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AAP Releases 2026 Child Vax Schedule, No Longer Endorses CDC’s Version
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released its 2026 childhood and adolescent immunization schedule, which continues to recommend routine immunization for protection against 18 diseases. The AAP’s 2026 recommendations remain largely unchanged from prior guidance the organization released in August 2025. However, they notably differ from the CDC’s list of recommended vaccines, which was dramatically downsized earlier this month.
“At this time, the AAP no longer endorses the recommended childhood and adolescent immunization schedule from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Sean O’Leary, MD, MPH, chair of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases, and colleagues noted in a policy statement published in Pediatrics.
“We’re going to publish vaccine recommendations that are based on scientific evidence and that are in the best interest of children,” O’Leary told MedPage Today. “As pediatricians, we go into what we do to take care of children, and that’s what we do all day, every day,” O’Leary said. “And the same is true of the policies that we make.”
The AAP’s recommendations are “not based on political ideology,” he added. “They’re based on keeping kids healthy.”
Shared Decision-Making on Vaccines Is Not the Enemy
The recent overhaul of the U.S. pediatric vaccine schedule under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touched off a firestorm of criticism — most of it for demoting six vaccines from routinely recommended to “shared clinical decision-making” (SCDM). The implication was that these six vaccines are optional, less safe, or less useful than the routinely recommended ones.
Like nearly everyone in public health, I agree that the evidence for the safety and efficacy of the six vaccines is robust and hasn’t changed. But in its urge to say what Kennedy gets wrong, the public health and medical community is actively resisting something he gets right: Vaccination decisions belong to patients and their parents, guided by candid advice from health care professionals.
Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’
Genetic researchers were seeking children for an ambitious, federally funded project to track brain development — a study that they told families could yield invaluable discoveries about DNA’s impact on behavior and disease. They also promised that the children’s sensitive data would be closely guarded in the decade-long study, which got underway in 2015. Promotional materials included a cartoon of a Black child saying it felt good knowing that “scientists are taking steps to keep my information safe.”
The scientists did not keep it safe.
A group of fringe researchers thwarted safeguards at the National Institutes of Health and gained access to data from thousands of children. The researchers have used it to produce at least 16 papers purporting to find biological evidence for differences in intelligence between races, ranking ethnicities by I.Q. scores and suggesting Black people earn less because they are not very smart.
Mainstream geneticists have rejected their work as biased and unscientific. Yet by relying on genetic and other personal data from the prominent project, known as the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, the researchers gave their theories an air of analytical rigor.
How Biden and Fauci Suppressed the COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory
On Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, and former Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield shed light on how health officials and President Joe Biden’s administration sought to suppress the COVID-19 lab leak theory. Miller-Meeks told the audience that the Biden administration worked backward from its preferred conclusion rather than grapple with the “spillover” outbreak theory.
“Either I was stupid, and everybody else was vastly more intelligent than I was, or people don’t want people to know, because science isn’t consensus, and I think that’s the biggest thing,” Miller-Meeks said in her opening remarks, noting that dissenting opinions on the origins of the virus should have been welcomed rather than suppressed.
California Becomes First State to Join WHO Disease Network After US Exit
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced just one day after the U.S. officially withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO) that his state would become the first to join the organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, in a seeming rebuke of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from international collaborations.
Newsom traveled this week to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he was scheduled to speak at an event but was canceled at the last moment. During his trip, he met with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“As President Trump withdraws the United States from the World Health Organization, California is stepping up under Governor Gavin Newsom — becoming the first, and currently the only, state to join the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network (GOARN), strengthening public health preparedness and rapid response coordination,” Newsom’s office said in a statement.
FDA Links ByHeart Baby Formula Outbreak to Milk Powder Ingredient
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Federal health officials say a milk ingredient used in ByHeart infant formula may be tied to a botulism outbreak that has sickened dozens of babies across the U.S. On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported finding bacteria that causes infant botulism in two samples connected to the formula.
One came from an unopened can of ByHeart formula. The other was from organic whole milk powder used to make the product. The agency said both samples matched bacteria found in a sick baby. FDA testing also showed contamination in a separate batch of whole milk powder supplied to ByHeart. It matched bacteria found in a finished formula product.
Still, officials stressed the results are not conclusive. The investigation continues, in order “to determine the source of the contamination,” the agency said. ByHeart said the findings suggest “that we are significantly closer to determining the root cause of the contamination.” Neither the FDA nor ByHeart named the milk powder supplier.
