fiction or faith. It is a major failure to give equal prominence to people presenting scientific facts and people talking about their feelings or beliefs with no evidence in their support, or to allow them to contradict unchallenged the most reliable evidence we have.
However, virtually every time I know something about a healthcare issue considered controversial, this is what I see in the news, and the hepatitis B vaccine controversy illustrates this abundantly.
On 5 December 2025, with a vote of 8 versus 3, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ended the recommendation that all newborns in the United States receive a hepatitis B shot at birth. The birth dose was recommended only if the mother had tested positive for the virus or if her infection status was unknown.
The change was very rational, and as in Western Europe, only Portugal recommends a universal birth dose, it would seem difficult to argue against it. But the media did and failed us badly. Two days after the vote, I downloaded news stories from 14 major media outlets, and they were all very negative. The media used three main tactics to support their beliefs:
They denigrated the Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the members of ACIP he had selected, and some of the presenters at the meeting.
They gave undue prominence and praise to the three dissenting ACIP voices and outsiders, who were depicted as experts or scientists, as if to say that they must be right, and they were widely quoted for their remarks, which were rarely rational or evidence-based.
They didn’t check if what the critics of the policy change claimed was correct.
The Denigration of Kennedy
Of the 14 news outlets, only Nature did not denigrate Kennedy.
Reuters started its press release by saying it was “a major policy win” for Kennedy that vaccine advisers named by him reversed a decades-long recommendation “that disease experts say will reverse decades of public health gains.” So, Kennedy’s advisers were not experts, and as the critics were experts, they must be correct, right?
Reuters noted that the CDC is “now run by a Kennedy-appointed acting head, Jim O’Neill, who is not a scientist;” that Kennedy founded the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense; fired ACIP’s previous 17 “independent” experts and replaced them with a group that largely supports his views; dropped broad recommendations for the Covid vaccine and cut funding for mRNA vaccines.
The facts are that several of the previous experts at the ACIP were not independent but had conflicts of interest in relation to vaccine manufacturers and other drug companies; that recommending Covid vaccines only to high-risk groups brought the US on par with Europe; and that cutting funding for mRNA vaccine research was well motivated. Kennedy said that his team had reviewed the science and found that these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like Covid and flu. His department was therefore shifting the funding toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”
Reuters misrepresented the ACIP meeting entirely, claiming that “many of Kennedy’s committee members criticized the vaccine as unsafe.” What they said was that safety had not been adequately studied, which was correct.
The other media called Kennedy a vaccine sceptic (The Hill, Health Policy Watch, CBC), a vaccine activist (CNN, the Guardian), or an anti-vaccine advocate (PBS), who fired all 17 previous members of the ACIP, replacing them with people who largely shared his scepticism (New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, CNN, PBS, CBS News, Time, Health Policy Watch, CBC, BBC, the Guardian) with a “goal of upending vaccine policy” (New York Times), and the vote fulfilled a long-held goal of the anti-vaccine movement (The Hill).
The CBC, the largest news broadcaster in Canada, noted that Kennedy had promoted debunked theories linking vaccines to autism. It is correct that studies of the MMR vaccine and aluminium adjuvants did not find a link, but the aluminium study is seriously flawed, some studies have claimed a link, and as it has not been studied if the extensive US childhood vaccine program might cause autism, the CDC has suggested additional research projects.
The Washington Post said that aluminium had become a focal point for anti-vaccine groups that claim cumulative exposure may harm neurological development and that vaccine researchers note that aluminium is present naturally in breast milk, food, and water at far higher levels than in vaccines and is rapidly cleared from the body. It is highly misleading to compare dietary intake with injections, as very little aluminium is absorbed from the gut and the rest is effectively eliminated via the kidneys, and as aluminium adjuvants in vaccines are harmful.
The Hill and CNN noted that aluminium adjuvants in vaccines have been proven to be safe (which is false), but that vaccine sceptics like Kennedy have long said they are linked to allergies and other health conditions (which is correct). Natural infection protects against allergies, and studies comparing vaccinated with unvaccinated children have shown vaccines increase the occurrence of asthma and other atopic diseases.
The Denigration of ACIP Members and Meeting Presenters
Nature noted that several panel members continued to express broad criticism of vaccines.
The New York Times lamented that most of the new ACIP members and some of the presenters have no experience in vaccine research or clinical practice and that the divisiveness and dysfunction of the committee in making the decision raised questions about the reliability of the advisory process.
This is terribly misleading. People who have learned to read can assess the merits of vaccines, and scientific debate is what furthers science. Acting ACIP chair Robert Malone said that the committee’s work must be guided by evidence, transparency, and a willingness to scrutinise assumptions rather than protect them.
