him to be fired in August was tense.
Monararez said he rejected two Kennedy demands: officials of the firefighters agency and sign vaccine recommendations without seeing any data.
“He said that if he was not willing to do both, he should give up,” he said. “I replied that I could not appropriate the recommendations without reviewing the evidence, and had no basis for the scientific experts of firefighters.”
The senators interrogated Monarch for approximately three hours about their interactions with Kennedy, who said at the Senate Finance Committee on September 4 that Monaz was expelled because she was not reliable.
A great concern expressed mainly by the Democratic senators, who had voted against Monaz during their confirmation audience in July, was that less vaccines for children could cause more deaths from preventable diseases, especially if any new recommendation was not based on scientific data.
“The concern is Robert F Kennedy [Jr.] He will make the United States get sick again, “said Senator Ed Markey, D-Mass.” They will send us to more diseases, more death and more despair in our nation. ”
Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of La-La, the president of the committee, asked Monaz if Kennedy had told him that he was going to change the childhood vaccination schedule.
“He said that the children’s vaccine schedule would change from September, and that he had to be on board,” said Monarch.
Monaz added that she and Kennedy “entered an exchange”, where she expressed their willingness to change the child vaccine schedule if there was science or evidence that supports such a change.
The Immunization Practices Advisory Committee (ACIP) meets Thursday and Friday, when 12 members designated by Kennedy are expected to review and vote on measles, Covid and hepatitis B shots.
The group will decide whether to change the recommendations for hepatitis B, as well as the combination of the combined measles-rubella and chickenpox vaccine. Another vote on the opportunity of this fall is scheduled for Friday.
Dr. Debra Houry, former medical director of the CDC, who testified together with Monaz, said she hoped that the Committee recommends delaying the Hepatitis B shooting in children up to 4 years.
“It is likely that there is a discussion about the hepatitis B vaccine, very specifically trying to dislodge the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine and push it later in life,” Houry told the senators.
Hepatitis B’s shot is administered to babies as three dose series. In general, children are recommended to obtain the first dose within 24 hours after birth, the second dose per month and the third between six and 18 months of age.
Houry said that before his departure from the CDC, he had not seen any data to support the change in the recommendation.
“I am worried about the future of CDC and public health in our country,” he said. “If we continue this way, we are not prepared, not only for pandemics, but to prevent chronic health disease, and we will see children die of preventable vaccine diseases.”
Why change the time of hepatitis B vaccines?
CDCs do not demand vaccination. Recommends a schedule for children to receive a shot for communicable diseases. The vaccine advisory group regularly reviews the data and updates the schedule based on the orientation of doctors or scientists with experience in the subject, said Dorit Reiss, an expert in vaccination policy at the University of California, San Francisco.
Kennedy’s impulse to change when children are immunized and what vaccines are available for them, it occurs in the midst of the agency by the public.
An August August survey, a health policy research group, found that more than half of adults in the US. They say they trust health agencies and CDCs. But the percentage has decreased from 63% in September 2023 to 57% in July 2025, months after Kennedy took over.
For more than 30 years, the ACIP of the CDC has recommended that children obtain the first of three shots at birth. (Recommendations are important as they influence what insurers are willing to cover free of charge).
Senator Cassidy, a gastroenterologist who specialized in liver disease, finished the audience when speaking in favor of hepatitis B fired for babies.
“Before 1991, up to 20,000 babies, the Babis!) They were infected with hepatitis B in the United States of America, and that changed when the hepatitis B vaccine was approved for newborns,” said Cassidy. “Now, less than 20 babies per year receive the hepatitis B of their mother. That is an achievement to make the United States again healthy, and we should stand up and greet the people who made that decision, because there are people who would otherwise be dead if those mothers did not have that option to vaccinate their child.”
Capture children and babies, particularly while they are young, with the hepatitis B vaccine is critical, said Michaela Jackson, director of the Hepatitis B Foundation Prevention Policy Program.
It is also important to “prevent cirrhosis, prevent liver damage, liver cancer, all consequences of living with a lifetime virus,” he said.
“There is a direct correlation between the age of which it is infected and its chances of obtaining a chronic infection,” Jackson said. “A baby born with hepatitis B has a 90% chance to develop chronic hepatitis B. They will take him with them throughout his life,” Jackson said.
During his testimony, Houry said that many mothers do not know that they have hepatitis B and that they can involuntarily transmit their baby.
The change could put Kennedy, who has previously been critical of the CDC and his past politics decision, under more scrutiny.
Monarch said at the audience that Kennedy made a series of “derogatory” comments about the agency.
“He said that the CDC employees were killing children, and that they don’t care,” said Monarch. “He said that CDC employees were bought by the pharmaceutical industry. He said that CDC forced people to use masks and social distance as a dictatorship.”
In a statement sent by email, Andrew Nixon, HHS spokesman, said Monaz was “very distorting the concern of Secretary Kennedy for the failure of the CDCs responding to the Covid-19 Pandemia.”
“The American people know that the CDC failed their mission, and that failure put the children in danger,” he said.
Reiss, the vaccine policy expert said that checking that the recommendation will put babies at risk directly.
“Checking it without the usual exhaustive examination of ACIP is irresponsible.”
