A Day That Will Live in Infamy — When the Grifters Beat the Scientists
Hepatitis B - snatching victory from the jaws of defea
Today wasn’t just another policy misstep.
It was a day that will live in infamy.
Because today, science didn’t win.
The grifters did.
The trial lawyers did.
And the people who can’t—or won’t—read science are now steering public health.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — remade in the image of RFK Jr. — voted to roll back the universal hepatitis B vaccine for newborns.
The single best-proven, least invasive protection ever designed for a child.
They didn’t do it because of new data. They did it because politics sells better than prevention.
I Remember What Hepatitis B Looked Like
I’m an Alaska Native physician and virologist. Some of the first work I did in graduate school was in the CDC in Alaska as a young virologist. I don’t need to imagine what happens when hepatitis B goes unchecked — I grew up watching it, and later studied it as a scientist.
In the 1970s and 1980s, hepatitis B carved through Alaska villages. Babies infected before they could crawl. Teenagers with cirrhosis. Entire families silently infected. Children — not adults, children — dying of liver cancer.
Then we fought back.
We worked with the CDC, our tribal health leaders, and field nurses who flew bush planes through blizzards just to deliver vaccines and track every newborn.
And it worked.
Transmission stopped.
The virus that once defined our grief disappeared from our children.
We have not had a single case of childhood liver cancer from hepatitis B in Alaska since 1992.
That’s not a statistic. That’s salvation.
That’s what science can do when it’s allowed to lead.
How Transmission Really Happens
The new “reformers” on ACIP want to pretend this is about maternal risk.
It isn’t.
More than half the hepatitis B infections in Alaska’s children came not from mothers, but from caregivers — family members, babysitters, or household contacts who never knew they were infected.
That’s why the “low-risk baby” narrative is deadly fiction.
You can’t screen away the risk when it’s hiding in the people who hold, feed, and love that child.
The birth-dose vaccine broke that chain.
It didn’t just protect babies from their mothers — it protected them from the world around them.
The Denmark Delusion
Tracy Beth Høeg, now temporarily in charge of the FDA’s drug division, told the committee that if Denmark doesn’t vaccinate all babies, we shouldn’t either.
That’s like saying, “Copenhagen doesn’t need snow tires, so Anchorage doesn’t either.”
Denmark has universal prenatal screening, universal healthcare, and one of the lowest perinatal infection rates on Earth. The United States has none of that — and a hepatitis B burden nearly 20 times higher in some populations.
But nuance doesn’t fit in a sound bite, and epidemiology doesn’t trend on X.
The Cult of “Choice”
The committee’s answer: “Parents can just come back later.”
As if every family has reliable transportation, steady insurance, and time off work.
As if poverty and geography are minor scheduling conflicts.
The birth dose is the one guaranteed chance to protect every baby.
Deferring it doesn’t empower parents — it abandons them.
These same voices talk about “reducing unnecessary interventions.”
But a 0.5 mL vaccine isn’t the burden.
A transplant is.
Lifelong antivirals are.
Watching your child die of liver cancer — that is the intervention they’ve just guaranteed.
From Victory to Betrayal
For more than thirty years, Alaska stood as proof that public health can defeat a virus.
Our success became the global model.
And today, a handful of self-styled reformers rolled it back — snatching the victory of science to feed the salesmen of supplements.
No supplement will replace a liver.
No tincture, no detox, no “immune support blend” will stop a virus already in a newborn’s bloodstream.
No child has ever been harmed by a hepatitis B vaccine — but children will die because this committee decided evidence was optional.
They’ve traded facts for folklore, and babies for talking points.
What Comes Next
This decision will not age well.
When the infections return — and they will — the numbers will be written in pediatric charts, not press releases.
The people who cast these votes today will measure their legacy in body bags long after a future administration has dismissed these grifters.
We did the work.
We proved prevention works.
And now, those who confuse arrogance for expertise have undone it.
Science didn’t lose because it was wrong.
It lost because the adults left the room.
And the infants will pay the price.