Health Policy Watch wrote that Malone has been criticised for vaccine misinformation, which is a meaningless comment without any mention of what the issues were. Some of the most outstanding vaccine researchers in the world, professors Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn from Copenhagen, have been criticised for misinformation and have had lectures and interviews removed from YouTube even though everything they said was correct.
CBS News noted that ACIP member Retsef Levi, a mathematician with no medical training (so what?), had falsely claimed that experts had never tested the vaccines appropriately, and the New York Times called it incorrect when lawyer Aaron Siri, a presenter, said that “not one” of the shots administered to children had been compared against a placebo or an inert substance. But Levi and Siri were correct. No childhood vaccine on CDC’s schedule was studied in placebo-controlled trials or relied upon before licensure.
The CBC also described Levi as a person with no medical degree who had questioned the safety of the Covid-19 vaccines and called for Covid vaccine programs to be halted. Well, I have observed repeatedly that Levi’s arguments were far more persuasive than those offered by people with medical degrees, e.g. by ACIP member Cody Meissner, a paediatric infectious-disease specialist (see below).
And Covid vaccines are definitely not safe; they have killed children who developed myocarditis and adults who developed blood clots. It was very prudent to change the “all-inclusive” US Covid vaccine programs when by far most people have been infected, whether vaccinated or not, and because repeated boosters can weaken the immune system and increase the risk of respiratory infections, also for flu shots. Healthcare workers themselves have already delivered a verdict. According to the CDC’s own data, fewer than 10% received a booster in the past year.
National Public Radio denigrated Siri: an anti-vaccine lawyer with no medical or scientific training, and the Washington Post failed their readers, too: “Aaron Siri, a Kennedy ally and lawyer for the anti-vaccine movement, delivered a presentation for more than 90 minutes. Siri said clinical trials for vaccines have not been properly performed, that safety surveillance after vaccines are licensed is lacking and that the efficacy of vaccines in reducing deaths and spread of disease has been overstated. Siri and Kennedy-aligned activists argue that the cumulative number of shots places an undue burden on child immune systems. Scientists counter that…the immune system can safely handle far more antigens than vaccines contain.”
Siri is correct and the reason why he was given so much time is that he is evidence-based and very knowledgeable. His book about vaccines is outstanding. And “scientists” have no evidence that the immune system can safely handle many vaccine antigens injected simultaneously. This is unknown and needs studying.
The Washington Post also noted that “Siri petitioned the government in 2022 on behalf of the anti-vaccine group Informed Consent Action Network, which is run by Kennedy’s former communications director, to reconsider its approval of Sanofi’s stand-alone polio vaccine. Siri argued that the government had relied on inadequate data, a claim regulators rejected.”
However, the petition notes that “the clinical trials relied upon to license this product did not include a control group and only assessed safety for up to three days after injection. These trials therefore did not comply with the applicable federal statutory and regulatory requirements necessary to prove the product was ‘safe’ prior to licensure.” As live, attenuated polio vaccines can mutate and cause polio, I agree with Siri that this drug had not been adequately studied before licensure.
The New York Times and National Public Radio wrongly implied that Siri wanted to remove all polio vaccines (“polio vaccines” or “the polio vaccine”).
Praising “Experts” and Giving Them Undue Prominence
Safety was a major issue. Dissenting ACIP member Cody Meissner said at the meeting that we know that the vaccine is safe, and his reassurances were quoted by the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, Nature, the BBC, and Time.
However, when the Institute of Medicine in 2013 was commissioned to review the safety of the CDC childhood vaccine schedule, they could not find a single study that had compared health outcomes in vaccinated children with those in children who had not received any vaccines and they concluded: “There is no evidence that the schedule is not safe.” Similarly, Time wrote about the hepatitis B vaccine that there is “no evidence in regard to lack of safety.” My comment on this kind of reasoning was: “If the brakes in a new car model have never been tested, the reassuring conclusion would be: ‘There is no evidence that the brakes don’t work.’”
At the ACIP meeting, Meissner accused Siri of presenting “a terrible, terrible distortion of all the facts” (New York Times, National Public Radio, The Hill, CNN, Time) and of making “absolutely outrageous statements about safety.” This was totally false and Meissner should know better. ACIP members were shown that the clinical trials underpinning approval of the hepatitis B vaccine were small, lacked a placebo group, and followed infants for no more than seven days after vaccination, which would not detect any long-term adverse outcomes. Normally, such findings would have shocked people and prompted caution, but Meissner insisted that “There is no evidence of harm.” Well, if you don’t look, you won’t find.
