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This was telegraphed in advance. More than likely RFK went looking for something that he can point the finger at for autism and didn’t want to come up empty handed.
Of course, it might also be cover for the recommendation to delay hep b vaccines until 12.
Why would this recommendation need cover at all, let alone in the form of such a red herring?
The case against universal infant Hep B vaccination can be made straightforwardly to the American people: Hep B is quite rare in this country and is generally transmitted vertically or through contact with body fluids, so the vaccine should generally be restricted to infants born to a Hep B-positive mother, or living in close contact with Hep B-positive people. I’m not saying this argument is a slam dunk: although it’s easy to test the mother for Hep B at the time of childbirth, it’s hard to test everyone whose body fluids the neonate might come into contact with, and understandably the mom-to-be may not answer survey questions like “Does anyone in your household shoot up hard drugs, or have lots of promiscuous sex?” honestly. I’m merely saying that this argument is cogent and plausibly defensible on cost-benefit grounds in a way that the “Tylenol causes autism” distraction just … isn’t.
Because arguing that any vaccine is unnecessary, ever, is a major controversy in America.
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