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CDC Formally Stops Recommending Hepatitis B Vaccines for All Newborns
Instead of recommending the hepatitis B vaccine for all newborns, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now officially advises women who test negative for the virus to consult health care providers about whether their babies should get their first doses within 24 hours of birth. The agency’s vaccine advisory committee — whose members Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed this year after he fired the previous ones — voted for the recommendation this month, upending more than three decades of agency guidance.
Acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill accepted the change Tuesday — the final step for it to become the agency’s policy.“We are restoring the balance of informed consent to parents whose newborns face little risk of contracting hepatitis B,” O’Neill said in a statement. The CDC had recommended the birth dose of the vaccine since 1991.
Many public health experts criticized the advisory committee’s decision: After the meeting, a chorus of doctors, political leaders and health officials called on O’Neill to ignore the suggested change and maintain the CDC’s recommendation, to no avail. The CDC now suggests waiting until at least 2 months of age for babies’ first hepatitis B shots if they do not receive the birth dose.
Former Top Vaccine Official Sues Trump Administration Over Her Firing
A former top official at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sued the Trump administration Tuesday, alleging she was illegally fired by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after she blew the whistle on internal clashes over vaccine research at the agency.
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo ran the NIH division responsible for vaccine research until late March, when she was placed on indefinite leave. In a formal whistleblower complaint, she said she was sidelined because she pushed back against NIH officials appointed by President Trump who questioned the importance of childhood flu vaccines and canceled long-running clinical trials.
She was terminated in October after she went public with her concerns in an exclusive interview with CBS News, which she claims was a further act of retaliation. “I spoke up because the decisions by HHS leadership have put the public’s health at risk and wasted billions of dollars — actions that will have devastating consequences for Americans’ safety and wellbeing for decades to come,” Marrazzo said in a statement on Tuesday, noting that she is seeking her job back and also aims to protect the rights afforded to federal employees who blow the whistle.
California’s New Vaccine Law Shields Providers — While Leaving Injured Families With No Remedy
In 2025, California lawmakers, with the signature of Governor Gavin Newsom, enacted AB 144 — a sweeping statute that dramatically expands the authority of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). Public debate has focused on how the law freezes outdated CDC guidance and empowers CDPH to operate a parallel, state-run vaccine policy and enforcement framework with minimal public oversight. But buried within AB 144 is another serious problem — one that has gone largely unexamined.
California has moved to shield vaccine providers from liability even when federal vaccine-injury compensation pathways no longer apply — without creating any alternative avenue for injured families to seek compensation. That structure raises serious constitutional concerns. For decades, vaccine liability has operated on a carefully constructed bargain: when government limits ordinary tort lawsuits, it must preserve some alternative path through which injured individuals may seek compensation.
That principle underpinned the 1986 federal vaccine injury framework and explains why vaccine liability protections survived constitutional scrutiny. Providers were shielded only because injured families retained a legally cognizable avenue for redress, however imperfect. AB 144 breaks that bargain.
FDA Approves Label Change for Depo-Provera, Adding Brain Tumor Warning
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved on Friday a label change for Pfizer’s birth control shot Depo-Provera that warns patients of the risk of meningioma, a tumor in the lining of the brain. Pfizer is currently battling a lawsuit in which more than 1,000 women claim the company knew about the risk and failed to warn patients.
The lawsuit points to several studies dating as far back as 1983 showing a link between progesterone and meningioma, saying those studies created an “unassignable duty to investigate,” and that Pfizer should have studied the risks associated with Depo-Provera sooner. (Progestin is a synthetic version of progesterone.) According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 4 sexually active women in the U.S. have used Depo-Provera. Black women use it at nearly double the national rate.
Meningiomas are usually not cancerous — meaning they don’t spread to other parts of the body — but they can be harmful depending on their size and where they grow. The overall risk of developing a meningioma remains small: About 39,000 meningiomas are diagnosed each year in the U.S. In a court filing this year, Pfizer asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, saying it became aware of the risks of meningioma associated with Depo-Provera in 2023, and in February 2024 it submitted an application to the FDA to add a warning to the drug’s label.
WV Supreme Court Sets Deadlines for Vaccine Ruling Appeal
West Virginia education officials have until spring to finish an appeal to the state Supreme Court over a Raleigh County Circuit Judge’s ruling in a case at the center of a debate over religious freedom and the state’s strict school vaccine requirements. The court issued a scheduling order Tuesday in the case of West Virginia Board of Education, et al v. Miranda G., et al. Raleigh Circuit Judge Michael Froble issued a statewide ruling Nov. 26 that enjoined the state and Raleigh County school boards from using the state’s school vaccine law to deny school admission to plaintiffs in the lawsuit and anyone who had requested or been granted a religious or philosophical exemption to the school vaccine requirements.
Days later the Supreme Court granted a stay in the case that temporarily halted the ruling. West Virginia has been one of only five in the country that do not allow students to opt out of the requirements because of religious or philosophical objections to the shots. Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order requiring the state to allow religious exemptions on his second day in office.
He’s not rescinded the order even though state lawmakers voted down legislation that would have codified the exemptions. His order is based on the state’s Equal Protection for Religion Act of 2023.
Pfizer CEO Blasts HHS’ Anti-Vaccine Policies as Revenue Outlook Dims
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla will not be deterred by recent policy changes from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS) that are undermining public confidence in vaccines. “I can assure you we are not going back to Louis Pasteur times,” Bourla said on a guidance call with investors Tuesday morning.
He labeled recent rhetoric from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the agencies he oversees as “an anomaly” that he hopes will soon be corrected. As just one example, U.S. Food and Drug Administraion (FDA) regulator Vinay Prasad has blamed 10 child deaths on COVID-19 vaccines — without evidence — and late last week rumors circulated that the FDA would slap a black box warning on those shots, though the agency this morning denied those claims. “I think those comments, they don’t have merit, and that will not change the way that we are looking at our long-term investments on vaccines.
We will continue investing on vaccines,” Bourla said. He continued: “As I said, this an anomaly that will correct itself. I hope pretty soon.” Bourla’s comments came as Pfizer reported a significant decline in its COVID-19 franchise in the waning years following the global pandemic. The New York pharma is expecting a leaner year overall in 2026, with guidance topping out at $62.5 billion in revenue, missing analyst consensus.
Pfizer’s shares fell about 4.8% Tuesday morning to $25.17, compared to $26.43 at close the day prior. But Bourla remained positive. This recent anti-vaccine push is “mostly driven politically,” he said, “and when [the] political situation allows that I think [it] will be resolved.”