Levi hit the nail on the head: “What is the number needed to vaccinate – among babies born to hepatitis B-negative mothers – to prevent one case of chronic hepatitis B?” No one supplied an answer. But if the true number was “in the millions,” then any credible harm-benefit analysis would require showing a number-needed-to-harm one infant seriously even higher.
Meissner, however, opined that the move was rooted in baseless scepticism and that we will see more hepatitis B infections (Washington Post, Nature). He was also against possibly using fewer than three doses of the vaccine (New York Times, The Hill), arguing that antibody titres are not a good correlate of protection and did not have scientific backing (Nature). The inconsistency was unmistakable. Antibodies are embraced as proof of vaccine efficacy when convenient, e.g. in drug regulation, otherwise not.
Another dissenting ACIP member, psychiatrist Joseph Hibbeln, was quoted a great deal although he said nothing of substance: The revised guidance was “unconscionable” (Washington Post), “the decisions should be based on data” (The Hill), “Those are all speculations” (Time), “Is there any specific evidence of harm of giving this vaccination before 30 days?” (the Guardian). Not a single journalist wondered why a psychiatrist sat in a vaccine committee.
Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, a presenter at the meeting, noted that the US was an outlier recommending around 72 childhood vaccine doses, while countries like Denmark use fewer than 30. PBS and Time argued that the US is not an outlier in recommending hepatitis B vaccines for newborns because 116 of the 194 WHO member states did the same. This is not a proper comparison, and, as noted above, in Western Europe, only Portugal recommends a universal birth dose.
Levi noted that “The policy in the US is completely misaligned with many countries that…care about their children just as much as we do,” and when Meissner viewed the growth of the childhood vaccine schedule as an achievement for child health, Siri countered correctly that the US “has the worst health outcomes amongst all developed countries.”
The media quoted three previous CDC directors. Rochelle Walensky said that over the past few months, she had observed “a systematic undermining of the nation’s vaccine program” (National Public Radio) and that the “US vaccine-safety monitoring system can detect very, very rare safety events“ (Nature). Maybe, but she ignored them. In April 2021, cases of myocarditis after Covid-19 vaccination, particularly among young male vaccine recipients, had been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System at the CDC, but Walensky said by the end of the same month: “We have not seen a signal and we’ve actually looked intentionally for the signal in the over 200 million doses we’ve given.”
Tom Frieden provided a doomsday statement: “The ACIP recommendation…puts millions of American children at greater risk of liver damage, cancer and early death.” He advised everyone to “stand up for fact-based care” and “not accept this misguided and dangerous recommendation” (Time).
Demetre Daskalakis had a weird argument: “This will signal to clinicians that there is something wrong with the vaccine – there is not” (Reuters, CNN). It could also signal greater responsibility at the CDC than under previous directors. But the BBC and the Washington Post joined the folly arguing that public health experts, representatives of medical organisations, and some ACIP members worried the vote could raise unfounded safety concerns about the vaccine and undermine hard-won trust in vaccines leading to more sickness.
The media gave organisations undue prominence without ever considering if they were impartial. They urged people to look to “independent recommendations,” e.g. from the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, for “science-based advice” (National Public Radio).
I would call it advice based on money. The Academy would continue to support the birth dose of the vaccine (Reuters, CBS News, Health Policy Watch, CNN, Time, CBC) but all journalists forgot to say that it receives many millions of dollars from vaccine manufacturers and other drug companies. Unsurprisingly, hepatitis B vaccine makers Merck, Sanofi, and GSK defended their products as safe, and Merck was “deeply concerned by the vote” (Reuters). Perhaps because Merck’s shares dropped?
“Don’t listen to ACIP at all…listen to the American Academy of Pediatrics” (CNN), which said that the “irresponsible and purposely misleading” guidance would harm children; called it a “deliberate strategy to sow fear and distrust among families” (CBC); and delivered a gigantic falsehood: “Vaccine recommendations are largely similar across developed countries” (CBS News).
Reuters noted that ACIP members had said that the birth dose “was out of step with peer countries, particularly Denmark,” but then quoted “a CDC disease expert” for saying that the US is not comparable to Denmark with its universal healthcare and more thorough screening for the virus. The Washington Post said that “public health experts” had noted that European countries recommending fewer shots for children were smaller and had better health care systems, and that medical associations had argued that the US schedule had been thoroughly studied (which is blatantly false). None of the media quoted Levi, who mentioned that the US and Denmark have the same background rate of hepatitis B despite different policies on the birth dose.
