Has ACIP made bad vaccine decisions?

In a tweet announcing the new members, Secretary of Health Robert F Kennedy, Jr. claims that a corrupt ACIP has expanded the childhood schedule to roughly 69 and 92 “vaccines” without ever requiring true inert placebo-controlled trials. Thus, vaccine safety remains unproven and may be driving today’s surge in chronic childhood disease.

The tweet suggests that children get too many vaccines today, but think about it this way: which of the illnesses we prevent would you be okay with your child (or yourself) catching? Since the 1980s, doctors have only added about one or two new vaccines every ten years. That slow, careful pace shows that the schedule grows through solid science, not random decisions.

Right now, the schedule protects children from 22 different diseases. The claim that kids get 92 “vaccines” uses creative math. Many vaccines come in more than one dose, so your immune system gets a reminder lesson. A booster isn’t a brand-new vaccine; it’s like reviewing for a test (meeting the real disease) you’ve already studied for. Also, some shots combine protection against four or even six diseases in a single injection. Take Vaxelis, for example. It protects against six diseases in three doses, but vaccine opponents count that as 24 separate vaccines.

Others worry about too many ingredients or antigens. In truth, combination shots use fewer total ingredients than giving each vaccine separately. A child meets between 2000 and 6000 antigens every day just by eating, playing, and breathing. The total from vaccines over 18 years, fewer than 200 antigens, is tiny by comparison. So, the big numbers some people toss around about “too many vaccines” don’t match how the schedule and kids’ immune systems really work.

It’s a mistake to believe that a placebo has to be an inert substance, like saline, but that’s not always the case. If there is an adjuvant that has been tested for safety in the past, the placebo might include the adjuvant so that people can’t detect whether they are getting the vaccine or the placebo. The World Health Organization guides the ethical use of placebos in vaccine trials in these situations.

If a new vaccine is being tested to replace a currently used vaccine, you cannot withhold the currently used vaccine and give people a saline shot instead. Today, would you sign your child up for a study of the measles vaccine if you knew they had a 50% chance of receiving no vaccine? Of course you wouldn’t. You would never gamble your child’s health that way. It would be unethical to withhold the existing vaccine from participants if not receiving it would pose a significant risk to their health.

Even so, saline-placebo-controlled trials are done for many vaccines to assess both safety and efficacy, including the Rubella, Pneumococcal, Hib, HPV, Polio, Measles,Tdap, and COVID-19 vaccines.