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President Donald Trump said late last week that the White House will be “demanding” that vaccine makers split the doses of some routine childhood vaccines into five doses, administered over time rather than at once.
Trump made the announcement during a Friday press conference at the Oval Office, alongside U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A day earlier, Kennedy told attendees of a one-day Children’s Health Defense (CHD) conference in Washington, D.C., that they have a “friend at the White House” on vaccine policy.
Trump told reporters that some childhood vaccines would be administered six months apart, with each dose containing only 20% of the amount of vaccine contained in the single-shot doses children receive now.
“We’re going to recommend that they do five doses … and that they be given in six-month intervals so that a small amount of the vaccine gets pumped into the body,” Trump said.
“I think you’re going to see a massive reduction in autism,” he added. “And that’s a big deal, a very big deal. We’re going to be recommending that and actually demanding it,” Trump said.
Trump didn’t specify which vaccines would be targeted for being split into separate, smaller doses.
The announcement came a month after Trump signed an executive order reducing the number of diseases for which kids receive routine childhood vaccines from 18 to 11.
The order also called for one of those routine vaccines — the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) shot — to be split into three individual shots. Each shot would target one of the three diseases, delivered separately over 18 months.
It remains unclear whether Trump was referring to the MMR vaccine during Friday’s announcement. Trump and the White House have not announced any additional details.
Combination vaccines ‘interact in unexpected ways, in unpredictable ways’
Mainstream researchers who spoke with media outlets after Friday’s announcement criticized Trump’s proposal to split childhood vaccines into smaller doses.
Dr. José Romero, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official who is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) infectious-disease committee and a pharmaceutical industry consultant, told The Washington Post that Trump’s proposal is “an incorrect way of giving the vaccine.”
“Vaccines are formulated so that the total dosage that they’re getting is the one that delivers the best immune response,” Romero told the Post.
Last year, six medical groups and the AAP sued Kennedy, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and other Trump administration health agencies and officials, challenging changes they made to the CDC’s recommended childhood immunization schedule and to a key federal vaccine advisory committee.
In March, a federal judge stayed several of Kennedy’s vaccine-related policies. An appeal is pending while the lawsuit remains ongoing.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, said that organizations like the AAP have a vested interest in promoting Big Pharma’s vaccine-related interests.
“Any blowback from President Trump’s comments is pure propaganda from those, like the AAP, who are beholden to the vaccine industry,” Hooker said.
Steve Kirsch, founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, said vaccines like the MMR shot are administered together for convenience, not for reasons of efficacy.
“The problem is when you give them together, they interact in unexpected ways, in unpredictable ways,” Kirsch said.
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, a physician and host of “The Tenpenny Files” podcast, said that in the early 2000s, “vaccine manufacturers started creating combination vaccines to (deceptively) tell parents that their child was only getting one vaccine at the appointment, but that one shot had 5 or 6 vaccines combined.”
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD’s senior research scientist, said the MMR and the MMRV (measles-mumps-rubella-varicella) vaccines are “terrific candidates” for being split into smaller doses because the current combined dose can lead to those sorts of unexpected reactions.
“Because they are combined, they are overdosed to overcome viral interference,” Jablonowski said. He said the mumps vaccine, when it was offered as a stand-alone shot, contained a dose four times smaller than what is currently contained in the MMRV shot.
Similarly, the dose of varicella — or chickenpox — vaccine contained in the MMRV vaccine is seven times greater than what was previously contained in the stand-alone varicella shot.
Jablonowski said the polio vaccine is another excellent candidate for splitting into smaller doses. He explained that the shot contains antigens “for type 1 poliovirus, which is endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” and antigens for other polio strains last recorded in India in 1999 and Nigeria in 2012.
Hooker said other multivalent — or combination — vaccines may also be candidates for being split into separate doses. These include:
- The diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTaP) vaccine.
- The Pentacel 5-in-1 combination vaccine targeting diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio and Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib).
- The Vaxelis 6-in-1 vaccine targeting the five diseases covered by the Pentacel shot plus Hepatitis B (Hep B).
“This would give parents the opportunity and impetus to do research on which vaccines they want their children to receive as well as whether they would like to opt out entirely,” Hooker said. “Good public health maximizes the choices given to parents, who are the best experts in their own children.”
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Trump’s announcement leaves unanswered questions
For Hooker, the debate over splitting vaccine doses comes back to the MMR shot — and its potential link to autism.
While separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines are offered in some countries in Africa and the Middle East, “the vaccine industry did not want those shots to be split up and, heaven forbid, the autism rates go down.”
According to CDC data, 1 in 31 U.S. children had autism in 2022 — up from 1 in 36 in 2020 and less than 1 in 10,000 in 1970.
The MMR vaccine is linked to a high number of adverse events. As of Aug. 28, there were 95,473 adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following MMR vaccination — and 500 deaths.
Historically, fewer than 1% of adverse events have ever been reported to VAERS.
Dr. Michelle Perro, a pediatrician, said she “appreciates that for the first time a president is questioning the sacred vaccine schedule” and is raising questions about a possible vaccine-autism link.
However, she said Trump’s announcement leaves several questions unanswered.
“Whether split dosing would reduce autism is an empirical question, and Trump asserting it doesn’t make it true any more than … denying it makes it false,” Perro said.
Tenpenny warned that by splitting vaccines into smaller doses, “we will be going back to more vaccines and more injections per child.” This could mean “more chemicals and adjuvants injected into the child.”
“So, in an attempt to decrease the toxic load to babies, this could quite possibly lead to more,” Tenpenny said.
According to Perro, there is no literature showing that splitting current childhood vaccines into five doses “produces equivalent protection” or “would be safer.”
“However, the counterargument that the current schedule is optimal also has no trial behind it, because the schedule was never tested against a spaced alternative,” Perro said.
Related articles in The Defender
- Trump Signs Executive Order Aimed at Reducing Number of Childhood Vaccines
- ‘I Intend to Stay in This Fight,’ RFK Jr. Says at CHD Conference
- Breaking Up MMR Vaccine Will Benefit Kids — But It Could Be Years Before Single Shots Are Available
- Federal Government Appeals Ruling in AAP Lawsuit that Struck Down RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Policies
- New Poll: Americans’ Trust in MMR Vaccine Fades
- 1 in 31 Kids Had Autism in 2022 — Up From 1 in 36 in 2020