The American Medical Association is also heavily corrupted by industry money and said that ACIP’s decision was “reckless and undermines decades of public confidence in a proven, lifesaving vaccine. Today’s action is not based on scientific evidence” (CNN).
The American College of Physicians said that “This vote…will only endanger children and increase risk of death for millions,” and a hepatitis researcher urged people to “go back to our true experts…our CDC colleagues” (Health Policy Watch).
Time noted that “A group of several dozen professional medical organizations and health advocacy groups, including the American Medical Association” expressed alarm over the committee’s decisions: “Previously, we could expect science to drive decisions.”
Some panellists and media noted that universal hepatitis B vaccination at birth had helped to nearly eliminate cases among newborns in the United States, and that there was no evidence of harm (New York Times, Washington Post, The Hill, the Guardian). However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. When Levi countered that the risk for a child of getting infected was extremely low, supporters of the birth dose noted that the virus can be spread by household objects like toothbrushes, razors, or combs used by an infected person. This is a fake argument and the CDC website is explicit: “Although HBV can be found in saliva, it is not spread through kissing or sharing utensils. It is also not spread through sneezing, coughing, hugging, breastfeeding, or food or water.”
Levi also said that the decline in hepatitis B cases occurred long before the birth-dose policy was introduced and was concentrated in older age groups, not among infants, which supported a risk-based policy, focused on infants born to hepatitis B-positive mothers and on high-risk adult populations. When ACIP liaison Dr Flor Muñoz of the Infectious Diseases Society of America claimed that much of the discussion amounted to “misinformation,” Levi responded: “It’s not misinformation…this is CDC data.” When Muñoz pushed back, presenting her disagreement as established fact, Levi replied: “I appreciate your beliefs and feelings about this, but these beliefs and feelings are not supported by the data that were presented.”
Levi also pointed to ACIP’s prior recommendation of Covid-19 vaccination for healthy, extremely low-risk children, which he described as “one of the most outrageous” examples of framework failure.
ACIP’s decision sparked anger from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a doctor, who said the vaccine is safe and effective (BBC, CBS News, Time, Health Policy Watch). He wrote on X that Siri, a prominent anti-vaccine lawyer, makes his living suing vaccine manufacturers and is presenting as if an expert on childhood vaccines. The ACIP is totally discredited” (Washington Post, The Hill).
The Hill was particularly critical. It wrote about an ardent objection from major medical organisations, internal spats among ACIP members, and a stark lack of data to support altering decades-long vaccine guidance, in fact, “There’s been great data and studies done on these vaccines, and they are safe and effective.” The Hill quoted top figures from Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York City for their rants, which included that they would not abide by ACIP’s “irresponsible attacks on clear, evidence-based science.”
When journalists “dial-a-quote,” they call organisations or people whom they know will respond in a way that mirrors their own bias pretending they have asked an “independent expert.”
The media were full of evidence-free, derogatory comments that were meaningless because they could not be contested:
- “We can no longer trust federal health authorities when it comes to vaccines,” “heartbreaking to see this science-driven agency turn into an ideological machine” (New York Times);
- “Medical experts have argued that it’s important to vaccinate all newborns for hepatitis B” (Washington Post);
- “The vaccine is incredibly safe,” experts decried the move (Reuters);
- the American Association of Immunologists is “extremely disappointed” in the decision;
- the American College of Physicians called the meeting “completely inappropriate” (CBS News); “many experts expressed dismay at today’s decision” (CNN);
- “A long lineup of medical experts…strongly urged against changing the vaccination schedule” (Health Policy Watch);
- “Public health experts decried the move,” CDC and the ACIP are no longer trustworthy sources and are becoming increasingly irrelevant (CBC);
- “a forum for the discussion of falsehoods,” ACIP members promoted their own sceptical views on vaccines, looking for a bogeyman, and you’re not going to find something if it doesn’t exist (Time);
- “Experts say any change to the current hepatitis B vaccination recommended schedule could have significant and far-reaching consequences for childhood health in the US” (the Guardian).
When the media presented statements that could be contested, they were usually wrong or seriously misleading, e.g. “Siri’s presentation was replete with ‘falsehoods and misrepresentation of the data,’ and he conflated informed consent with mandates” (New York Times); “fierce objections from medical groups that said the recommendation had proved a successful public health strategy, nearly eradicating the dangerous virus among U.S. children” (Washington Post); a “Minority of members argue the change is not supported by data” (Reuters).
Persuasion by Big Numbers
Like the drug industry does, the media used big numbers in their propaganda.
