U.S. Plan to Drop Some Childhood Vaccines to Align with Denmark Will Endanger Children, Experts Say
The U.S. reportedly plans to overhaul the country’s childhood vaccine schedule. The move could set public health back decades, experts say
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic, has spearheaded the push to change the U.S. vaccine schedule.
Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
The U.S. reportedly plans to overhaul the country’s childhood vaccine schedule. The move, first reported by CNN, would change how many vaccines to protect against various diseases children get and when they receive those immunizations.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., secretary of health and human services, is a longtime vaccine skeptic and supports altering the vaccine schedule. Recommendations for several vaccines that are currently given routinely to children in the U.S.—including shots for rotavirus, varicella (chickenpox), hepatitis A, meningococcal bacteria, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)—could be scrapped entirely under the plans, according to CNN.
Childhood vaccines collectively protect children and the U.S. population as a whole against diseases, such as measles and hepatitis B, that once sickened, hospitalized or killed hundreds or even thousands every year. Currently, children in the U.S. are recommended vaccines for 18 diseases, compared with 10 in Denmark.
On supporting science journalism
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Changing what vaccines kids get would be “a terrible mistake,” says Jessica Malaty Rivera, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Defend Public Health, an all-volunteer organization sponsored by a nonprofit. More children could get sick and die from preventable illnesses as a result.
RSV, for example, is the leading cause of infant hospitalization, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 58,000 to 80,000 children younger than five years old are admitted to the hospital each year in the U.S. because of the disease. The two available shots, which are not technically vaccines but antibody drugs that protect against RSV, were approved in 2023 and 2025 and are more than 90 percent effective at protecting against hospitalization. Many of the vaccines that are reportedly targeted for removal are ones that were approved more recently, Malaty Rivera notes.
People have an arbitrary line of “old-school” vaccines, such as those for polio and measles, and “new-school” vaccines, such as those for chickenpox and human papillomavirus (HPV), Malaty Rivera says. But these newer vaccines have been around for decades and have been shown to be highly effective, she says.
The Trump administration has previously stated that it wants to model the U.S.’s vaccine policy after other developed countries and specifically Denmark, which recommends fewer vaccines than the U.S. does and recommends them at different times of life. The comparison was a core focus of discussion at the most recent meeting of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee. But it doesn’t make sense to compare the U.S. to countries, such as Denmark, that have a vastly different health care system.
Such a comparison is “not apples to oranges; it’s apples to steaks,” Malaty Rivera says. “I cannot understate the value of universal health care and the extremely organized health care infrastructure” in Denmark.
“We can learn a lot from some studies that come from other countries, but we have to use a critical mind to figure out what is applicable to our context and what isn’t,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University.
A key difference between the U.S. and Denmark that Kennedy and other U.S. health officials seem to avoid is that the European country has a national health care system that covers everyone for free while the U.S. does not.
“Denmark or other places have universal health coverage where people don’t fall into health care gaps like they do in the United States. The reality of our health system is that people fall into the gaps,” Nuzzo says.
In the U.S., a change to the vaccine schedule would also affect who would be able to get a vaccine. Whatever the CDC recommends influences what private health insurers will cover and what federal programs, such as the Vaccines for Children program, will subsidize.
“When changes are made to the schedule, it will have consequences for who is able to get vaccines, whether or not you want them,” Nuzzo says. “This isn’t about allowing you to opt out. This is about making it harder for you to opt in.”
The plan may yet change, according to CNN. The Department of Health and Human Services had scheduled a press conference about children’s health on Friday but has since pushed the announcement back until next year.
If these further changes come to pass, they will chip away at the collective protection against deadly infectious diseases, Nuzzo says. Individual medical providers and states may step up to preserve access to vaccines, but people could still slip through the cracks of an increasingly patchwork public health system.
“We have to make public health recommendations that work for all. There are clearly people who can’t spend a bulk of their time trying to find the credible sources of information,” Nuzzo says. “I’m worried about people who just won’t get the lifesaving protection that they need.”
It’s Time to Stand Up for Science
If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.
I’ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.
If you subscribe to Scientific American, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.
In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.
There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you’ll support us in that mission.