🧬 The Receipts — Alaska’s
Before and After: Alaska’s Numbers
Before Alaska launched universal newborn vaccination in the early 1980s, about one in six children in parts of western Alaska carried chronic hepatitis B. Entire families were infected, and over half of pediatric infections came from caregivers — grandparents, babysitters, and household contacts — not from mothers.
After the vaccine program began — first targeted, then universal by 1991 — the numbers collapsed. Among children under ten, chronic hepatitis B disappeared completely. Surveillance found zero cases of childhood liver cancer since 1992, and no new chronic infections in vaccinated children.
In the years before vaccination, liver cancer in Native children was tragically common. Since the program, not one Alaska Native child has died of hepatitis B–related liver cancer. That’s over three decades of life reclaimed.
Coverage for the hepatitis B birth dose now exceeds 98 percent statewide. Where the virus once infected whole families, it no longer circulates at all.
This wasn’t luck — it was design. It worked because every baby got the vaccine before leaving the hospital, regardless of maternal test results. Tribal health workers tracked each birth and follow-up dose by hand, often flying vaccines by bush plane to remote villages. The data from Alaska became the model for the 1991 U.S. recommendation — and later for the World Health Organization’s global policy.
What Made It Work
Universal newborn vaccination, regardless of maternal test results.
Community-based record tracking in partnership with tribal health organizations.
Free, immediate vaccine access — before discharge from delivery.
Long-term serologic monitoring proving elimination of transmission.
That program became the template for the U.S. birth-dose recommendation in 1991 — and the World Health Organization’s global policy soon after.
What Happens When You Roll It Back
If the ACIP decision stands:
Up to 1,000 new infant infections could occur annually in the U.S. within five years.
1 in 4 chronically infected infants will develop cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma later in life.
Costs for lifelong antivirals and liver transplantation will far exceed the cost of prevention.
This isn’t speculation. It’s arithmetic — the same arithmetic Alaska proved thirty years ago.
References
McMahon BJ et al. The Alaska Hepatitis B Program: Elimination of Chronic HBV in Children. J Infect Dis. 2000;181:413-418.
Bruce MG et al. Elimination of Hepatitis B Virus Transmission in Western Alaska. PubMed 41143066.
Margolis HS et al. Prevention of Hepatitis B Virus Transmission by Birth-Dose Vaccination — Lessons from Alaska. MMWR Suppl. 1991;40(RR-13):29-33.
World Health Organization. Hepatitis B: Birth Dose and Global Control Strategy. 2023.
Closing Words
“No supplement will replace a liver. No detox will undo a virus. And no amount of pseudo-patriotism will protect a child left unvaccinated.”
We didn’t just build a public-health victory in Alaska — we built proof that science saves lives.
Today’s committee erased that proof to appease the cult of contrarians.
But evidence doesn’t die quietly.
And neither will those of us who still believe in it.
Behind the shield of “shared decision making,” the Committee essentially voted to ask women to come to a decision about the Hepatitis B virus and Hepatitis B Immunoglobulin vaccine for infants, “in consultation with a healthcare provider.”
What was almost completely ignored by ACIP Committee members both yesterday and today, with the exception of Dr. Raymond Pollak, is that we have over 30 years of compelling evidence that the public’s understanding of health and medical information is very inadequate for informed decision-making. Through very little fault of their own, more than half of US adults have low health literacy- difficulty understanding and using health information to make informed decisions. 50% of the US population reads at an 8th-grade level or lower. Poor and marginalized populations are disproportionately low health literate. As concrete examples of low health literacy, about half of adults know that viruses are not treated with antibiotics (Pew Research Center, 2017). NSF Public Understanding of Science Surveys conducted over the last 30 years show that just about 50% of US adults believe “that antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria.” https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20207/public-familiarity-with-s-t-facts Literacy also includes our numeracy skills – how well we work with numbers.
Add to this the reality that health providers vary tremendously in their communication skills and biases when communicating with patients.
I did not know this history. I do know that there is a total idiot "running" HHS. Apparently he has found lunatics to "run" the CDC. What a travesty. RESIST!