Globally, the vaccine has prevented millions of infections (Health Policy Watch). Before the vaccine, around 200,000 to 300,000 people were infected each year; since the vaccines began being universally administered to babies, overall cases are down to around 14,000 annually (PBS).
After a birth dose was recommended in 1991, the shots have prevented an estimated 90,000 deaths in the US (BBC) and reduced hepatitis B infections among infants and children by 99% (CBS News, Time, Health Policy Watch, Nature).
All these claims are false or seriously misleading. Data presented at the meeting showed that much of the decline in hepatitis B infections over past decades occurred before the birth dose was recommended and it was largely driven by behaviour change, screening, and targeted vaccination of high-risk groups.
Senator Cassidy wrote on X that “Before the birth dose was recommended, 20,000 newborns a year were infected with hepatitis B. Now, it’s fewer than 20” (CBS News, CNN, Health Policy Watch). This was an error of 133 times. CDC data show that in 1990, only around 150 children below one year of age became infected.
Vaccinologist Paul Offit Lied on CNN
The most high-profile vaccinologist in the world, after vaccine “Godfather” Stanley Plotkin, is Paul Offit, but that may be a thing of the past after Siri’s recent revelations and his self-destructing appearance on CNN on the second day of the ACIP meeting.
Offit told viewers he had not been invited to speak at the meeting but internal documents show his claim is false. CDC officials had contacted him repeatedly – via emails, phone calls and a speaker-request form – inviting him to present.
Offit warned viewers that “50% of people in this country have chronic hepatitis B and don’t know it” (only about 0.3% have chronic disease) and suggested newborns were at risk through everyday contact with nannies, daycare workers, and family members because of sharing toothbrushes, towels, or simply being held by an infected adult, which the CDC denied could happen.
Offit described ACIP as a “clown show,” an “anti-vaccine advisory committee” that “puts children in harm’s way.” He lied monstrously saying that before universal infant vaccination, “30,000 children under the age of 10” contracted hepatitis B each year. CDC data presented at the ACIP meeting showed that new hepatitis B cases in children under the age of 10 were around 400 per year before the universal birth dose was introduced.
I am very indebted to journalist Maryanne Demasi, PhD, who wrote many of the articles I quoted above. She gave Offit the opportunity to clarify his remarks but he did not respond. This silence contrasts sharply with the certainty he brings to national television, where his claims are delivered without scrutiny and his financial ties to vaccine manufacturers are almost never mentioned.
Offit is not an impartial commentator. He earned millions from the sale of his stake in Merck’s rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, and has long been aligned with the pharmaceutical industry whose products he routinely defends. Yet major news outlets present him as a neutral authority and take his statements at face value.
Conclusions
The media’s reporting on the hepatitis B issue was seriously misleading and their advice that we should trust the “experts” who condemned the ACIP committee’s wise decision is horribly misguided.
The new ACIP’s first chair was biostatistician Martin Kulldorff. He developed the monitoring system the CDC uses for quick detection of vaccine harms, considered the best in the world. On 1 December, Kennedy announced that Kulldorff was appointed to a senior role at the Department of Health and Human Services after he had “transformed ACIP from a rubber stamp into a committee that delivers gold-standard science for the American people.” NIH director Jay Bhattacharya said that “Five years ago, Martin Kulldorff and I co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration calling for an end to pandemic lockdowns. That evidence-based approach to public health now permeates HHS.”
What the media presented was what we call eminence-based medicine, and the medical journals’ reporting on vaccine issues is also a disaster. I shall end with the abstract of an article I published on 10 November:
The reactions to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s initiatives to improve vaccine safety have been almost uniformly negative. I studied how the narratives were framed in a cohort of 33 articles in the BMJ of which 30 were written by journalists or the editor. I focused on whether the reporting was balanced and informative, and whether the articles saw any merit in Kennedy’s reforms in his role as Secretary of Health and Human Services or supported the status quo.
The reporting in the BMJ was highly biased. Much of the information provided in Kennedy’s disfavour was misleading, and some was wrong. All initiatives at improving vaccine safety were condemned, without any analysis of their merits in an evidence-based fashion. Instead, the BMJ cited people who had their own agendas and who condemned Kennedy without providing any evidence in their favour while expressing faith in vaccines, with the industry mantra that they are safe and effective, although all drugs will harm some people.
The BMJ did not take any interest in the widespread and lethal corruption in US healthcare institutions – one of Kennedy’s focus points – but toned it down.
Despite the constant ad hominem attacks, Kennedy has succeeded to introduce important changes and plans related to vaccine safety, guidance about how vaccines are used, and about avoiding neurotoxic metals in vaccine adjuvants.
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