The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Tuesday adopted a policy to allow mothers, who test negative for Hepatitis B, to decide whether they want their babies to have hepatitis B immunization at birth.
The CDC recommended that infants who do not receive the birth dose ni receive the Hep B initial dose before the infant is two months old.
The CDC's child immunization schedule will be updated to reflect this recommendation.
Mirroring other countries
Did you know that Denmark recommends childhood vaccinations for 10 diseases with serious morbidity or mortality risks?
Japan recommends vaccinations for 14 diseases.
Germany? Vaccinations for 15 diseases.
This information comes from an official White House memorandum signed by President Donald Trump sent recently to media with the subject line "Aligning United States Core Childhood Vaccine Recommendations with Best Practices from Peer, Developed Countries."
The release states that in January 2025, "the United States recommended vaccinating all children for 18 diseases, including COVID-19, making our country a high outlier in the number of vaccinations recommended for all children."
Peer, developed countries like Denmark, Japan and Germany recommend fewer childhood vaccinations.
"Study is warranted to ensure that Americans are receiving the best, scientifically-supported medical advice in the world," the release stated.
Trump directed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Jim O'Neill, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "to review best practices from peer, developed countries for core childhood vaccination recommendations – vaccines recommended for all children – and the scientific evidence that informs those best practices, and, if they determine that those best practices are superior to current domestic recommendations, update the United States core childhood vaccine schedule to align with such scientific evidence and best practices from peer, developed countries while preserving access to vaccines currently available to Americans."
The memorandum concluded that it is "not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person."
That Hep B Vaccine
The Hep B vaccine became a newborn vaccine in 1991. Prior to that babies did not take a Hepatitis B shot.
This week the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (Acip) voted 8-3 to support "individual-based decision-making" on whether to vaccinate babies born to mothers who have tested negative for the liver infection.
Newborns are generally vaccinated within 24 hours of birth.
If a mother tested negative for Hep B, why would her baby need it?
Dr. Baruch Blumberg discovered the Hep B virus in 1965. He even won the Nobel Prize for his discovery. He worked with another doctor to create a screening test for the virus and by 1971 it was used to screen blood donations, which is where many people acquired the disease.
According to the Hepatitis B Foundation, various vaccines, including one that was discontinued in 1990 and no longer available in the United States, were created.
However, "In 1986, research resulted in a second generation of genetically engineered (or DNA recombinant) hepatitis B vaccines. These new approved vaccines are synthetically prepared and do not contain blood products," according to the Hepatitis B Foundation's website.
A 2015 editorial published in the World Journal of Hepatilogy states; "Hepatitis B is a major global health problem, that can cause chronic liver disease and it is associated to a high risk of death from cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC),"
That same editorial points out: "HBV is a worldwide infection but there is a marked difference in the geographic distribution of carriers. Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of HBV carriership ranging from 10% to 20%, while it is less than 1% in Northern Europe and America."
Because of the global prevalence of the disease and the readily available vaccine, in 1991 the World Health Organization (WHO) "set 1997 as the target for integrating the HBV vaccine into national immunization programs worldwide."
But several European countries never mandated the Hep B vaccine including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and the United Kingdom. Instead, many of these countries, including Japan, test those at high risk before administering the vaccine.
In the United States the Hep B vaccine is given to newborns for several reasons including that not all pregnant women are screened and if so, tests can be false negatives. CDC officials have long said that vaccinating all newborns acts is a critical backup. Children are also at risk, according to numerous articles, for Hep B in daycare and school settings.
According to the CDC, the most recent data estimates that about 640,000 adults in the U.S. have chronic hepatitis B.
A November 2025 article in Gastroenterology reports: "In the United States, since the introduction of universal birth dose vaccine recommendation in 1991, infant HBV infections have declined 95%, and more than 6 million infections, nearly 1 million hospitalizations, and 90,000 deaths have been prevented."
Some physicians in a September 2022 article in Contemporary Pediatrics note a risk with aluminum in the Hep B vaccine for newborns.
New parents need to know that if their infants are normal-risk, which 99% of newborns are, then the chance of them getting fatal hepatitis B is 0.00001% or one in seven million — a prevaccine statistic,” said Shira Miller, MD, PIC founder and president. “They also need to know that all hepatitis B vaccines include the neurotoxin aluminum — which means there’s a 100% guarantee their infant will be exposed to aluminum if they get injected with a hepatitis B vaccine.”
This official decision Tuesday to allow mothers in the United States to decide whether to vaccinate their newborn babies with the Hep B vaccine aligns the United States with the European countries and Japan that do not specifically mandate the vaccine.
