I want to admit from the start that I don’t understand the brouhaha over administering Hepatitis B vaccines routinely to infants. I don’t understand why the administration chose to pick a fight by altering the guidelines; I don’t understand why the reaction has been what it has. Perhaps someone can explain it to me.
For background in 1991 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended that the Hepatitis B vaccine be administered too all newborns, a change from the previous risk-based recommendation. This is estimated to have prevented 16,000 to 18,000 cases of Hep B in children with some subpopulations having a higher prevalence than others. That in turn reduced the number of other liver diseases including cancer later in life. The complete course of immunization is three doses.
The risk of adverse reactions appears to be nominal. There is no identified relationship between the immunization and autism, for example. Allergic reactions are most common and those are rare. Last year there appear to have been no reported deaths from administering the vaccine to newborns.
The cost appears to be fairly nominal (around $300 for the entire three-dose course) with little out-of-pocket. Like everything else in healthcare the markups and administration fees are high but the figure cited above includes those.
Routine immunization has reduced the number of diagnosed cases but hasn’t eliminated them (it’s stated objective).
So, the bottom line is that I don’t understand the argument at all. Immunization reduces the number of cases at the margins and is fairly harmless and inexpensive to the extent that anything in healthcare is. I don’t understand why there’s an argument. On either side since it hasn’t achieved its stated objective and it’s obviously not much of a profit center. Is it a turf battle?
Perhaps someone can explain it to me.
