When Dr. Su Wang was in medical school, she donated blood. That’s when she learned she was infected with hepatitis B, a virus that attacks the liver and can lead to cancer and death decades later. “I was 18, healthy, in college,” she said. “And suddenly I had a chronic …
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel voted Friday to change the recommendation for when children should get their first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. Instead of a first dose within 24 hours of birth — as the CDC has advised for more than 30 years …
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel meets Thursday for the first of two days of discussions about childhood vaccine schedules and recommendations. The panel will focus on the hepatitis B vaccine and vote on whether to continue recommending it be given to all children at birth or …
Working out of a tribal-owned hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, liver specialist Brian McMahon has spent decades treating the long shadow of hepatitis B. Before a vaccine became available in the 1980s, he saw the virus claim young lives in western Alaskan communities with stunning speed. One of his patients was …
As the federal government prepares for the next meeting of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has intensified his attacks on aluminum vaccine components used in many shots to boost the body’s immune response. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before seeking …
A page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website was changed to include a false claim about autism and vaccines. Multiple CDC officials familiar with the situation said the change was made by political appointees inside the Department of Health and Human Services without input from relevant agency …
Rates of pertussis, also known as whooping cough, are surging in Texas, Florida, California, Oregon, and other states and localities across the country. The outbreaks are fueled by falling vaccination rates, fading immunity, and delays in public health tracking systems, according to interviews with state and federal health officials. Babies …
From inoculations against polio and smallpox to protections from measles and tetanus, vaccines are critical health care tools that have saved more than 150 million lives in the past 50 years. Rarely, they can also have side effects. This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Jon Wertheim reports on vaccine court, …
At his six-month check up, Jacob Thompson received a combination shot that included the recommended childhood vaccinations against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, or DTaP, all deemed safe and effective in clinical trials. Later that day, Jacob began to seize. Doctors hoped the seizure was a one-time reaction. It wasn’t. In …
President Trump’s suggestion last week that combination childhood vaccines, including the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, shot, should be separated marks a sharp break from decades of immunization practice in the United States. “I was shocked,” said Dr. William Moss, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at …