Dismantling of U.S. childhood vaccination schedule has begun

If any ambiguity remained about the ultimate goal of the current administration’s public health policy, the final 48 hours of last week shattered it.

On Friday, following a disastrous two-day meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), President Trump signed a memorandum directing the Department of Health and Human Services to align the U.S. vaccine schedule with peer, developed countries — a seemingly reasonable but fraught suggestion. This directive follows the explicit roadmap laid out by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose stated goal is upending the childhood vaccination schedule.

To the uninitiated, this might look like a sudden, erratic pivot. It is not. It is the culmination of a c